WP205 | Rethinking the Traditional 60/40 Split with Brittany Schank, LCSW
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Why the 60/40 Split Can Feel Like the “Right” Choice
When Brittany Schank first started growing Solace Counseling, a 60/40 split felt like the natural choice. She had seen other practices use percentage-based compensation models, and she wanted to offer something attractive to clinicians while still building a sustainable business. But as her practice grew, she realized that simply following what other practices were doing did not mean the numbers actually worked for her own business.
When Your Pay Structure Starts Creating Resentment
One of Brittany’s biggest warning signs was resentment. She found herself dreading payroll because some clinicians were bringing home more than she was, even while she carried the responsibility, risk, onboarding, legal work, complaints, and day-to-day leadership of the practice. She realized that if a compensation model consistently leaves the owner overworked and underpaid, something has to change.
The Hidden Costs Behind a 60/40 Split
A 60/40 split can sound simple on paper, but the actual cost of employing a therapist goes far beyond their paycheck. Payroll taxes, administrative support, legal expenses, billing, insurance issues, supervision, and the owner’s time all have to come from somewhere. Brittany pointed out that even before she owned a group practice, the math did not really make sense to her. Growing the business did not magically make those expenses disappear.
Your Practice Has More to Offer Than a Paycheck
Part of Brittany’s transition came from becoming more confident in what Solace Counseling could offer clinicians beyond money. Early on, she worried that she had to pay more because she did not have enough experience or value to attract good therapists otherwise. Over time, she realized that work-life balance, community, transparency, support, and a healthy culture were all meaningful parts of the employment experience. The goal was no longer to be the highest-paying practice. It was to be the right practice for the right people.
Moving From Splits to Salary
Brittany eventually moved away from offering splits to new hires. Full-time clinicians now receive a salary, while part-time clinicians are paid per session. The transition was uncomfortable, especially because Solace had developed a reputation for its 60/40 model. Brittany remembers interviewing a clinician who specifically wanted that split and ultimately chose not to join the practice when she learned the position was salaried. It was difficult, but it helped Brittany accept that not every clinician was going to be the right fit for the model she was building.
Compensation Should Reflect Your Practice Values
For Brittany, moving away from splits also helped Solace better live out its commitment to work-life balance. A percentage model can unintentionally create a “the more I see, the more I make” mentality. With a salary model, clinicians know what is expected of them without feeling pressure to continually add more sessions just to increase their income. The compensation structure began supporting the values the practice had been talking about all along.
Why Percentages Do Not Tell the Whole Story
Whitney and Brittany also discussed why therapists should be cautious about judging an opportunity solely by the percentage offered. A 60/40 or 70/30 split may sound appealing, but that number does not tell you how efficiently the practice handles insurance payments, denials, collections, administration, legal issues, crises, and referrals. Those systems can have a major impact on what a clinician actually earns and how much support they receive.
Private Practice Comes With More Than a Higher Session Fee
The same applies to therapists considering leaving a group practice to work independently. Keeping a higher percentage of each session does not mean keeping all of that money or gaining unlimited freedom. Phone calls, scheduling, billing, paperwork, subpoenas, missed payments, and administrative tasks all become the owner’s responsibility. Brittany encourages clinicians who feel called to private practice to pursue it, but to do so with realistic expectations about the time and responsibility involved.
Changing Pay Structures Requires Careful Decisions
Changing an existing compensation model is more complicated than simply choosing a new percentage or salary. Brittany worked closely with an employment attorney when deciding what to do with clinicians who were already on legacy split agreements. Her experience was a reminder that compensation changes can involve legal, ethical, financial, and relational considerations, and practice owners should get professional guidance before making major changes.
Building a Sustainable Practice for the Long Term
A healthy compensation model should work for both clinicians and the business itself. Practice owners can be generous, supportive employers without creating a structure that leaves them resentful, financially strained, or unable to sustain the organization. Brittany’s experience shows that sometimes protecting the culture, values, and long-term health of the practice means being willing to rethink the model everyone else seems to be using.
Meet Brittany Schank
I'm Brittany Schank. I'm a licensed clinical social worker, and I own a group practice called Solace Counseling up in Fargo, North Dakota, home of extremely friendly people and extremely unfriendly winters. We've got 11 clinicians now, which still catches me off guard some days, since this thing started as just me and a caseload.
Somewhere along the way I also started a directory that connects therapists with clinical supervisors and consultants, because finding the right supervisor should not feel like online dating.
And most recently, I built an app called I'm Here. It's really nothing fancy, just a simple way for clients to text that they've arrived so nobody has to sit in an awkward waiting room making eye contact with a stranger. I built it because I was tired of that problem in my own practice, and it turns out a lot of other practices had the exact same headache.
Outside of all that, I'm a mom to four kids and married to my husband Landon, who is also the COO of our counseling practice (we met working together, so when he joined full time it felt like a full circle moment). In my free time, you can find me watching my kids play while in cozy socks and an oversized sweatshirt and sweats, drinking an iced coffee, beating my kids in a game of Uno, or out catching the biggest fish!
Brittany’s Resources
WP122 | Leading with Wisdom: Adding Supervision to Your Practice with Brittany Schank, LCSW
Links and Resources
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[00:00:00] Whitney Owens: Building a thriving faith-based private practice isn't easy. It takes courage, wisdom, and commitment to lead your business without compromising your faith and values. I'm Whitney Owens, the owner of a seven-figure multi-location group practice and founder of Wise Practice Consulting. Every week on the podcast, I share real strategies, lessons, and conversations that come from actively leading my own practice, helping practice owners across the country do the same.
Whether you're building a solo practice or growing a team, this podcast is here to equip you, empower you, and remind you, I believe in what God's called you to. You don't have to do it alone. Welcome to the Wise Practice podcast. Let's get started. Hey, friends. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here with me today.
If you love this show, please share it with a friend. We want more faith-based practice owners to know about the podcast because we're lonely out there in private practice. So I'd love for you to share. If you could take a minute and give me a review of the show, it helps people find it. Plus, I just love hearing about your experience of listening to the podcast.
So today, we're at episode 205, where we're gonna talk to Brittany Shank about the traditional 60/40 split and why that wasn't working anymore for her practice. Y'all, a few topics make us more anxious as practice owners than talking about money, and, uh, specifically for group owners when we're talking about paying our therapists, right?
So we have this idea. We wanna be generous, which is really great. We wanna have a healthy compensation model. We wanna retain therapists, and then sometimes we make decisions that aren't best for the practice, right, 'cause we're afraid of losing good therapists. And as I was kinda thinking about this introduction, I was reminded that last week I hosted a very intimate retreat for group practice owners, and we got so deep into the mindset stuff that makes the decisions in our practice 'cause that is the important work that we do in consulting.
And as we're having this conversation, I just flat out was like, "Yeah, because we don't want people to leave." Like, we constantly meet the needs of the people that work for us because we're scared of them leaving, and at the same time, we hurt ourselves, and we hurt our practice. And this conversation comes up over and over again.
So I love that Brittany just laid it out in this interview. She's so honest about her experience. And so if you've been thinking about that traditional split or maybe you thought about owning a group practice or you're not really sure what to pay people, this episode's for you. We're not gonna push you to make big changes, so don't be nervous that I shouldn't listen to this for that reason, but it's just an episode to help us think about the 60/40 split and a real practice owner's experience in that.
So I'm looking forward to you getting to know Brittany Shank in this episode.
Hello friends, and welcome back to the Wise Practice podcast. I've got a repeat guest here today, Brittany Sch- Ank. She is a licensed clinical social worker and owns a group practice, Solace Counseling, in Fargo, North Dakota, home of extremely friendly people and extremely unfriendly winters. She has 11 clinicians now and still catches herself off guard some days since this thing started with just her and a caseload.
So somewhere along the way, Brittany also started a directory that connects therapists with clinical supervisors and consultants, which by the way, was a podcast that we previously did, if you wanna go back and check that one out. I actually think it was 122, if I got that number correct on that episode.
But because of finding the right supervisor is difficult, which is why she put this directory together. It's kinda like online dating. But most recently, Brittany has built an app called I'm Here. It's really nothing fancy, but a simple way for clients to text when they've arrived for their appointments so that nobody's just sitting in an awkward waiting room waiting.
She built this, um, because she was tired of the problems of owning a practice when clients were showing up and not knowing where to go When she was hearing that headache from many practice owners. So outside of that, Brittany is a mom of four. She's married to Landon. She runs her business in and out an hour a day so they can actually be more present with their family, which is a non-negotiable.
She's also leaned on AI tools more than she'd probably like to admit on the podcast. Thanks for coming on, Brittany.
[00:04:26] Brittany Schank: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it. It's fun to be back.
[00:04:30] Whitney Owens: Yeah. Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, I feel like if I talk to someone from Fargo, they're supposed to have, like, this accent, and you kind of, but it's not that intense.
[00:04:39] Brittany Schank: No, it's not too intense. Yeah. I hear your accent. I don't hear my own accent, but I think that's pretty normal. People don't, uh, hear their own accent.
[00:04:46] Whitney Owens: Yeah. Mine's pretty strong. Uh-huh And depending how sleepy I am or stressed I am, it comes out even stronger,
[00:04:51] Brittany Schank: so yeah. Oh, fair. It's like a mood ring. Your accent is like a mood ring.
[00:04:56] Whitney Owens: There you go. That's right. That's right. Well, there were so many things we could have talked about today, but the topic that I found the most interesting that I think a lot of people ask about is pay structure for our therapists. Um, and so I'd love to kinda talk through what you were doing when you first started and what that experience was like and kind of start walking me through this change you made in your practice and why.
[00:05:19] Brittany Schank: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So I opened Solace Counseling about eight years ago. We just celebrated our eight-year anniversary. And when I started, I was at a group practice that I didn't know back then but was failing financially. So, um, I was at a group practice where they actually paid a 70/30 split at that practice, and it was 1099 contractors there.
And so I was part of a training program. We were employees if you were in the training program, but the whole model was once you were done with the training program, you moved off of W2, and then you became a 70/30 split clinician as a 1099 contractor. So When I opened up my own practice, I used that as my model along with kind of what everybody else was saying in the community that they were doing and what was attractive to me.
And, uh, so I was like, when I started to think about group practice, I thought to myself, 70/30 didn't work, and I know that because they did not make it financially, and I know that because it was, um, it was a nonprofit organization that w- it was known in the community what happened, and that there was financial insecurity there.
So I knew that I couldn't do what they did. That wasn't financially sustainable. So I was like, well, the next best thing would be a 60/40 split, and that should be sustainable then. Mm-hmm. And the difference for me is I started my, the group practice side of things, I went in private practice myself and then had a group practice.
So when I went into private practice is when people were really starting to talk about the difference between 1099 contractors and employees. So I kind of came in at a time where there was a lot of talk, if you will, and it wasn't just, "This is the right thing to do." People were starting to say, like, "Is this the right thing to do, contractors versus W-2 employees?"
So it was kind of a nice time to come in when things were a little bit in an uproar and people were really questioning that pay structure, at least here in North Dakota they were Uh, so I thought to myself, "I'll do a group practice and I'll do W-2 employees because that sounds like it's the right thing to do."
And when I say right, I mean it sounded like it was perhaps the more legal thing to do at the time. And, uh, but I knew 70/30 split wouldn't work. Also, I was, I, you know, I was smart enough to know that there's more costs associated with W-2 employees, and so I just set it at a 60/40 split. That's what everybody else was doing in our community.
I was certainly very insecure about hiring, and I wanted to... I didn't think that I had what it took, so I needed to provide the finances to people for what it took. And, uh, eight years later, we have no more splits. We will not do splits again. But it was a really big learning lesson, and it's, it's taken a lot of time to get there, and a lot of disappointment in the community, if you will, and just a lot of really vulnerable moments to get to the place now where we're not known for that split.
People now know when they come here, interview here, that that's not what they're gonna get here. But it's taken a lot of time to get there, and it was a very hard road to get here.
[00:08:26] Whitney Owens: I'm sure it was. Brittany, you're not alone. I know you know that. Me too. I mean, so many practices start because, I can even say I didn't know what I was doing when I started my solo practice, for sure.
Actually, when I started hiring therapists, I hired a business coach 'cause I was like, "I don't wanna mess this up." And even looking back, that coach did contractor model, and that was not for me, and I ended up tra- changing within a year to W-2. But I think a lot of people are in your boat, and they're probably listening right now going, "Brittany, I get you.
I've hired my people and I run my numbers." In fact, I have another... This is just coming to me right now. I do a lot of Voxer messaging, and I was talking to one of my consulting clients today and she said, she was like almost crying on the Voxer. She was like, "Finally, I'm making money when I run payroll."
Because she had contractors and she was paying them too much, then she switched to W-2s. It's just been such a process, but she has had years of not making anything and being stressed all the time.
[00:09:26] Brittany Schank: Yeah, and I remember that place so well. I think one of the things I've learned as a group practice owner is if I'm starting to feel resentful, I am, I need to make a change.
There's something that has to change there. And I remember feeling jealousy, I remember feeling resentment when I was running payroll and a clinician's paycheck was larger than mine. But if I were to clock the hours of what the clinicians were making versus, or I'm sorry, the hours that the clinicians were working versus what I was working, it didn't feel fair to me.
And I remember just I hated doing payroll because I knew what it was gonna come up with. It was gonna come up with I was spending a lot of time, energy, effort, money, risk, and the pay model that I created, 100% my fault, that I created was paying the clinicians a higher pay than I was taking home myself, and that was a terrible place to be.
It felt like, how can I ever dig myself out of this? And honestly, it felt like in order to dig myself out of this, I need to keep hiring. But when you keep hiring, you keep putting time in. And so I think of it as like, um, so I was seeing like 20 to 25 clients a week when I was fully on my own, and then I brought on a clinician, and they saw about the same number of clients, and they were getting their 60/40 split.
But because I was bringing somebody on, I now either needed to de- decrease my caseload to increase my time to bring them on, or I needed to keep my caseload there so I could keep the same pay and increase my time spent. So really what ended up happening is people were seeing the same number of clients as me and making more while I was onboarding them, figuring out all the legal pieces, talking to attorneys, getting contracts signed, taking in clinician complaints and client complaints, doing all this stuff, but making less than them.
Those are your options when you do a 60/40 split. It's either get paid less to have the time to support the people you bring on, or see the same number of clients and increase the time that you take for your new hires to bring on, but get paid the same. Hmm. And it is a really lonely, sad, dark place to be of like, wow, there is no way out of this other than changing the pay structure or hiring and hiring and hiring and hiring, and I think that's an endless pit.
[00:11:50] Whitney Owens: 100%. Mm. Yeah, I think a lot of people are in that trap. And I just wanna make it clear, when you say 60/40, you were doing a W-2 model and the therapists were getting 60%. Yeah.
[00:12:02] Brittany Schank: Correct. Yep.
[00:12:02] Whitney Owens: Yeah. Correct. But when you start adding in what you have to pay in payroll and all that, it's really more like 70%.
[00:12:09] Brittany Schank: Yeah, and then the time.
You know, like if you wanna really bring someone on well and have the foundation nicely laid out, you are spending so much time to bring that person on, and it is really zero dollar time. Like, you're getting paid nothing to do that. You know, I remember when I was my own, so it was just me in private practice, and there was a girl down the hall, and we were both dreaming about, like, should we do group practice?
Should we not do group practice? And we were sitting down at a restaurant close to our office, and we were in just the tiniest office spaces back then. It was so... I remember telling people, like, "Don't judge a book by its cover. Get in the building. You'll be fine. It looks a little sketchy. Get in the building and into our suite.
You'll be okay once you get there." 'Cause it was just, you know, the risk, you know? The risk, you just don't know. But anyways, her and I were sitting at a local restaurant, and we were starting to run numbers of, like, you know, what should be- we pay, what does that look like? And we were talking about the 60/40 split thing.
And I literally said to her, "I don't even make 60% myself as a private practice person. How are we supposed to bring people on and increase our expenses and pay them 60%?" And I remember her saying, like, "I don't know, maybe it just gets cheaper as you go." And essentially what she was saying is like, "I don't know, like you have internet for yourself right now, and now internet covers multiple people."
And I remember, like, buying into that. Like, oh yeah, that's probably, like that's probably true, right? And then you actually get into it and you're like, oh my gosh, it was so much simpler when it was just me. Now I have to add somebody actually running payroll. I didn't have to have a payroll person back then.
Taxes are incredibly expensive once you become a business. It used to be like $200 for my taxes. Now it's thousands of dollars for my taxes. And so those are expenses that, like, you just, you have no idea, uh, that are gonna come up. But I wish I could go back to myself back then and be like, "Brittany, you knew that the 60/40 split wasn't gonna work.
The math didn't make sense when it was just you. Why would it make sense as you grow?" But you don't know. You know, you're like, "I don't know, everybody else is doing it. It must work." Mm-hmm. And, um, it, you know, it's certainly of my opinion it doesn't
[00:14:18] Whitney Owens: Yeah. People wanna do what everyone down the street is doing, but you don't see their numbers-
[00:14:22] Brittany Schank: Mm-hmm
[00:14:22] Whitney Owens: in the open. If you don't have a business, no one gets to work. Mm-hmm. And so the most important thing we can do as business owners is protect the business.
[00:14:31] Brittany Schank: Yep. Yeah, you're exactly right. And I do really believe that part of what gave me the confidence to go away from the 60/40 split was, one, the resentment, quite honestly.
That was really killing me. Mm. But, um, the other piece that I think really gave me the confidence is I started having confidence in what the business had to offer and what we had to offer that was much bigger than a paycheck. So when I started, it was almost like this feeling of I have to do a 60/40 split because I have nothing more to offer these people.
I'm a newer clinician. I don't have this grand skill of I know all of these, um, you know, I've got 10 years in the business of being a clinician. I didn't have that. So I was like, "I'm gonna be bringing on people that what's gonna attract them?" It's not that I'm a good consultant at that point. It's not that I'm a great supervisor.
It's not that I'm even that clinically skilled at that point. And so literally to me, I was like, "Well, it must, it's gotta be the money 'cause I don't have enough in me to offer to them other than the money." And I don't think I knew that very well back then. I think I felt it, but I probably couldn't name it.
Now I can look back and I'm like, "Oh yeah, that certainly was happening," that insecurity of hiring, and I just have to pay them really well so they come, otherwise nobody will come.
[00:15:40] Whitney Owens: Practice owners tell me that all the time, especially when I'm helping them start a group practice, right? And- Mm-hmm ... I get so much pushback when I tell them what to pay.
And so it's the thing that people say is, "Well, if I don't pay them enough, they won't wanna work for me." So how do you make your practice sellable, you know, to new therapists or just private pay, private practice?
[00:16:03] Brittany Schank: Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. That's a great question. You know, I actually remember the first interview we, the interview pool that we did, if you will, after we switched our model, which also if we get to, I would be happy to share a little bit about because it was actually very tricky to switch the model from a 60/40 split to the model that we have now.
And the model we have now is, uh, we have full-time clinicians and part-time clinicians. Full-time clinicians are paid on a salary, and part-time clinicians are paid on a per session basis. So I've literally had every model I can think of, and I can certainly tell anybody the pros and cons to each of them.
But Whitney, I remember the first interview we did when we switched the model to a salary model, we were hiring a full-time clinician, and I was so nervous at that interview because the job posting certainly had said salary. But for me, I'm like, I think the community knows us as the 60/40 split paying practice or one of them in the community.
And what am I gonna say to somebody if they're like, "Hey, wait, you're not doing a 60/40 split?" And like, how am I gonna sit with that? So I had a lot of fear of that happening, and that exact thing certainly happened. I really do believe God gives us exactly what we need, and I needed that in that moment, that just humbling experience of you're scared of this and you can handle this.
And so I remember the clinician sitting in the office that we were interviewing, and we have kind of a paneled interview, and the clinician that was interviewing knew one of our current clinicians that was a 60/40 split. And we got to the end of the interview and it got to the point where, uh, we were saying, "Hey, do you have any questions for us?"
And she was like, "Yeah, I'm wondering about pay structure." And I bet you could feel my nervousness and probably the sweat on my, you could see the sweat on my upper lip in that moment. And, um I'm, I imagine my voice was probably a little bit quivering because that's what I do when I get very nervous. And I told her, and I said, you know, "This is a salary position," and I talked about it, and she literally said to me, "You mean you're not doing 60/40 splits anymore?"
And in that moment, I n- I knew. I was like, "The, we're not gonna get this applicant. This, this person isn't gonna wanna work for us." And she was a great clinician, and that's what happened. She had come for the 60/40 split. She didn't, uh, want a salary model. And looking back now, I know that was exactly what needed to happen.
Like, we needed a starting point to switch out of the model. But I wonder if there, if that piece right there is a piece that holds people back of like, how am I gonna face this? That these people are expecting this, and I no longer have what they're expecting or what they're wanting. And, um, so maybe I'm giving that story just to, like, let people know y- you will get through it, and the first time might be hard, and you might stumble across your words, and it doesn't flow out as, you know, beautifully and freely as, "It's a 60/40 split, and you're gonna make more than the owner of this company does."
You know, like, it's not... But it's not sustainable, and it was not good for my heart. It was not good for my soul. And so I remember that so vividly of just how bad that felt, how scary that felt, and I know I knew deep down that was the right thing to do, but gosh, that really stunk. So yeah, that was the beginning of us switching over to the model.
What do we offer, was your question. Like, how do I make up for that now? Because as you heard, I was very nervous of like, I don't have anything to offer these individuals. And so what we learned is the 60/40 split now we know, the 60/40 split doesn't really align with who we are, period. So since the beginning, one of the pieces that has been really important to me is work-life balance.
And the 60/40 split model very much perpetuates or creates a like hustle mentality that's like the more I see, the more I make, the more I see, the more I make. And the salary model that we now have for clinicians is like, "Hey, here's the expectation of you. You don't need to hustle to see a bunch more than that.
You know, we expect you to meet the criteria that you need to meet. I mean, you have a, a, a job that you have to do and, and the beauty of that is you get to see clients in that." But the hustle mentality isn't there, and so we were preaching work-life balance, but the pay model actually wasn't preaching that for us, or it wasn't, um, backing that up for us.
So I would say if you were to poll our clinicians, which, uh, we do ask them quite frequently like, "Hey, like, what's going well here and what's not going well here?" The two things you will hear just about everybody say is the work-life balance and the community feel here. People don't come-- Solace Counseling is not known as the top payer in the community.
Solace Counseling is certainly not known for a 60/40 split anymore. What people can know is when they come to Solace Counseling, they will be very well taken care of. We will care about them and their family members, um, and we will not be a pusher of see more. Uh, it, there's clarity, there's transparency, and so I think that is the people who fit at Solace Counseling are that type of person, and so that's what people get now when they come here.
[00:20:55] Whitney Owens: That's great. I think you highlighted so well knowing who you are and what you offer. And every practice has a different things that are important to them and how they provide that. So like for example, when I had someone say, "Oh, well, I interviewed somewhere else. I can make five more dollars a client down the street."
And I was like, "Well, then go work there." Like, like I care more about high value supervision, being there for you when a problems comes up, that I spend that extra money to pay for that support, but that's important to me and the values of this business, and that's not gonna be what everyone want. Some people would rather make five more dollars and then pay for supervision on the outside if they need it.
But to me, you're gonna have that if you're at Water's Edge.
[00:21:42] Brittany Schank: I, uh, totally agree with you, Whitney, and it helps us to understand if they're a good fit or not now. I used to have this mentality of I have to give everything so they want to be here.
[00:21:52] Whitney Owens: Yes.
[00:21:52] Brittany Schank: And as soon as I was able, nobody could tell me to, like get over that.
People could encourage me and like, "Hey, think about it this way." But like I just had to work on that myself, that like lack of understanding of who I am and what we offer is so beautiful. It's not beautiful for everyone. It's beautiful for the right people. And so if somebody's coming in and the most important thing to them is top dollar, then this is, this is certainly not the place.
I am so happy to like direct you to the places that have that model or have that split or I want that person to find the right place. But this is not the right place. And what, um, goes on in my mind is I think, I don't think I'm ever gonna make this person happy because that's not what we offer here.
And, um, the other thing I wanna say about the 60/40 split is it's n- now that I'm a business owner and I see the back end of it, it's so interesting to me how sought after that model seems to be because there are so many places that can go wrong for somebody that they don't have access to. And what I mean by that is if I were interviewing somewhere now, which Solace Counseling for life, but if I were interviewing somewhere now, the 60/40 split would be somewhat scary to me.
I would have so many more questions beyond the 60/40 split. Some of the things I think of are like how backlogged are your insurance payments? How many denials do you have? How many clients are going to collections, and what happens for me? On a 60/40 split you are relying so much on the back end of that business being structurally sound In order to get the money that you think you're gonna get versus other pay structures.
So it's just so interesting to me, and I understand coming in I would never have those, I would not have that visibility. But now it's like it is so much bigger than a 60/40 split. A practice saying they'll give you that, like you have layers and chapters of more information you need to really know if that's a model that's being run well and if it is a safe model for you to even engage in as the provider.
So it's knowing what I know now, it's just so risky even for the employee, so.
[00:23:58] Whitney Owens: True. It's true. I do think when we talk in splits, it gives the wrong impression as well, like somebody feeling like... I mean, 60/40 evidently they're making more, but like I pay a little bit less than 50% of what they bring in. Um, so if I were to ever talk in splits and say, "Well, you're getting 45%," like that's gonna make them feel like, "Well, I'm getting less than half," when their work- Mm-hmm
is certainly more than that. It's just this is what we battle as therapists in running a business, and they don't see, which we've already touched on, all the expenses. I mean, I just had the terrible subpoena situation. It's gonna be thousands in attorney fees. Mm. And no one else is gonna see that. Or we had a crisis yesterday, so the clinical director, the COO, all the people are getting involved.
Mm-hmm. I don't charge the therapist for that, you know? And so they don't see that side of- Mm-hmm ... of it. I also wanna point out what you said that I think is so valuable, this idea of when you were a solo owner you weren't making 60/40, and a lot of therapists in group practice that leave these days think that.
So like a recent therapist I've had for years decided to leave and start her own, and I, I was very honest, I said, "It is really hard to start a practice right now. Harder probably than I've ever seen it before." You're agreeing. And I s- I said, um, "You're probably gonna make more here. I'm just gonna be honest with you, by the time you do it."
And she was like, "Well, I need a 70/30 split W-2." I was like, "I'm sorry, I'll never be able to meet that, even though you're one of my best therapists." But even like you just said, no one's gonna get that-
[00:25:29] Brittany Schank: Mm-mm ... in
[00:25:29] Whitney Owens: private practice. And I think the world that we live in keeps telling therapists you can make more, you can have this perfect schedule.
And I'm a consultant, you know? You help people with their practice. It's not always that way. Mm. And I'm gonna tell you, those people on TikTok or whatever it is, they just wanna sell you their stuff, so they're gonna tell you the thing that they think you wanna hear so that you will do it. Mm-hmm. And it's an empty promise.
Mm-hmm. Um, so I don't know. Mm. I just, I felt that was important. I do think what your friend said and how y'all were talking about- How the expenses are shared, I do think there's something to be said for that. You're agreeing with that too, yeah. Mm-hmm. Because it does... Somehow when you bring everybody together, there is a bigger collection of money to divvy out to everyone.
So I think like, for example, if everyone were to leave Water's Edge Counseling and start their own practice, I think we'd all be making less, you know? Mm-hmm. But when we all come together, I think we actually make more for not only the financial piece, but referring to one another and all that kind of stuff.
[00:26:29] Brittany Schank: Yep, I totally agree. I think, um, I hear what you're saying too about social media and it's, you know, make your own schedule. And I am of the opinion that if that is really in your heart to start your own practice, have at it. You do that. I really believe, like, we all have a calling, we all have a purpose, and if your purpose is to do that- Absolutely go do that.
How- a- and however, and I'm not sure how to say it, 'cause I don't wanna eliminate what I just said, 'cause I really do believe that. Go with the right information. You know, somebody asking, I mean this kindly about your, uh, clinician, she sounds like she's wonderful, but asking for a 70/30 split tells me that the information you have is not realistic.
Right. And so, you know, it'll, it might be a really hard lesson. The other th- for her. The other thing I think of too is, um, the amount of time that goes into it. So like right now, I'm not sure how your admin team is set up, but we have all W-2 people, and we do have an admin team. And so when clients are calling in, clients are looking to reschedule, clients need their telehealth link, an ROI needs to be sent somewhere, all that's taken care of.
When the attorney calls because they have a subpoena, nobody's grabbing that clinician to say like, "Hey, there's a police officer here to issue your subpoena." Nobody's doing that here. It's being taken care of. And so just my hope for people going on their own is that that's what their calling is and that's what they're supposed to do, but they're also realistic about that's all you.
Or the like, you know, when phone calls come in at 1:00 in the morning and the voicemail gets it, because that person is intoxicated or really struggling or whatever, like that's coming to your cellphone, or that's coming to your voicemail, and you have to handle that, you know? Mm-hmm. There's just so many things that, um, my heart...
Maybe the emotional response I have right now is my heart just breaks for people going into private practice, not recognizing, thinking like, "Oh, great. I'm gonna get 70, I'm gonna get 70%," which just, that's just not realistic. But I'm gonna get 70% or 60% of that session I saw. You're right, but your time is now so much thinner, because you had to deal with the whole thing that goes into that session, not just seeing the client.
So just people looking to go into private practice, just remember like the payment is higher, but your time is spread way bigger. The 53 minutes you normally sit in a session per client, you know, is now, I don't know what the number would be, but you know, expect more like an hour and a half or two hours per client, and at, at a time that's not convenient to you anymore.
It's, I know when I opened my private practice, the number of times I was in my car with my kids, I have four kids, as you said earlier- Oh, yeah ... that I was in my car with my kids, and it's like, "I can't miss this phone call. I need this client." Pull over on the side of the road, and literally on the side of a gravel road, I'm now parking my kids and saying like, "Hey, hold on one minute.
I gotta step out and grab this phone call to take an intake phone call." That's the sacrifice that you're gonna have to make when you go into private practice. And do it, but just know it. That's right. Like know that's what you're giving up.
[00:29:24] Whitney Owens: Yeah. I remember those days too. And I told my therapist all those things as well, 'cause my heart was, it was m- it was, it wasn't even so sad that she was leaving, even though I love her to death, it was more of I just want you to have the life that you want.
And I don't know if this is really... And I hope the best for her. Okay. So- Now that you're on the other side, curious, did you change the pay structure for all the people who were working for you at the time? Yes.
[00:29:48] Brittany Schank: So it's a great question. You know, I had a friend who was also switching at the same time as me, and that was nice, quite honestly, because we had each other to be like, "This is hard and this sucks."
Yeah. "What are you doing?" I worked very, very closely with our employment attorney. So that is my first caveat. What I am saying is not legal advice, it is just what I lived through. Okay? I would really encourage anybody making the switch to work with an employment attorney, because I really wanted, we only had three clinicians left that were on a 60/40 split We had started hiring salary, and when we made the decision to start hiring salary, that was the decision we had to make.
Are we gonna keep these three clinicians on a 60/40 split or do something different? And I thought it was just gonna be that was the decision. Do they stay or do they not stay? And when I started working with an employ- an employment attorney, she very much honed in on, "This is so much bigger than that, Brittany.
You are risking a lot by even considering to keep them separate." And she had talked a lot about risking the, the appearance that I am being discriminatory. And so you're keeping it... Let's just say my three clinicians were, you know, around the age of 25 to 35, they were white, and no disabilities. And now if the first person you hire, Brittany, is somebody that does not look like that, does not act like that, or does not have that background, you're in trouble.
[00:31:12] Whitney Owens: And- Good and con-
[00:31:13] Brittany Schank: It was... It gives me chills to think about that now a- and these are the things we're talking about with the, with the risk of going into practice. This is the weight that you carry now, is not just what's the right thing to do for the practice financially, it's what's the right thing to do for the practice so it doesn't literally go under from a lawsuit.
And so I had a friend that was going through the same process, got the same advice, uh, chose to do, keep some people as a split and start hiring salary, and she actually got sued for a discrimination lawsuit. Wow. And it was, it was terrible. Uh, rocked her world, and, uh, rocked a lot of people's world that watched it happen.
And I'm not here to say whether that was right, wrong, or indifferent, but those are the fears. And so what did we choose to do? We did choose to keep the 60/40 split, knowing that it might have been the riskiest call of them all. And so we, one of, uh, those 60/40 split clinicians left and opened her own practice.
The other two are still here, and we're transparent about it to try and reduce the, um, likelihood that we do get a discrimination complaint. And by that, I mean, like, in our employee handbook, it talks about the different pay structures, and it says, "Legacy 64," or, uh, "Legacy split clinicians, here's what applies to you.
Salary clinicians, full-time, here's what applies to you, and part-time clinicians, here's what applies to you." So people are aware it's a legacy thing. It's not a, "We really like you, so you can get this, and we don't like you, so you're not gonna get this." That's in an attempt to be able to keep my word to those people who got that split without putting our business at risk.
From a business standpoint, what probably was the... From a business standpoint, what probably was the right decision to make, move everybody to salary. From a human standpoint of what feels Right inside of me is it didn't feel right to tell people, "Hey, I brought you on in this model and I'm gonna s- switch you."
While I can understand why a lot of people would do that, and I don't think it's a bad call by any means. So very difficult decisions, risky decisions.
[00:33:16] Whitney Owens: Yeah. Certainly. Well, I wanna make some time for you to talk about your new software that you've created. So can you tell us about the I'm Here?
[00:33:23] Brittany Schank: Yeah. Sure.
Absolutely. Okay. So the I'm Here app is a very simple check-in app. Essentially, I'll talk about the reason why I created it and then just give you a quick overview of it. I sit in a-- We're kind of in a circle in our office, and I sit in the corner of it. And so the number of times I saw clinicians go to the waiting room, and I can hear them, and say to the admin team, "Hey, is my client here yet?"
Or look for their client and walk back to their office was very frequently. And, uh, I am all about time, time management and work-life balance, and I kept thinking to myself, "Those clinicians could be doing notes. They could be relaxing on their couch. They could be doing anything other than checking the waiting room three times to see if their clients were here."
On the other hand, what I saw happening is sometimes clients were here, and I'd hear the clinician pull 'em back and say, "Sorry, I didn't know you were here. I didn't mean to grab you late." And so I was like, "Okay, we need something better here." So we don't have time to check apps in between sessions. I literally was like, we just need a way to either text them or email them and say, "Your client is here."
The other thing is everybody arrives on the hour, and so we do have two admin staff up there, but they're checking in one client or scheduling their next sessions. That one's checking in clients or scheduling their sessions, and now nobody's there for the line of people waiting to just tell their clinician they're here.
So I, uh, built an app that just sits on an iPad. You can use any tablet up there. It literally has pretty pictures of all the clinicians on it. The person taps the picture, types in their name, and it sends an automatic email or text to the clinician and says, "Hey, your client is here." Very simple to use, very quick to set up.
Uh, we've used it here, uh, four or five months. It, it's great. It's wonderful. And so yeah, I created that, uh, towards the beginning of this year. I, uh, got it approved through the App Store, so people can download it if they have Apple products. And it just last week got approved through the Google Play Store for Android devices.
And, uh, if people don't have either device and they just have like a laptop they wanna set up, there's a web URL too that they can just pull up the website and, uh, modify it so they can check in clients. So that's the I'm Here app.
[00:35:22] Whitney Owens: That's great. And how are your therapists liking it?
[00:35:25] Brittany Schank: Oh, they love it. You know, there was one thing that, um, they didn't like so much to make sure it was HIPAA compliant for text messages, because text messages aren't HIPAA compliant.
Uh, we had to remove, like, the first name. So instead of it saying, "Brittany's here for her appointment," it says, "Your client is here." Right. And boy, did they hate that at first. Um, emails we can do it. We have a BAA inside of the, the app, so as long as you have a BAA with your emails, it'll tell you the name through emails.
But outside of that one small hiccup, uh, for them, uh, where they were like, "Put names on text messages," I was like, "You cannot have text messages sitting in your phone with clients' names on it." Um, outside of that, it's been beautiful. Very, very efficient and nice. Good.
[00:36:03] Whitney Owens: Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, this has been enjoyable, as it was before.
Could you tell people how to get in touch with you if they have questions, wanna follow up, or learn more about the app?
[00:36:12] Brittany Schank: Yeah, that sounds good. Could you put the app link in the notes?
[00:36:16] Whitney Owens: Mm-hmm.
[00:36:17] Brittany Schank: Okay. If people go to solacecodirectory.com, you can click the, um, I'm Here app. It's just a little bit long, uh, to say out loud on the podcast, so I'll leave that there.
Otherwise, on, uh, in, on Instagram, uh, you can find me at, uh, Brittany Shank. Uh, we have a website, solacecounselingfargo.com. Uh, you can find me in any of those places and happy to answer any questions you have. If people have questions about 60/40 split or how to, uh, transition out of that, I'm certainly not an expert, but I'm one lived experience and, uh, happy to talk with people about that as well.
[00:36:48] Whitney Owens: Well, thank you. Well, lived experience is sometimes the best expert.
[00:36:51] Brittany Schank: Yeah. Yeah, I agree.
[00:36:52] Whitney Owens: Well, thank you so much for your time on the show, for sharing about the app and your experience, and, uh, looking forward to airing the show.
[00:36:59] Brittany Schank: Thanks. Thanks so much, Whitney.
[00:37:01] Whitney Owens: The Wise Practice podcast is part of the Site Craft Podcast Network, a collaboration of independent podcasters focused on helping people live more meaningful and productive lives.
To learn more about the other amazing podcasts in the network, head on over to sitecraftnetwork.com. The Wise Practice podcast represents the opinions of Whitney Owens and her guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only, and the content should not be taken as legal advice. If you have legal questions, please consult an attorney.
