Episode 17 Julie Herres "Profit First"

In this episode of Not Your Typical Psychotherapist podcast, Ernesto delves into the world of financial well-being for therapists with special guest Julie Herres, author of the groundbreaking book "Profit First for Therapists."

Ernesto and Julie explore the often neglected aspect of financial management in the therapy profession, discussing the challenges therapists face in maintaining a healthy financial foundation. They delve into the concepts outlined in Julie's book, which offers a fresh perspective on financial management tailored specifically for therapists.

Throughout their conversation, Ernesto and Julie shed light on the unique financial hurdles faced by therapists, including the challenges of managing unpredictable income, dealing with employee's struggles to bill, and just navigating the intricacies of private practice. They also discuss the emotional aspects surrounding money and how therapists can address their own money mindset to achieve financial success.

Drawing from Julie's expertise as a certified Profit First professional, they delve into practical strategies and actionable steps therapists can take to implement the Profit First method in their own practices and personal lives. They explore how this approach can transform therapists' financial well-being by allocating profit first, creating a sustainable cash flow system, and fostering a healthy relationship with money.

Tune in to this episode of "Not Your Typical Psychotherapist" to gain valuable insights and practical tips from Julie Herres as she shares her expertise on reclaiming financial wellness for therapists. Whether you're a seasoned therapist or just starting out, this conversation will empower you to take charge of your financial future and build a thriving practice that supports both your professional and personal goals of being Not Your Typical Psychotherapist.

Julie's Website

Profit First for Therapists Website

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Julie: Hello. Hello. Good to see you.

Ernesto: You too.

(Music Intro)

Ernesto: Look, look everybody. I'm holding the Profit First for therapists. Okay? This is.. congratulations. This is just a major accomplishment.

Julie: Thank you so much. I could not be more excited to get this into the world. I am so excited like it it makes me so happy when we get emails and we've been getting multi emails per day saying, I love it. This is helping me. I love this section. I felt seen like that just That makes my heart sing with joy. I'm so glad to be able to help people in this new way.

Ernesto: Yeah. You understand the mental community. And we're gonna dive into this conversation. So for those of you who are not seeing this on video, I'm interviewing Julie and she is the author of Profit First for Therapists. Finally, someone is writing something about the finances, the profits, all the things about money management, all of that stuff for mental health professionals. And god knows I need this book. Oh my gosh. For those of you who've listened to the first first episode of the Not Your Typical Psychotherapist Podcast, it was Our first quarter at our group practice was just really, really a challenging time and Julie almost, I believe, wrote almost everything. Yeah. We did not do in our or not not that we did not do, but some of the stories are just real. And the the really funny thing is, Julie, I'm I'm in this book.

Julie: You are in this book. You generously shared your thoughts on therapist guilt which is your your, you know, your story is right there in chapter one because we start there. So many therapists struggle with the validity of making money. And I think it's your ethical responsibility to have a profitable practice. Right? It's not a bad thing.

It is your responsibility. It's in service to everyone around you. And then you we also shared your story about the vault accounts. Right? That so you had the vault accounts and, like, how you protected your business from yourself and, like, just knew your limits. And I think that is so powerful and I'm so honored that you shared that story because I think a lot of people are going to see, like, oh, I can do this too. I can put the safeguards around my business to make sure that it's taken care of.

Ernesto: Yeah. You know, at the time of this you started writing this and interviewing, I did not trust myself. Right? I did not trust myself with money because you know, I have I'm still going through some generational issues with holding money and withholding money and all those things. And it's a generational thing for me. It's just an internal thing. And I'm I'm so happy that you put that in there because it was just part of my story. You know, this is great.

Julie: Yeah. Well and a lot of people actually have mentioned the Vegas and Shoes bank account. Right? Like, that's that's story in there. So, like, if if you haven't read the book yet, you should you should you should do that.But Ernesto has a a specific bank account for Vegas and shoes. And well, now it's one of the home in Vegas, but but and at the time we were interviewing for this, this was was for traveling to Vegas. Right? Going to Vegas and buying shoes. So this was something that was kind of your Achilles heel, if I remember correctly, where I was, like, that's an area where you had a hard time, like, not overspending. So you just gave it its own account, and that takes away its power. So you know if there's money in that account, go buy buy more shoes.

Ernesto: Yeah.

Julie: And if there's no money, then you know you can't. You simply can't.

Ernesto: Yeah. The tricky part now is that I have multiple properties. Right? So I have to really, really be careful about what I'm doing. And now I'm hosting retreats in my homes here in Vegas. And that's I was I was traveling to Vegas. Now I have three homes in Vegas.

Julie: Now you have homes. So I will bet that you probably started a new bank account for your investment properties. Right? Maybe one for all of them or maybe one for each. Both is okay, but I'll bet there's a real Profit First account there somewhere?

Ernesto: Yeah. So yeah. So within the each houses has its own bank account.

Julie: Okay.

Ernesto: So it's a separate LLC for each homes because it's all investment properties. And so I separated all of the houses into different LLCs. I took off of my name. I bought the house under my name, but quickly turned into quickly claiming it into an LLC. So created multiple accounts there, and I'm hosting retreats them ...now in them. So before we go into that, Julie, Profit First, tell me the story, tell me the the motivation behind the Profit First writing the book for specifically for therapists.

Julie: Probably, first of all, changed my life. My money story was that entrepreneurship is risky, it is unstable. And so I always thought, like, that is that's what I've seen because my my mom was a serial entrepreneur she loves starting a business, but it was always an up down, up down of business going well, and now business is failing. And now there's a new business and there's something else. And so on the other side, I would see my father who had worked for the same company for twenty years and, okay, that is stability.

So I always had in my mind working for someone else is stable, being an entrepreneur is not. So profit versus how I actually started my own business years before I was implementing with my with my clients. But then once we started sharing this information, my team and I was we started implementing profit first in our private practice clients. We saw this amazing transformation, and so a practice could go from really struggling financially to within, you know, six to twelve months. Actually doing really well.

The owners paying themselves intentionally paying themselves more. They have enough money for taxes. Like, those are some really amazing life transformations, but also when we think of the quality of life of a practice owner where they're always stressed out about money, going from that place of difficulty to going to a place where all of a sudden, like, they have they can have some peace and they can kind of just breathe into, like, okay. I know things are going to be k? There's a a huge relief in that.

And so seeing that transformation happen over and over again, I thought how can I get this message out there? In a way that even, you know, my my accounting firm, no matter how big I grow it, I I will never be able to work with every single practice owner in the United Right? That's just not possible. And I have no no ambition to grow it that large, but I wanted to get this message out. And for me, the book was in accessible way to do that.

So you can pick it up. You can even get it at your library. Right? Request it from your library. Pick it up on Amazon.

It's in the twenty something dollar range on Audible and Kendall. Like, that's, you know, where else can you for twenty dollars get that much value into the financial systems of your business. There's not a whole lot of places. Mhmm. And so that was my goal to, like, make it accessible to anyone who is starting a practice, thinking about starting a practice, in group practice, like wherever wherever they were, I wanted to be able to reach them and provide some guidance.

Ernesto: Yeah, this is this is amazing stuff because you're speaking the language of therapist. That's one thing. And there's there's a disconnect between the mental health profession and money. And I think what you did really well here is you bridge that gap between the therapist, a mental health professional, and money. You talked about or I love this. Here's story about your mom. Here in chapter four, you kinda mentioned a little bit more about it. And it feels like that is a pivotal learning lesson for you as well too. It's just observing her and how she ran her business. And, you know, when she got sick, something went on.

Julie: Yeah. My mom's life was spent, like, she that's what she wanted to be as an entrepreneur. And unfortunately, it was the cycle of starting a business. The business kinda gets off the ground, and then, eventually, the business failed. Right? And I I just remember thinking as a child and even as a as an adult, like, if if my mom can't figure this out, if if someone can work that hard and be that dedicated and still not make it. How could I? What how how could I possibly do it? And I just can't help but think if if she had to have the advantage of this of this framework of building profitability into the practice, how things could have been different. But I just knew when but, you know, when it was my time to start a business. I really hadn't been hot. I really hesitated before I even took took that first step, but I knew I I did not wanna put my family through what I had been through as a child. And I had a very happy childhood. Right? I'm not regretting any of that, but there was a lot of instability. There was a lot of change. I mean, we're constantly moving to new house, new school, new friends, new everything because, you know, as the business has ebbed and flowed, it doesn't just affect the business owner. Affects everyone in their orbit, everyone around them. And I just knew that's not the story I wanted for my own children and my family. And so I had to do something something different but, you know, that that made me feel very close to my mom. That's something that we have in common being entrepreneurs. And I feel like I can take the baton right where she was not successful. Like, I can take that baton and and keep going and and just change our family legacy that way.

Ernesto: Well, you know, with this book, I think you've I know that you've achieved it and your mom must be extremely proud of you. This is amazing.

Julie: Thank you.

Ernesto: Yeah. So again, we're talking about profit first for therapists, Julie Herres, And it's forwarded by Mike Michaelaich, which is pretty amazing as well too. So you you spoke about the framework. Or mental health professional, quickly help us go through that.

Julie: So the premise of Profit First is that returning the traditional accounting equation upside down. So if you've ever looked at a profit and loss and I know Ernesto you have, I hope most of your listeners who are business owners have as well, the the accounting equation you'll see there is income minus expenses equals profit. It's profit in this case is an afterthought. It's what's left at the end. And for some, practice owners, it's what It's a theoretical thing. Right? It's what happens maybe at the end of the year on paper when you're talking to your accountant. It's not something that they really ever see. So when we turn that accounting equation upside down, we're saying income minus profit equals expenses. So we're carving out that profit from the very beginning, and that means there's going to be less left for expenses. But when you have less, What Parkinson's law tells us is that you're going to make it work. Parkinson's law tells us your supply your demand for something will expand to meet its supply. Right? The demand for something will expand to meet its supply. And we see that happen all the time. Right? If you start making more money, where is that money going? You find ways to spend it. So if you are carving some money out specifically for profit, you have less left, you're you're naturally going to get creative and make that work. One of the ways that we do that is by using a smaller plate. So that's one of the profit first principles. So if you are eating from a big plate or a small plate, chances are if you're eating from large plate, you're just simply going to consume more. Right? That is what the data shows us because there just is more available to you. So the way we do that in the context of profit first is we're using multiple bank accounts. Instead of having one big bank account, right, one large plate where all that money goes into. When you see that big pile of cash, your brain is naturally going to think There's a lot of money. Let me go consume it. Right? Parkinson's law kicks in. So when we're using multiple smaller bank accounts that are named for their intended purposes, we're naturally going to spend less. So the six foundational bank accounts that we are going to start with are the income account. Typically, your existing checking account is going to become your income account, especially if you take insurance. We don't wanna mess with any insurance payments. Your existing checking becomes your income account. All deposits go there. Then we add a profit account as the name implies. This account is meant to be a reward for you being a shareholder of the business. Right? You are business owner as well as a worker in the business. So if you are Ernesto investing in, you know, a dividend paying stock in AT and T, a Home Depot, you're going to get a little check or a big check every quarter. Right? That is just you didn't do anything for it. You're just getting a check because you're a shareholder. So this profit account is part reward and part emergency fund. And we have the owners pay account, that is intended to pay the owner for the work that they do in the business. So that should ideally cover all the household expenses.

Ernesto: Yeah

Julie: we have the tax account. That one has some heavy lifting to do. The this is where we're earmarking funds to pay taxes on the owner's behalf doesn't come out of your personal cash flow. Next up, and this one is optional. For practices that have employees, for group practices, we add a payroll account Because in group practice, as you know, payroll is the single largest expense you're going to experience right now. So the money is going there. So we have that payroll account for wages, payroll, tax, and benefits. And last but not least, we have an operating expenses account. So that is where things like rent, liability insurance, software, kinda all the little odds and ends are going to go in. But that operating expenses account, that's where most of the discretionary spending happens. Right? Are you going to invest in coaching? Are you making this investment? Are you maybe looking at a new space. That's usually the the money that you have to play with. And so that is your small plate that tells you, can you do this or can you not? So that is those are the broad lines, very, very broad lines of profit first. You're using multiple bank accounts to help control your spending.

Ernesto: Wow. There's there's a lot to unpack there, and it it's just a beautiful model and guideline to really put money aside in different areas. Now one of the things that I get a lot and one of the things that also you also have come across is people who are upside down in their finances. You know, you have to do the the assessment. You you do the assessment and you you realize that the group practice or the business is underwater. Yeah. From there, what would you suggest? What are some of the things that you would do at that point?

Julie: So first, I know that is just a very tough situation to be in. Right? I know the stress that that is, but I also know that when a practice is underwater, so spending more than it makes. That is not a sustainable long term solution. Right?We are not large multimillion dollar corporations with million, multimillion dollar lines of credit or access to bank and funding and VC capital So for most small business owners, when there is money going more money going out than coming in, there either is a point where there's no personal funds or reserves left to put into the business, and sometimes are no longer any credit cards or line of credit or anything else left to do. So The best place to do to start when that is happening is get to work. As a business owner, there are two different options available there. Because you can either decrease expenses or increase income. And I think sometimes business owners forget about the increasing income. Piece. They kinda go into, like, starvation mode. Like, what can I cut? How can I cut everything possible? And that is a really good exercise. But sometimes if you're cutting a twenty dollar a month expense, and your problem is a ten thousand dollar problem. That twenty dollars is not going to actually

Ernesto: insignificant, insignificant. Right? Yeah.

Julie: It's kind of insignificant. So I when that happens, I love it when or I always recommend the practice owners look at what is this the thing that you can do that will have the largest impact. So that might not be calling Comcast to get a twenty dollars reduction. That might be, how can I talk to the most influential referral partners that we have? And tell them, hey, we have immediate availability.

Ernesto: Got it.

Julie: Right? Like, working on the things that are going out because if you do that and all of a sudden you get ten intakes that week from that one referral, what a huge difference that makes compared to something else? If you're in a situation where you just had three clinicians leave, which I know one of our clients off the top of my head that happened recently. Right? Three clinicians left at one time. If it's a ten person practice, that can be almost catastrophic. Right? That's a huge amount of revenue leaving out the door. So maybe in that case, your best effort is How can we focus our efforts on recruiting and getting someone new into the practice as soon as possible so that we can replace that income? Right? So a lot of times for that business owner, the revenue generating is the most important. And then you can still have an admin or someone on your team work on. Maybe how can we reduce expenses. But for the owner, that revenue generation is not really important.

Ernesto: That is amazing. I actually love that suggestion. And It's actually really validating because, you know, that's the automatic piece. Right? What can I eliminate? Yeah. Because of out of fear. But you can also think about it from a perspective of how can within these past few weeks increase generation of revenue. So you don't have to you you can you can cut expenses like you said, but that doesn't have to be the only choice that you can make. You can actually increase so do more marketing, reach out to your referral sources.And I just actually did that today where I wanted to increase a little bit more because there's so things going on in twenty twenty four that I wanna accomplish instead of decreasing my expenses or cut my expenses somewhere What I did was I did more marketing, making sure that people understand the retreats that I'm doing, the summits I'm doing, all of those things. So that is a pretty awesome way to look at it. And lo and behold, to people bought a ticket to Santa Fe -- Yes, sir. -- today. So and for those of you as well who are listening. Julie Harris is actually one of my speakers for

Julie: Yes. Absolutely. -- I cannot. Wait.

Ernesto: Greece. We're going to Greece next year. I love that. I love that framework where the increase amount and that's a strategy that is that that works in this day and age. Right?So, Julie, from from your perspective, this financial framework, it leads to somewhere. You wrote it from a perspective of not just educating the mental health professional about all of this stuff. But there's it seems like there's a deeper meaning, there's a higher meaning to why you wrote this book. And you've mentioned financial freedom. Can you speak a little more about that?

Julie: Yes. Well, and so I believe every practice deserves to be profitable. I believe every practice owner deserves financial freedom, and that might meet something different to everyone. Right? It might be for some practice hours, that means I wanna be able to go on a trip every single year with my family and not have to worry about the cost. For others, that just means I want to be able to put my kids in this special private school. Other times, I want to be able to buy something and swipe my credit card and not have to worry if it's going to that I'm going to be able to pay my credit card in full. Right? So everyone has their own definition of what is important to you. But ultimately, financial freedom is you you have the space to do your very best work. Right? I think as as business owners, there's that transition from working in the business to on working on the business, right, and that's from the the Emith, Michael Gerber. But when you're working on the business, when you're fully stepping into your shoes as a visionary of the business. If you are constantly worrying about money, it is difficult to do the things that really need you. Right?It's difficult to to really step into those shoes and do your very best work and put your very best foot forward and do the visionary work. And so that allows you a system that you know everything is going to be okay. Things will break in the business. Right? Because I think that's just a certainty.In business, things will break. The bigger the group, the more things will break. That's just a certainty. It's not a when. It's or it's on a if it's a when.But then you have a framework that will help you identify, oh, something's going on over here, oh, things are not looking good over there. Right? The profit first framework is going to to tell you what is going on. So if something like, for example, one of our clients was recently saying, oh, well, there's not enough money in my payroll account. You have to change allocation. That means the pay profit first is broken. And our answer was, actually, that means something is going there's a problem with with payroll. So we need to look at what's going on, not just change the allocation, change the dollar amount that's going there. We need to figure out what the bank account is telling you right now. And then we can make an informed decision on if it makes sense to change things.But your your bank account is telling you, hey, something's going on over here so we have to listen to it and actually go on a fact finding mission and see what is it telling you.

Ernesto: Wow. This is amazing. Chapter eleven, financial bottlenecks reduce expenses by focusing on financial issues with the largest impact explain quickly what that means.

Julie: Okay. Whenever I I think the that business ownership is a a game of whack- a-mole. Right? I'm sure most business owners feel like that's something where you're like, oh, problem. Problem problem.So this is a a short chapter with a framework on looking at there's always going to be a problem in the business. There's usually multiple problems like a bottleneck. Right? And I want practice owners to focus on the thing that is going to have the largest impact. And so I go over here are some of the six most common ones that we see.One of those is fixed expenses, one is clinician payroll, one is personal expenses, whether there's some in the, you know, in the business account, sometimes it's growth, So just identifying that where are we having the biggest bottleneck and how so so that you can focus your efforts as the business owner on that one area. If you're trying to fix eight things at one time, it's really difficult to actually do. But when you're able to to identify, like, this is the area that's going to have the largest impact like what we were just talking about earlier, then you're able to really move the needle on the business.

Ernesto: Well, that's that's it's such so simplistic to think about that. Right? But for some reason, for many of us, it's complex. Right? Tell me about the impact.What would be an example of an impact?

Julie: Let's back up a little bit into bottleneck. So I think of a bottleneck as you're on the highway, right, if all the cars are going at the same speed, you can be going really, really fast. Right? You can go be going sixty five, seventy miles an hour, everything is fine. But if one car slams the brakes and then there's a pile up behind it, then all of that stops.So I think of that as your the system's in your practice. So if all the systems are growing at the CSP, they could go be going really fast and everything is going to be fine. But if all of a sudden, for example, billing slams on the brakes. Then you have a problem. Or if all of a sudden, you know, your clinician compensation is completely out of control, then you have problem.Everything else is not growing at the same speed. So it's just identifying like, identifying where that is so that you can basically bring the little bring your own little tow truck, undo this bottleneck, and then everything will start flowing at the same speed again.

Julie: Listen, I I don't think it is. I think you learned a great lesson. I think trust and verify is probably the lesson that you learned in this case. Right?

Ernesto: Yeah.Julie:Yeah. So what systems have you put in place?

Ernesto: Oh my gosh. So so it was brought to my attention. So my incredible team kept on screaming and shouting about it. My executive team, three of them was was saying things to me like, can you look at the financial, can you look at this? Hey, we just discovered this.And, you know, I'm like, I'm gonna do my travel. I'm gonna be buying houses or whatever. So I put my head was in the sand. And then they forced me to look at it. And then they were like, hey, the staff, the staff, the staff, the staff, We have no checks and balance on who's collecting what.And then when they took it upon themselves to fully audit the program for a whole month. Then we started discovering through therapy notes all of the billings that were not made because we at this time, at time of this recording, we're only with one insurance company. Everything else is private pay. So we didn't have an idea of whose collecting what and whatever. So we have that system.Now what we did, Julie, is when we figured out what we needed to look at, what we need to accomplish, My one of my staff is now taking on the billing, looking at it every single day, making sure that people are billing, we're collecting copays, and many of the clients didn't even know that they had copays. And so we had to go back with each and every one of our clients and tell them, hey, you know, you've got a copay, a $20 copay. So we have to collect, luckily, we haven't had any well, we had some pushback, but not very many. So this is a kind of checks and balance that I think the bottleneck have happened Right?Because if it continued on, I don't think we as a group practice would have survived you know, the first quarter.

Julie: Yeah. Like if it went on another another year where it just keeps the whole keeps getting bigger, right?

Ernesto: Yeah. Yeah. So now that we've got we've got a system, we've got a flow, people are checking in. We're not out of the hole yet. I mean, there's, you know, insurance companies will not allow you to build after ninety days.Right? So unfortunately, we've lost some, but we're moving forward. But now that we know we've got systems in place every single day I get these reports saying, hey, we've got this and we got this money coming in. So That makes me feel good. But again, there's a part of me as a group practice owner as a leader when you feel a sense of failure.Yeah. You know? And I'm sure you guys hear it a lot on your end, Julie.

Julie: Well, I I think, honestly, I I wanna be kinda turn the tables on you. I think it's commendable that you are sharing this, right, that you're just being open about it because this is that's a tough situation and a lot of a lot of practice orders feel alone when Like, how could I have made this mistake? Everyone makes mistakes in some area. Right? So for some it will be this, for some it will be something else.And I bet it costs you a lot of money, and that That is not that is not great. Like, I wish it hadn't cost you a lot of money, but I I noticed a really big difference between the the practice owners who think about that kind of situation from a place of scarcity versus abundance. And I think you're approaching it from a place of abundance of, like, oh, I I I'm putting systems around it so that doesn't happen again. And that was a really expensive lesson. But now think of the impact that you sharing this story has where, you know, your lesson, I have no idea how much it cost, but let's say it was a fifty thousand dollar lesson, like, That was expensive for you.It will never happen again to you. You now have the guidelines in place. Like, then you can go share this message. Like, what a gift to the community to hear that and say like, okay, let me go look. Do I have these kinds of checks and balances in place?Do I do I don't get a report every day, maybe I should get a report every day. So, like, thank you for sharing that because I think it's really valuable to hear that Even that that people who have look like they have it all together, some days they don't. And that's just the reality of business ownership.

Ernesto: Yeah. Yeah. The the funny thing that you mentioned $50,000 is because you're almost right on the dot.

Julie: I'm it was an accident.

Ernesto: Right. Right. Yeah. You know, and and that's that's true for me. Everything that you said is is very true for me.That's why I talked about it in the first podcast just because I felt like a failure. I felt I felt like wow, and I said, you you have been you're so errigan to think that you can trust people. Now, just as I say that, I had compassion for those who weren't billing. I you know, in my practice, they're still with me. And I warned I told my executive team go easy on them.Even though my executive team was like, no, we gotta do this. But for me, because I was never a good employee, You know, I was I worked at community mental health. I hate notes. I I hate I I was always the one that had that email or that phone call saying, hey, you need to turn on you know, to complete your notes.

Julie: Turn in your notes.

Ernesto: My I projected my own sadness onto them and and my my compassion where it bit me in the butt. Right? So now I have to work on my leadership but that's something that I had to realize. And we are still at a point where learning and learning. And I'm glad that you are pointing this out in your book.

Julie: Yeah. Well, and I I'm curious to hear, did the employees who were in the situation, did, like, have they happily turn this around? Or was that a difficult situation to turn around?

Ernesto: No. No. No. No. They really turned around.They really turned around. They answered the call. You know, I really do have the respect of my group practice. And They weren't doing this out of malice. It was just one of those things where I I truly believe that there it was gonna get done.

Julie: Yeah.

Ernesto: But not at at a timely manner. Right? Okay. Not not very many of them know that insurance companies will not reimburse you after ninety days. Right?Mhmm. Right? And so you didn't know that piece. I think So

Julie: And and also clients don't really like it when you bill them ninety days later. Right? There's there's that there's that part too. If you're billing eight sessions ninety days later, like, oh, that's a big chunk of money.

Ernesto: Exactly. Oh, I got you.

Julie: Yeah. Exactly. Well, I thank you for sharing your story. I'm glad that things are back in the right direction, but I'd be willing to bet that your profit first accounts had a little sounded a little alarm bell there and that hopefully, that helped you one that was one of the pieces that helped you identify this this problem.

Ernesto: I can tell you now, I know. I know what to do. I know where I need some improvement in my leadership, in in my group practice ownership. I know now. And it's it's a hard lesson.It's close to $50,000, everybody. I will shout that out. Okay? But I truly have this above this mindset no matter how difficult life may be at the moment financially with my businesses. I just know that because I put things in place, I am just very confident that we're gonna build back So for those of you who are listening, group practice owners or just business owners in general, reach out to Julie read the book Profit First because it will validate.It will empathize with you. It will extend grace and compassion. There's like you said, Julie, there's ebbs and flows, ups and downs in businesses. Right? And I think you did a great gracious job here with your book for the mental health community?

Julie: Well, thank you. And I I really I customized the Profit First system. Specifically for private practice owners, but I also wanted to be really intentional. And I I I thought long and hard about what else do practice owners need that I can include in this book, right, without making it the size of a dictionary? Like, what do you what are the pieces that they need in addition to profit first.So I have a whole chapter on team compensation because I think that's something that people struggle with and that where they needed some guidance. Have a a chapter on scaling, a chapter on paying down debt. Right? There's a lot of little bits and pieces here have an appendix on Tax basics because I I that's that's hard to make interesting, but I wanted to make sure that practitioners had a resource guide where they could go and say, like, okay. Don't understand what this term is.Let me go look that up and see what's going on. So it's definitely all profit first, but there's there's a lot more in there to just help practitioners, like, manage their money.

Ernesto: Love it. Love it. Well, for those of you interested, I will have the link to the show notes for Profit First and also the link to Julie Herres and her team. They've always been a big supporter with Cab Academy and the retreats and summit and all that stuff. And please come to Santorini on a Santorini cruise and hear Julie please.Julie: Come cruise with us.

Ernesto: Exact exactly. Julie, thank you so much for for this book and all you do for the community.

Julie: Hey, Ernesto. Thank you. I appreciate all your support. With the book, and I appreciate everything you do.

Ernesto: Alright. Thank you so much.