Hi, this is David Kats with Therapist Consultants, and I have a tip for you.

As we go into year 2020, it's important that we go in with a clear vision and here's why. You will never grow bigger than your biggest vision. If your vision right now is to do the same thing as you did last year, that's probably what you'll do. If you can create a bigger vision and say, "I want to be 50% bigger than I was last year," chances are you'll grow 50% during the year because your vision dictates your goals, your goals dictate your action plans, and your action plans dictate your results.
Before we go into 2020, I suggest you sit down and try to expand your vision because a mind stretched by a new idea will never return to its original size. Sit down tonight while you have an opportunity, and have a big vision. Get a big vision. Say, "What can I do in my biggest vision for year 2020?" I think if you expand your vision, you'll naturally expand your practice.

This is David Kats. Thanks for...

They say having a clear vision will help you plan good goals. In the year 2020, that's your clear vision right there; 2020 vision. I want you to have very clear goals of what you're going to do next year. Before we get into the year 2020, you should write down all the things you want to have, do and become.
Think about them in your spiritual life, in your physical life, in your business life, in your financial life, in your social life, in your educational life, in your family life, and in your leisure life. If you take those eight areas, and decide everything you want to have, do and become; the list may be 15 or 20 things, but if you write them down and set a date beside them when you think it's possible, and then look at them every day and work the plan, and I have a feeling 2020 will be your best year ever.

Hi, this is Dave Kats with Therapist Consultants and I have a tip for you.

One of the things I see some therapists do that are well-established that other therapists really never get around to doing is workshops or seminars. That’s a right way and there’s a wrong way to do workshops and seminars. If you say to your patients, “I’m going to hold a workshop and I’d like you come on Wednesday night at 7 o’clock to this workshop,” chances are you won’t have many people in attendance, but there’s an old saying, “If Rome won’t come to you then you go to Rome.” Here’s the idea. If the patients won’t come to you then you go to the places where the patients are at. One of the places I find this is the case is churches. A lot of times churches will have a young married group or a married with children group or even a senior citizen group and any of those lend themselves well for you going in and doing a...

This is Dave Kats of Therapist Consultants and I have a tip for you.

One of the best things you can do to keep your practice full is to put out a newsletter on a monthly basis. It doesn't have to be much of a newsletter. An 8 and a half by 11 sheet of paper with print on one side is enough. Email it to your patients each month. I have a therapist with an e-mail list of 200 people, mostly patients. She sends out a newsletter every month and she never sends out a newsletter that she doesn't get a new patient or reactivation of an old patient. So I'm saying putting out an electronic newsletter is very important because it costs you nothing. Make sure you have the permission to send people these newsletters and be absolutely sure that when you send them out, you don't accidentally expose their e-mail addresses to other people. That would be a violation. I had a therapist once that sent out newsletters to about a 175 people and it had all the other people's names and e-mails listed and...

Hi, this is Dave Kats, for Therapist Consultants and I have a tip for you.

Have you ever thought of how you perceive yourself as a therapist? In other words, how good you feel about yourself as a therapist? How good a job you feel that you do? Well, I ran across an article that said that they're certain factors that determine how you feel about yourself as a therapist. Here they are, they were really six of them.

The first one was self-image. If you have a good self-image, you're going to think that you're a good therapist. If you have a bad self-image, you're going to think you're not so good a therapist. So that stands to reason.

The second one that was the size of your practice. If you have a large practice, if you have a successful practice, if you have a waiting list, naturally you think yourself a better therapist than the people that are struggling to get people to come in, and can't keep people under their care.

The third thing they talked about was having extra education....

Hi, this is Dave Kats for Therapist Consultants, and I have a tip for you.

Have you ever wondered how your patients perceive you? How they see you as far as the value you play in their life? Well, there was an article written about how patients perceive their therapists, and there were seven things that made a difference in how the patients perceive you.

The first one is simply their need. If they have a problem that they desperately need help from, they see you as being much more important. For instance, if they desperately want to keep their marriage together, and you are helping them do that, then they see you as a very important part of their life. The second one was their personality. For instance, if they have a personality disorder of some kind, they may not see you as important as they could. The third one I thought was very interesting, it was your presentation. How you present yourself, how professional you look, how professional you act, the way you dress, and things...

All of us should be setting goals each month for the whole year.

In fact we encourage every client to set new patient goals, patient visit goals and collection goals by month for the whole year.

How do you set goals so they are logical? There are four or five things you have to consider. You can’t just pull a number out of the hat and say, “This is how many new patients I’m going to get” or “This is how many patient visits I’m going to see”. You have to have some reasoning behind it so that you can believe it and reach your goal. There is an old saying that says, “What the mind can conceive and the heart can believe you can achieve”. If you really believe that you’re going to hit your goals you’re going to probably hit them. The reason you’re going to believe that you’re going to hit your goals is, because there’s reasoning behind it.

Here’s the reasoning you have to use. When you set a goal,...

Dr. Perusich: Hi everybody. Dr. Michael Perusich and Dr. David Kats here. We've got a video tip for you this week. This week we want to talk about head space. Stephen Covey talks about, in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, sharpening the saw. In fact, that's the final habit that makes the habits all work together. Sharpening the saw is about making sure that you take time to renew yourself. As healthcare providers, we give off so much energy to our patients and our clients on a daily basis that we have to, every once in a while, take a little bit of a step back and just sharpen our saw again, renew ourselves and we need to be doing this on a daily basis.

Dr. Kats: Dr. Perusich, I don't want to turn it into an advertisement for the companies but I have to tell you that the best way to get your head on right and get your head space right is to just tune in to the the webinars that we do and make sure that you listen to them on a regular basis. I can't imagine how much smaller...