- Laurie Kolt, Ph.D.

Summer is a great time to relax and enjoy yourself! It is also the perfect time to reflect on your practice productivity and build in new opportunities for the busy fall season that will be coming sooner than you think. In our last newsletter, we talked about how to create a yearly practice building plan. Now we will focus in and look at "one month at a glance." Therapists are great analyzers, so transfer you skills to the business side of your practice and study your practice trends.

This article will go through The Monthly Practice Summary (MPS) which is a special insert in your newsletter. It is an excellent and quick form that you can complete at the end of each month. The top gray section of the MPS will help you easily compute your monthly vital practice statistics, which are essential in growing a successful practice. It will help you evaluate what is going well. It will help you see why you are, or are not, reaching your practice goals. As a result, you will gain essential knowledge about how to grow your practice more efficiently and effectively.

The MPS will show you how many New Clients you saw, so you can see how your promotional projects and referral source relationships are going. Your Total Client Hours is a concrete number, which you want to see moving towards your goals. Marketing projects are geared to raise this figure. Total Non Client Hours helps you evaluate whether your non-income producing time is well spent or just draining you and your potential earning capacity. This also helps you clearly see the time drain of managed care cases verses cash paying clients. Projected Revenue records your expected earnings, including sliding scale adjustments. The MPS will then give your Average Fee Per Hour which is important in knowing how hard you are working to earn your money.

Next, compare your actual collection figures with your expenses to get your Net Income, a key variable that your business must be able to keep you going, and thriving. Your Business Draws will show you what YOU really earn. Business Savings are useful to accumulate so you can pay for specialty marketing projects and cash flow crunches.

Capturing Referral Information and key follow up ideas will not be lost if you use the MPS each month. Your creativity and motivation will stay high by listing your Accomplishments and capitalizing on how to expand on them while they are still fresh in your mind. Spell out Your Marketing Projects and how they are going. You can refer back to these archives later in the year, or even over several years to follow trends that can help you make better business decisions over time.

Next, list your Challenges And Solutions so you can address any conflicts, roadblocks or fears. Whether they are seasonal, monetary, health, industry related or other challenges, be honest with yourself. Being an ostrich with your head in the sand will only spell trouble. Be sure to include information that will explain low statistics too, such as being on vacation for two weeks, or being out with the flu.

Place each MPS form in a yearly three ring practice binder. Make tabs for each month and include other relevant financial, marketing and practice building information.

You can use the MPS to recapture all of your previous data from last year or you can simply start using them now. The point is to begin taking action now! By just thinking through the MPS, you can get a fairly good view of what your practice is doing. Are you doing promotional projects that have been successful? Are you moving sufficiently in the direction of your goals?

The Monthly Practice Summary and other key practice development forms can help you understand your current level of momentum. You can create such forms yourself, or, if your time is precious, you can purchase them. They will more than pay for themselves, so why try to reinvent the wheel? Remember that you should enjoy your practice reflecting and planning. What do you want to accomplish? What would you love to do?

How high would you Dream if you knew you wouldn't fail?

OUR NEW BOOK!

How To Build A Thriving Fee-For-A-Service Practice from Harcourt Brace/Academic Press.

Earn CE Credits by taking "How To Build A Thriving Therapy Practice" workshops -
Our most popular seminar has achieved national CE approval since 1997. We have recently also been approved as a CE trainer in various separate states. Call us about having your organization sponsor our CE workshop and get your relicensure credits to benefit you!

Infertility chapter to be published in Clinical Innovations -
Dr. Kolt has completed a chapter on clinical treatment and practice building applications of infertility. The chapter was co-authored by Alice Domar, Ph.D. and Ellen Slawsby, Ph.D., Harvard psychologists who have pioneered the mind/body medicine approach to infertility treatment.

Brochure Project Expands -
A brochure, along with clinical information and marketing applications, can get you started in developing an established and respected practice. This APA project has produced articles, brochures and marketing materials for breast cancer, separation and divorce, cardiac psychology and trauma patients. Other topics are being developed. Dr. Kolt and Dr.Kal Heller are co-directing the marketing component of this project sponsored by APA Divisions 42 and 29.

KLG Client Satisfaction Survey published -
The publisher of Clinical Innovations has asked Dr. Kolt to contract with them to publish our three-part Client Satisfaction Survey (CSS). The CSS is a useful tool in assessing quality of care and building a successful practice. It can be given to selected clients at intake (to gage their comfort and rapport with the office), at termination (to help clients summarize the value of their therapy) and 6 months after care (to reflect on the stability of change that occurred through the therapeutic process. Each questionnaire gives the therapist useful feedback that is more "therapist friendly" than managed care versions. The CSS Questionnaires are now a part of our expanded 21 Essential Forms For Therapists that sells for $49.95.

• Make your practice thrive in any health care climate
• Earn the kind of income you want, by doing what you do best
• Discover the top marketing tools and ideas
• Get your name recognized by the public as an expert in your specialty
• Make your practice adaptive, challenging and enjoyable into the 21st century
• And even earn your CE credits!

Our new set of practice forms combines our key business management & marketing forms with the original "21 Essential Forms For An Efficient, Effective & Ethical Practice."

From marketing plans and goal setting forms to policy statements and forms for intakes, treatment planning, releases, terminations, satisfaction surveys and much more, you save time, money and create a professional image. Each form comes with an original to copy and on disc so you can customize them any way you want.

$10.00 OFF!

Mail your check to:
Kolt Leadership Group
1330 Camino Del Mar
Del Mar, CA 92014

Normally $49.95 (+$5 S & H)
Or for credit card orders you may fax or e-mail
to the addresses below.

Have you found creative and ethical ways to build your practice? Please share them with us!

Here is another example.

"It always amazes me when I get a call for a therapy appointment from a person who heard me speak at a workshop or seminar over a year ago. I ask them why they decided to call now and they often mention the following:

During the presentation, I said something that touched them, but they were not ready to deal with it yet. They saved my handouts because they found them informative. They found them again later and it reminded them about the talk. Because my name, address and phone number were on them, they just pick up the phone and call right then. As a result, when I design a presentation, I take extra time to 1) build in things that will touch the audience, 2) make my handouts attractive and interesting and 3) make sure my name, address and phone number are on the front page."

1. Midwives
2. Funeral Directors
3. Clergy
4. Attorneys (for jury selection, etc.)
5. Wig Makers (for cancer patients)
6. Endocrinologists & Urologists (for infertility)
7. Nursing Homes
8. Plastic Surgeons (for accident/cosmetic patients)
9. People in your spouse's profession
10. The person sitting next to you on a bus or a plane
11. A low/no fee client

Kolt Consulting
1330 Camino Del Mar
Del Mar, CA 92104

Phone: (858) 509-1330

Fax: (858) 536-8887

E-mail: LJKOLT@aol.com