How to set up your practice for success with Anna Bunch aka the Psych VA

Today I'm joined by Anna Bunch, an experienced Virtual Assistant and Online Business Manager who specialises in supporting Psychologists, Therapists and Wellness Professionals. Her passion is helping others achieve their goals, and she loves working with, and supporting people, with the aim of giving them their time back and achieving their business goals.

The highlights 

• Anna tells us what led her to wanting to work with psychologists and therapists as a VA  02:03
• I ask Anna about the mistakes she sees people making when they set up in private practice 11:30
• Anna takes us through the first things people should get in place, such as practice management software 13:36
• Anna advises us on how to get ourselves ready to work with a VA  22:40
• Anna talks about the difference between employing somebody to do admin for you, and hiring a VA who is freelance  29:19
• Anna tells us how can we measure the return on our investment, if we outsource to a VA  37:08
• Anna talks about the consultation service she provides, and how she can help with setting up systems  41:16
• I tell you where you can get in touch with Anna  42:25

Links for Anna

Website: psych-va.co.uk

LinkedIn: Anna Bunch

Other Links

Course Creation Guide

Psychology Business School

Mentioned in this episode:

Free Client Checklist

Do you sometimes wake up at 2 am worried that you’ve made a terrible error that will bring professional ruin upon you and disgrace your family? I’m laughing now but when I first set up in private practice I was completely terrified that I had “missed” something big when setting up insurance or data protection. Even now, three years in, I sometimes catch myself wondering if I have really covered all the bases. It is hard, no impossible, to think creatively and have the impact you should be having in your practice if you aren’t confident that you have a secure business. BUT it can be overwhelming to figure out exactly what you need to prioritise before those clients start coming in. I’ve created a free checklist (plus resources list) to take the thinking out of it. Tick off every box and you can see your clients confident in the knowledge that you have everything in place for your security and theirs. Download it now - the link is in the show notes.

Client Checklist 2021

TRANSCRIPT

SPEAKERS

Anna Bunch, Rosie Gilderthorp

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.

Hello, and welcome to today's episode of the Business of Psychology. Today, I'm really pleased to be here with somebody that I know well and work with every day. I'm here today with Anna Bunch who is a VA who specialises in supporting psychologists and therapists to work smarter, not harder, and she literally saves my skin every single week! You will have heard me talk about her on this podcast before, so I'm very, very pleased to have her here to talk to us today. Welcome, Anna.

Oh, hi, Rosie, thank you for having me. I'm very excited.

Yeah, me too, because one of the reasons that we get on so well I think, is that we both have a bit of a passion for creating systems that make running a practice easier. So in Psychology Business School, I've always been talking a lot, and on this podcast I've always been talking a lot, about how outsourcing can really take the weight off your shoulders, get you some clarity, but in order to do that, you've got to build systems that make sense, and that somebody else can follow. And I just think it supercharges your practice when you do that. But the fact is, most of us don't have hours and hours to spend setting up the perfect systems in our practice. And in my experience, that is very much where you come in. And I know how brilliant you are at doing it. So I'm really excited to have you here to talk to the listeners today about how to use a VA to your best advantage and how to set up your procedures properly, so that with some help, you can create a smooth running machine in your practice. So before we get into all of that, though, what led you to wanting to work with psychologists and therapists as a VA?

So I've got quite a long and varied career history, and it's just been by chance that my past kind of led me to this line of work. So I've started my career mainly working for the railway. So working for a national railway company, starting out customer service, I used to work at Darlington train station selling train tickets, and then I moved on to working on the more finance side of things, down in York at the head office where I managed the accounting team. Then I had a bit of a change and then worked in private education where I was head of department for MIS and funding. So it was all audit compliance, so that's where I get my passion of processes and systems making sure everything's done right, and that we've got a list to check off... that yeah, that's the, my inner auditor in me.

Everyone needs one.

Exactly so, that yeah, lends well to everything that I do today, really, you know, the customer service side of things, the admin, the managing teams, audit and compliance. And then very randomly, after I had my little girl, Jessica, who she's going to be six in a couple of weeks, I didn't want to go back into the training sector, been doing that for 10 years had enough. So I very randomly started doing some cleaning, which within a couple of months, I had five members of staff, I had contracts for some big premises locally, and yeah, it just all went a bit crazy. But trying to do all that, and then the team, it was just growing too big for what I could do as a, as a new mum. And one of my friends, who's a neuropsychologist, told me about her VA. And like a lot of people I was like, well, what's a VA do? And then she told me and I said I can do that, I could do that. And I thought, hmm, working around Jessica, at my computer, at home, no commuting, no cleaning toilets, no going back and working for someone else, it was just the perfect answer for me.

Wow. So I didn't know you actually grew a business that expanded too quickly!

Yes, it did, it did. And it was something that y'know, it was never intentional, it all just kind of snowballed as things do. And that and again, that was the point where I was out cleaning, I was trying to do payroll, I was trying to do all the back office admin. I was trying to market my company. I was trying to write risk assessments, the whole health and safety side of things. And it just, at that point, that was the moment when I realised that owning your own business, we don't just do the jobs, you know, do your day to day job. It's all the admin stuff. So it was you know, Friday nights was pizza, pyjamas and payroll night, you know, Saturday mornings, I was going out to see new clients, Sunday's was all planning the next week. And then of course, you know, you get all their, when you've got a team of people, all the HR issues. and it's just yeah, so I have a very strong appreciation of what it's like to run a business.

That's so interesting, I just think a lot of people listening will really resonate with that, with going into business because you needed more flexibility to work around your little girl, and then building a beast, basically, that took over your whole life.

Absolutely. That was what it was like and then, so just through word of mouth, the VA business started to grow. And that was about three years ago now. And it's all just happened holistically, and just all, like I say, from word of mouth. So at first, I wasn't as nice as I am now, but it just made sense, the more and more, and it's not just psychologist, you know, the wellness professionals, anyone really with a clinic, private practice, it's, you know, everyone's got the same pain points, everyone's got the same needs, uses the same systems. And because I'm privy to a lot of people's businesses, you know, you can, you can take the best practice for it and share with it, you know, so how a good way of doing things. So yeah, from that it just made sense to niche down and just deal with everyone in the same sector, which has worked really well, and I really enjoy it as well. I think, you know, I was someone who was sick, I've had therapy myself over the years, so I've been the client on the other side as well, and how important it is to, you know, have that empathy and provide your clients the customer service as well. And then my skill set from all the other things I've done over my career, it's all things that I know.

I think it's so valuable, that you've got that niche, and that understanding of the business from both sides. Because, you know, I think I was talking to you actually, before we hit record on this episode, about the fact that I did work with a couple actually more generic VAs before I found you. And that was really the struggle, it was that, you know, I would have to invest a lot of time and mental energy in explaining things like, you know, we might get people phoning up who are really distressed, this is how you need to talk, this is what you need to say. And I had to really think all that through for them, because they didn't have any experience in business like mine, and most VAs that you will see kind of marketing themselves, say or you know, on Facebook ads, or at business networking, they probably don't have the experience of running a clinic based practice. I think that's actually quite a skill to run a practice where you need to be filling appointment slots, but you don't want to be booking people in it at random times. It's really different to the needs of running a different type of business, I think.

Yeah, absolutely. And no two virtual assistants are the same, everyone's got a completely unique skill set. And I'm growing my team slowly, so I have three other VAs who're working the working with me, and I'm being very careful in picking the right people who have the background as well, that have previously worked with therapists or have been a medical secretary, to have that, because I just think it's so important that to have that understanding, you know, that there's millions of people who can do basic admin work and like fill diaries, but just having that extra knowledge of the medical sector is what we're about really.

Yeah, because it's not really basic, isn't it? I think, you know, there's such a lot of issues around GDPR and confidentiality. I don't think there's really anything we do that is straightforward compared to some other businesses, because obviously, there's kind of two sides to my business, and I find the clinic side is much more complex admin wise than the other stuff that I do. I think it is anyway. And so I just think knowing that the VA that you're working with is a safe pair of hands, and they've done this before and learnt that best best practice is really, really valuable. So very keen to promote your services to other people, especially now I know that you've expanded, I think it's a great thing to offer.

Thank you. Yes, it's al,l it's all going really well. And yeah, the GDPR side, like you say is just so important that's at the forefront of what we do, and it scares so many people. Just the people I speak to, just everyone's terrified of making a mistake, you know, and just, but if you've got the right systems in place, you've got the right paperwork and the understanding of it and so, us hear, me and the girls, you know, we've all done our GDPR training and just, yeah, we're doing everything that we can.

Exactly. And it's about having that confidence in the person that you outsource to, to know that they've taken responsibility for learning about GDPR. I often get questions about y'know, do we need to provide the training? And actually, one important thing to recognise about hiring a VA is that they should be a freelancer. And that means that they're responsible for their own training. So my advice is always no, find a VA who has got that training for themselves and look for the evidence of that, but actually, unless you're going to employ them, which is a completely different thing, and we might talk a bit about differences there, that's something that you should expect your VA to be an expert in. And they're not the right VA, if they're not,

Yeah, absolutely you need, when you're, when you're looking for a virtual assistant, you need to make sure that they're ICO registered, ask them about GDPR, make sure they've got the correct insurances in place, you know, they will, a good VA will send you over any evidence that you require, as a matter of course, and make sure that you've got your contractor services in place, your data processing agreements between the two parties, and any other parties. So with my team, I have the same contracts and data processing in place with them also, and I provide them with ongoing training, and, you know, share best practice. So just to make sure everyone's covered from, from all angles, yep, from a legal point of view.

And I definitely recommend, if you're running a therapy practice, that's what you need to look for. And there's not that many people out there offering it to be honest. But I wouldn't settle for anything less. So that kind of brings me on actually to my next question, which is sort of about the mistakes that you see people making when they set up in private practice. Because I know that one of those is sort of being so scared about the admin and getting it right GDPR wise, that they actually don't have a system at all. So I was wondering, kind of what have you seen out there? Because that's something I hear quite a lot.

Absolutely, I would say my typical clients, when the majority of people come to me, they're suffering a great deal of overwhelm and using a lot of pen and paper, pen and paper diaries, you know, we're having clients on spreadsheets, invoicing or maybe not invoicing, sending invoices out, so it's the whole back office stuff, which, and I know how it starts, I've got experience of it myself, you think you start off with your diary and you think, you know, I'll do that later, I'll put that in place another time. And then your business just gets, runs away with you, and then you, all of a sudden everything's just a mess, and you just feel like, out of control. So yeah, that I'd say probably about 90% of the people who come to me are in that position. So they've been running private practice for, you know, a couple of months or years even and got to the point where they think enough is enough, I need some expert help here. And there's just so much stuff out there which can help, a lot of software, IT software, getting a practice management system, that is key. I would say unless you've got more than, you know, a handful of clients, it might not be worth your while, but yeah, making sure that you're keeping all your patient's data secure all in one place, not using lots of different systems so you've got data everywhere, and really just keeping control over it.

So I was going to ask, what are the first things that people should look to get in place, if they're in that state of overwhelm, and feeling like their practice is just this massive burden on their shoulders? So it sounds like practice management software is a good first investment?

Yeah, absolutely. Within, I mean, one of the most popular ones on the market is WriteUpp and I work closely with WriteUpp. And this is a system where you can store absolutely everything. It's got all your organisational information in there, you can put all your clients notes in there, all your clients data, they can set up appointment reminders so they can be sent out automatically, you can invoice from it, you've got a diary in there, you can send smart forms out so to collect clients data safely rather than using Google Forms or, you know, asking people to print out a form and then scan it back in which is just time consuming and obviously it's not the most secure way of doing things, and just having that tool to communicate with the client within one system, and of course doing your invoicing in. Because you're using a system, once it's all set up it's really quick and easy to use and a lot of the software out there it can integrate with. Other systems like your accounting software. A lot of clients don't use accounting software when they come to me, but they, everyone has taken up, you know, using something such as Xero or FreeAgent or, I mean, there's lots lots out there. Xero is the most popular one and links with all the practice management software that I've used. So basically, what that means is, when you're raising invoices, well, it actually starts from when you put an appointment in a calendar on the system, that can then trigger raising an invoice and then it will go over to your accounting software, your money comes into the bank, which is linked to your accounting software such as Xero, and then it's reconciled. So you know, that well, a) you can't miss an invoice going out, the customer gets it timely through emails securely, and you're making sure that your your credit controls are in place, and you've got, you know who owes you wash basically, rather than trying to match bank statements with spreadsheets, missing people, and just losing revenue that way, basically.

And these are the two things that really went wrong for me, I'd say when I set up in private practice. I think like a lot of people, I got more clients more quickly than I expected to, so I hadn't thought about investing in something like private practice software, because I thought it would take me months and years to get to the point where I needed it, when actually that wasn't a reality. I had lots of inquiries quite quickly, and didn't really have a way of, you know, keeping track of them all. So I might speak to somebody on the phone, and then you know, write some anonymized notes in my notebook, you know, great that it's anonymized from a GDPR point of view, but pretty terrible for ever finding that person again, in my notebook! So I got myself into a bit of a pickle, I was double booking myself all the time, because I'm really rubbish with calendars, anyway, and yeah, I just would get really confused. Whereas write up at least has just your clinics in it, or you can set it up so only your clinics lots are available, so if I'd had that it might have been slightly better than what did happen. But then also, I would get a bit emotional about invoicing. And I think this happens to a lot of people where you either put it off, or you don't do it at all, because you kind of feel bad about doing it. And I hope, I think I've moved past that a little bit now, and I now feel a lot better than I did at the beginning about charging for my services. But you know, I think we all know that feeling where you're like, ah I just don't want to chase up that person, so your mind kind of avoids it. Whereas if you're using WriteUpp and Xero, which are the two that we use together, you can really clearly see ah right, this invoice has been overdue for a month now, I need to follow that up. So even if that was all you did, I reckon that would make you a lot of money in your practice.

Absolutely, and I think, you know, people think, oh, it's, you know, it's X amount a month for this, it's X amount. But it really is so valuable. And again, having a virtual assistant to have those conversations with clients as well, if they're if they haven't been paying the bills, and the automated reminders that the systems generate, you know, how it worked out, because if you're providing therapeutic care, the last thing you want to be doing at the beginning or end of the session is saying "And by the way, can I have that 100 quid you owe me?"

Completely, I don't think it works. I wouldn't go so far as to say that, I think you should outsource that as soon as you can, because it enables you to be focused on the therapeutic relationship, rather than having to worry about those transactions. And it also gives clients the opportunity to separate those two things in their mind too. So you know, I've had a couple of clients who have had difficulty with paying, or have paid quite late, and I think it's enabled the therapeutic relationship to continue, that they've had those conversations with you, not me.

Absolutely.

And so obviously, if there's something with therapeutic benefit, I can talk to them about it because I know what's going on. But I think the fact that they can organise a payment plan or they can say I can't pay it now I'll pay it at the end of the month, and have that with a completely separate person. It enables them to get the most out of their therapy, I think.

Absolutely. Another thing that’s come up recently, obviously the price of everything's going up and then people are wanting to increase their fees, and it's something that everyone struggles with so much, you know, that you know, I don't want to put them up and you don't put my prices up. And so I've been able to give that business kind of talk and say you know you have to do this, you're running a business, it's how much it costs and then putting together an email to send out, and then me telling them that the prices are going up, and just removing the therapists from that conversation as well. That's been, yeah really important, I think.

Absolutely, I think that there are lots of tasks for different, and we'll all be different about this, but that we get kind of emotionally hung up on, and we maybe start to avoid, because it's unpleasant and difficult for us to do it. You know, for me, I think I might be fairly unusual in how stressful I find calendars and, and booking appointments, but it is definitely true that before I had help from you, I would turn down opportunities quite a lot, just because I couldn't see where they would fit in my diary. And I would hate the scheduling to the point that I would just ignore the email. I'd be like, I don't want to respond to that because I can't... haven't got the headspace to think about where to put it in my calendar. So I think, you know, knowing your personal strengths and weaknesses is really important to this and getting a VA in to do the thing, you know, you're not brilliant at which for many of us will be invoicing, but there's probably other stuff that's unique to you, as well, I think that is absolutely crucial and I'd recommend it to anyone.

Absolutely. And I think it's not only the, doing the admin side as well, but I think a lot of people out there need support with choosing what systems to use, and how they can benefit their business. Things that are time consuming, such as communicating with clients, trying to organise even initial calls with them, you know, where there's, we've got software out there such as Calendly, or what have you that we can just automate these things. I mean, I've had a few clients recently who have come to me, and I've helped them set up the systems, I've created workflow processes for them, configure the practice management system, and then give them to them, and then there you go, and then they don't need a virtual assistant, you know, they've actually got everything in order, they know what they're doing, they know what day of the week they're going to do things, we've set everything up so it's automated and streamlined. And that's brilliant you know, it's, I really enjoy that side of things; getting my hands on people's admin and getting it all sorted out for them.

Yeah, I mean, I can see why it's, it's kind of fulfilling to do that, because you're really taking people at quite a vulnerable moment when they're really overwhelmed and giving them an action plan. It's not that different, really, to what we do in therapy when you think about it.

Right.

So. I guess there'll be a lot of people listening to this, who are thinking this sounds great, but I'm not sure that I'm ready to outsource yet. How do you get yourself ready to work with a VA?

I would say the first thing to do would be to do a little time audit, and really have a think about and log some times of things, the tasks that don't make you money that you do. And there might be some of them that you like, and you want to keep on doing, or, or not so much. And so yeah, really having a look at breaking down all the different tasks. I mean, to give you an example of some of the things that you know, we can help with, is dealing with enquiries. So from enquiry stage, whether it's at the moment everyone's got seems to be operating on waiting lists, everyone's so busy. But yeah, just having that initial communication, whether it's setting up an initial call, or through to onboarding, onboarding your clients. So this is a key part to make sure you're getting all the information that you need from your clients, so you consent signing, your therapy contracts, you might want to send them out some questionnaires, getting their personal details, getting everything put on the system ready to start the therapy with them. That's, that's a big part. And once everything's up and running, it's a really quick and easy thing to do as well. And then tracking to make sure that the forms are back so you don't end up going into your first therapy session, and then realise that they haven't signed the consent or you haven't got the GPT details. Dealing with insurers; that's everyone's pain point. They're not the easiest to deal with. So we've got experience in dealing with all of them. So it's, yeah, how they all work and how to keep on top of the admin that comes with dealing with trying to get your money back from the various companies. Invoicing how you do it, what, the frequency that you sent invoice your customers, whether you're invoicing them in advance or retrospectively, which sometimes if their self funding isn't ideal. Credit control and then maybe putting your receipts onto your counting software. So every time we spend something we can upload your receipts and reconcile that for you. We don't go any further than that we just do the basic bookkeeping, and then obviously it's over to your accountant or whoever does your accounts. But all those things do take up quite a bit of time.

It's doing that audit isn't it, to figure out how long are you spending at the moment on all of those things? Because often people will say to me, oh, yeah, but it only takes me 15 minutes while I'm watching telly on an evening. And I'm like, use an app that tracks your time, and then tell me how long it takes you. Because it's probably not 15 minutes. I was I was awful for this, I used to think, oh, you know, I'd like to outsource my invoicing because I know that I'm quite patchy with it, but I just can't justify paying somebody for an hour a week to do that because it only takes me 10 minutes when I do it. But it didn't take me 10 minutes at all! When I, I got the app Toggle, which I really recommend, it's free and really easy, and I did this, and I realised that it was actually spending me, I was actually spending at least two hours a week on invoicing, either sending out invoices, or just kind of mindlessly going into my spreadsheets and trying to make sense of who I'd sent an invoice to or who I hadn't. And I might not actually do anything, but I'd spend 10 minutes staring at it, get overwhelmed and leave. So when I started tracking all of that, it added up to two hours a week. Well, you know, that was kind of the push I needed, because I know that, you know, I had a waiting list at the time, I could have picked up two extra clients in that time and that would have more than paid for the VA to do it for me. So I think that auditing your time is really, really crucial.

Yep. And then I think the next stage would be you know, have a, have a look around and see who, who you want to work with. I'd recommend to always speak to a couple of VAs just to get a feel for people and making sure that they've got all of the right credentials in terms of you know, their insurances, are they anti money laundering registered? And getting that information. And not every VA is the right fit, you know, and it's a two way process as well, you know, it's like does the VA want to work with this therapist? On a few occasions have politely declined, you know, if I haven't felt that things feel right. And I think after being in this, you know, doing this for a few years now, you can, you get a gut feeling, and it has to be a two way street otherwise, you know, it's not going to be a great relationship either way. And like you say, you're putting your trust, you're putting your business, you're putting your business baby in someone's trust, so it needs to be right and it needs to feel right. And just having the right expectations of a virtual assistant. I think some people think you're available 24 hours a day, but the reality is, you know, everyone's self-employed, usually juggling around, you know, family life. Some VAs might only work on an evening or a weekend, which may not, may or may not suit your practice, some work through the day. Then you have to think about do you want to pay for ad hoc hours or on a retainer contract. Now, ad hoc hours generally tend to be more expensive than if you, if you set out how many hours a month you want, you want, well you're guaranteeing that person's time. I mean, the lowest we work with is five hours a month, which for a small clinic that can, that can suffice during the invoicing, and maybe a couple of inquiries, just depending on the workload. So yeah, there's lots to think about. But yes, always have that important discovery call with a virtual assistant. And I imagine most people offer them for free before jumping in and signing a contract with someone, and yeah, being conscious of you get out clauses as well. I mean, we don't, I'd never tied any clients in it's, you know, just to give a month's notice, but some people, they might want to tie you in for a year or what have you. I think some of the bigger agencies might go down that route.

That's interesting. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. But I think you're right, it has to be a good fit, and you have to get your expectations, right. Because we talked a little bit earlier about, you know, the difference between being employed, employing somebody to do admin for you, and hiring a VA who is freelance. Can you say a little bit more about what you can and can't expect?

So yeah, the differences between having an employed member of staff and a virtual assistant, you know the client cannot say I want you to, you know, do my work between 9.30 and 10 o'clock every day, it's, you may be able to do, and some VAs may be prepared to do that, but I've tried that and in reality it doesn't really work out because people's work overrun. So if you've got deadlines in mind, your virtual assistant will adhere to them, but they need the free rein of when to actually do that work. And yeah, if you needing people to do specific tasks at a specific time, then yeah, employing someone's going to be going more down the route for you because, yeah, that's part of the the difference between employing and freelancing, you know, we, we pay our own national insurance tax, we have all our own equipment, and yeah, when it comes to try to pin people down to certain times it just generally doesn't work.

And one of the things that I used to worry about, and but we found a way around, was how that would work when I had inquiries coming in via the telephone. And actually, as probably most people have experienced, we're getting a lot less now by telephone. Used to be most of my inquiries came in via the phone, now, I would say, we get very, very few. But I still wanted that assurance that, that basically you could deal with my telephone enquiries for me, because they're the ones that I'm particularly bad at, because if somebody gets through to me on the phone, I can't put the phone down on them. Especially not if you know they've got a difficult story, or maybe they want to blurt out their whole story because they know they're talking to the therapist, so I would often spend an hour on the phone with somebody that I knew I wasn't going to work with, I just couldn't say no, basically. So telephone enquiries is something I really wanted to outsource, but I knew I didn't want to employ anybody because my business just, it doesn't work for my business to do that at the moment, and it took me a while to figure out how that could work with a VA. But what we do is use a telephone answer service, and then the inquiries, somebody at the end of the phone in one of these big call centres, takes down a barebones message and then emails that to you, you then call them back.

Yes, that works really well.

So it doesn't come through to me until you've already vetted them, which is brilliant, and I highly recommend it.

Absolutely. And again, you know, most VAs will use or recommend using a call answering service. I've tried to have it with a couple of clients where I've took incoming calls, but it's so disruptive to the work that I'm doing, and like you say even though I'm not the doctor who they want to speak to, we still, I still end up getting a rather lengthy phone call and knowing a lot about them. So, and of course you know, it's like that needs to be billed, because that's just taken up an hour of my working day. So yeah, definitely call answering services is the way forward. Really quick and easy, you get an email, reply to them, and yeah, that works really well.

Yeah, so I think, you know, if anybody was listening, thinking, I don't know if I can make a VA work for me, because I need enquiries responded to between nine and five, for example, that's one way of making it work and I just wish that I'd known or thought of that sooner. I just wasn't aware that these services existed.

Yeah, no, they're brilliant, yeah, there's all sorts out there. Another thing worth mentioning is, in terms of expectations, is your virtual assistant, they probably will just check your mailbox once a day. You know I, at some points, you know, I have up to 10 clients at a time and so does the team, so it's we cannot keep on track of everyone's emails, you know, it's usually go in deal with what's there, and just to be mindful of that. I do have a hotline on my whatsapp phone, so if anything comes through timely, which is great, but it's just, it's just you can't do it. So that's just another thing to bear in mind when you're having the initial conversations, how often can they. It might be that whoever you speak to, you might be their first client and they only want a couple of clients, and then they can have your emails open all day, but more often than not, it is, you know, usually done a bit more infrequently.

Yeah, and I think, again, it's when you're having that conversation, specifying what you think you need, but then you've got to hold yourself to your side of it as well. So for most people, I think we check our emails too frequently. I think, you know, so long as you're going in there once or twice a day to check that, you know, there's no inquiries or risk issues that needs dealing with, that actually it's better to bracket your email time and say I only look at my emails, say I don't know two o'clock in the afternoon, and then people have to wait 24 hours for me to respond. And I think if you're used to going in your emails all the time, then when your VA tries to work with you, they'll just find that you're responding... I don't know, I've probably done this to you, I think... and make it quite difficult for your VA to do their job properly because you're kind of jumping in there and making it really confusing to work out what's come into the inbox. You almost need to step back a little bit, and go, okay, I'm not going to spend all my time in the inbox, and I'm going to trust that once per day is enough, or twice per day, whatever you arrange with your VA, and allow them to do their work, rather than if you've been doing it yourself for a long time, it's very difficult to do that.

Absolutely. And I think a lot of clients, you know, still have overview of the mailbox and just keep an eye on it if something you know, urgent comes through. Then what a lot, what I found really easy for managing people's expectations is just to have in your signature, you know, this email, this inbox is only checked once a day, and then that way, you feel like you've told people so then people aren't, and you're always going to get people say, oh, I messaged you, you know, 10 minutes ago, and I have another reply, but that's just life, people do that. But yeah.

I really like that. And it sets for a particular type of work as well, it sets a boundary that actually needs to be clear from the beginning. Because most of us are not running emergency services. Therefore, you don't want to set up the expectation that you can respond within 10 minutes, because there'll be days when you can't. And it's not helpful to people to think that you're that available, if that's not the reality. So sometimes I think it can be good for everybody to have that kind of 24 hour wait before you respond. I mean, obviously, you don't want it to be longer than that, ideally, but I think it's useful sometimes to set up expectations of how you're going to work going forwards, and good for your mental well being as well to not be in there with the onslaught of stuff coming into your inbox filling up your brain every minute of the day.

So one thing I wanted to ask you about, and I'm aware, sort of we're coming to the end of our, of our time, but I really want to ask this, that is about return on investment. So how can we measure the return on investment for us, if we outsource to a VA?

I think the biggest thing would be financially, I think you have more time to see clients and to do what you set out in your business to do, whereas the back office tasks are not eating into your time. We were saying just before the, before we were recording this, that there's been lots of clients that when I started doing working, we've realised there's been lots of invoices that people who haven't been invoiced. So you know, they're straightaway, there could be hundreds or thousands of pounds of revenue recouped for things that have being missed, and getting payments back quicker on time, so having someone to do your credit control for you. And just as important as financially, you know, emotionally having that headspace, having that not having to feel like procrastinating thinking, oh, I need to do that tonight, you know, it's just just something that's taken care of, which can give you time to focus on your personal life or, you know, ideas for your business and just be able to, yeah, have, giving you your time back, that's what it is.

I think you can't put a price tag on that really.

No, I don't think so.

For me, I know that when I took on my first VA, I made about 300 pounds more, almost instantly within about a fortnight, just because I used to double book myself so often that I was having to cancel lots of appointments and therefore obviously not getting paid for them. And goodness knows what I was doing to my reputation. I mean, you can't calculate it. But I do know, within a couple of weeks, I think I'd paid her about 70 pounds, maybe for two hours, and made at least 300 from her just going through my diary for me sorting out all of the ones that were already conflicted, and making sure I didn't put any more conflicts in. So I would say to people, you can see that return on investment really quickly financially, and you feel it straight away emotionally.

Another thing that I'm hot on and encourage clients to do as well is to, to do more reporting and look at, actually drill down into the data. This is my compliance manager and data manager coming out in me, but just seeing what is making you money and what's not. And if you're not accounting for things properly, if you're not seeing which revenue streams are making you however much money and the expenses that go with it, you don't know which way to progress with your business or what's working for you and what's not. And so just having either the time to do this, or have someone else to, you know, having the systems in place and using the software and these tools, you know, you might be working with associates, but then by the time you're paying all the, you know, extra bits and what have you, you might actually be making no money, making no money for it. So it's, and I see that quite a lot.

Yes, that's the very common story, isn't it? I see that a lot, too. And I think it's, yeah, it's having the time and headspace to make sense of that data, that I think, if I was working on my own in my business, I would really struggle to ever take that time to step back from it. But yeah, you kind of produce the data for me and then because you're doing all of that admin stuff, I've then got the time to look at it as well, which is amazing.

So I guess, on the whole, and I'd really recommend that people outsource to a VA as soon as they can. And I'd certainly recommend that people come and check out your... are you an agency now, your team?

Not yet, I don't know, at what point do I become an agency?

Yeah, what, I don't know what the right descriptive word, but your team of awesome people?

Absolutely. Yes, no, please do. If you, even if you just wanting a bit of a chat, a consultation, you know, it's whatever it is you need we can help with. And when it comes to setting up, you know, your systems, if you needing help setting up your workflow, like how is it going to work? Who's going to do what? When's it going to be done and how? You know, that's all things that we can help with. And if you needing help configuring your practice management software, setting up all the templates and what have you, we're more than happy to help.

Yes, and that's an exciting new service for you, isn't it? Kind of diving in and getting people's WriteUpp or Clinico or whatever they're using, set up for them so that they can kind of hit the ground running in their practice. And I think there's going to be a lot of people who maybe I meet through Psychology Business School, for example, who would really benefit from that.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I see a lot of people using systems but they're only using the bare minimum and they're capable of so much more, so it's just sharing that knowledge of how you can improve what you've already got, really. So yeah, making the most of all this technology we have.

Absolutely. So people can find you at psych-va.co.uk I'm going to put the link in the show notes. So if you want to find Anna and her team of wonderful people, you can head over to psych-va.co.uk. And I'm sure a lot of people are going to want to do that. So thank you so much for your time today, Anna, it's been a real pleasure.

Brilliant. Thank you. I've really enjoyed it.

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, than make sure you come over and join my free Do More 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.