The Private Practice Success Podcast

35. Behind The Scenes of June 2025

• Gerda Muller • Episode 35

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In episode 35, Gerda invites you behind the scenes for a candid look at what’s happening in her very own group private practice and coaching business for the month of June 2025.

Hear the real-time insights, challenges, and wins as you gain an insider view on the strategies, decision and lessons shaping Gerda's own business decision.

This month’s update covers topics from contractor management and employee recruitment breakthroughs to marketing pivots and exciting new projects - plus a major announcement about expanding mental health services to a regional community.

In this Episode, you will learn (among others):

  • How Gerda’s practice is rolling out a brand-new Contractor Scorecard to support compliance, performance, and fair contract negotiations.
  • Recruitment results and trends for Child & Adolescent Psychologists, including a discussion around the demand for Assessment Only roles.
  • The latest marketing and cash flow initiatives for allied health private practice.

Who This Episode Is For:

  • Allied health practice owners curious about the realities of running (and growing) a multi-site group practice.
  • Business owners who want practical, real-world examples of strategy, recruitment, and compliance in action.
  • Anyone looking for a relatable peek behind the curtain of allied health private practice success.

Tune in for a refreshingly honest, practical, and empowering look behind the scenes.

Want Gerda's Help with your Business?

Gerda helps allied health group practice owners go from overwhelmed, overworked, and underpaid to fully empowered and financially thriving. If this is you, then make today the day you reach out. Complete this super short Triage Form here bit.ly/triageformpps and Gerda will personally reach out to you. 

Here to help you build a practice you can't stop smiling about :)

Connect with Private Practice Success & Gerda here:

Well, hello there, spectacular private practice owner. My name is Gerda Muller, and you are listening to the Private Practice Success Podcast, and this is episode number 35. 

Today I'm super excited to share with you an episode that I am hoping you are going to love and therefore, which I am hoping to turn into a bit of a series.

Introducing Behind The Scenes

You might have noticed the title of today is Behind the Scenes of June, 2025. So yes, it is my intention to take you behind the scenes. To date, all 33 episodes that I've done have been very, I would say, educational in nature. I've really tried hard to think about what is a problem that practice owners are experiencing, and what is the solution to that problem, and I shared that solution with you. I thought it might be really interesting for me to also have once a month an episode where I actually just talk to you about what I'm doing at my group private practice.

What is the stuff that we have in the pipeline, AKA, what is happening behind the scenes? Generally, when I do business coaching, mentoring, and consulting, I like to share stuff that I've already implemented, tested, tweaked, and where I can go 100% of the time - this works. How do I know that? Because I've done it.

It doesn't mean I don't coach people on implementing stuff that I've never done. 100% that happens every week. But when I teach stuff that I've done, there's just that additional level of confidence in knowing that I've probably made all the implementation mistakes, I've learned how to fix it, and I know what people can expect. So there's an amazing level of confidence that comes with that. 

But when I'm doing these behind the scenes episodes, I'm going to be sharing with you what is in the pipeline. What am I still testing? Will that be of help? I was just thinking that as a group private practice owner in the early days, I would've loved to be able to listen in to something like this.

Now, I do want to preface this by saying that when you listen to my podcast or any other podcast for that matter, you will be hearing a lot of amazing ideas. You know what we refer to as those shiny objects, and I think the majority of us do suffer from shiny object syndrome, whether we want to admit it or not. It just is what it is. It's human nature. 

One of the biggest mistakes we can make as business owners is to see all these amazing ideas and go, because that person is doing it, that means that I must do it - and if I don't -  I'm going to fall behind or I'm going to fail, or I'm not going to have the success that they have.

Matching your Strategy Choice with the Level your Practice is at

It's really important for you to understand that there is a big difference between having a level one private practice and a level five private practice. Just like there's a big difference between having a level two private practice and a level three private practice. And if you're sitting there going, what the hell are these levels you're talking about Gerda? Then I do encourage you to go and listen to episode 19 of this podcast, where I take you through the five levels of private practice development and it will actually help you to identify what level your business is at right now. 

The point I'm trying to make here is that depending on the size of your business - i.e. are you level 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 -  which will mean you will have a different number of clinicians, you'll have a different number of admin staff. Your revenue will look different, your profit will look different, the number of appointments per week will look different. Depending on your size, different strategies will be required.

If you are a level three practice wanting to implement level five strategies, you're setting yourself up for failure.  I will also say that sometimes you can use the same strategies across the levels, however, you need to implement them differently so that they fit your level of private practice development.

This is where people often go wrong because they think, I'm just going to listen to all these podcasts, or Google all these things, and oh, this is an amazing idea, I'm going to use this at my business. But when you don't know how to adjust it to the size of your business, again, you're setting yourself up for failure, and nobody likes failing.  Yes, we all know that it's learning, but guess what? It's so much easier if you can avoid that learning and rather fail on the stuff that matters. 

So before I go too deep down this rabbit hole, I'm just going to pull myself up and say the point I'm trying to make is when I'm sharing stuff with you of what I'm doing behind the scenes, you always need to ask yourself - or again, it could be me or anybody else out there in a podcast - ask yourself, is this relevant to me right now?

It might be a brilliant idea, but maybe I need to put it on the “to consider later” list, and just write it down, make a note of it, park it somewhere, and go, I know that it will be there when I'm ready and when my business is ready for me to implement that. 

Also keeping in mind that I share with you what I'm doing at my practice - I've got a really established business. I've got level five practices, so the strategies that I'm using are generally relevant to that level. Again, most certainly, you can often use those across the levels, but there's going to have to be tweaks that you need to make. 

I hope I've made that point because remember, I am here to help you get to where you want to get to as smoothly as possible with the least amount of speed bumps possible, which is why I just wanted to frame these behind the scenes episodes for you in that manner. 

Alrighty, if you are excited about hearing behind the scenes stuff from me, I would love for you to let me know. Maybe listen to the end of this podcast episode to actually decide whether this was of help and whether it was interesting, and flick me an email. My email address is in the show notes. I don't want to do this on a monthly basis - which is 12 episodes out of the year -  if it's not going to be of help. So I would love to hear from you.

Behind The Scenes at The Psych Professionals

As you may know by now, my practice is called The Psych Professionals. I'm happy for you to go and Google us and I have been running my private practice since 2007. That's when I started as a solo practice and transitioned into a group practice at the start of 2008, and in 2011 is when I started my second group private practice. And I've had those two locations ever since.

I have changed locations over the years. Initially, it started in a little sleepy suburb called Cornubia on Brisbane Southside. That practice then moved into Loganholme, and currently that practice is in Springwood. So over all those years, we've moved to three suburbs. The other practice started in Capalaba, also on the Brisbane Southside. It then moved into Cleveland, and it has recently moved to Thornlands, which is interesting, right? So that one has also now moved to three suburbs. 

Across both locations, we are now in suburb number three, which I don't think is too bad given that we've been in existence since 2007 and 2011. The part of the practices journey that I am most proud of is the fact that both practices, which operate as separate independent legal and financial entities, have now been operating without me being on the ground at the practices involved in the operations for more than five years.

You might not believe this, but I do not even have a key to get into either location. Now you might think that is crazy Gerda, but I don't have any need to go into the practices. I don't need a key - I will just lose it. I actually live seven hours drive away from my practices. It  doesn't mean I don't have my freaking fingers in the pie. I love having my fingers in the pie. 

I meet with the person that runs my practice every Monday at one o'clock. That meeting goes for 45 minutes to an hour maximum, and that is the involvement that I have in running the practice. So I still know what's going on. And as a business coach, mentor, and consultant to other allied health professionals, I really feel that I've got a competitive advantage as a business coach because I still have skin in the game. 

I know the struggles that you guys are having because I'm probably having it at my practice as well. I also have a business that has to deal with client numbers, team retention, talent acquisition, career pathways, finances, revenues, profits -  all of the things. All of those things I hear about every Monday. So I have skin in the game.  I still feel like I'm in the trenches, although I can't really call it the trenches - I'm in there an hour a week. But that is what you call a self-running practice. 

I will be honest with you, your self running practice - I think it would be a mistake to not be involved at all. I'm not saying that day won't come.  When I reflect on it now, maybe I am doing that hour a week because I feel like it makes me a better business coach to other allied health professionals. I know what the struggles are with the software we use to book our diaries. Has there been a technical glitch happening? Oh, okay. That's what people are complaining about, right? What is the impact of those things, or what is the impact of this thing that happened? 

I do think that if I wasn't doing Private Practice Success Australia, I might have walked away from the practice 100% by now, I might even have sold it - I don't know. But for now it will continue as usual.  I love those catchups with the practice and knowing exactly what is happening on the ground because, as I said, it helps me feel really in touch with what is happening for other practice owners as well. 

Now that you have a bit of that background, for those that might be new to the podcast, this is what has been happening behind the scenes. Obviously a lot happens and operationally -  there are things that just happen. But I'm going to share with you things that I think are new or really important for us as a business. When I was reflecting on what I wanted to share today, there's really two things that popped up for me.

The Contractor Scorecard: How to Evaluate & Retain High-Performing Contractors

The first thing, which is really exciting, is our contractor scorecard. So Ash and I - Ash is our Director of Strategy and Operations - have been working on our contractor scorecard. So what is that? 

First, I want to say that this is a scorecard for contractors only. This is not an employee tool. The contractor scorecard is something that we are designing off the back of the new way of contracting within Allied Health.  I'm sure by now if you've got contractors, you are aware that a lot of the rules around contracting have changed. Last year - I think it was June or July - I ran a three hour webinar taking practice owners through the changes and through how we differentiate contracting and employment at my group private practice.

We have a hybrid model where we have a core employee team and then we have contractors around the employee team to look after the overflow of referrals. But as a business, it is important for us to be able to demonstrate how we manage the employee team and the contractors differently in order to be compliant with the new ATO rulings around contracting, and how we do that within an allied health setting. It went for three hours because there's a lot of nuances that you need to get right.

If you don’t know what I'm talking about, you need to go and find out what has changed. Because if you don't, you're putting yourself - personally, as well as your business - at significant risk. You do not want to get the fines and the consequences that come with not doing contracting right, because it is significant. This is not me fear mongering, and I don't want you to freak out. All you need to do is, okay, I've now heard it, now I know I need to go find out what is going on, what are the changes. Okay? 

So the contractor scorecard is on the back of all of those changes. The way that we provide feedback to contractors has also changed.  The purpose of this tool is for us to go: how do we know that contractors are doing a good job for the business - or not - because you pay your contractors good money. The cost of goods that goes towards your contractors is significant. So contractors are paid really, really well. Therefore as a business, your contribution to OPEX is not always as high as it might be with an employee team when you have a performing employee team. 

So again, there's always these nuances. You can't say one is more profitable than the other. Both are equally profitable if you run both models properly. But costs of goods are high for contractors because they don't have a lot of the other entitlements, obviously now, with these changes in ATO rulings - and I say all of these things not being a lawyer, please let me just preface that. 

But this is my understanding of reading all the stuff:  for many contractors now, depending on how they are assessed, you are going to need to pay super. But a lot of the other entitlements they don't get, so you have to pay them more money, right? Because, for example, they don't get annual leave. In other words, if they don't work, they don't get paid. And that's why the cost of goods is so expensive in that sense. 

As a business, it's really important for me as the business owner to be able to assess: is this contractor delivering on the required deliverables, and how do I know that? When it comes to contracting, the way that I understand it in my head is that with contractors -  you can tell them what to do, but you can't tell them how to do it. Whereas with employees - you can tell them what to do and how to do it. This is a very simplified way of differentiating between the two. Obviously, there's a lot more that goes into it. 

With contractors, we can tell them, this is what you need to do. In other words, these are the deliverables, these are the outcomes that we want to see, these are the results that we want to see. How you get there -  that's up to you, right? But we also need to then be able to go, okay, so what are those deliverables, how do we know that they're meeting it, and how do they know that they are meeting it?   If you just go, okay, here's the clients, now go for your life and I'll just pay your invoices 0 that's not going to work. And I've seen that time and time again. 

The purpose of what we're putting together now - and it's like 95% complete -  is for us to go, okay, as the business, what are we looking at to go: is this person delivering what we are paying them? Then, what we are going to do is some of the stuff is only going to be for our own in-house use. And then we are going to put that into a report, into a document, and we're going to send that to our contractors on a quarterly basis.

Obviously if we see that they're not performing, we are going to give them feedback sooner, right? But generally, if you've got a good hiring process, you're going to hire quality people. It doesn't mean things don't go astray. And generally, we find that's only needed on a quarterly basis. But as a business, the plan is for us to update the in-house scorecard on a monthly basis. If we see a red flag, we will immediately give feedback to that, but they're going to get the big picture scorecard once a quarter so they can see how they're traveling and we've got benchmarks. 

Some benchmarks are only marked as satisfactory versus unsatisfactory. Others have benchmarks around exceeding, on target, below target, or not meeting target, so that we can give them that feedback. ?  The purpose of this is for them to know how they are going and for us to know how they are going because your contractor agreement should really only be valid for 12 months.

If you've got a contractor agreement that doesn't have an end date, you are treating them like an employee. That's my non-lawyer understanding of the rules, right? Because an employee doesn't have an end date - unless maybe you've got them on a very specific fixed term contract - but generally employees are employed on an ongoing basis,

So with a contractor, you should have a start date on their contract and an end date. And when the end date comes, you need to negotiate a new contract. When that time comes to negotiate a new contract, how do you decide to offer a new contract - yes or no? And I bet my bottom dollar, the contractor is going to expect an increase at that time, as they should.

I’d want an increase when I'm negotiating a new contract. Just like employees are going to want an increase on an annual basis, the contractors are going to want an increase  too - maybe because their expenses have increased. And as a business, we are probably increasing our fees to the clients because our expenses have increased.

When a contractor tells us they want to earn more money, they are an expense for our business. Just like our electricity might go up or accounting fees might go up. Similarly, our contractor fees might go up. So when the time comes to renegotiate that contract -  as the business owner -  I need to have a really clear data driven way to make a decision. 

I'm not going to decide to give somebody an increase based on whether I like them or not. Not that that's a problem for me - because I don't even know them, I'm living seven hours away and I don't hire them. I don't see them on a daily basis or anything to that matter. But even for Ash, who's on the ground at the practice - and in your case, you might still be on the ground of the practice. - you never want to be seen as making decisions based on whether you may be close to someone or, you go out for lunch with that contractor every now and then. 

You want to be able to go very fairly based on the numbers, whose contract am I going to extend - yes or no? And if I do extend it, am I going to offer them an increase - yes or no? Because that's a negotiation that's happening there, right? So we want to know that. 

The purpose of the scorecard is for us to be able to go: is this person what we refer to as a preferred service provider, or they just a service provider? 

If they are a preferred service provider, then I most certainly am going to want to extend their contract, and I'm very likely to say yes to an increase. Now the level of increase? That’s a totally different conversation. But I'm going to go - of course, they’re a preferred service provider. They've met all their deliverables. They're ticking all our boxes. We want them to stick around.  Versus just a service provider. It's like maybe they're doing the work, but they're not ticking all our boxes. 

To try and explain to you how I think about it, let's think about it in this way, because sometimes in the allied health industry, we get very stuck on contracting, and I feel like having an external example helps us. 

Imagine you are a builder. You build houses. You might have a company that builds, I don't know - let's say 50 houses every year, which is actually not a big amount for builders. And with those 50 houses, you will have at least 50 electricians that need to go onsite, and they are contracting to you.

You, as the builder, have the contract with the client. Now you get in these contractors -  electricians, plumbers, tilers, painters, carpenters - to come help you build a house. 

Now you've got 50 electricians potentially helping you - one per house that you are building. Some might do more than one house, depending on how big their business is. But that's not really relevant to this example, Gerda. My point is this: of those 50 electricians, some are going to be preferred service providers, and some are just going to be service providers. 

Your preferred service provider is the electrician that actually pitches up on time every day. They're not two hours late. It's the one that actually leaves a clean work site once they knock off for the day, rather than leaving all their tools around and garbage everywhere. they're the ones that submit their invoices on time-  and when they submit their invoices, it's not full of mistakes.

So coming back to us as Allied Health practice owners: a preferred service provider starts their sessions on time. Their dropout rates are within industry average. Their retention rate is appropriate. When you look at the inactive client list, it's going to be appropriate. They're submitting invoices on time and it doesn't have 10,000 mistakes on it. I know I'm exaggerating, but they've actually paid attention to their invoice rather than expecting you to fix up all the mistakes -  so it's all those things. 

We really look at if somebody is actually operating like a true contractor - meaning that they are a business that takes pride in the service, and the quality of that service, and the timeliness of that service that they are delivering to your business. You are going to of course extend their contract, and you are going to say yes to paying them more money - with joy. Okay. With joy. Because you are going to go, “They are so freaking worth it. Of course I'm going to pay you more money.” 

Versus somebody that wants to work as a contractor because they're attracted to more money per hour that they're getting. So there's that lure of, “I can earn a lot of money,” but they don't really see themselves as a business. They’re  just getting paid more money. So there's a different mindset and filter. 

If a contractor doesn't understand that they are a business that's giving your business a service, and therefore they need to do it at a high level with pride in what it is that they're delivering - that it has to be quality - then you're not going to want them to stay on. And then you need to make that decision. 

And I will say to practice owners: if you know somebody's not delivering, and you offer them more money and extend their contract - don't come complaining to me about it. Because you are making a conscious choice around whether to keep them on or not. And I know you might feel desperate, but it's not freaking worth it. 

We want to make sure that when the time comes to renegotiate that contract, that we can confidently say yes or no. And we can confidently say, “Okay, now let's have a look at what that increase will need to be.”

Because again, it's a negotiation, and we still need to meet our contribution to OPEX - aka operating expenses - which is a benchmark that we set based on what is happening for our numbers as a business. We also want to make sure that we are fair towards the contractor by giving them their scorecard.

Just like there's that saying in business that an employee should know that they're going to be fired. Getting fired should never be a surprise. If it's a surprise, then you, as the business owner, haven't done your job, because you've not given them feedback.

We have to give our contractors feedback to say, “This is how you are traveling. Look here - You're not meeting that deliverable. You're not meeting this benchmark”. And if they can see that, they've got two choices. They can either ignore it, or they can pull up their socks and go, “You know, this was really helpful. It's really great to see the expectations in black and white again, as a reminder. I actually want to retain this contract with this business. So I'm going to work on this, and I'm going to make sure that in three months time with the next score card, it is where it should be.”  It's a choice for them.

If people choose not to level up - well what does that tell you? It's like, okay, that's your choice. I totally get it. But then I now have a choice. And again, that's then the choice is on you: to decide -Am I going to be happy with mediocre performance, when I've seen it on black and white, and they have had the opportunity to uplift that performance - or not?

I am very much for giving feedback and giving people an opportunity to uplift the quality of their work. Because I'm not perfect. Nobody's perfect. We can only uplift the quality of our work when somebody tells us that it's not where it should be. And you should do that for your employees as well. 

So that is the purpose of the contractor scorecard. I am excited for the practice to roll that out with our contractors. And I look forward to that allowing us to practice it to uplift the quality of our servers even more. Because at my practice, what we aim to do is help people live the life they deserve. But we want to do that in better and more effective ways. And that has always been a tagline for us at the practice - We want to help more people in better and more effective ways.

And the contractor scorecard is just one of the tools that is going to help us do that. Yes, it's going to help with a lot of other stuff, but ultimately everything we do in the business is to help more people. That's why I became a psychologist. It's why I started my business. So yeah, so that's the contractor scorecard.

Recruitment Insights & Results

The second exciting thing that has been happening behind the scenes at the practice is that we have been recruiting. We've just added an extra room at one of our locations, so we have put up an ad for a child and adolescent psychologist. The job ad specified one role for a child and adolescent psych doing therapy, and one for a child and adolescent psych doing assessment.

We had this job ad up on Seek and it went for the full 30 days as it does when it is on Seek. At the time of recording today, it’s the last day that the ad is still live. I thought first I'm going to share with you some stats.  I know that the recruitment market has most certainly improved - like 100% - from what it was about two years ago. Generally to find a child and adolescent psychologist is much harder than finding an adult psychologist. I know it was, as  one of my practices has a child and adolescent market. So when we get applications, we are rejoicing. 

Here are our stats: or the 30 days that the ad was on Seek - and we still have the rest of the day to go, we might get another one - we had 21 applications, which is good. There was a time a couple of years back, where if you got two freaking applications, you were doing well.

So 21 applications. Of those 21, 11 - that is a full 50% - we considered not suitable. The thing I like about Seek is it has a bit of a dashboard, and when applications come through, you can actually pop it into certain sections. So 11 of them went into the not suitable section. 

Right now as we're looking at it, we've got one in our inbox, which is new, so we must have gotten a new application overnight. Three are still in the pre-screen stages. So basically we look at it, we go “Okay, maybe,” we are just putting them into pre-screen. We need to look through them when we have time. So they go in there. There's zero on the shortlist at the moment. There are two currently with interviews scheduled. There's two that have already had the interviews - and we've made offers - but we are waiting to hear back from them.  And there's two that have already accepted the offer. 

So from this one round of interviews, we have already gained two new psychologists and we are offering another two. Hopefully, we are going to take on board four child adolescent psychologists for either therapy and or assessment, with this one round of advertising. Now these aren't full-time equivalent roles.

The interesting observation that I had in speaking to Ash - when she updated me with regards to this process-  is that the majority of people that we considered suitable wanted assessment only roles. How interesting is that?  

The two people that have already accepted our offers were for assessment only.  I believe both of them are contractors, and that is what they wanted. They wanted to do contracting. That works for us as well. And the other two who we have offered and we are waiting to get their contracts back - we don't see it as accepted until they've signed on the dotted line -  I believe that those two are the employees and they will be doing therapy.

I might add that of those four people that we are making offers to three are going to be providing, I believe, in-person sessions and one will be joining the telehealth group of contractors. We've got a cohort of contractors that does telehealth only, and then we've got a cohort of contractors that does in-person or a combination of in-person and telehealth. 

As you can see, we are a very flexible business, and I think that goes a long way towards really engaging high quality clinicians to work at your business. It also provides a lot of choice to clients, which I love to do. 

The purpose for sharing is that recruitment has definitely improved for child and adolescent role. And a lot of people these days, it seems, are wanting to do contracting - which means you need to know how to do contracting well. Hence the contracts scorecard as well. 

So that is what's happening at the practice. Everything else I would say is just business as normal.

Behind The Scenes at Private Practice Success Australia

Given that we are talking about behind the scenes, I thought I might also give you a little bit of a window of what is happening behind the scenes within my business - my coaching, mentoring, and consulting business called Private Practice Success Australia. I just refer to it as PPS - PPS for Private Practice Success, if you didn't know.

With PPS, the three biggest things that I do:

Number one is the Private Practice Success Academy, which is where the majority of people come and work with me. 

Then I have my Founders Club. That is where people are in the academy, but they're also working with me one-on-one.

And then of course, in April I launched Ignite Your Practice. 

Ignite Your Practice is if you just want to have a bit of a test drive on what PPS is all about. Then the Academy is the core signature program for helping you build your Allied Health business. And then Founders Club is that next step - if you really want to fast track things by working with me one-on-one on a weekly basis - not just once a quarter,  but every week via Voxer access. I'm in your pocket, basically. I'm with you every step of the way. 

So that is the three main delivery methods within Private Practice Success Australia.

Solving Cash Flow & Marketing Challenges

In May, which was last month, and this month, which is June, we had a bit of a marketing focus. Most of 2025 - January, February, March, and April - were very much focused on the financial aspects of running an Allied Health private practice. I focused on that because I know from speaking to a lot of you that cashflow has been a bugger during 2025.

It's been the biggest challenge that people have shared with me. Cashflow, money, and the lack thereof in the bank account is one of the highest stress points for business owners in general. That is the shit that keeps you up at night. That is the stuff that when you wake up, it's the first thing you think of and you can't fall back to sleep. You've been there. 

I think a lot of people have been experiencing that in the last couple of months. So as the chief business coach in the Academy, I make it my job to deal with those things. So we've really had a big focus on that. Then last month, May and in June we did a bit of a pivot into marketing, because I also know that having full diaries, having clients, that is a big lever and driver for money coming into the bank.

In May I got a guest expert to talk to the Academy and Founders Club members around Facebook ads. I'm on Facebook a lot because I've got my Facebook groups, and the amount of Facebook ads I get from Allied Health business owners that I look at it and go - I'm not a Facebook ads expert, but I've been running Facebook ads for myself since 2014 - and people are just freaking throwing money into the water with the type of ads that I see running. And I want to make sure my people don't do that - because cashflow's already tight. 

When cashflow is tight, people do crazy things to circumvent it. They won't invest in business coaching because it's like they can't draw a direct line between business coaching and more money. So they go, “Let's do advertising,” because they feel like there's a direct line between a Facebook ad and clients in the bank.

But that line is not direct. That line's not even going to clients in the bank account based on the Facebook ads I was seeing. So we got an expert in to really come and talk to the Academy about what those ads should look like. It's so important if you are going to have a Facebook ads budget, that every freaking dollar is going to have a return on investment.

If you just send people to your homepage, that's not going to work. Oh my goodness. Anyway, we had a great expert come in. We've got people currently doing their very first Facebook ads, and they are doing it in the freaking right way. Facebook ads can be a really great marketing strategy, but only if done right. It's like any business strategy, you need to do it right in order for it to work. You need to be able to track that return on investment.

If you invest $20 in marketing, you want to get $200. You really want 10 times your return on your marketing spend. For me, that's a very general rule of thumb. And if you can't get that, then there's something wrong. So that's what we did in the Academy in May. 

In June, we also had a marketing focus. I presented the June skills training on my all time favourite marketing strategy. If you had to tell me, “Gerda, you can do no marketing but one thing,” that is the thing that I would be doing,

It's the one marketing strategy that you can use across the levels of private practice development - whether you are at level 1, 2, 3, 4, or five. This is one that I highly recommend.

If you've ever worked with me in the Academy, in Founder's Club, or in Ignite Your Practice, you will know exactly what I'm talking about. So that is what we did in June.

The Private Practice Success 2-Day Business Intensive

The other really exciting thing that has just happened - like in the last week is - drum roll…. I opened up registrations for the Private Practice Success Academy in-person Business Intensive.

We run two Business Intensives a year. The Business Intensive is a two day deep dive into all things Allied Health business. We always run the March one virtually, so that's online. But the August one is in person. The website has gone live and registrations are happening.

I'm excited to say that we are going to be in the Gold Coast Hinterland in August for two amazing days, up somewhere in Mount Tambourine in the gorgeous rainforest. It is the perfect place to learn whilst rejuvenating. I'm super excited about it. 

Last year, we had our very first in person Business Intensive. I was so freaking stressed beforehand - I'm just going to admit it. The Academy started in 2020, and we always used to do the business intensive online. It was never my intention to do it in person. But the members said, “It would be really nice to get together in person,” because the relationships and the connections that people form in the Academy are really strong and really beautiful. So I went, “Okay, let's do it!” 

We went to Melbourne in the beautiful Hepburn Springs last year.  I had put a lot of pressure on myself to make it a really amazing event. And we did it!  I remember sitting at the airport on the way back with Kelley, Ash and Chelsea and going, “Far out guys, now we need to top this next year. Let's start stressing.” 

That's what we do as high achievers in high performers - we set the bar really high, we jumped over the bar, and now we are going to take it up a couple of notches -  that's how we roll. So, yeah, super excited for the August 2025 Business Intensive in the Gold Coast hinterland. It’s going to be another amazing event. 

So that is my current focus. It's always business as usual with Ignite, which is our self-study program, the Academy, which is our core program and Founders club. But now we are really getting down and dirty in terms of making all the arrangements to ensure a kick as Business Intensive in August. 

So that is what's happening in the Private Practice Success Australia. What else is happening?

Extending Mental Health Services to Agnes Water

Oh my goodness - how could I even forget? And it's probably because I look at this more as a personal behind the scenes. 

Some of you may or may not know that my daughter, Cassidy, is now a fully registered social worker. Now that she has finished her studies in Brisbane, she has moved to Agnes Water, where I live. And of course, the two of us have now decided to open up an Agnes Water Psych Professionals location. So that is so exciting. 

I've been living in Agnes Ward now since January, 2020. Although consciously you can recognise when people say: when you live rurally or regionally, you don't have access to a lot of mental health services. But once you come here, you actually realise how real that is for the community. 

The community where I live, you would need to drive 90 minutes one way, so it's a three hour round trip to see a psychologist. And that's just not good enough. I can't tell you how many times over the last four years I've had those moments where I have gone, “You know what? I really should just do one day of consulting clinical work because people here deserve access to a psychologist.”  I've had a lot of times of feeling pretty guilty knowing that I am a registered psychologist that could easily see people, like,  “Just do Fridays and Saturdays Gerda, it's not that hard -  just do it. At the very least, you can help a small segment of the community.”  Then I would go, “Yes, I'm going to do it.” 

And then I'd go - I can't because. My main job is Private Practice Success Australia, and I never want to not give my coaching clients the attention they deserve. So I've been having such an internal struggle between going back onto clinical work to help out the community versus not overextending myself because my day job is now being a business consultant, and I need to ensure that I have the time and the energy and the mind space for that.

But now that Cassidy has moved up - she's not a psychologist, but social workers can do amazing work and she's going to do her mental health accreditation - she's going to open up Agnes Water Psych Professionals for us.

We already have a room that we are going to rent. We've already started to do the marketing brochures and social media promo that is going to happen. We have signed up with the Step Care program here, so she'll be able to provide services through what they call Healthy Minds, which is the old ATAPS for our area.

She can do NDIS work. She actually worked as a support worker for quite some time while she was studying, so she's got experience in the NDIS and she can do private work. So at the very least, it is a start, and I feel so happy that we are able to offer the local community mental health support through the work that she's going to be doing here. So, yeah, that is pretty exciting for me and for Cassidy, for that matter.

So that concludes the behind the scenes for June, 2025.  Please be sure to let me know if this was of interest and if you do want me to make this a series where I give you a monthly update of what is happening behind the scenes. 

Thank you so very much for listening, and as always, know that I am here to help you build a practice, you can't stop smiling about. 😊

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Gerda Muller

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