[00:00:00] Dr. Anahita Banoo: Welcome to the Therapist Business Growth Podcast, the podcast for therapists who want to grow and scale a group practice [00:00:10] that runs itself so you can make more money, work less, and actually live the life you’re dreaming of. I’m your host, Dr. Anahita, and I am so glad you’re here. Let’s dive in. [00:00:20] Welcome, welcome, my therapist besties.

[00:00:22] I am so excited to have you here, and I’m so excited to dive in for this first episode of the Therapist Business Growth Podcast. [00:00:30] So this is for you. If you are a therapist who has ever wondered, like, “Am I really going to be in private practice for the rest of my career?” Maybe you’ve scrolled Indeed, and you’re, like, trying to find another [00:00:40] job where you can make as much money as you have in your head, um, without you having to be the one in the therapist chair all the time.

[00:00:46] Um, maybe you’re on your drive to school to drop off [00:00:50] your kids, and you are wishing that you did not have to go to the office right after because you squeezed in five sessions back to back so that you could at least have your evenings with your kids, but [00:01:00] now you’re just, like, going between sessions constantly, knowing that then you have to return right after to go pick them up.

[00:01:07] If you are any of these people, this podcast is for you. [00:01:10] So who is this podcast for? Let’s talk about it. You are somebody who you’re, you have a full caseload. You are so burned out. You are daydreaming about [00:01:20] all the other possibilities of how you can make money. You’re scrolling Instagram. You see all of these people who are doing it in all these other ways, and you keep wondering which w- which is the path for you, right?

[00:01:29] Um, [00:01:30] maybe you’ve been really curious about a group practice, and you’ve thought about, “Man, that would be so cool to, you know, have therapists working under me, and I could supervise people.” Um, and that [00:01:40] thought really entices you and is really exciting, and then at the same time, it’s also really terrifying and probably pretty overwhelming, right?

[00:01:46] Or maybe you’re already in a group practice. Maybe you already have people hired and [00:01:50] working under you, but you’re realizing, like, “Holy shit, this is way more overwhelming than I anticipated.” Maybe you’re not making the money you thought you were gonna make. Maybe, um, you know, you’re working far more hours [00:02:00] than you anticipated.

[00:02:00] You know, a lot of people get into the group practice life because they think, like, “Okay, great,” like, “I don’t have to be in the therapist chair anymore to make this money.” Um, well, awesome. But now [00:02:10] all of a sudden, maybe you’re the person who’s, like, up at 10:00 at night, you know, responding to therapist emails and managing conflicts and fire, putting out fires, and you can’t take a vacation, right?

[00:02:19] So if [00:02:20] that is where you’re at right now, I’m so excited to have you here. This podcast is, is for you, okay? I’m going to give you, first of all, my honest takes and [00:02:30] my, um, honest opinions about group practice life and scaling it and what that looks like based on my own experience, okay? I’m always, I’m happy to be an open book to kind of share what’s worked for me and what [00:02:40] hasn’t worked for me and all the ups and downs that I went, um, that I endured along the way.

[00:02:44] Um, I’m also gonna be sharing all the real strategies how to move forward, um, without the fluff, [00:02:50] right? That I’m not gonna be giving you, like, here, try this or do this just because it sounds good or it sounds like how a business owner should operate. Like, no, I was not that person in my practice. I [00:03:00] did only what I needed to do in order to scale the business, okay?

[00:03:04] And we’re gonna have a fucking good time while we do it, okay? So I am so excited to dive [00:03:10] in. This podcast is not for you. Let’s talk about that. If you are a therapist who has, like, little to know ambition, um, I’m gonna guess you haven’t even tuned in, which is great ’cause this is [00:03:20] not, not the podcast for you.

[00:03:21] Um, or if you’re somebody who, like, you truly do, you just wanna see clients for the rest of your career, and that’s amazing. I, like, I love that for you. [00:03:30] That was never me, and that’s not a lot of the people I talk to, but if that’s you, great. This podcast probably is not going to be for you either. Um, and then if you are somebody who thinks [00:03:40] that making money makes you inherently greedy, bad, or unethical, this podcast is sure as hell not for you because we are going to be talking about money, okay?

[00:03:49] We’re [00:03:50] gonna be talking about how we can, you know, really step into the place where we can make really good money in our practices and feel good about it. Okay? And not let the, like, you [00:04:00] know, societal, um, stereotypes of what it means to be wealthy, uh, set in. We’re gonna be busting through all of those stereotypes, okay?

[00:04:08] So [00:04:10] how did this come to be for me? So I went to grad school for counseling psychology. This was like, oh my gosh, how long ago? This was, like, 12, 12 years ago? [00:04:20] Yeah, 12 years ago. I went to school for counseling psychology, okay? I knew I wanted to work in schools at that time, and I thought, like, “Okay, great.

[00:04:27] I’m gonna go this route, and then I’m gonna be a school counselor.” [00:04:30] I got into that program. Within 10 weeks, it was a quarter program. Um, it was University of Denver, so they were on a quarter system, so each quarter was 10 weeks, okay? I got into it, [00:04:40] and when we were starting to figure out our placements and everything, I found a school that I was gonna do my practicum at.

[00:04:46] And I went there, and I was chatting with the school counselor, and we were talking about, like, you know, the [00:04:50] roles and responsibilities I was gonna have. And it was a lot of, like, academic counseling, and, like, credits, and all this kind of stuff. And I was like, “So what about, like, supporting the students with, like, their mental health?”

[00:04:59] And she’s [00:05:00] like, “Oh, that’s not our role. That’s the school psychologist’s role or the school social worker’s role.” And I was like, “Oh, I think I made a massive, really [00:05:10] expensive mistake.” So that’s when I started to s- make the switch. I switched to a doctorate program in school psychology. Um, and so the next year I started that [00:05:20] program.

[00:05:20] And I was so exci- I was like, “This is exactly what I wanna be doing.” I, like, thought it was the, I found, I found it, right? Like, I found the, the perfect thing for me. Um, I, [00:05:30] I’m curious if therapists out there can relate, where you’re like, “This is exactly what I wanna be doing,” and then you get into it, and then actually realize, like, “Oh, maybe this isn’t what I wanna be doing.”

[00:05:37] So I was working in schools as a [00:05:40] school psychologist. Um, it was through COVID, and then I had my first kid, my daughter, Kahila. And went back to working in [00:05:50] schools, but it was part-time. But still, the schedule was just not, it wasn’t it. It wasn’t gonna be sustainable or manageable with my daughter. And especially as my [00:06:00] first, and if you have kids, you know that with your first you, like, you wanna soak up all of those, those memories and those moments, and I was, like, not willing to miss it.

[00:06:07] I also remember having this moment where I was sitting and I was [00:06:10] staring at the salary schedule. If you know public school systems, salary schedules are, like, anybody can Google it. You can Google your district and say, like, type in, you know, Boulder Valley School [00:06:20] District, um, salary schedule, and you’ll see what the salary schedule is and how much you make at, at each level within your career.

[00:06:26] And there’s no room for negotiation. It’s just if this is [00:06:30] your, um, the education level that you have and the number of years you’ve been working in schools, here is what, how much you’re gonna make. Okay? So I remember looking at that, and at first when I graduated, so I graduated [00:06:40] with my PsyD in school psych in 2019, and I went to work in Denver Public Schools immediately after.

[00:06:45] And when I did that and I looked at the salary schedule, my starting salary was gonna be [00:06:50] $56,000. I was like, “Are you kidding me? This is insane.” And I, when I did my interview and everything, they’re like, “We’re renegotiating the contract right now. Like, it’s in, [00:07:00] like, communi-” What’s the word? “It’s in negotiations.”

[00:07:02] I was like, “Okay.” So then they came back, and then it bumped up significantly to 72,000. And I was like, “Holy shit, [00:07:10] like, this is incredible. I’m about to be making $72,000.” Like, I thought that was so much money, and I was so, so excited about it. Um, and then again, when I had my daughter and I was, [00:07:20] like, realizing that, you know, the school schedule, which we can talk about that another time ’cause I know people are like, “But the school schedule sounds amazing,” it does and it doesn’t ’cause there’s no room for flexibility.

[00:07:29] But [00:07:30] looking at it, I wasn’t gonna be able to make six figures, $100,000, until 20 years. 20 years. And to think about 20 years and the increase going from 72,000 to [00:07:40] 100,000, like, that’s insane. And so I just kinda started thinking, like, “Is this really what I wanna be doing?” Like, yes, I love the kids, and there was just so much, like, [00:07:50] bureaucratic bullshit to deal with in the schools, which that’s also another story for, that’s a story for another time.

[00:07:55] But Um, I just was like, “No, this isn’t it.” And so I actually [00:08:00] reached out to my externship supervisor and asked if she would supervise me for post-doc so I could get licensed as a licensed psychologist, and she said yes, and I started working for her, and it was awesome. [00:08:10] She was charging $195 for the sessions that I was holding, and I was getting paid $75 for those sessions.

[00:08:16] And for all of those, like, group practices are so unethical naysayers [00:08:20] out there, uh, that’s significantly lower of a, um, split than what I was paying when I had my group practice. Okay? Um, but at that time, I thought that was incredible. [00:08:30] $75 per hour? Like, I thought that was amazing. Okay? But I saw, I saw what she was charging, I saw the schedule she had, and I was like, “Okay, this is the route that I wanna go.”

[00:08:37] So got straight to work. And [00:08:40] actually, so rewind a little bit. When I was in grad school for the counseling program, I met some of my really close friends currently. One of them, her name is June, and you’re [00:08:50] gonna hear June, and I’m sure June will be on this podcast at some point as well. Um, June and I came together.

[00:08:55] We were both insanely burnt out, and we both were like, “We wanna make the leap into private practice.” So we decided to [00:09:00] co-found together, and we started having meetings and talking about, like, you know, what do we want our name to be? What do we want this vision to be for our practice? Is it gonna morph into a group practice, [00:09:10] or is it gonna stay just kind of each of us operating i- like, in isolation, but just under the same LLC?

[00:09:16] So that’s how it started. We co-founded Empowered Living Collective. [00:09:20] This was, gosh, when was this? This was July of 2022 Okay, so we were– we met at a coffee shop, and, like, we had made the decision, we’re doing this. So we met at a [00:09:30] coffee shop, and I had a list of everything we needed to do: forming the LLC, um, getting our Google domain name, right?

[00:09:36] Like, all of these different steps, and I just busted through them. I [00:09:40] was like, “We are doing this. We are going all in, full send,” like, going through each of them, okay? So we did that, and we started– we launched the business June of 2022. Um, and we were [00:09:50] on some of those… I’m not gonna say their names, but we were on some of those platforms out there, um, you know, to get credentialed quickly with insurance and just to kind of go as quickly as [00:10:00] possible into it, because I had my second kid October of 2022.

[00:10:04] So if you are listening to this timeline, you will have noticed that I said Jude and I co-founded our business in [00:10:10] July of 2022, and then I had my son in October of 2022. So that was three months later, okay? And so, like, we had to go. We didn’t have time to, [00:10:20] like, dilly-dally and, you know, just kind of take things slow.

[00:10:23] We just had to, like, bust our asses and go. And I did. I took a maternity leave with my son. Um, I came back way sooner [00:10:30] than I wanted to. I think within a matter of, like, a couple weeks, I started seeing a couple clients again. Um, but I knew when I came back from maternity leave, I knew that I wanted– we wanted to scale this thing.

[00:10:39] [00:10:40] We wanted to scale to a group practice, okay? So we did. In April of 2023, we hired our very first therapist. By September of 2023, we were a team of nine. Um, [00:10:50] and then what happened was it just continued to scale really quickly. We fostered and created this culture that therapists love to work at, which is– we’re gonna talk so much about that because that is one of the most important parts of [00:11:00] group practice, is fostering a culture where your therapists really wanna show up.

[00:11:03] Okay? I then had my third kid in November of 2024. So every two years [00:11:10] for, for three kids, I had a kid, okay? Um, and so I had my third kid in November 2024, and while I was on that maternity leave, we [00:11:20] hit a million dollars in revenue in our business, and that just felt insane to me. I, I didn’t set out for that.

[00:11:26] I was– When we started this practice, I wasn’t like, [00:11:30] “I wanna create a million-dollar business.” Okay? I was just so focused on the immediate next step, hiring the next person, filling that person’s caseload, right? Like, each of these things, I was just [00:11:40] grinding it out, and I was going step by step through the process.

[00:11:42] And then before I knew it, I was like, “Wait a second.” Like, I remember when my accountant did our taxes, um, for [00:11:50] 2024, and I was like: “Wait Like, I think we’re close to hitting a million dollars in revenue. And then I was on maternity leave, and that’s when we hit a million dollars in revenue. And I, I [00:12:00] remember texting my parents being like, “I have a million-dollar business.”

[00:12:03] That w- those were words I never thought I would ever utter, ever. I thought that was, like, just not, not even… I thought it was a pipe dream, like, [00:12:10] definitely not gonna happen, okay? And I remember, actually, a lot of my family is in, like, the science tech world. My mom was a computer programmer. My dad was an atmospheric scientist.

[00:12:19] [00:12:20] My uncles were, like, in tech. One of them works for Uber. One of them, like, c- started his own tech businesses and sold them. And I remember hearing them talk about money and, like, selling [00:12:30] businesses and all this stuff, and I was like, “That is not ever gonna be in my trajectory. That is not ever going to be something that is in my future,” because I thought it was only, like, creating multimillion-dollar [00:12:40] businesses, selling businesses, I thought that was only for tech people, okay?

[00:12:44] And then I took this maternity leave with my third kid, and I literally took a maternity leave. I took three months off, [00:12:50] okay? And my business ran itself, and it took care of the people that it needed to. And what happened was I started getting approached by people who wanted to buy the business, and I was [00:13:00] like, “Wait, what?”

[00:13:01] Like, people are actually interested in buying this business that I created? Okay. And I had multiple people reach out, and then I found the right people. These people reached out. They [00:13:10] wanted to buy the business, and they were the, like- Just the, the perfect people. Just the way that we thought about our therapy practices were the same.[00:13:20] 

[00:13:20] And so I thought, okay, if there’s ever gonna be a time that I’m gonna sell a business, it’s going to be to these people because they are going to emulate the exact same values that I have in my business. They’re gonna take care of my [00:13:30] therapists, okay? And they’re gonna really focus on continuing to scale, continuing to foster this, this environment that I created.

[00:13:37] So I sold it, and again, could not [00:13:40] believe it. Could not believe I had created a business that anybody wanted to buy, let alone actually then bought. So in this podcast, I am here [00:13:50] to share with you guys all the things that it took for me to scale this business to a place, to a multimillion-dollar business, to a business that sold.

[00:13:59] And I’m [00:14:00] gonna talk about the ups and downs along the way, okay? Because it was not just, like, a steady path. There were times when I wanted to quit. There were times when I sat there running payroll and I thought, like, “I have nothing left to pay [00:14:10] myself. This is not worth it. I’m grinding my ass to build this business, and I can’t even pay myself anything after I’m paying my therapists.

[00:14:16] Like, where is the money going? What’s happening?” So we’re gonna talk [00:14:20] all things hiring, filling caseloads, pay structures, marketing, mindset, money, and then I’m gonna share some of my life outside of business too. This podcast is [00:14:30] gonna be a mix of solo episodes, so like this, and then I’m gonna have some guest interviews, and I’m gonna bring in some colleagues.

[00:14:35] I’m gonna bring in some family members. June is gonna be on here at some point, and [00:14:40] people inside of the accelerator programs, so you can hear from, from them yourselves as well to hear about them scaling their business too, okay? Episodes are gonna drop weekly. They’re gonna be about 20 to 40 [00:14:50] minutes, and my promise to you, it’s no fluff.

[00:14:52] Okay? I’m not here to waste your time. I know we’re all insanely busy people, and we’re trying to grind right now and trying to grow these businesses, okay? [00:15:00] So there’s not gonna be any extra stuff. It’s only gonna be the things that worked for me when I built my business or the things that I know are necessary now because business is always evolving, all [00:15:10] right?

[00:15:10] And I’m staying on top of it to be able to give you guys the up-to-date information so that you can, you can scale your business in the day and age that we’re in. So let’s talk next episode. I’m [00:15:20] gonna go behind the scenes of, like, what it actually took to build this $2 million business and then sell it.

[00:15:25] And then after that, we’re gonna talk about is a group practice even worth it, [00:15:30] okay? Because I hear so many people who are interested in doing it, and they’re like, “Is it actually worth it?” Because everybody’s talking about working too much or not making enough money, all of those different things, okay? I [00:15:40] cannot wait to see you next time.

[00:15:41] Thank you so much for joining, um, and I’ll see you next time. That is a wrap on today’s episode. Thank you so much for [00:15:50] spending this time with me. If you connected with what we talked about today, the best thing you can do right now is hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Leave a review to let other therapists know how this was helpful, and share [00:16:00] this with a therapist friend who needs to hear it.

[00:16:02] Come find me on Instagram @dranahitabanoo. That’s where I hang out the most, and I genuinely love connecting with therapists there. If you have a [00:16:10] question, a win to share, or you just wanna say hi, my DMs are always open. And if you’re ready to actually take the next step in building your group practice, head to [00:16:20] www.dranahitabanoo.com.

[00:16:20] There you can learn about my group practice accelerator programs or grab my free marketing quiz to get started filling caseloads. See you next week. Over and [00:16:30] out