Scaling Therapist Podcast: More Income, More Independence, More Impact (Not More Hours)

You want people to find your work. But you do not want to push them into buying.

I get it.

In Part 2, Tad Hargrave and I talk about how to explain what you do, build an offer people need, and meet people through groups they already trust. We also talk about sharing your work in a way that feels like you.

Missed Part 1? Listen to STP 182. We cover trust, making time for marketing, and getting clear about who you help.

One step this week: Think of one person or group your future clients already trust. What could you share that would help their people?

Marketing can feel like the icky side of running a therapy practice. Hype. Pressure. Self-promotion. Trying to convince someone to work with you.

But what if good marketing did the opposite?

In this episode, I talk with Tad Hargrave, founder of Marketing for Hippies, about a different foundation for marketing. Instead of trying to get the sale, Tad believes marketing should help you and the other person discover the truth: Are we actually a good fit?

In Part 1 of our conversation, we work through the first three foundations of Tad’s ethical marketing approach: ethics, space, and niche.

00:00 – Ethical marketing starts with a different question: Is this actually a good fit?

01:15 – Why marketing feels so icky to therapists and helpers

02:20 – Why self-promotion feels uncomfortable for most of us

05:00 – Tad’s alternative to self-promotion: make it easier for other people to spread the word about your work

07:00 – Why hype, pressure, and urgency often show up when the marketing foundations are missing

08:30 – Foundation #1: Ethics and why it belongs at the bottom of the pyramid

11:00 – The honest mechanic story and why trust creates word of mouth

13:30 – Foundation #2: Space. You cannot implement good ideas when your life is already full

16:00 – Every yes also means saying no to something else

17:20 – Foundation #3: Niche and accepting that you cannot be everything to everybody

18:45 – Two questions to ask when deciding who you really want to help

19:45 – Stop going for the sale and start looking for the truth about whether you are a fit

20:15 – Why Tad believes your deepest wound can sometimes point toward your truest niche

Marketing for Hippies Website: marketingforhippies.com

Instagram: @marketingforhippies

YouTube: Marketing for Hippies YouTube Channel

In Part 2, Tad and I continue through the foundations and talk about point of view, your business model, hubs, and how to share your work without hype or pressure.

You know you need help. The harder question is, what exactly should you hand off? In this episode, Alyssa Avant joins me to talk about how to get clear before you hire a virtual assistant. We walk through the four parts of a good VA job description: what you want done, what success looks like, what skills or tools they need, and how you will work together. If you have been putting off hiring help because you are not sure what to delegate, this episode gives you a place to start.

Start with the outcome.

What do you want to be different because you hired a VA?

You do not have to map out every click and every step. In fact, your VA may have a better way to get there. What matters is making sure both of you know what a finished job should look like.

Look at what is eating your time.

What do you keep putting off? What do you dread doing? What takes you twice as long as it should?

Alyssa puts it simply: just because you can do something does not mean you should keep doing it.

Delegating the right work gives you more time for the things only you can do.

Not every VA does the same kind of work.

Some are generalists. Others focus on bookkeeping, websites, podcasts, social media, email marketing, or other specific work.

If you use WordPress, ActiveCampaign, Kit, or another tool, put that in the job description. You do not want to hire someone and then find out they have never worked in the programs you depend on.

Good delegation still needs good communication.

Pick one main place where work and questions live. That might be email, Trello, Slack, or another system.

Then decide how often you will check in.

Alyssa recommends regular updates so you know what was finished, what is still waiting, and what your VA needs from you.

Also decide whether you need help with one project or ongoing support.

02:00 – You know you need help, but what should you actually delegate?

03:00 – A simple question to help you find tasks to hand off

03:45 – The 80/20 principle and where your time is really going

04:45 – Why a VA job description can save you frustration later

05:00 – What belongs in a virtual assistant job description

06:40 – General VA or specialist? How to know which one you need

08:00 – Why the outcome matters more than documenting every step

10:45 – Start with the work that takes too long or that you dread doing

11:45 – Communication preferences can make or break the relationship

13:00 – Why one main communication channel makes life easier

14:00 – The weekly update Alyssa’s team sends to clients

17:00 – One-time project or ongoing support?

18:20 – Alyssa’s free training on writing a VA job description

Virtual Assistant Job Description Training from Alyssa Avant: https://alyssaavant.ac-page.com/job 

Alyssa Avant and Company: https://alyssaavantandcompany.com/ 

Christian Business Advantage Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-christian-business-advantage/id1525088804 

STP 38: 5 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Hiring a Virtual Assistant, with Alyssa Avant: Listen to STP 38 on Apple Podcasts

STP 109: How to Improve Your Virtual Assistant Results with Effective Communication: Listen to STP 109 on Apple Podcasts

Delegation is really about knowing when someone else can help carry the load.

That includes HIPAA.

If HIPAA compliance is one of those things sitting on your list because you are not sure what to do next, the HIPAA Compliance Workshop can help you work through it.

HIPAA Compliance Workshop: https://www.coursecreationstudio.com/hipaatoolkitworkshop

AI can already answer a lot of the questions people used to pay for in online courses.

So what does that mean if you are a therapist trying to sell a course or teach online?

In this episode, I talk with Brent Stutzman, founder of TheraSaaS CRM, about the hard truth of building courses in the age of AI. We talk about why information alone is getting harder to sell, what people still need from you that AI cannot give them, and how tools, support, community, and real experience can help your students actually get the result they came for.

03:00 – Why AI is changing marketing, content creation, and the way therapists run their businesses.

04:15 – How practice owners are already using AI for hiring, interviews, operations, and decision-making.

06:30 – The hard question for course creators: Why should someone pay for information when AI can give them a good-enough answer in minutes?

07:20 – Why AI is making frameworks and information easier to copy, and what that means if you sell what you know.

08:20 – Why the future may belong to courses that help people do the work instead of just collecting more information.

09:00 – Brent explains the Alex Hormozi value equation and how to help people get what they want faster, with less work and less guessing.

11:30 – The Private Pay Practice Program case study and why Brent and Dr. Deb Legge changed the way they sell the program.

12:30 – How they built separate custom ChatGPT tools for brand messaging, websites, SEO, and referral letters.

14:00 – Using AI to help students get the work done faster instead of simply giving them more information.

15:45 – Why James and Brent both separate custom GPTs by task instead of trying to make one GPT do everything.

16:30 – Where community still matters and why learning alongside other people can help you stop wondering if you are doing it right.

19:30 – Why some students want community while others just want the answer as fast as possible.

20:30 – How Brent’s wife used Claude to help think through a new Director of Operations role.

23:15 – The Play Therapy Toolbox case study: 21 courses, more than 1,700 students, and over $35,000 in revenue across eight years.

24:30 – How AI may answer the question before people ever click on your website.

26:00 – Why watching someone actually do the work, hearing good questions, and seeing how they respond is harder for AI to replace.

28:00 – How TheraSaaS helps therapy practices keep leads from getting lost and helps teams know what happened next.

29:15 – Using a course platform for internal staff training, onboarding, case notes, and practice procedures.

HIPAA Toolkit Workshop
https://www.coursecreationstudio.com/hipaatoolkitworkshop

A live workshop built around The Guesswork Ends Here™ Toolkit: A 30-Day HIPAA Compliance Foundation Workbook. It is designed to help practice owners work through the foundation of HIPAA compliance with a practical toolkit and guided training. The workshop is Friday, September 18, 2026, from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Eastern.

Resources From Brent

TheraSaaS CRM for Therapists and Practice Owners
https://therasaas.com/?utm_source=scaling_therapist_podcast&utm_medium=scaling_therapist_podcast&utm_campaign=scaling_therapist_podcast

TheraSaaS helps therapy practices keep leads organized, follow up with people, and give the intake team a clearer picture of what is happening.

TheraSaaS on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/@therasaas/videos

Find videos and marketing tips for therapists and practice owners.

Connect with Brent on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/brentstutzman/

Group Practice Scaling Summit Waitlist
https://practicescalingsummit.com/waitlist

AI is going to keep changing how people learn.

That is the trap if your course is only information.

A simple question to ask is this:

What can I give my students that AI cannot?

Maybe it is support. Maybe it is a tool. Maybe it is someone helping them take the next step.

What do you do when a child, teen, or client answers every question with “fine” or “okay”?

In this episode of the Scaling Therapist Podcast, James talks with Krista Smith-Larson, founder of Winning Communications, about using games to make difficult conversations feel safer. Krista shares how her own family experiences with divorce, blended families, grief, anxiety, depression, and trauma led her to create games that help people talk about feelings without making the conversation feel forced.

If you work with kids, families, or clients who have a hard time finding the words for what they are feeling, this episode will give you some new ideas to try.

Help kids get past “fine.” Learn why games can lower the pressure and help kids start talking without feeling like they are being questioned.

Make hard topics easier to approach. Hear how Krista uses games to talk about grief, divorce, anxiety, trauma, relationships, and other big feelings.

Add something practical to your sessions. Discover simple game ideas therapists, parents, churches, and family ministries can use to build trust and start better conversations.

00:00 Why games can help people open up
00:23 HIPAA Compliance Toolkit Workshop with Dr. Natasha Guess
01:15 Meet Krista Smith-Larson of Winning Communications
02:00 Why Krista and James both love games
04:00 How games take some of the pressure out of conversation
05:15 Using games with kids, adults, grief groups, and DivorceCare
06:00 Krista’s story of divorce, blended family life, and helping her kids communicate
08:00 How her first communication game was born
09:15 Turning grief and loss into a way to help others
10:30 Getting past “fine” and “okay” with kids
11:20 The Slippery Slope game and why Grace Cards matter
14:00 Adapting games for children, teens, and adults
16:00 Why parents do not always need to have the right answer
17:00 Who can use these communication games?
18:00 Why games can help therapists build trust faster
18:45 Krista walks through several of her games
20:30 Connect Blocks for divorce, grief, anxiety, trauma, and more
22:45 Helping kids connect words with feelings
24:00 Krista’s favorite go-to game
24:40 Where to find Winning Communications
25:40 Scaling Therapist Services sponsors and resources
26:30 Final HIPAA workshop reminder

If a HIPAA issue happened tomorrow, would your practice know what to do?

Join Dr. Natasha Guess for The HIPAA Compliance Toolkit Workshop on Friday, September 18 at 11:00 a.m. Eastern. This is a virtual workshop designed to help you apply the toolkit to your practice, work through your questions, and turn scattered policies into a system you can actually use.

Go to CourseCreationStudio.com for workshop information and registration.

Winning Communications
Learn more about Krista Smith-Larson’s communication and play therapy games at:
WinningCommunicationsMN.com

Scaling Therapist Services
Looking for businesses that can help you work through a therapy practice bottleneck?
ScalingTherapistServices.com

Course Creation Studio
CourseCreationStudio.com

Maybe you have been thinking about a workshop, a course, or paid speaking.

Then you start trying to figure out the whole thing before you even take the first step.

I learned this lesson the hard way. The expensive way.

I spent months building an online course before I really knew if people wanted it. The better question would have been much smaller:

Can I get 10 people interested in a workshop?

That is what this episode is about.

Your dream can be big without your first step being big.

Small steps give you evidence. You learn something. Then you know what to try next.

Why being an expert can make it hard to become a beginner again

What I learned after spending six months building a course that sold only a few seats

Why I needed a faster way to learn, not a bigger course

How Leo Debrock and I tested an idea with one live workshop

Why evidence builds confidence

Small ways therapists can test workshops, speaking, and courses

00:00 - Your first step does not need to match the size of your dream
00:44 - The Friday afternoon HIPAA breach phone call
01:22 - How to prepare before a HIPAA problem happens
03:00 - Why becoming a beginner again feels uncomfortable
05:08 - Trying to figure out all ten steps
07:07 - Why I went all-in on an online course
08:17 - Six months of work and about four sales
10:20 - What I really needed was a faster way to learn
11:03 - Make the experiment smaller, not the dream
11:17 - How Leo Debrock and I tested an idea with one workshop
12:49 - Why 20 registrations gave us more than sales
14:21 - Evidence builds confidence
16:16 - You do not need certainty before you begin
18:20 - One small step you can take this week

Friday at 3:30, you do not need a binder. You need to know what to do next.

You bring the toolkit, and Dr. Natasha Guess walks you through putting it to work in your practice.

Learn more here:
https://www.coursecreationstudio.com/HIPAATOOLKITWORKSHOP

Scaling Therapist Services:
https://scalingtherapistservices.com

Workshop creation and paid public speaking resources:
https://www.coursecreationstudio.com/workshops

What is one small step you can take this week?

Make the step smaller. See what happens. Then take the next right step.

Your dream does not need to get smaller. Your next step does.

Put your mission in motion.

Therapists explain useful ideas every day.

You teach clients how to understand anxiety, communicate better, set boundaries, work through conflict, and make sense of hard seasons. After years of doing this work, you may have a talk inside you already.

The question is: how do you take what you teach in the therapy room and turn it into paid speaking?

In this episode of the Scaling Therapist Podcast, I talk with speaker and coach Dustin Rivenbark from Built Different Speakers Academy about how to choose a message, figure out who needs to hear it, and start finding places that will pay you to speak.

Dustin also shares why your reason for speaking matters, how to build a simple follow-up system, and why your first speaking gigs may already be sitting in your phone.

If you want to get paid to speak, Dustin says you need to start by knowing why you are doing it and who you are trying to help.

You also need to stop trying to talk to everybody.

As Dustin says, “A speaker who speaks to everyone is a speaker who does not have an audience.”

From there, you need a simple system for finding people who could hire you and following up with them. That could be HubSpot, or it could be a basic spreadsheet.

Nothing fancy.

You just need something you will actually use.

Dustin also talks about creating a speaker one sheet, getting clearer about what you want to say, and following up instead of giving up after one email.

And one of my favorite reminders from the episode is this:

Your first few speaking gigs may already be sitting in your phone.

Sometimes we think we need a bigger audience.

Sometimes we just need to start with the people we already know.

If you have explained the same idea to clients dozens of times, pay attention to that.

That may be the beginning of your speaking topic.

Write down one problem you help people solve over and over again. Then ask yourself who else needs to hear it.

If you are a therapist, you know the feeling of opening an envelope or checking a portal, only to see another claim denied. It’s exhausting, it’s frustrating, and honestly, it’s one of the biggest reasons therapists lose money and burnout in private practice.

I sat down with my friend Jeremy Zug from Practice Solutions to talk through this. We didn't want to just talk about the "what," we wanted to give you some real hope that this doesn't have to be your constant reality. We unpacked why you might be getting underpaid, how to spot the cracks in your billing process, and when it’s actually the right time to stop doing it all yourself.

The "Hidden" Money You Might Be Missing

You might be leaving thousands on the table without even realizing it. We talked about one practice that found out they had been underbilled by $30 per session for twelve years straight. Twelve years. We walk through how you can check your own rates against the market so you aren't stuck in that same position.

The Real Cost of Doing It Yourself

We tend to think that doing our own billing saves money, but Jeremy breaks down the "opportunity cost." If you are spending your most productive hours fighting with insurance companies, that is time you aren't spending with clients or growing your practice. It is often the most expensive hour in your week.

Fixing the Denials

The number one reason for denied claims is usually the most avoidable one: duplicate claims. We go over a simple process fix for this that could save you a mountain of headaches and help you get paid faster.

Key Moments from Our Talk

Resources

Hiring your first therapist feels like the next obvious step.

But this is where a lot of practice owners get tricked.

We spend so much time looking for the right person that we forget to ask why we're building a group practice in the first place.

In this conversation, James sits down with Brie Chrisman and Allison Dixon from Bosco to talk about hiring, onboarding, and retention. More importantly, they talk about building a practice people actually want to be part of.

Because helping more people shouldn't mean creating a business that wears you out.

Who This Episode Is For

00:00 Why therapist retention matters more than most practice owners realize.

01:43 Meet Brie Chrisman and Allison Dixon from Bosco.

05:02 The first question every practice owner should answer before hiring.

09:33 How your mission shapes culture and helps great therapists stay.

11:49 The policies and systems to have in place before you hire.

15:00 Why hiring one person at a time usually leads to better results.

17:37 Bosco's three-step hiring process.

22:00 Why transparency during interviews builds trust.

26:25 The real reason many therapists leave practices.

28:24 How to create an onboarding experience people remember.

31:42 One thing that makes therapists want to stay.

33:00 Learn more about Bosco and their work with therapy practices.

Learn more about Bosco and how they help therapy practices improve hiring, onboarding, operations, and retention:

https://heybossco.com/

Most therapists don't dream about building systems.

They dream about helping people.

But after a while, the business starts asking for more of your attention. Emails pile up. Paperwork waits. Little decisions follow you home at the end of the day.

If you've ever felt like you're carrying your entire practice around in your head, you're not alone.

In this episode, James sits down with Brie Chrisman, CEO of Boss Co, to talk about why good systems aren't about making your practice more corporate. They're about helping you stop carrying everything in your head so you have more energy for the people sitting across from you.

Every unfinished task is like leaving another browser tab open in your brain. After a while, everything slows down. This conversation is all about closing a few of those tabs so you can get back to the work you were called to do.

00:00 – Why therapists often feel like they're carrying everything in their head

01:36 – Why building a practice requires more than clinical skills

03:15 – The hidden weight of all the small decisions you make every day

06:45 – Why systems aren't about being more corporate

09:20 – Every unfinished task is like leaving another browser tab open in your brain

11:45 – How simple processes create a better experience for your clients

14:30 – Why doing everything yourself eventually becomes the bottleneck

17:10 – The role delegation plays in building a healthier practice

20:40 – Small operational changes that make a big difference over time

23:50 – Practical first steps to simplify your practice

Choose one task you repeat every week, like onboarding a new client or responding to inquiries.

Write down each step as a simple checklist.

You don't need to build the perfect system this week.

You just need one less thing competing for your attention so you can spend more of your energy helping the people who need you most.