Melvin Varghese:
Hey there, it's Melvin. I hope you're doing well. Before we jump into today's session, just wanted to let you know that STC Elite, our mastermind for therapists creating their first online courses open for enrollment. If you've been thinking about creating an online course and have been a fan of the STC podcast and are looking to launch your online course in a community of other therapists, you can check out the mastermind over at sellingthecouch.com forward slash mastermind. or you can download our free online course starter kit. It's a seven day email course that'll help validate your course idea. That's over at sellingthecouch.com forward slash course kit. We'll jump into today's session. Hello, hello, welcome to today's session of Selling the Couch. I hope you're doing well, having an incredible day. So today's podcast is asking this question of, should I hire an intake coordinator for my private practice? Whether you are a solo practitioner or a group practitioner, I think this episode will be incredibly helpful for you and more than anything I think will give you some barometers in order to think about whether an intake coordinator does make sense for you.

I'm joined by Uriah Guilford at ProductiveTherapist.com. Uriah is based in Northern California. He's a group practice owner and also owns Productive Therapist which is a company that hire that has virtual assistants and intake coordinators and Uriah has definitely been through the fire has been a group practice owner since 2015 and has learned a lot about the intake coordinator journey hired many intake coordinators and has learned kind of what works and what doesn't work, what questions to ask, how to train, and all of these different things. We start our conversation with a really basic question of what in the world is an intake coordinator, just to make sure we're all on the same page. Then we dive into the more nitty-gritty, how would you know as a solo practitioner whether an intake coordinator makes sense for you? and how would you know as a group practice owner of when it would make sense for you. And then we dive into some of these responsibilities of an intake coordinator, how hiring the right intake coordinator can really help you get some of those hours back in the day, but also you can leverage that position into helping your practice in multiple ways. And then we get into data privacy. How do you think about and how do you handle data privacy? Because the intake coordinator presumably is going to be the first person that a potential client is talking to. And how do you sort of handle all of that kind of stuff? And I think Uriah's answer is pretty interesting, because it really does depend on the situation. And then we dive into a couple of different logistical things. What happens if an intake coordinator gets sick or goes on vacation? How do you sort of triage and handle calls that are coming in? What's a top mistake that Uriah sees clinicians making in hiring an intake coordinator? And then we wrap up with what are the metrics that Uriah thinks about when trying to determine whether an intake coordinator makes sense for both the solo and a group practitioner? I think you're going to really enjoy this conversation. Even if you have no plans right now to hire an intake coordinator, I think conversations like this are incredibly helpful because I think they help us to think about how we can design our practices in a way that is sustainable for us so that we're not trying to juggle all of the things that when it comes to private practice ownership. So here's my conversation with Uriah Guilford from ProductiveTherapist.com. Hey Uriah, welcome to Selling the Couch.

Uriah Guilford:
Thanks Melvin. I'm excited to be on your podcast.

Melvin Varghese:
I know we were just talking right before, man, I can't believe we touched base in 2018 and it's a little ridiculous. Like I have to like publicly apologize that it's taken this long for you to come on the podcast. You are doing some amazing things for our field, sharing some just like incredibly helpful things. And I'm thankful for you. Thankful that we get to have a conversation on intake coordinators and just the whole process of that.

Uriah Guilford:
Yeah, absolutely. It's one of my absolute favorite things to do to go out and collect resources and find cool things, whether it's software or podcasts or all kinds of resources for therapists and share them. That's like my favorite thing to do.

Melvin Varghese:
Yeah, that's so awesome. And I'm like looking at your background and I'm like, man, Mario, and we have like so many that's like back. What is that Mario like the Super Mario?

Uriah Guilford:
So look what's behind me is my original Super Nintendo with a tube TV. Yes, so I can turn around and play some Super Mario Brothers anytime.

Melvin Varghese:
How awesome is that? That like brings back good memories like original like Mario Duck Hunt, all that stuff.

Uriah Guilford:
So much fun.

Melvin Varghese:
So much fun. So you know, I had a bunch of questions for you. But I wanted to start here. I know that most of us probably know the answer on this, but I don't want to like make any assumptions. So what exactly is an intake coordinator particularly related to private practice?

Uriah Guilford:
Sure. An intake coordinator, sometimes referred to as a client care coordinator, is the person who's in charge and manages that initial contact between the client and the clinician. And they're really in charge of the whole intake process. And it's their job to create a smooth and welcoming experience for new clients. I like to say it's their role to kind of smooth the pathway from that first contact to the first session. And it's such a valuable and important role for the client experience and for the start of therapy.

Melvin Varghese:
I love the fact that you talked about it as a smooth path because I can imagine for many people to make that decision to call and seek out therapy is a hard one and then just making it a smooth and joyful process even from that call. And then also I know that I'm sure all of us have heard these stories where someone reaches out to a therapist and they never hear back, right? So there's that other side of it, of the courage it took and then not hearing back. And then the other side of it, right? As clinicians, like, you know, clinicians maybe are perhaps slammed or whatever it is, right? And they're just not able to recall. So there's just, there's so many layers to it. And I love the fact that you use the word smooth.

Uriah Guilford:
Yeah, there are so many challenges on both sides. And interestingly enough, in the last two weeks or so, I've been doing a handful of intake audits where I'm actually sort of reviewing people's intake process and pretending to be a client from landing on their website to reaching out, filling out their form, even going so far as to get added to their EHR as a client and go through the consent form process. It's super interesting to see it from the client perspective. And one of my conclusions is that it's still too hard to find a good therapist and actually start and complete the process to get in to see a good therapist. Even with all the resources that we have now, it's still very, very difficult.

Melvin Varghese:
When you were doing that whole like audits like that, where did you see like the common hiccup? Is it just the amount of steps that we're taking or what was that?

Uriah Guilford:
Yeah, there's a number of things. The first thing that comes to mind is the challenge of actually finding a therapist and then reaching out and getting a quick response. So almost no one picks up their phone. That hasn't changed in years. Some larger group practices maybe have an intake coordinator that can answer the phone line, which is really helpful. But the majority of the time someone is calling or even reaching out by text to a therapy practice, there's a delay of hours to days to actually get things started. So it's just really slow.

Melvin Varghese:
The other thing you mentioned is you went through websites and like filled out forms. Have you found anything like that where majority of clients are like filling out online forms versus like calling phones? Like, is there any like broader trends that you've noticed?

Uriah Guilford:
There's usually a number of contact options that people have on their website. It's usually a form, a phone number, and maybe there's some other options there. My favorite is online scheduling so that the potential client can actually schedule a call with the therapist or with the intake coordinator to talk about their needs and talk about what kind of therapist they're looking for. So those are usually the options that most people put out there. And people preference of potential clients depends on so many different factors. Some younger people would prefer to text or just schedule online. And then a lot of people we've noticed in my practice still want to call. So it kind of it's across the spectrum. Yeah.

Melvin Varghese:
So I guess broadly, it probably is wise to offer different options until you've kind of gotten clarity of like, oh, this is where are like disproportionately these calls are coming from.

Uriah Guilford:
Yeah, my advice to practice owners, whether they're solo or group, is to choose the most ideal contact method for them and then highlight that. One of the mistakes I've seen on a lot of people's websites is that they give people too many options. So they're like, call us, text us, fill out this form, fax us. Here's our mailing address. Send us a mail. There's too many options. And I always like to, you know, when we're training our intake coordinator team at Productive Therapist, I always point out that when people are reaching out for therapy, they're in crisis, some level of crisis. It might be mild to moderate, but it might be severe. So they're not exactly in the best place to make difficult decisions. So choose one main option and guide them easily and tell them what to do so that they don't have to work too hard to figure it out.

Melvin Varghese:
Yeah. Right. And especially if someone, whatever level of crisis they're in, usually their mind is of like single focus, right? They're not able to sort of process like multiple things. And I would imagine like too many options would often lead to more overwhelm and then actually not making a call or going is clicking on somewhere else or, you know, trying to find some other options or something like that.

Uriah Guilford: Absolutely.
Yeah.

Melvin Varghese:
How would a solo practitioner know when it's time to consider hiring an intake coordinator?

Uriah Guilford:
Yeah, great question. So I actually created a quiz a little while ago for people to figure out if they're ready for an intake coordinator. So if folks want to go to ProductiveTherapist.com slash quiz, they can take that quiz. It's a good one. I would say, though, for most solo practices, they won't ever need an intake coordinator. That's my honest answer. even though that's one of our main services. If you're a solar practitioner, most likely you can use technology to automate or streamline most of that initial contact and the process of getting a client into your practice. EHRs, modern EHRs are fantastic. And online scheduling platforms are excellent. So if I was going to start a solo practice again today, I know you did that not too long ago. I have some very specific ideas about how I would do that. I would just go ahead and use simple practice and use the scheduling option in the client portal for people to schedule a 15 minute phone call. That's how I've always done it. And then I would talk to them and then if it was a good fit, set them up in my in my EHR and we'd be off to the races. And I would put that widget on my website so people could just click, see my availability and schedule. So that's what I would do if I was a solo practice at this point. No need for an intake coordinator.

Melvin Varghese:
I guess. Is there ever a scenario where a solo practitioner would need an intake coordinator?

Uriah Guilford:
Yes, actually. So my initial answer is no, you don't need an intake coordinator. But my follow up would be there are some solar practice owners that are incredibly busy, right? I'm sure you know some of these folks. They see 20, 30, 35 plus clients and or maybe they're a professor at a university and maybe they are doing coaching or they have a side business of some sort and they really do need somebody to kind of run point and manage their entire schedule. Maybe even do some sort of executive assistant kind of functions. So at Productive Therapist, we do provide virtual assistance for some solo practices and it tends to be those folks that have a very busy caseload or they have other things going on and they just need to hand off that part of their practice.

Melvin Varghese:
Turning to the other side, how would a group practitioner know when it's time?

Uriah Guilford:
Take my quiz. No. That's right. Yeah. So it's a difficult thing to figure out because when you're starting a group practice, when you're growing a group practice, you don't necessarily have a lot of free time or money. In the beginning, you might have a little bit more time than money. Most group practice owners wait too long to hire an intake coordinator. And what they usually end up doing is they hold that role for themselves. And I totally understand this because this was my story back in 2015. That's when I started my group practice, same year you started STC, I think, right? So I remember vividly, right next door to the office where I am right now, many nights a week, 9pm, kind of slouched in my chair, just finished a bunch of sessions with teenage boys and their families. I was exhausted, checking my email and seeing that new calls had come in and wanting desperately to connect those people with our services, but also being drained of my energy and realizing I just didn't, it was too late and I didn't have the time to do it. And then the next day I'd have to try to get back to them. Meanwhile, I was writing all the blog posts, doing the networking, managing our QuickBooks, you know, all of the things, yeah, that a group practice owner does. So my short answer is hire an intake coordinator as soon as you can. As soon as you can afford it, it's a good idea. It will help you grow so much.

Melvin Varghese:
It seems like any intake coordinators, in addition to like perhaps like a clinical coordinator, those seem like important like first hires for a group practitioner.

Uriah Guilford:
I would say intake coordinator first, most likely because the practice owner is likely going to be potentially the first clinical supervisor or the actual acting clinical director for a while until they grow enough to hire someone else into that role. And in my opinion, the intake coordinator is like the MVP, like they're one of the most important people in the practice. And so besides hiring clinicians for a group practice, obviously you can't have a group without another therapist. Intake coordinator is the way to go. Interestingly enough, I started working with virtual assistants back in 2012. So it was back in my days of solo practice. And I was very, very fortunate to work with an amazing woman named Gina and, uh, worked with her for five years and her role kind of developed over time. But eventually she was my intake coordinator. She was responding to new inquiries, setting them up in the HR, et cetera. And it was such a wonderful experience. And then unfortunately, she passed away from cancer. And it was really sad because we had worked together for so long. And this was pre, obviously way pre-pandemic. We never saw each other on video. We did everything over, basically over email. Yeah, it was amazing. So that was so sad. And then I was in the position of, you know, growing this group practice, and I just lost one of my most important support staff. And so that actually prompted me to start Productive Therapist to solve my problem of needing part-time administrative support and the rest is history.

Melvin Varghese:
That's amazing. Yeah. How did you, like Uriah, like make the shift in your mind of, I can handle these calls, I can respond to these calls too, I need to delegate this because long term, this is going to be the smart and strategic move, because I feel like a lot of clinicians struggle with this, which is, I mean, it's like the e-myth revisited, right? Most private practitioners are, are technicians, right? And so our natural tendency then is to try to do everything.

Uriah Guilford:
Yeah, it's really hard. It's, it's a very difficult thing to let go of. I mean, delegating in general is hard for any small business owner, but the intake coordinator role is so important. And when you're a solo practice or a new group practice owner, like it's really, it feels like you're so close to it. And it feels like you need to be that person talking to each and every client, making sure you guide them to the right therapist, to the right services. And if I bring in somebody else to do that, what if they do a really poor job? And what if people don't get the care that they need? And what if I don't know what's going on? There's so many what ifs. It's very difficult to let go of that. It was for me, certainly, because I thought, I thought to myself, I'm actually really good at this and I actually love doing it. I love talking to, you know, parents of teenagers and they're struggling, their family's struggling. Like this is why I do the work. Right. And so connecting them with the best therapist is like such a good feeling. So to let go of that was very, very hard, but I found somebody and hired them and I thought to myself, this is going to work out okay, but it's not going to be as good as it was when I was doing it. Right. The numbers wouldn't be as good. And, uh, I don't know if you know what I'm going to say here. You probably don't, but the results were better. my intake coordinator did better than me. And I was, I was, I was kind of shocked. So I never went back from there.

Melvin Varghese:
Yeah. It requires such a, I don't know, it's such a practical decision, but it's such a mental decision as well to like transition away and then like let go of these roles, you know, trusting that Yeah, in some situations it ends up better, but then like other situations it doesn't, but then the freedom, right? Like the freedom that you gain could be really beneficial to the mental bandwidth, right? I could imagine like, right, like that Uriah who's got like a full day of clients and then realizes how to return all these calls and then like how present or, you know, would it be like the next day where you're like, I got to return those calls. Wait, I have a full day. It's heavy. It is heavy. Yeah. What are like the top three responsibilities that you see for an intake coordinator?

Uriah Guilford:
Yeah, so mainly they're handling the initial client contact. They're scheduling the first appointment, setting that client up in the EHR. And then broadly they're handling general admin and client requests. Maybe the clients reach out and they need a super bill or they need to reschedule or other sorts of back office things, updating credit cards. So the role is primarily, um, you know, client facing for that initial contact and walking those people through the process. But then generally intake coordinators do a handful of other things that are very helpful to the practice, sort of on the administrative assistant side.

Melvin Varghese:
I love that you broke that down. So three things, handling the initial call, scheduling that initial appointment, and then general sort of catch all admin things to reschedule. I love particularly that you included that last one, because I could imagine that could be another way you could get like sucked right back in, into like coordinating all these things if you're having to handle reschedules, or even like provide super bills, all that kind of gets to be a lot.

Uriah Guilford:
Yeah, it really does. And then, I mean, depending on the practice, usually the person in that role, unless the practice is larger and they're truly just doing intake coordination, they're probably handling other tasks too. Like our virtual assistants will schedule social media posts. They will handle some of the basic billing tasks and other things like that. So if you hire a really good person, they likely can help you with other things too. So it can be a little bit broader or narrower as needed.

Melvin Varghese:
Yeah, so what I'm hearing is there may be times where it's like those three roles, like one is more highlighted than other times. And that's like really normal. And then I guess the other thing I hear is, there's probably going to be a little bit of a time where the person gets into a flow with your practice. So don't like be disheartened if it's like, not smooth sailing in the first like week or two or something like that.

Uriah Guilford:
It takes some time to get into a rhythm and a routine. And depending on whether or not the person you hire has done the intake coordinator job before, or if they just have some, you know, maybe they have a psychology background or something, or maybe an administrative assistant background, but they need to be trained on how to provide these services in a mental health setting. So you really have to spend time obviously hiring the right person and then giving them enough training so that they're really solid, they're ready to go before they even answer an email or respond to a phone call.

Melvin Varghese:
Speaking of which, what things should you have in place since client data is potentially being shared even at that onset? There may be situations where you've never even touched base with a client but they're talking to your intake coordinator and getting information.

Uriah Guilford:
Yeah, good question. Digital security and privacy obviously is very important. It always has been. It used to be so simple back in the day because we just had paper forms and we had voicemail. Like that was it, right? Yeah. My half thing, things have changed. So in less than a decade, right? Truly, truly. Like if you think 2015 to 2025 vastly different landscape for what we do with private practice. Yeah. So interesting. In any case, if the intake coordinator is a W-2 employee, you're basically covered by your employee handbook, and you should have things in there that relate to how sensitive data PHI is handled, and you should be covered by that. Obviously, you have to keep up with that and make sure that they're following those procedures. And then if you are working with a freelance virtual assistant or an agency, such as Productive Therapist, you just want to make sure that there's a business associates agreement in place, often called a BAA. And that just details exactly what the responsibilities are of that virtual assistant or the agency and how they will handle any sort of privacy breaches. So those are the two ways to go about that, whether it's an employee or essentially a contractor.

Melvin Varghese:
And then the other side of this, right? Like intake coordinators obviously aren't robots, right? So how do you handle things? Not yet. I know I hesitated on that question. I was like, cause you know, now being on LinkedIn, like there's somebody I followed, they're like, what do they call it? Humanoids, right? Like really? Yeah. And it's like fast. I'm like, so he'll like make a video and then there's like a robot walking in the background. I'm like, Yeah, but how do you handle things like if the intake coordinator is like sick or goes on vacation or something like that? I mean, is it just like looping somebody in or is it you take like, I don't know, I would love to hear how you think about that.

Uriah Guilford:
Yeah, a couple different solutions for that for a small to medium sized practice. likely the owner's gonna step in and just take over. That usually works out fine, unless there's some vacations that are overlapping. But in a larger practice, there's generally an intake team. So there might be multiple intake coordinators. And if that's not the case, one other solution, like a third solution, would be cross-training one of the clinicians in the practice to be able to step in and sort of cover for that vacation or that illness. Those are usually the things that most people do.

Melvin Varghese:
What are you defining? It's like a small to medium sized practice versus a large one?

Uriah Guilford:
It depends on, people can define that differently. I think five to 15 clinicians is small to medium and then large would be 20 plus.

Melvin Varghese:
Yeah. It's so interesting. I was thinking like the transition from like an agency to solo practitioner, there's like that transition from a solo practitioner to like a group practitioner. There's that transition. But then even within group practices, like there's transitions. There's step ups.

Uriah Guilford:
Yes.

Melvin Varghese:
As you add employees and different things. And even I was thinking, like if you are a group practice owner or like if you're a solo practitioner that's starting a group, but you're imagining at some point having like 25, 30 clinicians, there's wisdom in like thinking like, yeah, I'm going to eventually have an intake team. So how do I both simultaneously build this in the moment while potentially even cross training and working through like how a team can emerge as we concurrently get bigger versus like, oh gosh, now we need a team because we're so overwhelmed.

Uriah Guilford:
It can growth can happen fast at times. Right. And so this is one of the pain points that I see most often is kind of scaling the support staff with the group practice growing is a challenge. And I think that's where productive therapist honestly comes in clutch because we have a team of mental health trained, you know, HIPAA certified virtual assistants that can step in. And the practice owners don't need to do very much at all to get going with those services. So I think like if I was starting over again, I would absolutely do myself in the beginning. And then I would hire a mental health virtual assistant. And then the next sort of graduation, we've done this with many of our practices is going from a mental health virtual assistant to an in-house intake coordinator. Because once the practice gets to a certain size, it just makes sense to go ahead and pay a W-2 employee. But that's kind of the stepwise way to do it. I will say that there's a lot of like finding the right person to hire and then training them, like I mentioned before. it's actually really difficult. And then keeping them and retaining them for months and years to come and having that stability in the practice, it's hard. If anyone has ever done this, um, if you, even if you just put out a job application on or not application, but a posting on indeed for, you know, mental health virtual or mental health intake coordinator, you'll get hundreds of applications. And it's like, how do you pick the best one? It's So it's, it's not easy, but once you do find that person, you train them and you get them solidly in that position. It's an absolute game changer for the practice owner. It's huge.

Melvin Varghese:
Speaking of which, like what are some, again, I ask a lot of really basic questions, but like, what are some like best practices to like retain these intake coordinators? Cause I, I would think like the demand is quite high and especially for like well-trained ones. I mean, just like what are the, you've seen.

Uriah Guilford:
That's a good question. So I told you that I worked with Gina for five years and that was amazing, right? And then between Gina and Tiffany, I had a couple other intake coordinators that didn't stay super long. And then I worked with Tiffany for six years. So the last six years, Tiffany was providing those services to my practice. And I can't even tell you how much peace of mind and stability that brought to my practice. Now, how did I retain her? Well, I obviously treat her really, really well, pay her as well as I can, provide benefits, create not only a culture, but a practice where the systems are working smoothly so that there's not daily tension and frustration. So I think those are some of the things that come to mind. And yeah, if you give people a great place to work with meaningful things to do and people that they like talking to, they're likely going to stay.

Melvin Varghese:
Yeah. I'm glad you said that. I forgot exactly where, but literally this morning I read some government report saying that people's satisfaction with job places are at their lowest in a very long time. So I think it speaks to that desire to really create an environment where people want to stay and are valued. I have two questions for you. What do you think is the top mistake that you see therapists making when trying to hire an intake coordinator?

Uriah Guilford:
Ooh, the top mistake? Like the number one?

Melvin Varghese:
Yeah, like if I could only say one.

Uriah Guilford:
Not doing it soon enough. Yeah, I would go back to that. Not doing it soon enough. But if that was, let's say that's off the table, right? The biggest mistake that they make is not giving them enough training. Honestly, that would be the one because a busy practice owner, whether they're solo or group, they don't have a lot of time or bandwidth. So once they do the work, the heavy lift of finding that person and hiring them, it's so easy to just want to say, okay, uh, good luck. I hope it goes well. But most support staff in a mental health practice need a lot more training and support and coaching and mentorship than they get. So I would say providing enough training and support until they're really, really solid, and then you can step back.

Melvin Varghese:
Is there sort of a, I guess, a phased approach to that sort of training? So I eat like, you know, in the initial stages, like running through some mock scenarios and then having them do like a call where like you're looking over there, you're with them. Like, how do you sort of think about it and approach it?

Uriah Guilford:
Yeah, there's a couple of different things that you can do. So when I was training my first intake coordinator, they were actually in this office that I'm in right now in this space, we actually recorded some calls. and with permission from the person on the phone, obviously. We recorded some calls so that then I could listen to them and give him feedback. That's incredibly valuable. It's a little bit harder to do because it's sensitive and people don't necessarily want to consent to that. That's like the absolute best way to do it. The secondary was sometimes I would come in and I would listen to him on the phone while he was talking to a potential client. And then I would, then we would talk afterwards and I would give him some feedback. If it's virtual, you would have to record the call or just, you know, have a meeting after one or two intake calls and then kind of talk through it. And of course you can do role plays and those kinds of things as well.

Melvin Varghese:
Awesome. Uriah, the final question I have for you is, are there any metrics that either a solo or group practitioner should look at to determine like whether an intake coordinator is worth it? So for example, you know, we've noticed like the number of folks calling to actually scheduling is increased by 25% or whatever it is.

Uriah Guilford:
Yeah. Two metrics I would highlight. The first one is owner freedom, and that's a little bit harder to categorize. One of our sayings is that we help therapists get more done so they can have more fun. And when I was getting my first virtual assistant, my business coach at the time said, well, what are you going to do with the time that you save, whether it's five or 10 hours a week? And if you're going to use that time either for enjoying your family, your hobbies, or growing your business, then great. So owner freedom is number one, but the second one really is your conversion rates. And that's just like terminology that means how many clients reach out and then how many become new clients. So your intake coordinator should do as well as you or hopefully better over time. So you want that. And that's going to happen with more availability and a quicker response time. Um, and of course the right person. So you want to keep a track, keep a track on that.

Melvin Varghese:
That's awesome. Uh, is there any sort of, I guess this could really vary by niches and populations, but is there sort of a standard number? Like, you know, you're doing really well if you know, 50% or 60% of your calls are converting or anything like that at all.

Uriah Guilford:
It's a little bit hard to get anything solid on that, but it seems like private pay practices tend to be a little bit lower, because insurance practices, it's easier for those people to say yes, because if I call and you take my insurance, easy, and you have availability, easy. So insurance-based practices usually are between 40 to 60, sometimes higher, 80 or higher, and then private pay practices are usually in the range of 20 to 40%. I think my private pay practice got up to about 45, 50%, sometimes a little bit higher. Yeah, I don't know if that's helpful, but those are kind of the ranges.

Melvin Varghese:
Yeah, it's so interesting. I feel like we almost need to do another episode on conversion of a private pay practice for an intake coordinator. It'd be so interesting. You're doing so much awesome stuff in the world. You've got a course as well to support therapists if they want to get their feet wet and think through this. Please do take a moment to tell us about the course and also how we can learn more about the awesome stuff you're doing in the world.

Uriah Guilford:
Definitely. Thanks. I appreciate that. So everything, all of our resources are at ProductiveTherapist.com and we do have a course called the Intake Hiring Starter Pack. And essentially we just took all of our best practices from hiring over a hundred intake coordinators which is a lot. And we put them into a course to kind of walk people through sort of a do-it-yourself process of, you know, recruiting and hiring an intake coordinator. So I'm really proud of that course. And my team, I'm not involved in hiring anymore. My team does all the hiring. And so I brought them in to help create that course. And so these are best practices on how to do all the things you need to do.

Melvin Varghese:
Yeah, that's awesome. And, uh, you are so kind to give the STC community a little discount as well.

Uriah Guilford:
Absolutely.

Melvin Varghese:
On the course. And so, uh, I believe the discount code is STC. Right.

Uriah Guilford:
Keep it simple. STC will give you 25% off that course. Yeah.

Melvin Varghese:
Perfect. You're right. Thank you again. I really am just so grateful for you. I'm glad that, you know, LinkedIn has enabled us to reconnect and grateful for all the work that you're doing in the world.

Uriah Guilford:
Thanks Melvin, appreciate it.

Melvin Varghese:
All right. Have a great rest of your day. Hey everyone. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Uriah and especially if you are in a season where you considering an intake coordinator, or if you have an intake coordinator and you've just been struggling with how to best maximize their potential. I hope that today's podcast session has just been incredibly helpful for you and yeah has just given you some new ideas in terms of how to approach it. As I was talking with Uriah and I was just reflecting on this idea of how an intake coordinator is really like the symbolism of like working in our business versus on our business. and how it's this transition of when we realize that we can't do all of the things in order for our private practice to succeed and then even like a hard realization that we may be the handicap or the roadblock that's holding our practice from where it should be. The STC equivalent of this has been for me is like hiring an executive assistant because, you know, Mel left to his own devices. We'll try to do everything possible with STC and do all of the things because who else can do it better than Mel, right? But, you know, wiser Mel has coming to realize that there is something in letting things go and hiring out and hiring and asking for help. because at the end of the day, people can often do this better than I can. And then more importantly, or at least equally importantly, it frees up time to be able for us to do the work that we're the most gifted at. And so I think in terms of private practice, it's often serving your clients well, learning and getting versed in theoretical orientations and getting to be a better clinician. Uriah mentioned that they have an Intake Hiring Starter Pack. So if you go through sellingthecouch.com forward slash intakehiring sellingthecouch.com forward slash intakehiring and enter the promo code STC, you get 25% off of that course if that's something that would be helpful for you on your private practice journey. Have a great rest of your day and I will see you next time. Bye!

Narrator:
Thanks for listening to the Selling the Couch podcast. For more great content and to stay up to date, visit www.sellingthecouch.com.

Melvin Varghese:
Hey, it's Melvin. I hope that you're enjoying today's podcast session. Just wanted to also let you know that STC Elite, our mastermind for therapist course creators, is now open for enrollment. If you've been thinking about creating an online course, and specifically if 2025 is the year that you want to create your online course, definitely encourage you to check out our mastermind. It's over at sellingthecouch.com forward slash mastermind. We launched this back in 2021 and since then over 60 of our colleagues have gone through our mastermind. It includes a ton of support all the way from live teaching, live feedback from colleagues and from our team to build out and structure your online course all the way to mindset coaching, all the way to access to our video editing and graphic design team so that you don't have to hire everything separately. We've made it really super comprehensive and I think you're really going to enjoy it. Again, the link is over at sellingthecouch.com forward slash mastermind. Enrollment does wrap up at the end of August. So definitely encourage you to check it out and consider joining us. And again, we have a free email course. It's seven days. It'll help validate your course idea. I know that's the biggest struggle many of us are navigating of whether the course is actually going to make money. And we put all of this into a simple to understand email course that you can check out over at sellingthecouch.com forward slash course kit, sellingthecouch.com forward slash course kit. We'll jump right back into today's session. Hey there, thank you so much for tuning in to today's session. Just wanted to also let you know that we have a free email newsletter that goes out every week. You can download it over at sellingthecouch.com forward slash newsletter. Basically that newsletter contains some of the stuff that's happening behind the scenes with STC and also with my life and how I'm balancing and trying to balance being both an entrepreneur as well as building a life around my family and my health as well. And it also contains the latest podcast episode and some of the stuff that I'm doing on LinkedIn, some of the strategies and things that are working for me. And then finally, a brand new section called On Mel's Mind, where I take a video or a book or a blog post or something like that, that's inspiring me for that week. And I share how I'm implementing it both in my life and in my business. Again, you can download that over at signthecouch.com forward slash newsletter. And if you are one of the 3,700 colleagues that have been a part of the email newsletter, I so appreciate you and I'm grateful for your support. We genuinely try to make these helpful and just based on the data and based on the feedback we're getting, it seems like we're doing a really good job. So appreciate you and I hope that you have a great day.

00:03:36 – Introduction to the Episode and Guest
00:05:23 – Defining an Intake Coordinator
00:06:40 – Challenges in the Client Intake Process
00:10:27 – When to Consider Hiring an Intake Coordinator (Solo Practitioners)
00:12:34 – When Group Practitioners Should Hire an Intake Coordinator
00:19:10 – Key Responsibilities of an Intake Coordinator
00:27:14 – Best Practices for Retaining Intake Coordinators
00:31:03 – Metrics to Evaluate the Effectiveness of an Intake Coordinator
00:33:05 – Introduction to the Intake Hiring Starter Pack Course
00:34:11 – Conclusion and Reflection on the Episode