Shownotes
Systems for success - streamlining your processes so you can achieve more with Amy Mitchell
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 create so much space and so much less overwhelm in your day. Working with Amy has really changed my life and business so I knew after we recorded the class that I needed to share it with all of you.
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
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
