Systems for success – streamlining your processes so you can achieve more with Amy Mitchell

Before we get started I just wanted to let you know that, if you’d like more help taking the overwhelm out of your practice the doors are now open for Psychology Business School. PBS is our complete course covering everything you need to get your practice up and running and bringing you the fulfilment you deserve. We’ve got live classes covering everything from mindset, pricing, business planning to advanced marketing strategies. Plus you get a bundle of legal templates created by a specialist GDPR lawyer just for us so you don’t have to worry whether your privacy policy and terms and conditions are compliant any more.

If you want to:

Make enough money to support yourself in your practice
Break free from the fear of not having enough clients by developing a marketing strategy that works on repeat
Create REAL work/life balance that doesn’t involve doing your reports at 2am

Then our 12 week programme is perfect for you. Doors will only be open for a week so come over and check out the details at:

https://psychologybusinessschool.com/the-psychology-business-school/

The Highlights

I introduce Amy and tell you how working with her has changed my life 00:17
I let you know that the doors are now open for Psychology Business School 00:41
Amy talks about her love for making things as simple as possible, and using tools to do that 02:04
We look at the key processes that people need to have in place, beginning with client onboarding 04:53
Amy tells us the key components a good client onboarding and monitoring system should have 12:59
Amy takes us through systems we can use for responding to, and monitoring enquiries 17:00
We discuss putting processes into action, and how to map out your processes without making it into a massive job 22.10
We talk about processes for invoicing and collecting CPD resources 27.01
Amy takes us through the tech we can use to help us 33:57
Amy tells us about the Asana mini training she has 43:53
I remind you about Psychology Business School 47:02

Links to find Amy

https://www.amymitchell.ca

Asana mini training: https://www.amymitchell.ca/get-asana-mini-training

If this makes you want to try WriteUpp please use my referral link to sign up. It doesn’t cost you anything and means they give me a small bonus, thank you!***********

I just wanted to let you know that the doors are now open for Psychology Business School. PBS is our complete course covering everything you need to get your practice up and running and bringing you the fulfilment you deserve. We’ve got live classes covering everything from mindset, pricing, business planning to advanced marketing strategies. Plus you get a bundle of legal templates created by a specialist GDPR lawyer just for us so you don’t have to worry whether your privacy policy and terms and conditions are compliant any more.

If you want to:

Make enough money to support yourself in your practice
Break free from the fear of not having enough clients by developing a marketing strategy that works on repeat.
Create REAL work/life balance that doesn’t involve doing your reports at 2am

Then our 12 week programme is perfect for you. Doors will only be open for a week so come over and check out the details at:

https://psychologybusinessschool.com/the-psychology-business-school/

***********

TRANSCRIPT

SPEAKERS

Rosie Gilderthorp, Amy Mitchell

Rosie Gilderthorp 00:01

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. The show that helps you to reach more people, help more people and build the life you want to live by doing more than therapy.

Rosie Gilderthorp 00:17

Today’s episode is part of the audio from a class I recorded on efficient processes for our Psychology Business School students. Systems expert Amy Mitchell shares why and how to create processes for everything that creates so much space and so much less overwhelm in your day. Working with Amy has really changed my life and my business, so I knew after we recorded the class that I had to share it with all of you. Before we get started, I just want to let you know that if you’d like more help taking the overwhelm out of your practice, the doors are now open for Psychology Business School. PBS is our complete course covering everything you need to get your practice up and running, and bringing you the fulfilment that you deserve. We’ve got live classes covering everything from mindset, pricing, business planning, to advanced marketing strategies. Plus, you get a bundle of legal templates created by a specialist GDPR lawyer just for us. So you don’t have to worry whether your privacy policy and terms and conditions are compliant anymore. So if you want to make enough money to support yourself in your practice, break free from the fear of not having enough clients by developing a marketing strategy that works on repeat, and create real work life balance that doesn’t involve doing your reports at two o’clock in the morning, then our 12 week programme is perfect for you. Doors will only be open for a week, so come over and check out the details at psychologybusinessschool.com. The details are all in the show notes.

Rosie Gilderthorp 01:45

Hello, everybody, and welcome to our session on systems, which all of you probably know how excited I am. But I’m particularly excited because today we’ve got Amy Mitchell here with us. And Amy is an incredible specialist in all things systems. So I shall let you introduce yourself properly Amy.

Amy Mitchell 02:04

Thank you, thank you, I’m so happy to be here, I’m really just grateful that you thought of me because I know that systems can be something that can be really overwhelming. And one of the things I love is to make it as simple as possible and like cut away all the things you don’t need and really think okay, what do we want to accomplish here? And how can we get some tools or technology or processes to support us. And so I geek out on making system simple, as much as possible. And I like I really love to help people create systems that align with the person using the system, not just cookie cutter systems. So super excited to talk about your workflows and the way that that you all run businesses. Yeah, so I help people set up systems, and I do it in a human focused way. In a nutshell.

Rosie Gilderthorp 02:54

Basically, the Psychology business School that this is part of is all about reducing the overwhelm of being in private practice. And I’ve taken Amy’s course and used her work to develop my systems, and oh, my word, the difference is massive. Overwhelm just comes down instantly when you know you’ve got your systems underneath you supporting you. So I’m really passionate about that, I’m really excited that you’re here to share it with everybody.

Amy Mitchell 03:22

Thank you so much. I’ll tell you a funny side story yesterday, I was on like a YouTube kind of game show with a couple of productivity experts that I met through Janet Marie actually. And we had to bring apps that we really love to increase productivity. And we were kind of competing against each other. And the other productivity experts kind of brought apps that helped you like get more done and bring more into your world and process more. And the apps that I brought were about removing distraction and making things simpler and clearer and I ended up winning. Because people really do want less, not more. And it’s so powerful to create systems with that lens. Like I don’t need to do more, I need to do more of the right things and actually clear away a lot of the things that are pulling my attention that don’t deserve to call my attention.

Rosie Gilderthorp 04:14

Yes, I love that about what you do. And I’ve been reading some really interesting research recently about the impact of dopamine and our the way that we can become addicted, basically to checking, to the action of checking things. And I think we all recognise that in ourselves, don’t we? When things are kind of pinging at us from all angles, it can be really, really difficult to focus on anything that matters to us.

Amy Mitchell 04:41

It’s… even just I deleted Instagram off my phone for two weeks. I was like where’d all this time come from? I already had a spacious feeling life and now it’s like, really luxurious. So.

Rosie Gilderthorp 04:53

Okay. So I thought today we could have a look at some of the key processes that people need to have in place when they’re running a therapy practice, and the one that sprung into my head first was around client onboarding. So I, full disclosure, I used to try and separate all the different things that I might need to do for a client, and I had loads of different processes but actually I think now what creates a better user experience for me is having it all in one process, like everything that needs to happen for that client from the minute that I come into contact with them from all the way through to discharge and maybe follow up if I’m going to do that. So can you talk a bit about how to develop a good process for the client?

Rosie Gilderthorp 05:43

Yeah I mean that’s absolutely essential because the number of times I get a client inquiry and I can’t figure out whether I can take them on or not. I mean how silly is that? I’m just you know the call comes in and I think, oh maybe I’ve got space coming up in February, I’m not sure? So it’s just really helpful to have something mapped out where you can see if people are getting close to the end of your work with them. I mean of course it gets messy, it’s real life isn’t it, so you know with me people are extending all the time or maybe they have an unexpected holiday and so the work doesn’t finish when we thought it might, or you know that those things happen, but it’s really good just to have a kind of a picture of what it should look like if everything goes to plan.

Amy Mitchell 05:43

Absolutely yeah. It’s really interesting when you’re looking at something like the client process because you’re looking at not only the best way for you to manage it administratively but also the best way to manage the actual relationship, as well as their own experience and any nuances right, so there’s it seems at a glance that maybe it’s difficult to really streamline it because you don’t want to treat everyone in the same way although there are very clear steps that everyone needs to go through. So I think, I think there’s a couple of principles maybe we’ll zoom out in order to frame the context of the client onboarding, is that what like you’re talking about having all these different systems, I think one of the like very foundational principles that I teach that I think is so powerful, is having one place that you can go to to manage this type of thing. So if you’re thinking about a client and you’ve got a client email and maybe you’ve got a contract sitting on google drive or dropbox or a desktop or maybe a paper copy, you know having having different places that different parts of the process live can be pretty challenging to then wrangle it all right and I’m sure you can relate to the to the nightmare of being like where’s that form again and where’s that contract and where’s that thing? And so when you go to onboard a client the focus becomes on kind of hobbling together all the pieces as opposed to focusing on really having that be a good experience to bring that person into your into your practice. So the first principle being, I love to recommend that people have one go to sort of digital hub for their business and there’s a few different tools we can use for that and then so just creating that context of like the client onboarding process has a home, and so it lives somewhere and we sort of set it up in as a portal so you can have that system and process live and all the links you need to everything you need for the process are in that portal, if it’s possible to create a visual in that way. So then the actual process itself, I really do, I think the other thing that it needs to have is the ability to dive into the process for that individual client but to also be able to zoom out and see your clients across your practice right, how many clients do you have? Where are they at in the delivery process? What kind of follow up do you need to do week to week? What to-dos do you have for them week to week? And so being able to zoom out and look at all your work play as well as zoom in to focus on okay what am I, what do I need to do for this particular person there in front of me right now or there about to be in front of me? And so I think a good system needs to allow you to do both of those things

Amy Mitchell 09:18

Yeah absolutely. And then the other thing that I think happens in capturing the process, because you all have your process whether it’s as streamlined it’s it could be or mapped out as well as you would like it to be is is a conversation, but you do move through the process with all those clients and so it seems one thing I was talking about yesterday is it feels like well I I’ve done this a million times, so I know what to do, it seems like a little bit of make work to capture it and set up a system. But even, so someone, something I do all the time is I run launches, I run, well I do a lot of things like that. I know those steps inside out and I still love to start with the process, because the less that I have to hold and remember and allow spin in my brain, the more I can just focus on having a bit of headspace or having a bit of space to be creative, or space to focus on the actual relationship, right. So even if you know your, how you onboard a client, exactly how it goes, and where that contract lives, capturing it in one place, making it a checklist as much as possible, and, and having some systems and tools to do that heavy lifting for you. So even though you know your process inside out, having it captured anyway, is having a way to move through it that’s very linear, and it can do the remembering for you. So you don’t have to be remember, oh, I need that form, or they have to sign this disclosure or whatever, you know, it’s like it’s all laid out for you and you don’t even have to think, which which really does free up your own headspace. And I’m sure you’ve found that in just shifting to using systems more.

Rosie Gilderthorp 10:56

Oh, definitely. Partly, when I started, it was really the peace of mind that I knew that I had all the consents that I needed, that all the paperwork I needed was always in place, because I ticked it off. And I wouldn’t do that if I hadn’t done it. But also, I think the benefit of that is when you’re ready to outsource, when you’re ready to get a VA to help you, you then just invite them into the system that’s already there. And it’s really easy for them to get on board and get up and running really quickly. I think in the past, you know, I’ve tried to work with VA’s and I’ve made their life really difficult, because it was in my head, and it wasn’t really anywhere that they could see what I wanted them to do. And so I was always a bit disappointed. But it really wasn’t fair, because I had never laid it out for them. Whereas now, I had a new VA join me a couple of weeks ago and she’s completely up to speed doing everything the exactly the way that I would do it because it’s all mapped out for her, and if she has a problem, she can communicate that to me really easily by leaving me a comment underneath saying, you know, I can’t complete this step because of this reason, can you clarify it? It’s honestly been such a game changer. And I really want all of the psychologists and therapists listening to this to be hiring a VA sooner rather than later. And it’s helped so much with that process.

Amy Mitchell 12:18

I can’t tell you how happy that makes me, to hear that. It’s like because it is such a classic problem, it’s like, I’m too busy, I need support, but I don’t have the time to properly onboard support because my systems aren’t there. So I need systems first, but don’t have time to put the systems in place. And so it gets to be easier. It gets to be put a simple subsystem in place, make sure that these few things are checked off properly, that it’s working in this way to support you and get help as soon as possible. Yeah, I just I, I really wish I would have hired help even sooner than I did. In my business. It’s like so freeing and so helpful, and does make it a lot easier.

Rosie Gilderthorp 12:59

So are there any like key components that a client, a good kind of client onboarding and monitoring system should have in it?

Amy Mitchell 13:09

I think for your your business, I think probably just making sure again, like those things that have to be done are captured, and that they’re in the process. I think that we we either tend to focus on what we need administratively, or the relationship. And I think in having some sort of like checklist or system, you get to focus on both. And so I think, you know, the client onboarding systems in general, the way that I always teach it, and maybe it’s a little bit different for your industry, is that as soon as someone makes a decision to invest with me, I want to make sure that immediately they feel like it’s they they’re in the best hands, and I’ve just made a great step and decision for themselves. And I think probably it’s even more so in your industry where it’s like they, they’re about to really get intimate with you and share a lot, and so having the process carry them in a way that’s going to actually increase your credibility and increase their feeling of trust and safety in the relationship, right. Your, the way that you onboard is really going to set the tone for the relationship, and also for setting boundaries on your end too. Right. So really being able to say, okay, this is the way that I work, these are my expectations of you, this is how I want things to go. Like being able to have your system help you communicate that means that you have these little policies and procedures in place to address anything that’s outside of that and it’s been clearly articulated the way y’know people generally rise to what you ask of them in these these onboarding situations. It’s like I used to think early on in my business, I was so clueless, I was terrible at boundaries, and I’ve done my fair share of work in therapy, and, and so I used to think I just had bad clients. They’re just, they took advantage of me, it was the way that I thought, which is just so backwards. I never explained how I wanted it to be and how I wanted to communicate and how what I expected from them. And as soon as I did that, it’s like I haven’t had a bad client in years.

Rosie Gilderthorp 15:12

Oh my gosh that, I resonate so much with that. My, I used to charge a lot less than I do, and I was a lot more scattered, I wasn’t outsourcing at all, because I was not charging very much so I was always broke. And so the service that people got from me right from the beginning, was scattered and sort of apologetic. Whereas I put my prices up, and something in my head just said, you know, if people are paying me this, then they need a really polished service. And I put a lot of focus into that kind of onboarding, templating all of my emails, making sure all of my contracts went out at the right times. And just that confidence to be like, these are the terms and conditions, if you don’t like them, I’m not the right person for you. I really don’t get DNA very much anymore. I’m sorry, that’s jargon, it means do not attend, did not attend, people who don’t show up and don’t give you any warning. I even used to, I used to get people who’ve ghosted me all the time, and I would be very upset and maybe ghosted without paying. And very similar to you, I kind of put that on them for a while. And then it clicked that actually, it was to do with me and what I had communicated and how my boundaries were.

Amy Mitchell 16:32

Yeah, your client onboarding process is setting the tone for the relationship. And it’s setting your your dynamic as well. Yeah. So having your systems help you do that, and make sure you get all those pieces and communicate exactly what you want. It’s like you don’t even have to think of it, think about it, then. Sorry, I interrupted you.

Rosie Gilderthorp 16:51

No, not at all. No, I think that’s the main point, isn’t it? It’s like we’re trying to take stuff out of your head. It seems really crucial, really. So I also wanted to think about the kind of responding to inquiries bits, because that’s something that trips us up quite a lot. How do you create a system for that and monitoring people who might inquire?

Amy Mitchell 17:17

Yeah, I love creating systems for this, because it’s one another one of those systems that’s very simple and can be really powerful at the same time. So this doesn’t have to be a big system or a big thing to think through, it can be pretty, pretty straightforward. So do most inquires come through email? Would you say?

Rosie Gilderthorp 17:34

Yeah, so increasingly, I think I try and get inquiries by email, I still get probably 20% on the phone, which is not my preferred method, but yeah, most of them do come by email.

Amy Mitchell 17:49

Okay, and then is there generally like a handful of responses you might have to any given inquiry, if someone probably someone is gonna, there’s gonna be the kind of people that are just price shopping, there’s going to be the people that are looking for maybe a particular modality or approach? I’m not sure what the right language is. And so you probably have varying responses based on what they’re, they’re inquiring. Do you have some sort of like application process or some sort of like questionnaire before you will consider? Or do you do like free consultations?

Rosie Gilderthorp 18:24

Yeah, so it probably varies between people watching this, but usually we’ll have some kind of questionnaire or consultation or both.

Amy Mitchell 18:32

Okay. Yeah. So I think there’s a couple ways you, you want to be able to, I think, respond quickly and not reinvent the wheel every time you respond. And then you want to be able to appropriately follow up with anyone. I think probably, I’m sure you do this, but there’s maybe people who’ll inquire and then don’t get back. And then sometimes the simple follow up will trigger actually someone to to be like, actually pull the trigger and say, you know what, actually, I do want to move forward, but if you let them go, then they go. You know, they just need that extra nudge.

Rosie Gilderthorp 19:06

I suspect most people are watching this and thinking actually, I never follow up.

Amy Mitchell 19:10

Yeah, you think if they if they want to meet, they will, but actually sometimes a quick follow up like I’ve had, I’ve inquired with therapists before, and then someone reached back out and said, hey, did you need any, did you have any other questions? It’s like, oh, yeah, actually, I did, I did want to follow up, I had, I had deprioritised that for myself, and it’s actually really important to me that I get this support. And so it can be, I think it can be a really good thing, I think could be a service even, to see it as a service and not as like a sales tactic. So in that you can build this system specifically just in your email, if you want. So, is there like a particular email client that people use? Gmail or is it varied?

Rosie Gilderthorp 19:48

Yeah. So I think there’s quite a lot of people using Gmail, quite a lot of people using Outlook as well. And, and then, you know, for some people like me, there’s also an email marketing software on top of that, which is slightly different, we probably wouldn’t use that for inquiries for therapy.

Amy Mitchell 20:04

Right. Yeah. So so in assuming that your inquiries are in your main email client, I think even just having, so I use a free tool called Streak. And it’s actually an extension to Gmail, and it sounds complicated but I just use the very basic tools in there. And one of the tools in there is, I think Gmail has this built in now, is the snooze function. So if an email comes in, and, and I reply to it, and I want to follow up, I can just snooze it, and then when the snooze comes back up, I can send a quick follow up. The other feature that Streak has is essentially like text expanding, and Gmail actually has this natively, like email template. I really like Streak’s snippet functionality, because it allows you to create like a paragraph that you can use a shortcode. So for example, if you wanted to have your application link as a snippet, you can say, you know, hashtag link, and it’ll pull up your application link to easily just put into your email, or you can have just very, um, templates for responding to emails and templates for following up with people. So that is, like one of the biggest things that I recommend for an inquiry system is have a system that allows you to that remind you to follow up with people that you have responded to, and have templates for those responses. One step more advanced, I suppose, would be to track your leads in a task and project management tool like Asana, Trello, that kind of thing. And so in that case, in the case of Asana, for example, you would forward any inquiries to Asana after you’ve responded to them. And you would have them in columns or stages. So; responded to, following up, waiting on response, sort of having these stages so you can see your lead pipeline at a glance, how many inquiries kind of, you’ve kind of got in the hopper, how many people are reaching out that you’ve responded to, that you’re waiting to hear back on, depending on you know, the volume of leads that you have.

Rosie Gilderthorp 22:10

So just to clarify for people who might not have heard the term lead before. That just means somebody has inquired with you, but they’ve not become a client yet. So yeah, I think it’s a term that we use in marketing a lot, but I didn’t know if everybody would have heard it. But it sounds like, you know, I think we’ll come on and talk a lot more about the tools that are available because I am a convert to Asana, which I think is just a brilliant place to hold all of this stuff, which is awesome. But just kind of thinking about what we’ve spoken about so far, and I’m trying to think, you know, how is somebody who’s already overwhelmed in their practice going to put this into action? And actually, if you just made a note of every step you took, the next time you get an inquiry in, if you just had like a sheet of paper, and you wrote down everything that you did, in response to that inquiry all the way through until they became a client, you’d have this process mapped out. And the same for the client onboarding, if you’ve got no process now, rather than thinking it has to be this massive job of, like I need to spend dedicated time working on my processes, and you’re too busy, and you’re just gonna keep procrastinating that, unless you’re like me, and you love doing that kind of thing. Then actually, just next time, you’re doing some client onboarding, just tick, like ticking it off on a list in front of you, that you can then put into one of these tools. So it doesn’t have to take you extra time really.

Amy Mitchell 23:45

That’s actually a great point. I feel like one thing I’m I’m becoming more and more clear to me that so often people do, so they think, okay, I want to manage my clients better, I want to manage my onboarding better, I need this particular tool to help me do that. But actually, the tool itself is just a way to hold the thinking and the process behind the tool. And so, so many people are looking to tools to solve the thing that actually could be solved in a piece of paper exactly like you’re saying. So the checklist of what needs to happen when that is that’s your system. And whether or not you have that system on a piece of paper or in some tool digitally, to you know, whatever you prefer, the system is the same the process, the workflow is the same and so you can have these tools to support you. But it does start with just mapping your process first. And of course, there’s like basic high level things that you know, are kind of the same across all industries like getting a contract signed and sending a welcome email and booking the appointment in and sending a reminder about the appointment like these kind of pieces are pretty standard across, across the board, that checklist and then any nuances that you’d like for your particular client experience you want to include in there. And then even if you had, you could even take like a little whiteboard that had the process. And every time you have a new client, just check it off, and then you can wipe it clean again, it’s like, it could be very simple. But the point is getting it out of your head, and having one place where that lives. And ideally, you know, I do really obviously love a digital system where you can, in that step that includes the contract or the consent form, or whatever forms you have it links to that form so it’s just at your fingertips like, that does make things faster. But I can see the same system, being on paper and still being really helpful to have it mapped out in that way.

Rosie Gilderthorp 25:48

I just think like however busy you are, you don’t have to make separate time to do this stuff. You can just be mapping it as you go. And and then it’s really easy to put it into a checklist in Asana. That’s not the difficult bit. I think the thing we get intimidated by is the mapping, is thinking like that, how am I ever going to sit down and remember all of the steps that I take when I onboard a client, that’s going to take half an hour, and I haven’t got half an hour. Well actually just do it as you go. And then it will be there for you to review. And you’ll probably review it and see oh, that wasn’t very efficient, or I did that twice and I only need to do it once or whatever. But, but I think yeah, just that process doesn’t need to be hard.

Amy Mitchell 26:29

It doesn’t need to, it doesn’t need to be hard, and it’s doing it one time to make every other time you do it after that easier and faster and easier to outsource. So it is it does feel like one of those like small investments with a pretty big return, which I think a lot of systems are, they just seem really overwhelming and complicated. But there is kind of just like a very basic level where it’s like, what are the steps that you take? Let’s capture them. And then we can worry about putting it in a tool in a checklist and Asana.

Rosie Gilderthorp 27:01

Yeah, cuz other the other key processes that I was thinking in my head are really important for therapists and psychologists, are things like invoicing, and remembering to do it. I mean, I’m just all I was awful for that. Remembering to do it, maybe outsourcing doing it, if you possibly can, because it’s so time consuming. And also like collecting up your CPD resources. So one of the things that that I love about Asana is the ability to email stuff from it. So you might, you might attend a really amazing training seminar, for example, and they send through slides afterwards. Well, I never have time to look at those slides in that moment, but I want them at some point. And so being able to kind of forward that email with the slides in into Asana, and then put it in a project for resources has been really game changing for me, I do that so frequently at the moment, and we all over indulge in CPD.

Amy Mitchell 28:05

I love that too, because then it’s, it’s again in that one place principle that I love. And also you can create sections to say there’s a particular resource on a particular approach or, or something you can categorise. And so the next time you’re like, oh, I wanted to learn more about this particular thing, you can go and there’s a handful of resources there that you’ve collected, that are organised and categorised. And it just becomes like this database and it’s searchable, too. So if you, you know, have a question about something or you couldn’t remember exactly what resource it was in, you could search to find the title at very least. So it ends up being this, this kind of cool, intranet kind of thing with all your resources, and everything at your fingertips is the idea. And then, of course, invoicing. I think one thing that I, I remember as well feeling like dealing with clients and meeting with clients, servicing clients was first, and invoicing is like off the side of my desk. And the more you get paid, and the faster you get paid, the better off you are, you know, the more clients you can handle, the more support you can get. And I feel like this putting getting paid on the backburner is actually just a mindset shift. But it just, it’s a non negotiable piece of the process that gets done right after step four, it’s step five, or whatever every single time. It isn’t something that, that, so I think that is just kind of like an approach like, oh, yeah, I deserve to get paid promptly for my work, and so kind of moving invoicing in terms of priority is something that has to get done administratively, to it being more like this is a priority in my business for me to continue to thrive, for me to continue to show up fully and, and be supported myself so I can continue to support other people. So that was at some point the shift that I made. And then the system, again, it was one of those things that isn’t very difficult to get it in in the steps, and it’s definitely something to outsource as soon as possible. So it’s, you know, the next time you go to invoice a client, write down the steps, get it into a checklist in Asana or Trello, and then get someone else to do it as soon as possible, but prioritise it nonetheless, don’t let it be something that gets put off because it’s not, it’s not your taxes, it’s getting paid.

Rosie Gilderthorp 30:31

One actually, that’s another reason I would say that outsourcing is really important, because if you give someone that job, they haven’t got your mindset gremlins, so they will send that invoice when you might be kind of hovering over the key like, oh, I don’t know. Because I know that some of us, some of you watching this will relate to that. And hopefully some people don’t, but I certainly get that feeling sometimes, oh this is a big one, and don’t want to send it. But also, I think it’s good in our industry specifically to have someone else in between you and the finances. Because if something does go wrong, I think we work in in an area where sometimes people’s lives take nosedives while they’re working with us. And often we have compassionate policies in place for helping you and who might need to set up a payment plan or wait for a while. And actually, what I found is when that’s happened to people having my system say Rosie’s really happy to offer you a payment plan, this is how we’ll set it up, protects the therapeutic relationship a bit.

Amy Mitchell 30:57

Absolutely. Yeah, I can definitely see that. And again, that’s where having like the policies and procedures in a little template, so that you can just access it, you don’t have to have three sleepless nights before you have your assistant send that email.

Rosie Gilderthorp 31:57

Yes, exactly exactly. I just recorded a podcast about that. You have less sleepless nights if you have policies about these things. Because, you know, when you’ve been in private practice for a while, everything comes up eventually, so you might sort of note down what you think are the ideal ways of dealing with these situations, so that you don’t have to redo the thinking next time it happens.

Amy Mitchell 32:20

I heard this copywriter that I follow she said, let your preferences become your policies. And I loved that because it’s like, oh, yeah, capture it. Capture your preferences, because your preferences really do get to dictate how your business feels and how it feels to work in your business, and it can protect these little nuances that make no difference to someone else in a lot of cases but make your life feel so much better and easier. And yeah, I love that though.

Rosie Gilderthorp 32:46

Yeah, me too. Yeah. And yours might be different to someone else’s. I don’t think, people often ask me, you know, can you share your Did Not Attend Policy or your Safeguarding Policy? And I’m like, Well, I could but actually, these are better for you to create, maybe with your supervisor, thinking about what would make you feel like you’d handled it really well? And what steps do you need to take to feel like you’ve covered all the bases, because it might be different. There are some fundamentals that are kind of good clinical practice, but everybody that I work with has their core training, I know that they’re competent, and ethical and all the rest of it. So it really does just come down to what feels good for you and having that mapped out so that you’re never left with that feeling of oh, I’m not really proud of, of how I dealt with that.

Amy Mitchell 33:36

Yeah, that’s incredible. Yeah, I hadn’t thought about it that way. It is, it is kind of nice to you know, see what someone else is doing. But ultimately doing that work, because okay, what do I truly want to be here? How do I want my clients to experience this? How do I want my experience to be? And setting it up, that that piece of work is really powerful.

Rosie Gilderthorp 33:55

Yeah, I think it can be. And so I think we should let ourselves talk about the tech a bit more, because I know that you love it. We know that I love it. And I think people kind of need to know more about this stuff. Because a lot of people won’t have heard of Asana.

Amy Mitchell 34:11

I think it can be really helpful to do a visual. So I have my demo workspace up and we can sort of play around a little bit. But I think essentially what we’re talking about whether it’s Asana, Trello, Click Up, Monday, there’s a lot of them, there’s a lot of them. I will help narrow the field by saying Asana is definitely my top choice for ease of use. It’s a free platform for some limited functionality, they are going to continue to limit functionality for free accounts. And Trello is also really good for people who like a visual board. There’s a one particular limitation with Trello. So okay, let me back up a little bit. Having a digital space that you can treat as a portal for your business can be really powerful for when you want to go look for something or you need something or every single checklist, system process, preference, policy, contract, it’s all in one place. Just that alone is so game changing. And then there’s some other sort of things that your system, you know, whatever platform you choose, if you choose a platform, there’s some other things that your system that I like to see your system to be able to do. And most specifically, it’s to remind you of things when you want to be reminded of things. So it’s one thing to have all your information in one place. But if you have to go looking for what you’re supposed to do, that can be really challenging. So one thing that Asana does brilliantly is it pulls any action items that you have across any your entire workspace into one place so that you know what you have to do. So there’s information in your space, and then there’s to-dos in your space, and you can house them both in one place so that it can remind you, hey, you said you want to do this thing on this day, and it can also be that place where your resources live where you can refer to them without it being an action item per se. Yeah, it’s so funny talking about a tool without, without showing the tool. I was on a podcast recently talking about it, I’m like getting so, trying to get so creative with describing the thing, but my brain just sees the visual. So yeah, the principle of having one place to house, I call it a digital headquarters, one place to house all the different moving parts of your business so that you know where to go to look for something. And that means you know, your tasks, and your processes, and your systems, and your checklists, and your client information, and also any plans that you have for your business, and you know, I have a reminder when my business insurance comes up for renewal every year, and who the contact is, and where that what the copy of the contract is, like it’s all in there. I also use it to manage everything personally, in my life. So I have a reminder of when I need to renew my dog’s medication, she’s very old. So it’s like all these little things that otherwise, you’d have post it notes randomly, or you’d have maybe ten different notebooks around your house, or you’d have these bits and pieces of things you have to do and remember as a human in this world, and it just pulls it all into one space and gives you a system to remind you. So whatever system you choose, I encourage it to include a task management component with dates where you can schedule to-dos, as well as a place we can house information and refer to information that’s searchable, and can can be organised and categorised. And so Asana does that beautifully. I’m an Asana certified Pro, but I don’t, I’m not selling Asana, it’s free. I just love it very much. So. I do like Trello, too, it just doesn’t pull tasks together in the same way that Asana does, you have to check all your boards to see what’s happening instead of having one place where tasks live. So that’s the big difference between those two.

Rosie Gilderthorp 38:10

Yeah, I think what I like about Asana, because I’ve used both, and I did, I did really love Trello, but when I heard about Asana kind of aggregating your tasks by date, that was something that was just game changing for me, I knew I needed that, because that’s what I was missing. I’d often just not look at the right board, and then be like, oh, man, I forgot everything there. So yeah, I really, I think that’s really valuable. And when, when you have those precious, like one hour of time, when you can actually do something, maybe it’s in between a day of clients, or our businesses tend to work like that, that will be like really busy with client facing work. And then we might get a precious hour where we’re like, right, I’m going to do some work on the business now. And it’s like, knowing what to prioritise.

Amy Mitchell 38:57

Yeah, like, where do you start otherwise.

Rosie Gilderthorp 39:00

Exactly. It also helps you realise when you’ve been a bit of an idiot and over scheduled yourself, which I think everybody in this community knows that I am not great with dates, like really not great. If you ask me, you know, what day of the week is it today, Rosie? I will literally have to search the archives of my mind, I really struggle. And so for me, it’s not uncommon at all, for to me to be like, yeah, I’m going to work on this project, this project, and this project and schedule them all for the same day. If I do that, then Asana pulls them all into my today list, and I’m like, well, that was always unrealistic. So at the beginning of the day, I can be like, actually, I’m gonna move that day. I’m gonna move that day, and make a conscious decision, rather than just sort of feeling like a disappointment to myself.

Amy Mitchell 39:47

Yeah because what happens is we have, so like the approach that I use in Asana is based on David Allen’s Getting Things Done. It’s like a classic productivity book, and one of the things that he teaches is that we have open loops. And so anything that our brain has to remember is an open loop and it just kind of spins around, and it often will remind us at a time that isn’t opportune at all, we’ll be like driving in the car, it’ll remind us do something that’s not in the car. And so the idea is having a system that captures your open loops, and so there, sometimes even just writing it down feels a bit better. But if you if you don’t, if you bring doesn’t know that that thing written down, if there’s a plan for it, there’s a system that’s actually going to catch it, then you still worry about it. So the idea in the way that I use Asana is that everything goes into Asana, everything gets a due date. And then Asana brings it up to the day that it’s due. Now another like, exactly what you’re touching on here, beautiful thing about that is that it shows you visually, everything you said you wanted to do on a particular day. And it’s so obvious when, it’s so obvious how much we expect ourselves to get through. And so I created this system that I use, I created these sections, where it’s like, my MIA is my most important actions for the day, and I just choose through the long list of things that I set out to do. I choose the few things that have to get done today, I can’t leave my desk until they’re done, they’re just the most important thing. And then I created a section called bonus. And it’s like, okay, if I get to these other things great, but these are the most important things. But without that kind of system, you’ll be in your email, and you’ll, you probably the first thing you would do on that precious hour you have is go to your email and start responding to emails. But maybe there’s something that is on a post it note somewhere that’s much more important than any of those emails, but because it’s not aggregated, you don’t see what’s actually most important. But as soon as everything, all your to do is all the things that you seek to do in a day or put in one place, it’s pretty easy to see what’s most important. Like I remember one day on my to do list was like organise Google Drive. And it’s like, the minute I put my all my actual to-dos, like, that’s just not important, that’s definitely not happening today. But had I sort of been working in the silos of information, this one list this, you know, prioritising the most important email, my email is probably not the most important thing across my business. So but because you’re siloed in email, you kind of think, okay, this is most important, and you’d spend that hour responding to emails, instead of maybe moving ahead, some client invoicing or yeah. So I think just even the approach of knowing that the idea of, of getting everything in it’s in one single system is that you are going to be able to prioritise what’s most important, what’s actually most important, not what is seemingly most important, based on urgency, or something that we’re reacting to. It does, it does really reduce read reactive work, I think, you know, it’s that you’ve intentionally set your to-dos, you drag and drop them and say, okay, this is the top priority, these are, you know, and that that process is choosing with intention, how you want to spend your time, and focusing on what’s most important. So I think there’s something like really therapeutic about that whole process is choosing where my time is going to go today. And sometimes I choose not to be the most productive person in the world, and that’s also fine. But I choose it, it doesn’t happen to me.

Rosie Gilderthorp 43:18

Yeah, I love that. I love that sometimes, when we’re really stressed, we can feel like a victim of our business. And that’s almost the opposite of what it should feel like, you know, you’ve chosen to be in private practice, because you wanted to take control. And yeah, sometimes we can just give that up to our email inboxes. When yeah, there’s really no, no reason to prioritise what comes in into your inbox just because it’s pinged. There, I’m sure there’s loads of powerful psychological research about why we’re like, oh, but it’s pinged, so I must, I must do what it says.

Amy Mitchell 43:53

Absolutely. The Asana mini training I’ll have, I’ll share the link. It’s a free training that I have, and it goes into this system a little bit deeper, it’s pretty short too, I think it’s only a maybe an hour total, to go through that.

Rosie Gilderthorp 44:06

I mean, I think anybody who is watching this and thinking that it feels right for them to create a digital hub for your systems, I couldn’t recommend it more. I really think the mini training is all you need to get going and to feel confident that you know how to use Asana. It feels like a friendly place. Another thing actually to mention is I really like the fact that Asana has an app that you can have on your phone, because when you have those open loops and something pops into your head, like when you’re out running or at a really inconvenient moment, getting into the discipline of being like right, I am going to put that in the app has, that’s been really helpful for me.

Amy Mitchell 44:45

It’s so handy, yeah. I just, it’s just automatic for me now. If I think of something that I want to do, I pop it in Asana and then I take a few minutes every day to take those random things I put in there and prioritise it among the other things I’ve set, and so it again it becomes really clear when those things pop in that seemed like such a good idea and sometimes it’s a brilliant idea and I prioritise it sometimes it’s like that’s going to go on my Sunday project because I just can’t get to it right now. The other thing the app has on iOS for sure I’m not sure about Android, but it has the ability to leave yourself a voice note up to one minute and it actually transcribes it, so if you..

Rosie Gilderthorp 45:21

Wow, I haven’t tried that yet, but that would be good, I’m always out running when this happens.

Amy Mitchell 45:24

And you could leave a voice note for your VA and then clean it up, clean up the transcript and then the audio note attaches as well so they get a copy of the voice note plus you know, and it’s nice for just a short minute and it’s not like the best transcription but it’s pretty good. And so I found it really handy even having an idea or something I wanted to write in an email but I didn’t, I was just thinking through it I could leave it as a voice note and then clean it up and send it as an email to a client or something. So I find that really really handy.

Rosie Gilderthorp 45:53

That is so cool. Thank you so much, I mean you have so many simple systems.

Amy Mitchell 46:00

Yeah and I think just to reiterate really quickly like it really can be very simple, there’s some very simple things you can put in place to just feel a little lighter and it really, I definitely recommend centralising your to-dos and letting your open loops be held somewhere else, but focusing on letting it be in one place so that your brain knows okay that’s where it is and you don’t have to kind of worry about that. Just that alone can be such a game changer and Asana is a great tool for that, but even on paper I think it can be a big shift because we’re really kind of clearing the clutter so you can focus on what’s really important to you is what we’re trying to do here.

Rosie Gilderthorp 46:40

Absolutely. But I think that’s note that we will finish on, but I’m going to give you all the links to find out more about Amy and her mini training because yeah this stuff, it sounds, initially to some, boring but it really isn’t. It can be so transformative in your business and so thank you so much Amy.

Amy Mitchell 47:00

Of course, so nice to be here.

Rosie Gilderthorp 47:02

I just wanted to remind you that the doors are now open for Psychology Business School PBS is our complete course covering everything you need to get your practice up, running, and bringing you the fulfilment that you deserve. We’ve got live classes covering everything from mindset, pricing, business planning, to advance marketing strategy, plus you get a bundle of legal templates created by specialist GDPR lawyer just for us, so you don’t have to worry whether your privacy policy and terms and conditions are compliant anymore. So if you want to make more money to support yourself in your practice, if you want to break free from the fear of not having enough clients by developing a marketing strategy that works on repeat, and if you want to create real work life balance that doesn’t involve doing your reports at two o’clock in the morning, then our 12 week programme is perfect for you. Doors will be open only for one week, so do come over and check out the details at psychologybusinessschool.com All the details are in the show notes.

Rosie Gilderthorp 48:03

Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of the Business of Psychology podcast. If you share my passion for doing more than therapy, then make sure you come over and join my free Do Mode Than Therapy Facebook community where you can work on getting your big ideas off the ground with like minded psychologists and therapists. I’d also love it if you could leave the show a five star review wherever you listen to your podcasts, it will help more of the people who need it to find it. See next week for more tips and inspirational stories to help you do more than therapy.