#58. How to Take a Real Vacation and Still Have Successful Private Practice

Almost everything will work if you unplug it for a few minutes…including you.
- Anne Lamott

What do you call a “real vacation”? And when was the last time you had one?

If it’s really a long weekend, then you and I need to talk.

If you can’t remember the last time you took a full week off, or more, then you and I (really!) need to talk. :)

The ugly truth is that way too many healers in private practice feel like they just can’t be away from their clients more than a few days at time. And I get that!

Yet I’ve managed to be away for as much as FIVE weeks at a time, without hurting my practice - at all.

Taking time off is essential for our mental and physical health, right? So let’s figure out how to make that happen.

In this episode, I'll walk you through several of the key steps you’ll need in order to prepare financially, clinically, and strategically for your oh-so-well-deserved break. 

PLUS, I'll share some tips on setting boundaries with clients, providing emergency coverage, and managing the financial aspects of taking time off.

I’ll also share a quick journal exercise at the end to will help you start planning your own getaway.

Remember, your business is there to support your life, not the other way around.

It's time to make self-care and time away from work a TRUE priority -  for the success of your practice, and your own well-being.

You know I’m right. :) 

~Wendy
xoxo

P.S. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a minute to share your 5 star review and a few words over on Apple Podcasts or even Spotify. If you’ve been meaning to do that, but keep putting it off, how about heading over there now? Then send me a screen shot so we can celebrate together! :)

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THIS WEEK’S JOURNAL PROMPT: 

1. What would I have to put in place in order for my clients to do without me for two full weeks (or more?) by this time next year? Make a list.
2. What’s the very first action step I can take on that list to begin making it a reality now?

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MENTIONED: 

• Study by the U.S. Travel Association 
• Report from The Center for Economic Policy and Research (CEPR) 

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(free!) RESOURCE:  The IP360 SCORECARD

As a coach of mine used to say, running a business is a full contact sport.

 There are SO many different parts of it to keep up with, manage, think about, and create - at every step of the way. How do you know what to work on first or where to focus your energy? How do you tell where your weaknesses are and where you're solid?

Well I’ve got you covered! The IP360 Scorecard, based on the 7 Pillars of an Ideal Practice, is designed to give you a practical, actionable, big-picture review of your practice as it stands. And you can complete it in less than 10 minutes.

Transcript

WENDY: 

 You're listening to ideal practice, episode number 58. Today we're talking about a dirty little secret that I think you and I both know, which is that most of you work way too much and most of you could really use a vacation, and I mean a real one, one that's at least a couple of weeks long, but a lot of you don't think that's even possible. So you take a long weekend and you call that a vacation instead. Yeah, today we're gonna talk about how to take time off when you're the one your clients depend on, and at the end I've got a little journal exercise to help you start thinking through how you could apply this not so crazy idea to your practice this summer. So stay tuned!

This is the ideal practice podcast! 

Hey guys, welcome back. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of the ideal practice podcast. This is Wendy. How are you? How are things going wherever you are today?  We are moving into the summer. Is that not the coolest thing ever? If you're here in the Northern Hemisphere, I think it's pretty cool. So we have been doing fine over here. It's been awesome. It's been a lot of fun. We have actually been quite social for the last few weeks, which is a bit much for hardcore introverts Like my wife and I. We've had some happy hours with friends. We last weekend we actually attended the Scottish Highland Games, which is hosted each year in Townsend, Tennessee, not far from me, so that was really cool. By the time you hear this, we will have attended a citizenship party for a friend who's getting his US citizenship, which is always incredibly powerful. So all that's really cool. But we introverts are feeling it, and probably no accident that I decided to do an episode on vacations, i think, as we're moving into the summer and we're thinking about where we wanna go this year. 

I just want to address a couple of things here. The first thing I want to talk about is just the importance of taking time off period, and I also want to address this myth, this belief that so many healers have, which is that you can't run a private practice and take a real vacation or take significant time off for anything actually, which is totally not true. It's just. That's a myth. That's wrong. The truth is you actually can. When you do things right, you actually can take significant time off from your practice and it will be healthy, it will be strong, your clients will be fine and you will all be the better for it. 

 Over the years I have been away many times for extended travel for different reasons most of it for fun, not all of it. Many years ago I spent a whole month traveling around Europe When I adopted my children. I spent several weeks in Guatemala on multiple trips. At one point I was gone for five whole weeks - and that was pre-internet y'all, so that was like really something. I've taken a trip out west where we were on the road for three weeks, and just this past fall you guys have heard me talk about this here on the podcast - just last fall I took a month long camping slash working trip. 

So It occurred to me I decided I wanted to talk about this because, if you are following this program and you know that last week we had an episode where I got to interview Kym Tolson. Kym is, she calls herself, the traveling therapist. She has been on the road now full time since February of last year. She still runs an active counseling practice, albeit a small one, and she's doing tons of coaching and she's got lots of courses around various things. But that episode really kind of got my juices flowing and made me think about not only how important this is, but that this really is doable, y'all. 

And even back when I had a JOB, the last real job I had where I was not running my own show, was when I was promoted to be the department head for the Department of Family Therapy at a residential treatment center And when they came to me and asked me to take that position, even then, I was already in the middle of planning that month long trip to Europe that I mentioned a minute ago. And I'd already had an experience earlier where a job had screwed me out of a plan like that - and I wasn't gonna let that happen again. So when I got offered this pretty significant promotion I said you know I'm willing to consider it, but only if you understand that next fall I've got a month trip planned and I'm gonna be taking that trip. So if that's okay with you guys, I'm open to the job. If that's not okay with you, then I'm not. 

Like - I was that clear about how important that was, and I honestly didn't really care if it was paid time off or not paid time off.  I was happy to take whatever paid time off came with a job, but I was also willing to take time off without pay in order to do what I wanted to do, because it was that important to me. 

Well, that same kind of thinking I have carried over into my private practice And I just this seemed like a good time to remind you that your business is there to support your life, not the other way around. And, yes, your business needs to be healthy and strong, and there are all kinds of important things to consider in terms of ethics, in terms of boundaries, in terms of systems, but ultimately, the whole point here, y'all, is to do good work with people that you love working with and to live a life that absolutely lights you up, that works for you, right? But this is a problem not just with you guys. 

This is actually a problem in the US. This is a huge problem in American culture as a whole. 

I found a report from back in 2019, before the pandemic, the Center for Economic Policy and Research. They analyzed paid vacations in America. So these are vacations that are covered by an employer and they compared that to many other countries in the rest of the world. And here's what I found about that. They said that there was a significant disparity between the United States and the rest of the world's richer countries. Okay, so we're talking well-established countries, more developed countries. The United States is the only advanced economy that does not mandate any paid vacation time for workers And it is one of the only countries that does not require employers to offer at least some paid holidays. 

So, because we don't have any rules around this, one in four working Americans does not get any time off, any paid time off. No holidays, no vacation. That's what this study found one in four. And even when Americans do get a paid vacation, they find it hard to take that time off. They tend to avoid it. 

So, according to a study from the US Travel Association, more than half of Americans I think it was 55% did not use all of their time off in 2019, did not use all of their paid time off that was guaranteed from their employers And that led to 768 million days left unused. 768 million days left unused. 768 million days left unused days! I don't know how many lifetimes that is, but I think it's a lot. And of those 236 - so roughly what is that? - about a third give or take of those days could not be rolled over to the next year. Sometimes you can roll them over, you don't lose them. But 236 million paid days off were just lost. 

And I'll tell you the way I think about that. That's like if you, let's say, if you work in an agency let's I speak to people who are in private practice but maybe you still are working and thinking about starting a practice on the side, or already have, or maybe you just are kind of keeping a foot in both worlds, which is perfectly fine. But if you have a job with an employer where you are a W2 employee and you have paid time off, that is one of your benefits that you are not using, do you realize that that's like turning around and handing a paycheck back to your employer. It's like it's like they're giving you money and you're going oh no, really, you keep it, thanks, that's great, but you know I don't really need it. That's awesome, but thank you so much. No, i'm good, thanks. 

That is - like - you talk about money on the table. That's money on the table. So that always gets me And, honestly, that gets me even with my counseling clients, who I often have the same kind of conversation with. 

Y'all, people need vacations, but you guys you guys are entrepreneurs. And I know you. You are creative, you are committed, you are brilliant, you are incredibly hardworking. You have more ideas than you can possibly shake a stick at, more dreams than you could possibly begin working on in one lifetime, and you have a huge heart for your clients. I know that. So you will do whatever it takes to be there for your clients. I also know that a lot of you have major worries and fears around money and being there for your families, and you cannot imagine that like taking time off, because if you're not in the office seeing a client, you're not getting paid. 

I saw this a lot in my group practice. 

So y'all know that I ran, i developed and grew and ran a group counseling practice for 20, 25 years And once a month - just once a month - I wanted to get everybody together. So we would have a so-called staff meeting once a month for an hour and a half two hours on a Tuesday morning, not a heavy client time right, not after school, not at the end of the day, when everybody wants appointments after work. And it was, it was striking to me sometimes how hard it was to get people to give up paid client hours to attend that meeting. 

Now, those meetings were really important. They were kind of the glue that kept the community of our practice together. They were our time to check in with each other, to reconnect with each other. Everyone who came would say, you know, I never feel like I have time for this, but I'm so glad I came. Like, that's how our meetings were. They were not just housekeeping meetings, like, they were important, they were connection times. And yet when you are paid by the hour, it's very hard to convince people to leave those hours and go do something else. 

There was actually a report by the Harvard Business Review. Now, this was, this was several years ago. This was like so 10 years ago, 2013. So, and it was bad back then. So I can't even imagine what it's like now. But back in 2013, 10 years ago, the Harvard Business Review did a study that set that found that managers, executives, professional people, those who are in the professional services, like you guys, tended to work a 72 hour week. That's because of the demands of the job itself and the way that we are now connected through our phones all the time. So if it was 72 hours a week back 10 years ago, I can't even imagine what it is now. 

Now here's the thing. When you run a business, when you own a private practice, when you are the go-to person whether it's for your clients or whether you have a staff, whether you have a team, whether it's just you as a solo operation or whether you've got a group, it didn't matter I know that all the responsibility comes back to you And, trust me, i really do know what that feels like. I have done a lot of that in my life. There have been many times, many, countless times, when I was the one holding all of it together in all kinds of ways, all kinds of different situations, right. So I really do know what that feels like. And yet, if you'll just hear me out, it is critically important that you carve out time when you walk away from the work, from the responsibility, from the thought, the thinking, from the screens, from all of it, and you walk away long enough to get a break to rest. You desperately need that people. You need that so much. 

Let's talk about what some of the benefits are of a true vacation And as I'm saying this to you, I'm thinking I want to define what a true vacation is. So the benefits of fixing this problem, these 72-hour work weeks -  geez... The obvious one is that you are more likely to protect and sustain your mental health and your physical health. You cannot push day in and day out without something breaking somewhere along the way. Something's going to break. You will get sick. 

I learned this a hard way several years ago when I landed in the hospital with a pretty severe case of anemia. To this day, we don't know what caused it, never could find anything, but I had been working really hard At the time that happened. That was about a year and a half or so after I had gone through a separation and I was in the middle of a divorce. I was handling a lot of things on my own for the first time, and that's when I had launched Secret Adventures for Greatest Women. So I was running a new business in addition to my existing business, while juggling a divorce and all the stuff that went along with that. So it was crazy and I landed in the hospital. So I came out of that experience thinking you know what? I don't have time to be sick. I've got a business to run. I don't have time to be sick. And I came out of that experience determined to take better care of myself, and I did. I did all kinds of things that I had not been doing before. 

When you take a break, when you practice good self care, when you take a true, honest to God vacation, you are protecting your mental help and your physical health. You're also strengthening your relationships your relationships to family, to friends and even to yourself. When was the last time you sat down to a meal with family when you didn't have a phone with you? When was the last time you met up with a group of friends somewhere in a cabin or at the lake or in a campground or at a B and B, where you just sat around and talked all night long and had a glass of wine and told all the old stories and solved all the world's problems and nobody gave a flip about what was happening online? When was the last time you had enough silence and space to think? When was the last time you sat somewhere and watched a bird or stared at the sky or listened to the babble of a creek or, for that matter, sat in the middle of a city center and just watched people go by. Whatever floats your boat didn't matter to me. But when you take a true vacation, a true break, when you get deep rest I'm not talking about going to bed on time deep rest you will strengthen your relationships to virtually everyone around you, including your clients. 

When you get back And as an entrepreneur, i know that you worry about all kinds of things. As a practice owner, you worry about if your clients are going to be okay, if people are going to get mad at you, if the place blows up while you're gone, if everything's going to fall apart while you're gone. I get that, i understand that. But the truth is, when you take a true vacation, when you get deep rest, you will recharge your business. You'll get ideas that seem to pop out of the blue. You'll find yourself walking on the beach and, all of a sudden, some little problem that's been niggling in the back of your mind. All of a sudden, a solution pops up and you're like Oh my gosh, that's exactly what I can do about that You'll find that you have completely new ideas for programs or services or things that you want to try to help your clients. You'll find that you are inspired by the most random things that happen while you're away, that you bring back with you to the work. The truth is that when you, when you treat vacations, when you treat deep rest, when you treat time off significant time off as is much a priority as your billing, your pricing, your marketing, your ideal client, your team, all of that Your business will be healthier, because you'll be healthier. 

Am I getting my point across? So let me talk about what I mean by a true vacation. I honestly believe you need to take a minimum of at least four weeks off of year, a year, and I'd like to see you take six. I'd like to see you take a couple of weeks in the winter, a couple of weeks in the summer. Ideally, i'd like you to take at least a week each quarter. Now I, in full disclosure, i don't do that, but I am thinking more and more seriously about setting that as a goal. What I have done now for a good while is I set a quarterly business retreat. 

I will take a solo retreat where I will go away for three days or four days to an Airbnb or to a campground or to some cool place, a friend's cabin, somewhere where I can just sit and think and plan and dream and journal and stare out at the window. I will do that and I call it a business retreat, but it is a personal retreat as well, like it's both right. But I am thinking more and more about the idea of taking a week off a quarter, because we push hard, y'all, we work hard. I have a friend who is a therapist who told me one time that she she works very hard when she works, because every other week, every other week, every other week, every other year, she takes a full month off at one time so that she can go farther, so she can travel and cover more ground. I currently take two weeks off during the holidays, in midwinter, around the Christmas holidays, and I take two weeks off usually in late summer or early fall. Sometimes there might be another week or two here and there, as I feel like it or an opportunity comes up. So that happens all the time And I I want to hammer home one point A real vacation is not a long weekend, and I don't think a real vacation is one week. Now, that's better than nothing. If that's all you can do, then you know I'll take it and yay, that's, that's great. But here's what I've learned When you take two weeks or more, something different happens. 

It takes a week, y'all, to stop thinking about work all the time. For that first week you're going to want to check your emails, you're going to be really tempted to text the client, check in with them. You're going to want to call your virtual assistant and see how things are going. You're going to want to check in with your colleagues, but after a week what I have found is you get to where you don't even want to think about it, much less actually talk to anybody. That represents work. That's why I really feel like you need two weeks, because it's honestly the second week when you finally will feel your shoulders start to lower a little bit And that tension you carry in the back of your neck start to let go a little bit And that little ache that's always there in your belly start to loosen up a little bit And that back pain that you tend to carry with you all the time starts to ease up a little bit. So, bare minimum. To me, a true vacation is two weeks or more And, as I mentioned at the top of this, i have been away for two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, even five weeks, and done just fine. So let's talk about how I've done that And how you can do that too. Now, if you heard episode 57, where I interviewed Kim Tulson, the traveling therapist, we had a whole great conversation and I'll be sure and link to that in the show notes. We had an outstanding conversation about how you can work from the road, how you can take your practice with you on the road, how you can be traveling for long periods of time and still work along the way. 

I did do that back in the fall, mostly kind of as an experiment to see what it was like, and I will tell you it was hard, but it was the first time I'd done it that way. Usually when I take off like that, i'm just off. This time I was gone for four weeks, and Monday and Tuesday of each week I still tried to do a certain number of client hours And then I sort of saved fun stuff and sightseeing and hiking and stuff for the rest of the week, managing the internet while I was on the road turned out to be really hard. The time zone thing wasn't such a big deal because I was in the same time zone, but the internet access was really tricky And there were times when it was a real challenge to find a safe, quiet, private place to do that work. There are certain things I think I would do differently the next time I do that, but I did do it And it was a worthwhile experiment. I learned a lot from that. I learned a lot from that. 

The energy that you use in work and the energy that you use in play are very different. Learning how to sort of segregate that energy on a trip like that, i think, is important, and the tech was a big issue, but that's not what I'm talking about today. What I'm talking about today is deep rest and being away from your work for a significant period of time at least two weeks, if not more. So let's talk about how do you do that. Great, wendy, that sounds fine, but you know good and well I can't afford it. How can I possibly do that? My clients need me. I need the money. 

Well, essentially, there are three things. You've got to prepare. You've got to prepare yourself financially. You've got to prepare your practice clinically and you've got to prepare your business Now financially. This is kind of obvious At least I think it is. You do have to, of course, manage your finances and save up for that time. Not only do you have to save them this is the hard part about being self-employed Not only do you have to save up for the trip itself, the vacation, the time off and whatever you're gonna do, but you also have to save up for and cover the income that won't be coming in while you're off right Now. This is assuming that you're still doing a dollars for hours practice. 

I do wanna say that if you think creatively in your business and you do some of the things that I can teach you how to do, you can have income coming in in other ways. If you have online courses, if you have membership groups, if you have other services that you provide that people pay for and different, different, multiple revenue streams, there are ways to make sure you've got money coming in, even when you are not actually seeing people. That's a fact. But if you are running a traditional practice, then, yeah, you do have to plan for all that, but y'all, it's just a matter of planning. This is quite doable. You might have to start further ahead, but it is something you can do. It's just an intention that you set and you go about it right. I mean y'all. 

I did my first European trip when I wasn't making any money at all. Took me a long time to save up for it, but I did it And you can too. Okay, so that's the first thing. The second thing I said you have to prepare clinically. So depending upon what kind of practice you run, what kind of service you do, you may or may not need to think about your client's clinical needs while you're gone. If you're a yoga teacher, maybe this doesn't matter so much. You just aren't gonna have classes for a while. 

But if you're a psychotherapist or you are in some other sort of mainstream side of medicine, then yeah, you do have to make sure that your patients are covered or your clients are covered while you're gone. So at a bare minimum, i do encourage you to arrange emergency coverage for your clients while you're gone. That can be as simple as asking a colleague to take call for you and then telling your clients if something comes up while I'm gone. Here's who to call. Most I've done that hundreds of times over the years, and I have asked other people to do it for me. It's extremely rare that anybody ever calls, because the truth is your clients don't wanna talk to anybody but you, so they won't actually call unless they really really need to. But I do want you to arrange that emergency coverage because I do not want you to set yourself up as the one that they could call if they really needed. 

Do not make the mistake of saying you know I'm gonna be traveling, but I should have internet access most of the time And if you know, if you can do a real, a tough spot, it's okay to text me or something. Don't do that, honey. Don't do that. Do yourself a favor and tell your clients you will not be available for this period of time. Set a boundary, but provide backup So they have somebody to call if they really need it. 

If you have really fragile clients if you work, for example, with folks who have experienced a lot of trauma, or you're working with people who have a lot of attachment issues, or you're working with people who are more just, more clinically fragile, you can send them a postcard, but I really don't want you to do anything more than that Okay, i want you to take a real break and let things be. And then the other part of preparing clinically to me is to treat your clients like competent adults Or, if you work with kids, like clients who are in the care of competent adults. I want you to give them plenty of advanced notice, remind them as it gets closer and make sure that they know who to call for whatever comes up while you're gone. Make sure they're already scheduled on your calendar for the week that you get back. Of course, you can do all that kind of stuff, but I really want you to just trust that they are adults and they'll be okay, because you are not the be all, end all, first of all. Second of all, you don't want them to be so dependent on you that you can't get away for a few weeks. If you are, then I would encourage you to address that in a consultation group or in a clinical supervision situation, because that, to me, is a therapeutic issue that's worth looking at. So preparing clinically means making sure that your clients are covered and have what they need while you're gone, but you are not the one who's providing it. It also means letting them know exactly how long you'll be gone and when you'll be back, and letting them know that you trust that they'll be okay, because they will. 

And then I said you also need to prepare your business. So we talked about preparing financially, preparing clinically and then preparing your business, and there are some kind of some kind of common things you can do. For example, i would encourage you to set up an auto responder in your email so that anytime someone sends you an email, they will get an automated response that says hey, i'm out of the office, i'm out having a good time. I'm gonna be on a break for a while. Here's who you can call if you have an emergency. Here's what you can call if you just need help with XYZ, and I'll start returning calls when I'm back in the office, on whatever date. Try to make those auto responders a little bit more, more man friendly. I've really was impressed with a coach I used to work with that I almost enjoyed reading her vacation notices as much as I did any other email from her, because they were always sort of delightful and sort of funny and a little more human. So don't just say I'm out of the office or return calls on May the 1st, say, hey guys, i'm practicing what I preach, which is I'm taking a vacation, and I hope you've got one planned too In the meantime while I'm away. Here's who you can call for this. Here's what you can do about that. Or you are welcome to leave a message here. You can put this on your voicemail or send this email and I'll begin responding with messages when I get back, as of whatever date, and let them know in the meantime you're unavailable. 

You also wanna do things like notify your bank that you're gonna be gone. Make sure that your mail pickup is covered. Make sure that any bills that come due while you're gone, that you've got those covered to be paid. Make sure your team knows what to do. If you have other people who help you in your business, make sure that they know you're gonna be gone and what they should do while you're gone. If there are particular situations they need to be prepared for. That's just stewardship, that's just being practical. That's just kind of making sure the ship is gonna sail no matter what while you're off doing something else. Okay. 

But here's the cool thing. What I really want you to hear is you'll be amazed at how well your clients manage. All they really need to know is kind of what to expect and kind of how things work, and they will be. They'll be happy for you that you're gonna be gone. Now, if you work with certain personality types, that might not be the case, but too bad, that's a therapeutic issue But most of them are gonna be not just fine with it but actually happy that you're taking care of yourself. They want you to be healthy, they want you to be well rested, they want you to be happy, they want you to have a good time, and they will be so excited to see you when you get back. And the cool thing is that by doing this, you are setting an example for them. You will come back refreshed. You will come back with creative solutions and ideas about things you wanna do in your practice And you will come back with a renewed level of enthusiasm and commitment to your clients. They'll feel it, and so will you. This is worth doing. 

I'll tell you one quick story before I bring this to a close. I mentioned that about Guatemala. So I have two kids, two grown kids, very grown kids, both of whom were from Guatemala and that we adopted when they were quite young, and for one of my kids, i was down there for three weeks For my second born. I was down there for five weeks because it's complicated and adoption is challenging And adoption within other countries has always had lots of levels of complexity that you are often quite unpredictable. 

So when I wanna mention this second one in particular, in that particular case I knew I was gonna be gone for a long time. I did not really know how long it would be. I had already been through it once where I was gone for three weeks. But there's actually there's literally no way of telling, because you never know what kind of legal complications might pop up or red tape hassles you might have to get through. So not only was I gonna be gone for a good long while, but I couldn't really tell my clients when I was gonna get back. The truth was I really didn't know. I could sort of ballpark it, but I didn't really really know. And this was a major life deal, right, this was a big thing in my life. So I had to go and I had to. I was in private practice And at that point I had not established a group practice. 

This was in the early days before I got a group going. I told all of my clients. Here's what's happening. Here's where I'll be. Here's why I'm gonna be gone as long as I am. Here's kind of how I think it's gonna go. Here's who you can call if something critical happens while I'm gone And here's how I will communicate with you when I can. 

Back then we didn't even have the internet. We didn't even have cell phones. That tells you how long ago it was. So it was. It was quite primitive really in a way, and they just had to be okay with it. 

What I want you to know is that in those several weeks that I was gone, i did send a postcard or two to most of my clients. I just wanted them to know that I was alive, that things were okay, that I hadn't forgotten them, that, yes, at some point I would be back. So I did do that, but that's all I did. And when I came back they all showed right back up again And we picked up where we left off. It really wasn't that big a deal. My practice did not suffer, other than the income I lost while being out, but of course I felt like that was worth it. But my practice did not suffer. I didn't lose clients because I was gone. That applies to everything I've ever done in terms of extended travel right. So I want you to know this really is doable. It really is doable, and I encourage you to find a way to build this into your life, ideally this year. I'd love to see you do it this summer, if you could, or this fall, if not. I really want you to do it next year. 

So here's the little journal prompter exercise that I want to mention to you. I want you to answer two questions. The first one is what would I want you to answer this question for yourself? What would I have to put in place and order for my clients to do without me for two weeks or longer, but at least two weeks by, let's say, this time next year? What would I have to have in place and have figured out in order to do that? Make yourself a list. And then the second question is what's the very first action step I can take on that list to begin making it a reality now? It might be something as simple as setting a savings goal per month and setting up a special account at your bank to put that into. It might be talking to a colleague about emergency coverage while you're out. It might be writing that auto responder email that's gonna go out when you're out of town, even if you don't use it yet. Just going ahead and writing it so you can kind of get a feeling for how real it's gonna be when you go. 

But whatever it is, i encourage you to make that list. What would you have to do to make this real And what's the very first action step you could take to start moving in that direction? I'd love to see you take at least a week, maybe two weeks off later this year And, if not this year, next year. You've got time to prepare for it. All right, my friends, i hope I have made you think. 

I know I can kind of get wound about this because I feel so strongly about it. It is just. I think this is one of the more common mistakes that I see in private practice. Honestly, if you are having to work 60, 70 hours a week and you're seeing way too many people and you don't feel like you can step away, then your practice needs help And there's lots of ways to fix that, and I'd love to help you with that if I can Just give me a call or shoot me an email and let's talk for real. That's what I've got for you today, and with that, i hope I at least have got some wheels turning. I want you to be thinking about the beach, or whatever your happy place is, and start making some plans. All right, because you really can do this, guys, and your practice will be fine, and so will your clients. All right, everybody, have an awesome week and I will see you next time here on Ideal Practice. Bye now. ["ideal Practice"]. 

Hey y'all, do you ever get overwhelmed with all there is to do to grow and manage your private practice? I know there are a ton of things fighting for your attention taking care of clients, keeping up with the billing, much less sorting out your marketing, and all of that. You name it. It's a lot. So, gosh, how do you know, like, what to work on at each phase as your practice grows? Well, i've got you covered. 

I've put together a little quiz, a tool that will help you take stock of your practice as a whole, and when you complete it, you will know exactly what to work on next. 

It's based on my proprietary framework the seven pillars of an ideal practice. This really quick and easy process will guide you through a series of questions that will help you identify for yourself where your practice is solid and where it might need a little work. I call it the IP360 Scorecard And, honestly, you can finish this in less than 10 minutes. Not only that, but once you've completed it, i'll also send you some guidance on how to think about your scores in the context of which phase of development your practice is in. And, the best part, it's completely free. When you go to my website, wendypitsreeves.com, forward slash 360, 360 the numbers, zero the numbers, you'll find a complete description of the Scorecard and how it's going to help you. And from there, guys, it's just a simple click of a button or two to get your own. So go get your copy today, complete it, fill it out and figure out where your practice is ready to go next, and I'll see you next time.