The Profitable Practice: Helping Healing Professionals Build and Grow a Successful Business

By Melissa DaSilva and Joe Sanok

“They didn’t teach me this sh*t in school” That is the phrase said by almost every practitioner who tries to start their own Healing business.  This book is a #1 must-read tool for anyone that wants a profitable practice while helping others heal.

Learn:
 The logistics of starting a busine

• Language: English
• Publisher: Om Therapy
• Release date: Nov 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781087819457

Book preview

A Profitable Practice

Contents

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Acknowledgments ………………………….…… 9

Foreword …………………………….…………... 11

Introduction …………………………….............. 14

Chapter 1: Why Start a Practice? ...................... 26

Chapter 2: What’s Your Niche? ............ .............. 43

Chapter 3: Branding …………………..………... 54

Chapter 4: Your Office Space ………………….. 58

Chapter 5: Money Mindset …………………….. 66

Chapter 6: Naming Your Business …………….. 75

Chapter 7: HIPAA and More ...………………… 86

Chapter 8: Your Website ...………………........... . 99

Chapter 9: Email Marketing ...……………... .... 118

Chapter 10: Online Marketing ...…………....... 127

Chapter 11: Community Marketing …………. 150

Chapter 12: Networking ...……………….……. 158

Chapter 13: Making the Money ...…………….. 172

Chapter 14: Becoming an In-Network provider

……………………………………………………. 190

Chapter 15: Your First Client Session ...……... 197

Chapter 16: Assessments, Progress Notes &

treatment Plans ………………………………... 207

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Chapter 17: Filling Out Claims ………..…….. 211

Chapter 18: What to Do With All That Cash

……………………………………………………. 237

Chapter 19: Taking Care of Yourself So You Can

Take Care of Business……………………….…. 241

Resources ...…………………………………..… 251

About the Author ……...……………….……... 253

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A Profitable Practice

Melissa has put together the best advice for creating a profitable practice. We don’t learn this in graduate school and Melissa has structured advice and tips to help you grow faster. We all need guides and coaches, and Melissa is clearly adding her voice to the conversation. I couldn't be more impressed!

—Joe Sanok, Private Practice Consultant and #1

Podcaster

Melissa DaSilva is ON FIRE in her industry. If you have a Healing practice or plan on starting one, read this book. She discusses the ins-and-outs of running a therapeutic business that most people take years to learn. Take my advice and read this book!

—John Lee Dumas, Founder and Host of the

Podcast Entrepreneurs on Fire

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"If there's one thing I know, it’s the power of working with people who truly know their craft.

Melissa is one of those people. Not only does she share incredible, experience-based wisdom and thought-provoking ideas and concepts in this book, but she does so with an empathy that most don’t possess. A true leader in her field, this book is going to help thousands of other like-minded

professionals do what Melissa does daily: help people."

—Chris Ducker, Best-Selling Author, Podcaster, and

Entrepreneur

"The Profitable Practice is an honest exploration of everything a therapeutic healer in business wishes they knew when starting. There are many pitfalls that they can run into when starting and

maintaining a profitable practice. Melissa tackles them all in this book! In my own experience, I wish I had such a thoughtful book that navigated me through the maze of business development in 4

A Profitable Practice

mental health. I’m so glad that practitioners have Melissa’s book as a

valuable resource. I will be recommending this book to everyone."

—Ernesto Segismundo Jr., M.S. Licensed Marriage

& Family Therapist (LMFT); Professor; Founder

and Owner of www.FYLMIT.com

"Authentic and transparent, Melissa DaSilva delivers her step-by-step strategies for building a profitable practice. Melissa is magical; her enthusiastic personality, relentless drive, unstoppable passion and ‘There’s Always a Way’

attitude makes her THE PERSON to model after if you want to build a profitable practice. I am consistently amazed at Melissa’s optimism—when it appears all roads are closed, she finds a way! She never gives up. I highly recommend this book to anyone starting a practice. Melissa shares her strategies and problem-solving skills for running a successful therapeutic business."

–Jax Anderson, The Psyko Therapist

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by Melissa DaSilva

The Profitable

Practice

by Melissa DaSilva, LICSW

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A Profitable Practice

THE PROFITABLE PRACTICE

Copyright © 2019 by Melissa DaSilva

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner

whatsoever without the written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and book reviews.

First Edition, 2019

ISBN 9781702798204

Indie Published by Melissa DaSilva

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by Melissa DaSilva

Dedication

____

To my husband, for keeping me grounded but never holding me back.

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Acknowledgements

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There are so many people I need to acknowledge for helping me grow as a person and as a successful entrepreneur. First, I need to thank my mother for teaching me how to be creative and teaching me that if there is a will, then there is a way. I also want to acknowledge my father. Even though he isn’t with me in this life any longer, I know he has had a hand in my success from the other side.

I need to thank my fourth-grade teacher and lifelong friend Sandra Lamb for all her support and for editing all my college papers for me. She was also the one to introduce me to the idea of someday being an author.

My business would not be as successful as it is if it wasn’t for my amazing assistant and Lady Sitter Selena Ainzuain. I am always impressed by her intelligence, skill and her ability to keep up with me. She always makes me feel like the funniest person in the world. I wish everyone could have a Selena.

Thank you to my Mother-in-Law, Dottie Jean DaSilva. She has been my sounding board, my audience 9

by Melissa DaSilva

and emotional support on really tough days.

I need to thank John Lee Dumas for teaching me so much about business through his podcasts, books and words of wisdom. His positivity and drive have been infectious. I hope to someday follow in his footsteps to Puerto Rico.

Chris Ducker: as promised, his Tropical Think Tank event was life changing. He opened my world to online business and changed the way I think about entrepreneurship. I am still striving to be the Chris Ducker of the therapy world.

Thank you to Joe Sanok, my first business coach.

Without him and his podcast, I would have never realized that I could live the lifestyle I deserve as well as be a social worker.

Last but not least, I want to thank my book coach Dallas Woodburn. Without her, I would still be writing random thoughts in a notebook labeled Future Book.

Thank you for finding me and being such a support through this process.

Forward

____

When I was five, I had a Kool-Aid stand. I had a little 10

A Profitable Practice

brown table, cups, and sugar water with hints of strawberry. Of the few days, I grew the business to employ seven other children. I didn’t have to work as hard by doing this. People bought a cup, and seven little kids said, Thank you!

At the end of one day, I counted the money with my mom. After paying the other kids a portion and set aside money for sugar and Kool-Aid, I had only a few coins left. I had worked all day to make less than my child labor employees. I gave up on the business.

As a five year old, I had no sense of profit, margins, or an owner’s cut. But, when I launched my practice I knew I couldn’t run it like a Kool-Aid stand. But, I never took a business class in college. The business guys were usually cocky, smarmy, and just plain weird. I once had a roommate, who was a business major. He wrote an entire paper about the economics of canned soup compared to the just add water soup.

To me, the business had no heart.

But that changed when I launched my practice. I noticed that as I grew, so did my impact on my clients.

As I added clinicians, more people experienced an 11

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impact. Then, I started teaching what I learned on a podcast. More practices helped more people through more therapy and better living for the owner and clinicians.

But that transition and learning wasn’t fast. I listened to business podcasts, read books, and got my own consultant. It took years of diligent work and consulting to distill how to run a successful practice.

Most people still run their practices like a Kool-Aid stand. They don’t know their numbers. They aren’t sure where referrals come from. They put a website up and hope it works. Like a five-year-old who works all day only to have nothing in the end, most private practice owners are burned out and unsure if they’ll be open in a few years.

In a world of lowering insurance rates, while people need more help than ever, we need to have a strong practice!

Our practices need to be strong financially.

Our marketing needs to be on point.

Our vision for change needs to be clear.

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As you pick up Melissa’s book, I want you to ask yourself, Am I creating a Kool-Aid stand? There is no need to do that, Melissa has distilled the essentials of a profitable practice into this book. So leave behind the Kool-Aid stand approach and get started on building a dynamic practice!

Joe Sanok

Podcaster + Private Practice Consultant

Traverse City, MI

November 2018

Introduction

____

It was a warm Tuesday afternoon, and I was writing this book while sitting outside on my deck with my two dogs.

Earlier in the day, I was at my therapy office when I decided that it was way too nice out to be working inside all day. That was when I realized I am the boss and I am going to go home to take a nap, conduct a phone meeting and 13

by Melissa DaSilva

relax on my deck to start working on writing this book, which teaches various steps on how to create and run a profitable practice, so that you can live the lifestyle you have always wanted.

At the time of writing this book, I have 18 office spaces, two business locations, a smooth-running six-figure therapy business, and a successful coaching business. By the time you will be reading this, who knows where I’ll be.

Maybe I will be speaking on different stages all over the world or hosting a retreat at my winter home in Puerto Rico, which I currently don’t own yet, but this is why I am writing this book. I do not only want to give you the step-by-step procedure on how to create and run a successful practice but also to teach you that when you share your dreams with the universe and work your ass off to achieve them, great things will inevitably happen. Not just for you, but for the others around you as well.

In 2015 I decided to start my own business. Even though I never studied business in school, yet there has always been an entrepreneurial spirit inside of me. I first became aware of this when I was 15. I started working at a beach store on the shores of Westerly, Rhode Island. I fell in love with the challenge of selling the most thong bikinis 14

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and temporary tattoos each season. I was good at this. I learned the importance of marketing and branding. This was when I learned that if people know, love, and trust you, they are willing to buy from you. This is very important, especially when you’re selling bikinis, one of the most dreaded clothing purchases people engage in. I loved the job so much that I had dreamt of one day moving to Florida, where it’s summer every day and getting open my resort shop. But that dream never came to be. I think part of me was not wanting to leave my family, while the other part of me was thinking I couldn’t have my own business since I didn’t have any money. I also felt that a resort wear shop wouldn’t make the impact in the world I was hoping to build.

Later, after graduating high school, I decided to pursue the dream of wanting to help others, besides encouraging people to throw caution to the wind and strut their stuff in a Brazilian-cut two-piece. I wanted to become a social worker, to help adolescents who are struggling in life as I had once done. I specifically wanted to be a school social worker.

College was a struggle every step of the way. I have always had challenges with Spelling and grammar. I had an 15

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undiagnosed learning disability, which teachers said would be corrected with a new invention called spellcheck.

Since I was born in the 80’s spellcheck was new at the time.

However, spellcheck did not help me with my grammar or knowing that three words that sound the same can have three different meanings such as there, their and they’re.

Don’t even get me started on the whole I before E except after C bullshit! I learned to work around my spelling and grammar difficulties, which made writing this book an amazing accomplishment on its own. I once heard that people who have trouble with grammar usually have an easier time with math. Nope, I must be the outlier on that theory since I was also horrible with numbers. I tend to flip them around or entirely forget to add them to the equation.

Some might say that these weaknesses are all reinforced by my mindset and belief system. If I tell myself that I am good with numbers and writing and try hard, I could be much better in these areas. Although this could be true, instead I have learned to accept my