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Private Practice Chronicles, Part 15: Getchu a Business Coach

Private Practice Chronicles, Part 15: Getchu a Business Coach

2019 has been an incredible year of professional growth. My practice has grown exponentially – a good, no make that – great problem to have – but when you are a sole practitioner, too much growth too fast can bring some pretty big growing pains. 

This year I was finding myself more and more drowning in the weeds.  As a sole practitioner, I’m the one scheduling, re-scheduling, following-up on emails, answering the phone and doing consults, marketing, networking, working odd and crazy hours and doing all the things that keep my practice up and running. 

But did I mention the errors I was making? Like, having the receptionist text me saying “Your 4:00 is here.”  And then: “Oh, and your other 4:00 is here.” Or telling a client I’d email them something and then completely forgetting to do it until three days later I’d get an email saying, “sorry to bug you, but can you send me that thing we talked about in session?”

Yikes.

Full disclosure: last month, I made a huge appointment screw-up and lost a great new client – she was super-mad and I don’t blame her one bit. But instead of beating myself up (which I admittedly did for a full afternoon), I knew something had to change. And fast.

After whining and crying about my life to a trusty mentor, she suggested I hire a business coach.

I’m in a women’s entrepreneurial networking group that meets monthly here in San Antonio, and a woman in that group recently launched her own coaching business. Her name is Robin and since we already had an established relationship, I knew that she’d be up for the task of looking at my business practices and helping me tweak where needed.

And to help me get my business shit together.

Off the bat, she told me this: you’ve got to get your calendar under control. It has to be automated. No more excuses, just get it done. I use Google calendar, but it only sent appointment reminders to me, so if I was off (or if my client input a wrong date), there was no check or balance system in place. I’m currently in the process of using a new calendar system through www.therapynotes.com and it’s already a game-changer, sending automated appointment reminders and confirmations (which yours truly was doing, sporadically at best, and obviously not doing it well). Eventually a link will be added to my website so clients can schedule or re-schedule themselves 24/7 without my direct involvement.

Another problem was my crazy schedule. Most days I work 8-8 with a few breaks in the day but my schedule was killing me. I also began adding 7:00 a.m. appointments to accommodate my busy business executives.  I was never home to eat dinner with my family and when I was walking through the door at 8:30 or 9:00, I was certainly not my best self. Robin told me to allocate, at most, one or two nights a week for late appointments for my “grandfathered” clients, but offer only daytime hours to any new clients. 

Robin is coaching me on other aspects of my business and helping me plan and strategize for future goals (stay tuned!!) that I’ve been too overwhelmed to think about, much less implement. She is helping me narrow my focus as well as develop a timeline/schedule of action-steps and realistic deadlines (which this procrastinator desperately needs).

So my advice to any fellow practitioners, or small business owners struggling with either growing your business or simply keeping up with your current pace is this: getchu a business coach, and getchu one now.  It is an invaluable investment in your business and yourself. My only wish is that I’d done it sooner!

College Parents: You Gotta Back the F Off

College Parents: You Gotta Back the F Off

I’m reading a lot about snowplow and lawnmower parenting, and it’s nowhere more apparent than the parents of college kids.

I see pictures of parents at sorority bid nights. There are parents visiting their kids with such frequency that I wonder if they’ve taken leaves of absences from their jobs. There are monthly local parent “chapters” for many universities that congregate to do things like assemble packages to send to little Johnny and Susie.

I know of a parent that took a day off of work to go meet with their kid (a senior) and his academic advisor to oversee the picking of next semester’s classes. Another parent told me that she can’t wait for Senior Year to be over because “we are spending hours online filling out job applications.” And by “we’ – she meant herself and her kid.

A friend of mine recently sent me a screenshot of a chat from a Parent Facebook page (yes, you read that right – a Parent Facebook page) from her son’s college. A parent posted a desperate plea – ‘IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ’ – asking if someone had an extra pair of mittens for Sally and could they bring them to Sally’s dorm because Sally lost hers and she didn’t want Sally going to class the next day in a snowstorm without any gloves.

I kid you not.

This is where we are at.

I’m all for being involved and staying connected with your kid, but this is getting out of hand. We are making it so that kids can’t problem solve anything – including getting themselves to Target to buy a new pair of gloves.

I have a college-aged sophomore at Baylor University. When I decided to write about this topic, I searched for Parent Facebook pages, because I honestly didn’t know these even existed. There were a few. Reading the comments alone seriously made my head want to blow off my neck. It was all kinds of nuts. These parents are spending serious time asking opinions about professors, apartment buildings, dorm food nutrition and myriad other things that their kids should be dealing with – not them.

College parents….and prospective college parents: you gotta back the F off. They are in college. They are young adults and they don’t need you there at every turn. They need to figure things out. You are not doing them any favors. In fact, you are stunting their growth and cognitive development and setting them up for a lifetime of needing you to be involved with any big – or little decision they make.

I’m seeing more and more “Failure to Launch” young adults in my clinic and believe me, these kids all come from families that have historically micromanaged every aspect of their lives from preschool on up.

It’s a balance. And a delicate one. Parenting is a game, and you need to be in the game. But your job is to be a cheerleader, a coach…..not as a player. Encourage them, instead, to be independent. They might make some good decisions, and probably some bad ones, but don’t fix their mistakes or troubleshoot everything. Be supportive and loving and present – but be in the background, not on the front line.