Humphrey was working "hard" five days a week. He was adding extra hours at the end of the day to "fit clients" in. He would have long breaks and ask his admin team to try and move clients around. Ultimately, he was working extra hard to earn every single dollar he was making.
Think dog chasing his tail....not dog winning the race.
Humphrey was doing a lot of work to earn his money. He was paying extra money for his admin team to take extra calls for clients to call and reschedule. He was wasting time by having big chunks of gaps in his day.
Therapeutic alliances were being ruptured when he tried to establish boundaries.
He would reduce his rates based on things the client said, but found that he would end up resentful when the client would talk about how they had spent money on other things.
He would in after hours only to have clients reschedule or cancel.
Jumping hoops is what Humphrey felt like he was doing. All in the name of "helping" his clients or trying to stay competitive with others.
Grab your notebook
When we discussed the client journey and was able to get the right level of client engagement, we minimised the cancellations and reschedules.
When we screened from an intake process for the most appropriate clients, we were able to ensure that only the most appropriate clients were booked in Humphrey's diary.
When we discussed the boundaries and held true to those boundaries, then the clients respected the therapeutic alliance more.
What did we do?
We sought commitment by collecting credit card details and ensuring the client knew why and when we would use the credit card.
We screened out any clients that couldn't attend the sessions that were available. We referred those clients to others.
We didn't take any clients outside of Humphrey's ideal clients and worked with building the skill set to increase his knowledge around different therapeutic techniques.
We changed his bio to reflect exactly the type of client he was seeking to work with in therapy.
By increasing client engagement and only taking the right clients as well as completed an active client follow up we were able to reduce the number of days, but still maintain the same number of billable hours per week. We reduced overheads by lowering the number of phone calls from clients as well as reducing the amount of time the admin team needed to spend on the phone trying to rearrange the diary.
Stop chasing your tail. And start running the race.
If you're interested in starting this process for yourself, you can download our free e-course and PDF workbook here.