This is Dave Kats with Therapist Consultants and I have a tip for you. You need to know a lot about your statistic in your practice, you need to know how many new patients you get, you need to know how many patients you see, you need to know how much money you collect. One of the important statistics that a lot of people don't look at is their PVA, that's their patient visit average and all it is, is an average of the number of times a patient comes in to see you during their lifetime.

Now, the way you compute a PVA is this, you take, let's say, on a monthly basis, you take your total visits for a month, and you divide it by your new patients for that same month, and that answer is your PVA. If you see 100 patient visits in a month, and you see 10 new patients, well, 100 divided by 10 is 10. Your PVA is 10. Now, I will tell you that if you do that, divide your total patient visits by your new patients, your answer should be between 12 and 15.

That's where the national averages, the...

This is Dave Kats with therapists consultants and I have a tip for you. Once we place our ad on psychology day, we leave it there and we never touch it. Whether it's good, bad, or indifferent, that's the way it's going to be the rest of our life because we never touch or improve our psychology today ad. I would encourage you to spend this week improving your psychology today ad. Now, what can you do to improve the ad? Well, the first thing that happens with psychology today is they look at your picture.

If you look normal, they'll read, if you don't look normal, they won't read. Make sure you have a good picture that says that's not too dark, that's not too light. It's a professional picture. It's the same size and shape as everybody else as far as your distance from the camera and have just a good professional picture, probably with a smile and a welcoming smile on your face. Then the next most important thing is the first three lines of the three paragraphs.

Now I have therapists...

This is David Kats with Therapist Consultants. I have a tip for you. You know, they say, "Record keepers are record breakers." I believe that's true. One of the things I find true of therapists is a lot of times they don't know exactly what their statistics are. I would say that you should set a goal each month for what you're going to reach as far as your statistics. You should set a goal for how many new patients you want this month, you should set a goal for how many patient visits you want to do this month and you should set a goal for how much you want to collect this month. I'll tell you something, if your practice starts to slip, you'll notice it first and fastest if you're tracking your statistics.

Why don't you put together a chart? This is your assignment for this week. Put together a chart that just has by every month, the number of new patients, the number of total patient visits, and the number of collections that you did, the amount of collections that you did. By the...

Hi, this is Dave Kats with Therapist Consultants and I have a tip for you. You can attend a lot of seminars and attend a lot of webinars and learn a lot and gain a lot of ground as far as your business is concerned in therapy. There's another thing you can do that's equally important. Not only should you attend seminars to build your business and attend webinars to build your business, but you should also have a brain trust partner.

That's somebody they don't have to be in your profession, but it's good if they're in your profession, that's somebody you meet with on a regular basis. You tell them what your challenges are and you talk together and they help you build your practice and you help them build your practice. I have two or three different brain trust partners. Now you may say my wife or my husband is my brain trust partner.

That's good, but often, you need someone inside the profession to give you some professional insight. Here's your assignment for this week. Think of...

Hi, this Dave Kats, with Therapist Consultants and I have a tip for you. Sooner or later, you're going to say, "I want to do some marketing." If you want to do some marketing to get new patients, the best place to do it is on the internet and the best place to do on the internet is with Facebook ads.

Now, Facebook ads are very inexpensive compared to advertising on Google. Why don't you put together some Facebook ads and here's one of the hints for you, video Facebook ads draw better than written Facebook ads. If you do a Facebook ad and do a short video, maybe 90 seconds, it will pull better and you'll get better results than just putting a written ad on Facebook. Think about doing a video ad on Facebook and I think it'll really build your practice if you do it consistently. This is the Dave Kats. Thanks for listening.

Hi, this is Dave Kats with Therapist Consultants. I have a tip for you. We hear so much about having a will or a trust when we die. That's very important. For therapists, there's another step. You need to have a professional will. A professional will is basically it tells what you want done with your patients and with your practice when you're no longer around. The first thing you have to do to have a professional will is have an executor that knows how to operate that will or they execute that will. You'll want that executor to be familiar with your office and where things are found.

Then you also have to have a way to show people how they can get their information from your office if they need it. The last thing you need to make sure you do on your professional will is make sure that everything stays HIPAA compliant in the transition after you're no longer around. Think about having a professional will. You can look it up on the internet, if you want more information. A...

Hi, this is Dave Kats with Therapist Consultants. I have a tip for you. Do you know what's hot right now on the internet? Different things are hot at different times. 20 years ago, a website was hot. When we started this company, 50% of therapists did not even have a website. Now, of course, everybody has a website. Then Google, became wildly popular to advertise on Google. Then the next step was Facebook, became wildly popular to advertise on Facebook.

You know what's hot right now? Podcasts are becoming a hot thing. You should learn how to do podcasts. Podcasts are really nothing more than you, and you usually have a guest. You visit together, you record it and you release it to the internet. Now, there are different places where you can release your podcast. The first one, you can use Apple podcasts. That's a place where you can get it seen. Then you can use Spotify. That's a big one. Also, there's one called Podbean. Podbean, P-O-D-B-E-A-N, is a group that will-- If you give...

This is Dave Kats with Therapist Consultants and I have a tip for you. One of the best things you can do is advertise on the internet but advertising on the internet alone is not enough. There was a book written long time ago called Megatrends and they talked about having high tech but also having high touch. That as we get more technical and use the internet more, we have to make sure we don't lose our high touch.

Now with COVID in the rearview mirror, one of the things I've noticed about COVID that make a huge difference in our community, and all over the United States is that customer service went down, COVID was a nice reason to reduce your customer service, and customer service went down almost all over. You can connect with your community in a lot of ways. You can sponsor events. You can volunteer to work in community projects.

I don't care what you do, but I will tell you that you need to be visible. You see, most professions like the medical profession or the chiropractic...

Hi, this is Dave Kats with Therapist Consultants. I have a tip for you. Do you realize that most people who are professionals in the healthcare profession don't like Healthgrades because Healthgrades will tell if you've had any board actions or if you have any cases against your license. I look at Healthgrades as a great benefit because it's a place where you can get a free website. It's becoming more and more popular. In fact, what I suggest you do is type in therapist in your area on Google and see how far down Healthgrades is.

A lot of times, it's on the first page. If it's on the first page, people are going to be looking for you on Healthgrades. You can fill out your Healthgrades form and when they look at you, it looks great instead of bad. I look at Healthgrades as a big boon to you. It's a free website for you. That's usually on the first page. Here's your assignment for this week. Go to Healthgrades, put your picture on it, put a write-up on there, put the hours on there....

This is Dave Kats with Therapist Consultants, and I have a tip for you. Sooner or later, you're probably going to want to market your practice, and if you're going to want to market your practice, you're going to want to do it on the internet. If you're going to do on the internet, you have these choices. You can do Google, you can do Facebook, and you can do some Instagram.

Now, Google is a little bit more quality of advertising. You'll probably spend more money. A lot of my therapists spend about $300 to $500 a month, but it nets them 10 to 12 new patients. Facebook has a little bit more quantity. You put it on, they see it over and over and over again. That's how they make the results. In Instagram, it's the same thing. Now, generally speaking, Facebook is for an older crowd than Instagram.

Instagram's kind of 35 and below, and Facebook is 35 and above. Depending on who you're going after, that'll tell you where you spend the most money. But I will tell you that while there are...