#90. 3 Success Hacks: The Must-Have Support Systems I Never Go Without

This week, in my 90th 😱 episode of the Ideal Practice(c) podcast, I’m going to tell you about the 3 most effective success hacks that have contributed soooo much to my own growth over the years.

If I’d had these systems in place when I started my practice, I could have saved tens of thousands of dollars that I lost to inexperience, a lack of business training and self doubt.

And I don’t even want to think about all the sleepless nights I suffered through. 😣

Ugh.

But as much as I hate thinking about what I missed back then, I LOVE what each of these have added to my life ever since.

I’ll explain what I mean by that in the episode. :)

(And hey - you need these too, y’all. Just sayin’.)

In this episode, you’ll hear: 

1. Some of the biggest risks you take if you’re working in a vacuum without the support of others who understand what you’re going through.
   
   
2. My top 3 success hacks for continuous growth through it all. (Psst! Can you tell what they all have in common?)
   
   
3. Many of the specific skills I’ve learned directly by hiring and working with good coaches throughout my life as an entrepreneur.
   
   
4. My three best tips for making a good mastermind work.
   
   
5. The one appointment I’ve kept nearly every week for over 7 years now-and why it matters so much to keep it going. 

But that’s not all.

You’ll also be among the first to hear about INTENTIONAL DESIGN, the 100% free training for your success in private practice that I’m putting together. I’m offering it for the first time ever, starting on Monday, February 12.

Details on THAT bit of goodness in the episode itself, and below!

Do give this a listen, because they don’t teach you THIS in grad school either.

~Wendy
Xoxo

P.S. Don’t forget to check the details below about the free 3-day training that I'm offering over lunch next week! 🥗 I’d so love for you to come!

ANNOUNCING:
3 Strategies for Crafting & Protecting Your Version of an Ideal Practice

You’re invited to bring your lunch and join me on-line next week, from 12-1 eastern, M-W. Each day, I’ll be teaching on one of the 7 Pillars of an Ideal Practice©. 

With a fun mix of story, strategy, and discussion, we’ll talk about the most common mistakes practice owners make in payment and pricing, marketing and promotion, and in the perspective we bring to the work. 

Then, I’ll show you what to do instead! Take 30 seconds to register, and you’re all set! 

CLICK HERE to REGISTER. (It’s free!)
_______________ 

THIS WEEK’S JOURNAL PROMPT: 

• How would your practice, or your experience as a business owner, be different if you had the competent, consistent and clear-eyed support that a coach, mastermind or accountability partner could bring? 

_______________ 

MENTIONED: 

1. Ep 40: Introducing: The 7 Pillars of an Ideal Private Practice© 
2. Ep 84: Why It May NOT Be a Great Idea to Start a PrivatePractice

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

You're listening to Ideal Practice, episode Number 90. Can you believe that y'all? And today I'm going to share with you three of my favorite, most effective success hacks. These are the three support systems that I consistently put into place in order to propel myself forward as a practice owner, as a business owner or, for that matter, as a human being. These have been not just game changers. These have been life changers for me, and I hope they will be for you too. So stay tuned. Hi, I'm Wendy Pitts Reeves and, with over two decades of experience in the private practice world, I've built my six-figure business while learning a lot of lessons the hard way. This is the first podcast that shows you how to apply the principles of energy alignment and strategy to build a practice that is profit-centered but people-forward. This is the Ideal Practice Podcast. Hey guys, welcome back. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Ideal Practice. This is Wendy, wendy Pitts Reeves, your host, and I am so happy to be hanging out here with you guys.

Speaker 1: 1:35

Again, I am feeling movement in the air, are you? It's February, and February in East Tennessee can be a little hard sometime. It can be a little cold, a little dreary, not always that exciting. But and it's also time of year, honestly that sometimes things can feel a little bit stagnant, but they're not. I am noticing new attitudes, new perspectives, new steps forward in clients, in family, in friends, and I don't know what's going on, but it feels to me like there's something going on in the electric, like the energy is moving and I love that and I am tuning into it and paying attention to it.

Speaker 1: 2:23

I just got a note from a client of mine the last week or so who is actually thinking about movement, transitioning to a whole new phase in our work together. We've been working together pretty intensely for a year and a half or so and she is doing so well. She's kind of ready to move into a new level where she needs not as much support from me, which is great, it's exciting. That's probably what I want, right. But she took the time to send me a note and tell me how much she is enjoying her private practice these days and y'all this just touched my heart. I love this so much. She said in this note she said, quote I have really taken to the freedom, as a sole business owner, to make things happen in my private practice.

Speaker 1: 3:13

I love that. I have really taken to the freedom as a sole business owner to make things happen in my private practice. And she went on and she said the sky is the limit in terms of the ways I can grow and the directions I can grow in. I didn't expect any of that when I started my private practice and it has been a delightful and sometimes nerve-wracking discovery. She said I have intuitively stumbled into a form of work that allows me to continually learn and grow and get paid for it. I mean, who could ask for more, right? I wanted to share that with you because that is such a perfect frame for what I wanna talk with you about today. The sky really is the limit in the way that you can grow and the direction that you can grow in, and it will indeed be sometimes delightful and fun and exciting and sometimes nerve-wracking. Indeed, for real I was thinking about. Y'all know this.

Speaker 1: 4:20

So I have run a counseling practice for a very long time as a solo, as a group practice, back to a solo again, but along the way I have had lots of things, other things I've done. I've run lots of other small businesses on the side and several years ago many of you have heard me talk about a business that I ran called Secret Adventures for Courageous Women. It was an adventure-based business where I literally planned an event every single month, 10 months out of the year. That were basically surprise adventures. That's really kind of what it was about, and they were crazy fun. They were super powerful for the people who participated. And I had been running it for two or three years and I knew how good it was. I knew how powerful it was. I really wanted it to last and I knew that something had to change. It was all consuming planning a big event for a group every single month. That was physically challenging, emotionally challenging and sometimes fairly complex. Well, it took a lot to pull that stuff off.

Speaker 1: 5:28

Well, I reached a point where I knew that I really wanted that business to last, but it wasn't going to unless I got some help. So I hired a coach. I had worked with other coaches as well along the way. All of them were awesome, but Christine is the one I found at the point when I was like something's gotta give and through a series of events, I learned about her. I tuned into her, I started reading things that she wrote, I started listing the things she had to say and I really liked what I was hearing, and at one point I was invited to join her program, which was a mastermind that included participants literally from all over the world, literally. And let's just say the short version of this is it was the scariest decision I think I had ever made in my business. At that point, I had just gone through a separation, was heading for a divorce, I was on my own and paying all the bills and sort of basically rebuilding my life, and it was a significant financial commitment more than I had ever made for anything, ever really honestly. But I made the decision and I joined that program and I'll tell you right now that was a. It was super scary and super impactful.

Speaker 1: 6:57

See, this is the thing, and here's something I want you guys to understand those brave, you brave, brave people who are the ones out there running the show. You already know this. It is one thing entirely to be an employee and someone else's organization. Right, when you work for a hospital or an agency or a clinic or a nonprofit, someone else is doing the worrying. You show up and do the work. The truth is that also goes if you are a practitioner in someone else's private practice or group practice. It wasn't really like that so much in mine, because mine was kind of a different kind of animal, but usually if you work in a large group practice, somebody else is doing the worrying, somebody else is doing the planning, somebody else is carrying the load right. It's another thing entirely. When you are it, it's your practice, you call the shots, you do indeed have the freedom to do what you want and you also carry all the responsibility, all of it.

Speaker 1: 8:04

Well, there are a lot of lovely aspects to creating something on your own. I personally wouldn't have it any other way, and I've talked about this on this show before. Not everybody is cut out to be in private practice, not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur, but if this is how you are wired and you can't resist the call and you are indeed out here with the rest of us trying to figure things out, well, there are a lot of challenges that come with this right and when you are working in a vacuum, when you're running your practice completely on your own, there are some significant risks, such as there's a real risk of making strategic mistakes that could prevent you from reaching the goals that you have for your practice. If you don't know any better and you're just kind of fly and blind and just guessing and you've had no experience, no training you're like me. You didn't get this in grad school there's a real risk that you're gonna make some expensive strategic mistakes. There's a risk, a very real risk, of burnout or worse, giving up from working too hard for too long with too little support. It can really get lonely and overwhelming sometime. Or one of the most significant risks that I see is people who are just spinning their wheels and getting in their own way all the time, because you can't see where you are tripping yourself up or holding yourself back. You can't often see where you are you are the one that is making things harder on yourself, or where you are the one that's not going after an opportunity that is just right there in front of you. We can't none of us can see that for ourselves.

Speaker 1: 9:57

So I've got something I want to share with you all in a minute. I want to really think about this whole idea about getting in your own way, because, lord knows, I have done that and I've done that with lots of zeros on the end deal. There are, in fact, one of the things I have learned from experience. That is a key part of my framework that you hear me talking about when I talk about the seven pillars of an ideal practice. There are certain aspects of your practice that people most often stumble over, struggle with, make mistakes in, don't understand or think they do understand but they don't. There are certain areas that I see that are the most common, where people, I think, are holding themselves back or getting in their own way. I want to help with that, and so, for the first time ever, I am announcing here today I want you guys to know about this. This is coming up really quickly.

Speaker 1: 10:53

I have decided to host a sort of a little mini series, a little mini lunchtime training that I am calling intentional design. It's one thing to start a private practice and fly by the seat of your pants and just stumble through things. It's a whole other idea to start a private practice or grow an existing practice with conscious and intentional planning, where you are designing it in a way that supports you and really works for you. And I am creating and offering, for the first time ever, a three-part training series on how to build your ideal practice with intentional design. I'm kind of excited about this y'all. This is like. This is a new idea.

Speaker 1: 11:44

I'm going to talk about how to avoid some of the most common mistakes that practice owners make, and I'm going to tell you how to turn those mistakes around in a way that moves your practice from being kind of eh, it's okay, you know it's working To absolute magic because it's so much fun or it's so much more interesting or it's so much more in tune and in alignment with who you are and what you want out of your practice. And if things go the way I want them to go, it will also be more profitable for you. I'll tell you more of the details about that training here at the end of this little episode, but I want you to tune in for this, because I'm super excited about it and it is coming up soon, all right, so let me tell you about these three hacks that I want to mention, my three favorite success hacks, and you're going to hear that they all have something in common. The first one and y'all I want you to listen to this the very first one that I I I really don't want to ever run, I don't really ever want to go without, and that is hiring a coach, hiring a coach. Now I saw on a Facebook group yet, uh, just recently, just last week there was. I was looking at a group that had 17, 18, 19,000 members in it private practice folks and somebody was saying is it really worth it, the kind of crazy money that you spend on a coaching program? And there was some real negative energy around that that I was really sad to see because, I will tell you, I had been investing in myself and in the success of my business by hiring professional coaches for years and years.

Speaker 1: 13:28

I've worked with lots of different folks. The very first coach I ever hired and I'm going to name names was Karen Greenstreet, and I'm going to link to these folks below Karen Greenstreet. I hired her back in the early 2000s y'all because I wanted to learn how to get paid to speak. I was doing lots of speaking in my community to grow and get a name built from my group practice, but I kind of wanted to start getting paid for it and I had absolutely no idea how to do that. So I hired Karen back then to teach me how to do that. I learned so much from her about how to craft a proposal, how to, what kind of language to use, how to build an offer that gave a potential speaking engagement lots of flexibility in what they, what, what their budget would cover that kind of thing. It was super helpful and and taught me things I knew nothing about.

Speaker 1: 14:19

Years later, I worked with Michelle Pippin. She, in fact, was the one who gave me the whole idea behind secret adventures, and from her I learned that I could play a bigger game and think outside the box in a really creative way. That would never have occurred to me otherwise. And then I've already told you about Christine, who I worked with too, so that I could save secret adventures. Let me tell you, none of those Were easy for me. Every single time, the investment that it took to join and it changed over time you know, as the years go by things get more expensive or as my understanding of the importance of investing in my business grew. I wanted to play a bigger game and I did. It was always a big deal, and every single time I made the decision to work with someone else, it scared me to death, and every single time I have been glad I did that.

Speaker 1: 15:14

Okay, so, number my very first success hack is you need somebody who understands business. Most of you there was a few of you, if you've if you listened to last week's podcast, you heard I interviewed a therapist with a quarter million dollar. What was it? Two, not quarter million dollars, 2.5 million dollar practice. She had an MBA. She was unusual. She had a business background. I'll certainly link to that below. Most of us don't have that. So if you don't know how to do this, how are you going to learn? It helps to hire an expert who knows what they're talking about and who can teach you what you don't know. I can't begin to say how much I have learned about sales and marketing from a place of integrity and service, about how to make an offer, about how to serve clients in a higher way that that works for them as well as for me, about how to set up systems in my business. It's like the list is endless of the number of things I have learned by hiring a coach. So the number one success hack I would offer you is to hire a coach. Find someone who works for you, that resonates with you, who has something you want, and go learn.

Speaker 1: 16:35

The second success hack that I have used, which I learned from working with a coach, and that was the importance of joining a mastermind. Now, that didn't come until later. Actually, I had some brief experiences with that along the way, but honestly, it wasn't until I joined the program with Christine Kane that I really wanted to be a part of the program and the program with Christine Kane that I really came to learn what a mastermind truly was and what it meant and what kind of difference it can make. And you know, in another episode at some point, if you all want, I would be glad to go into details about that and what that means. But a mastermind is essentially a very specific, structured, tailored type of peer coaching support group. Okay, sometimes it is professionally led and I actually think it's better when it is, but run well, it is indeed the mastermind that is created when a group of people come together to work together. It comes out of the Napoleon Hill book Think and Grow Rich, which many of you are familiar with. That's where the idea was first articulated.

Speaker 1: 17:56

I will tell you the key to making a mastermind work, because I've seen them work and I've seen them not work and there's a there's nothing. It can also be a really huge time suck when you find yourself tied into a group. That is not right for you. I don't want that to happen either, and I will tell you just really quickly, just three quick tips for what makes a good mastermind work. The first one is that you are in a small group of six to 10 people y'all, and if I mean, you can be in a group with a hundred people, but inside that you're going to meet with small groups of six to 10. They need to be people who are at your level of development in some way. That doesn't mean exactly where you are, and ideally, really, you want to be a people who are a little ahead of where you are. But all groups work better when you are with people who are going to challenge you and call you forward, in a way.

Speaker 1: 18:54

If you are in a group where you are way beyond most of the other people on the group, you're going to find yourself basically coaching and not getting a whole lot in return. You need to be with people who are more your business equals. I've had it. I've had experiences with both ways and it really does make a difference. The second tip I want to give you is it helps to be with others who want your best, and one of the ways you'll know that is that they are willing to call you out when you need that. They will challenge you when they see you playing small or when you are stuck. They will also celebrate with you when you succeed. Can you imagine what it would be like and I bet a lot of you can't imagine what it would be like to be in a group of six to 10 people that you could say hey, y'all just got a $10,000 client, I just signed a $15,000 contract, I just got my first $20,000 offer. Can you imagine sharing that kind of news with people? And they are not threatened by it, they are excited by it and they are going to give you hugs and high fives and a lots of woohoo's because if you can do it, they can do it, and it's going to do nothing but raise the vibrations of the whole group. Everybody is excited.

Speaker 1: 20:19

A good mastermind is a group that is carefully constructed with your business equals, who celebrates your wins, supports you on the days that you don't feel like you're winning and who will challenge you to grow when you're getting in your own way. And I would say that the third tip to finding a good mastermind is being with others who are willing to commit to it, like you are. A solid mastermind is not something you just do when you feel like it, you drop in here and there. A solid mastermind meets with some kind of structure on some kind of a regular basis, like we can talk about that later and everyone commits to showing up. And I will tell you this when you are in the right mastermind with the right people and they really are it's healthy and strong. It will change your life Y'all. It will change your life. You combine that when you've got the right coach and the right mastermind like there are no words to describe what a difference that can make.

Speaker 1: 21:25

Now, groups of people are groups of people and there are always going to be situations that work better than others. There are going to be, you know, moments that click and moments that don't. Nobody's perfect, but if you do your part and you're doing it, that's what you want to do. You want to do your part and you are in the right place. I'm telling you this can grow you like nothing else.

Speaker 1: 21:51

And then the third success hack I want to share with you is finding an accountability partner, an accountability buddy. This is a one on one relationship with someone else, that the two of you agree to support each other and to hold each other accountable to the goals, and the goals and intentions that you say you want in your business. Now, the criteria to make this successful are the exact same as what I just said about masterminds. A good accountability partner will be someone who is at the same or similar level of development as you. They may be a little ahead, they may be a little behind, but they're close. They also are someone who wants your best, so they also are willing to call you out when you need it and celebrate with you when you succeed, and they're also going to be the first one you want to talk to when you're having a bad day and things. Yet when you get fired by a client or the offer doesn't work or something bombs right, they're going to be the person that you want to call and they also are willing to commit, like you, at some point in the future.

Speaker 1: 23:04

I'd love to go into more detail about each one of these, because hiring the right coach, finding the right mastermind and working with the right accountability partner really can be the, the cocoon, the environment, the blanket to wrap around you on the cold days and the fireworks to shoot off in celebration on the great days they really can. That combination is just golden, and I'm not saying it's easy to find this because it's not, but golly when it, when you do, it's really something. I'll just tell you when I just joining that one program and I told you I've worked with lots of people and they have all been exactly what I needed at that time in my own growth and development, but they'll just that one program that I joined. In that case I found the coach I needed because in that moment, with where I was at that time, I found someone who understood people like me, meaning someone who who had a passion for what they did, who really loved their clients, who really wanted to do good things in the world and who didn't care a flip about money, who had no clue about how to make any money and who were really conflicted about it. She understood people like me and she knew how to speak to people like me and she knew how to challenge people like me. It was from her that I learned that I was a nine on the enneagram, which I resisted with everything in me for a long time. It was from her that I came to understand what that meant and how important that was, and I've talked about that on this program as well.

Speaker 1: 24:47

Finding the coach I needed helped me learn so much about myself, but it also gave me the courage to face some things in my business that I had not been willing to face before and to learn about my business. To learn about some sides of my business in a way that suddenly made sense, that I never understood before, especially about the importance of profitability and the whole role of money in my practice. Being part of a true mastermind turned out to be equally powerful as working with the right coach. And I will tell you I'm not in that program anymore. That program closed, but I, to this day, have a group of nine friends so there's 10 of us very carefully pulled together, who meet on a quarterly basis all year long for a two day period. We meet virtually because we are literally all over at literally every corner of the US, but we meet consistently and we and this, this group that I'm a part of, meets all the criteria I was just talking to you about. We were all at similar levels, we all are committed, we all want each other's success, and I can't even imagine running my practice without that kind of support. And then there's my sweet, amazing, lovely accountability partner, michelle Knox, who at some point I'm going to have on here for an interview because I want you to meet her.

Speaker 1: 26:11

Michelle and I have been meeting once a week for an hour, typically on a Monday morning, for six or seven years now, and although we go through times we might not meet during holidays or travel or when you know we're in the middle of a launch or something like that, most of the time we do, and even after all this time, even after becoming really good friends, we still say so, what are you working on your business this week? So, what did you accomplish last week? What are you feeling good about? Where are you struggling? What's your focus right now? How are you going to make that happen? That's what we do for each other. It's really just sacred to me.

Speaker 1: 26:51

So what do these three success hacks have in common? All of them involve relationships with other entrepreneurs who understand you, who get you, who see you, who support you, who care about you and who want the same thing in response from you. Right, all of them. We are not meant to operate in a vacuum, y'all. We're not made that way. We are healers. We are natural impasse. We naturally connect with other human beings. We naturally give all the time we also need to receive, and there is nothing like running a business to challenge you like nothing else. So I can't think of a better way to last and to grow and to really succeed than to make sure you have a good coach, that you're part of a good mastermind and that you have an accountability partner that will help you get through a lot.

Speaker 1: 27:50

So here's a little journal prompt I want to mention to you. So let's do something with this. I want to just ask you a question and I want you to sit with this. I want you to think about it and I really encourage you to maybe write about this. How would your practice or your experience as a business owner be different? How would it be different if you had the competent, consistent and clear-eyed support that a good coach, a good mastermind and an accountability partner could bring? What kind of difference would that make for you? And if you don't know, I'm just going to say what if you did know? What if you did know, what kind of difference would that make for you? And that's a perfect segue.

Speaker 1: 28:47

To go back to what I mentioned earlier. I want to tell you, I want to invite you, as you think about how your practice would be different, I want to invite you to join me for intentional design. We are going to do this from on your lunch hour. I'm setting this up on your lunch hour so that it is manageable for all of you, or I should say this way my lunch hour, which is on Eastern time. Hopefully that's close enough that it will work in other time zones. So I'm going to do this.

Speaker 1: 29:20

What is it next week? Is it next week? I think it's next week February, the 12th, the 13th and the 14th Monday, tuesday, wednesday, from 12 to one one hour. Y'all are going to make this quick, quick, quick, quick and clean so that you can get in and get off Monday, tuesday, wednesday, february 12th, 13th and 14th. And how perfect is that? It will lead us right into Valentine's Day, which I think is kind of lovely, because what better way to celebrate Valentine's Day than to figure out new ways to fall back in love with your practice by learning how to design it from an intentional point of view, where you can avoid some of the most common mistakes people make, leverage those mistakes and turn them around. Using the seven pillars as our framework, we're going to dive into three areas in particular where I see this as a common problem for so many folks.

Speaker 1: 30:16

And opportunity and guys. If you've never attended one of my events before, then, you may not know that they tend to be highly interactive. This is less. This isn't a presentation that I'm speaking at you. This is going to be a conversation and a discussion and some teaching around how to be intentional about each of these areas in your practice. I will.

Speaker 1: 30:39

This is free. Did I mention that it's free? 100% free. All you have to do I'm going to be doing this live on Zoom All you have to do is sign up through the link that I'm going to have in the show notes below. If you are on my email list, I'll be sending this out to you via email as well. It is completely free, but I need to know who's coming so that I can prepare and make sure that I am ready for you guys, and I like to know who's going to be there. So do me a favor, do click on the link that you'll find in the show notes or in your email inbox and sign up so I know, to expect you and clear your schedule 12 to 1.

Speaker 1: 31:18

And y'all, I'm going to make this tight. We will start right at 12. I is Eastern, 12 Eastern. I will log on, I will open the doors 15 minutes before that and I will stay 15 minutes after to answer any questions, but the content is going to be tight, 12 to 1. So I encourage you to be on time. I encourage you not to leave early. Give this to yourself. If you have clients or sessions before or after, give yourself a little window so you can make this work. All right, that's what I've got for you today. I'm super excited about it and I I hope you have a great week and I hope I will see you at Intensitl Design. Check out the links below or your email. Have a great week, everybody. I'll talk to you soon. Bye now, undefined.