Building Better Networks

Mental healthcare professionals are experts in their field of practice. After up to 12 years in higher education, they deserve that title of expert! But do you know what’s not included in their years of school and training? While they’ve gone into thousands of dollars of debt to earn their degree and certifications, there has been little to no teaching/equipping on how to actually make money in their practice! 

While you may be thinking something along the lines of the idea that business and profits need to stay far away from anything in the helping field, you’re missing the part where you remember that doctors/therapists/clinicians are humans, too. With needs, bills, families, expenses, and life to pay for. Clinicians deserve to be paid for their hard-earned skills and knowledge.

Health and wellness should never be exploited. So let’s be crystal clear: paying money for a service to improve health and wellness is not unethical. We choose to pay for the quality of groceries we want, the type of smartphone we desire, even the vehicle we long for. We all want to pay for what we deem as worthy. Mental health and wellness is no different, and accepting payment for the professional and licensed service of improving health is one of the best choices we can make, especially with all our current stressors. 

So, back to the point… Mental health clinicians deserve to be paid for their expertise, but they lack the back-office skills (and time!) to see their practice take off. The overwhelming wave of fear that they will never be able to pay off their mounds of student debt looms large and ever present. What can be done to provide relief? How do clinicians find a continuous stream of paying patients/clients that fall within their strengths.

It all comes down to practice management marketing! How are people going to know what services a therapist offers if they can’t even find them in the first place? While the mental health ecosystem is growing, wayfinding is still difficult. We live in a digital world; word of mouth and referrals from doctors aren’t gonna cut it. 

This is where marketing comes in. Therapists are rarely prepped in all the business side of things, and that’s okay. We are here to offer excellent practice management so that the health and wellness of patients can remain the focus of the trained clinicians. Therapists won’t have to split time and attention learning a whole new aspect of growing their practice; we can promote and market on their behalf using tried-and-true campaigns and approaches that work. 

While there are countless marketing strategies that can be implemented to further the growth of a practice, Simply Psych believes in the power of multiplication over division. The goal is always to help people feel better. Period. Full stop. We’re actively iterating to make sure that by keeping up with marketing trends and best practices, we are staying true to what the front-line therapist needs: meeting the growing influx of interest.

Multiplication means appropriate therapist compensation. Slogging through a million administrative tasks in between seeing patients/clients all day (Remember the prior authorization video?), and then coming home and working a side hustle just to make ends meet is not setting them up for success. Mental health professionals deserve the space and resources to feel better too. 

The mental health ecosystem will continue to grow and flourish when people are able to not only find what they are looking for, but also be able to actually get in the door. Shortages in the mental health workforce are a barrier to helping people feel better. As we continue to put the spotlight on the mental healthcare professionals, we hope more and more people find that accessing mental health gets easier. 

Simply Psych’s commitment to multiplication goes further (and this is the bigger piece that we get so stoked about). Building better networks is the key to creating mental health access for all! We subscribe to a marketing model that is inclusive, championing, and referral-minded.

We believe that there is no wrong door to therapy, and making it easier for people to find the right mental health professional for their needs is vital to helping people feel better. And to stay better, we advocate for promoting other therapists and mental-health-committed businesses.  

As an example, Feel Better Fort Worth does just that! With the goal of helping all people access the basic human right to feel better, this awareness campaign brings together private practice clinicians to multiply their voice. Where the venture-capital-funded companies fail is to incorporate and champion the local boots-on-the-ground initiatives that are best equipped to provide authentic care to those in their community. Yet, the big-budget corporations are the ones with the money to spend on top-tier marketing (which usually chokes out the little guys).

To combat this unfair advantage, we fall back on our principle of multiplication yet again. A rally cry that promotes the wellness of all is not afraid to include and promote each individual business seeking to achieve this goal. Building a better network is how we find healing for all.

Check out the partners of Feel Better Fort Worth at https://feelbetterfortworth.com/ today!