WP198 | The 12 KPIs Every Practice Owner Should Track
Watch on YouTube
Are you making business decisions based on actual data, or are you chasing whatever shiny idea feels promising this month?
When your practice has one great month followed by one disappointing month, it can be hard to know what is really working. You might invest more money in marketing, hire another therapist, or make a major change without having the numbers to support that decision.
In this episode, I’m sharing the 12 key performance indicators, or KPIs, that every private practice owner should be tracking. These numbers can help you identify problems earlier, make calculated decisions, understand whether your marketing is paying off, and create more consistent growth in your practice.
We’ll talk about the intake numbers that matter, including new inquiries, conversion rates, and no-show percentages. I’ll also explain how to measure the real value of your Google Ads, what to look for inside Google Search Console and your Google Business Profile, and why revenue alone does not tell the full financial story.
For group practice owners, we’ll also cover payroll, operating expenses, therapist caseloads, client churn, and average length of stay. These metrics are not about judging your team. They are tools that help you start better conversations, improve the client experience, and make thoughtful decisions about the health of your practice.
You do not have to track everything perfectly overnight. Choose one number from this episode and start there. What we consistently measure is much easier to understand, improve, and grow.
Why I Use a Weekly Scorecard
At Water’s Edge Counseling, we use the Entrepreneurial Operating System, also known as EOS. Every week, my leadership team meets for what EOS calls an L10 meeting, and our scorecard is an important part of that meeting.
The scorecard is not there to make anyone feel ashamed or judged. The numbers help us start conversations, identify problems, and make better decisions. If something looks off for one week, that may not mean much. When a number stays off for several weeks, we know it is time to pay attention.
You cannot fix a problem you have not identified. Tracking gives you a clear picture of where your practice was last quarter, where it is now, and whether the changes you are making are actually helping.
Start With Your Intake Numbers
The first group of numbers I want you to track is your intake data. That includes the number of new inquiries, your conversion rate, and your intake no-show percentage.
Your number of new intakes is one of the earliest indicators of practice growth. If inquiries begin dropping, revenue will usually follow. You do not want to wait until your therapists have empty schedules before noticing that your intake numbers have slowed down.
For a full-time therapist seeing around 25 clients per week, I generally want to see about five or six new intakes per month to help that therapist stay full. When a new therapist joins the practice, we also track how quickly their caseload is growing instead of simply hoping that it fills.
An Inquiry Is Not the Same as a New Client
It is not enough to know how many people contacted your practice. You also need to know how many of those people scheduled and became clients.
For a private-pay practice, I would love to see a conversion rate around 50% to 60%. Many practices are closer to 30% to 50%. For insurance-based practices, I want to see that number closer to 70% to 80%.
When your conversion rate is low, more marketing may not be the answer. You may need to improve your intake script, respond more quickly, answer the phone more consistently, or help your team feel more confident handling questions and objections.
You can spend all the money in the world getting people to call, but if your intake process is not converting them, that marketing money is being wasted.
Pay Attention to Intake No-Shows
After someone contacts your practice and schedules an appointment, you need to know whether they actually attend.
I want practices aiming for an intake no-show rate of 10% or less. Getting that number closer to 5% would be excellent. When no-shows begin increasing, look at how easy your scheduling process is, whether clients receive reminders and confirmations, and whether expectations are clearly discussed before the first appointment.
At our practice, therapists reach out to new clients before the first session to introduce themselves. That small point of connection can help the client feel more comfortable and more committed to attending.
Make Sure Your Marketing Is Producing Clients
Practice owners often receive reports showing Google Ads clicks, impressions, and cost-per-click numbers. Those reports can be helpful, but they do not tell you whether the people clicking actually became paying clients.
I want to know how many inquiries came from Google Ads, how many converted, and how many sessions those clients attended. A client who schedules one session may not generate enough revenue to justify what you spent acquiring them. A client who stays for several months has a very different value to the practice.
You also need to consider the expenses connected to serving that client, including therapist payroll, administrative support, and overhead. Your goal is to understand the actual value of each marketing dollar, not just whether an ad received clicks.
Use Google’s Free Data
Google Search Console is one of the most underused free tools available to practice owners. It can show you where your website appears in Google results, which keywords are generating impressions, and whether people are clicking through to your site.
We review this information regularly because it helps us understand whether our SEO efforts are moving in the right direction. You do not have to wonder whether your website is becoming more visible. Google Search Console gives you information you can actually track over time.
Your Google Business Profile also deserves ongoing attention. Do not set it up once and forget about it. Monitor profile views, phone calls, website clicks, and other activity. Keep your information current, add quality photos, and continue posting. Your Google Business Profile plays an important role in local SEO and helps potential clients find your practice.
Revenue Does Not Tell the Whole Story
Revenue is important, but I do not recommend looking at one month in isolation. Private practice can be seasonal, so comparing July to June may not tell you much. I prefer comparing the same month from one year to the next, reviewing year-to-date revenue, and looking for seasonal patterns.
Those comparisons help you prepare for slower seasons, make intentional spending decisions, and separate your emotions from the numbers. Practice owners often see a number and immediately feel anxious or excited. Data helps us pause and look at the bigger story before reacting.
Watch Payroll as Your Practice Grows
Payroll is usually one of the largest expenses in a group practice. Remember that payroll includes more than the wages you pay therapists and staff. It can also include payroll taxes, health insurance, retirement contributions, and other benefits.
Healthy payroll percentages can shift as a practice grows. That is why I recommend using a system such as Profit First and learning what healthy percentages look like for a practice of your size.
When payroll begins increasing faster than revenue, do not ignore it. Look at why it is happening and determine what needs to change. The goal is not to panic every time payroll rises. The goal is to understand whether your spending and revenue are growing in a healthy relationship.
Revenue Can Grow While Profit Shrinks
Operating expenses are another number you need to watch closely. It is possible for your revenue to increase while your profit decreases because your expenses are growing even faster.
Track operating expenses as a percentage of revenue. When that percentage changes, review what happened. You may need to reduce an expense before adding another one, renegotiate a service, or decide whether a particular investment is truly supporting growth.
Every expense should have a purpose. Tracking your operating expenses helps you see whether your money is supporting your priorities or quietly working against them.
Give Therapists Clear Caseload Expectations
Every therapist should know how many clients they are expected to see. Those expectations should be discussed in advance instead of changing from week to week based on how everyone feels.
When a therapist’s numbers drop for one week, that is not automatically a performance issue. When their caseload stays below expectations for three weeks or longer, it is time to check in.
The conversation should not begin with blame. It should begin with curiosity. Is this still the schedule the therapist wants? Are cancellations increasing? Is the intake team sending them enough appropriate referrals? Are clients staying in treatment?
Caseload numbers affect revenue, marketing decisions, scheduling, therapist confidence, and access to care. Tracking them gives you the information you need to support both your team and your practice.
Track Whether Clients Stay in Treatment
Churn measures how many clients leave treatment early. We first look at whether clients reach session four, and then we track retention through session eight.
When clients consistently leave before session four, I do not want practice owners using that number to shame a therapist. I want them asking what could improve. Maybe the therapist-client fit was not right. Maybe expectations about therapy were not explained clearly. Maybe the client did not understand the clinical approach or what the treatment process would look like.
At Water’s Edge Counseling, we talk openly with our team about churn and retention because all of us can improve the way we connect with clients, explain therapy, and encourage follow-through. Clients are more likely to benefit from treatment when they attend consistently.
Average Length of Stay Reflects Care and Business Health
Average length of stay is one of my favorite metrics because it gives us insight into both clinical care and the health of the practice.
When clients remain in therapy long enough to build a relationship, engage in the process, and work toward their goals, they have more opportunity to experience meaningful improvement. I want clients reaching at least eight sessions, and many clients will benefit from working with a therapist for several months or longer.
This is not only about making money. Keeping appropriate clients in treatment is good for the client, good for the therapist, and good for the stability of the practice. Therapists experience less constant turnover, clients receive more consistent care, and the practice can plan more effectively.
Choose One Number and Start There
You do not need to build a complicated dashboard overnight. There are plenty of platforms and CRMs that can help you track these numbers, or you can create a simple spreadsheet of your own.
The most important step is to begin. Choose one number that would give you more clarity about your practice and start tracking it consistently.
Maybe you begin with new inquiries. Maybe you look at your intake conversion rate, therapist caseloads, or operating expenses. Once you can see what is happening, you can make decisions based on reality instead of fear, assumptions, or somebody else’s strategy.
Your numbers are not there to judge you. They are there to help you lead your practice with more wisdom, confidence, and intention.
Show Sponsor Ubuntu Freelancers
What happens when a potential new client calls while you’re in session?
Maybe they leave a voicemail. Maybe they don’t. Either way, there’s a good chance they’ll call another practice.
Every missed enquiry is someone looking for help, and every delayed response is a missed opportunity to grow your practice.
Ubuntu Freelancers specialises in helping therapy practices build dedicated intake and administrative support teams who answer calls, respond to enquiries, schedule appointments and create an exceptional first impression for every client.
Because Ubuntu Freelancer’s focus’s on behavioural health organisations, they understand what great client care looks like from the very first interaction.
Wise Practice listeners receive five complimentary hours of onboarding support with every successful placement.
Simply mention the code WISE when you book your Discovery Call.
Visit www.ubuntufreelancers.com to learn more.
Links and Resources
Free Webinar: 10 Proven Strategies to Grow a Christian Private Practice
[ August 25th ] Registration is required, so be sure to save your spot HERE!
Join the Wise Practice Community(The Wise Practice Community will open for enrollment August 26–28.)
Learn More about Wise Practice Consulting
Connect with Wise Practice on Instagram
Connect with Whitney Owens on Facebook
-
Whitney Owens: What happens when a potential new client calls and you're in session? They might leave a voicemail. Maybe they don't. Either way, there's a good chance they're gonna call another practice. Every missed inquiry is someone looking for help, and every delayed response is a missed opportunity to grow your practice.
[00:00:16] Ubuntu Freelancers specializes in helping therapy practices build dedicated intake and administrative support to answer calls, respond to inquiries, schedule appointments, and create an exceptional first impression for every client. Because Ubuntu Freelancers focuses on behavioral health organizations, they understand the, the unique challenges of caring well for clients and making a good first impression.
[00:00:41] Wise Practice listeners receive five complimentary hours of onboarding support with every successful placement. Simply mention Wise when you book your discovery call at ubuntufreelancers.com
[00:00:56] Hi, I'm Whitney Owens. I'm a group practice owner and faith-based practice
[00:01:00] consultant, and I'm here to tell you that you can have it all. Wanna grow your practice? Wanna grow your faith? Wanna enjoy your life outside of work? You've come to the right place. Each week on the Wise Practice Podcast, I will give you the action steps to have a successful faith-based practice while also having a good time.
[00:01:18] Now let's get started
[00:01:22] Where she grows your practice, she don't play. She does business with a twist of faith. It's Whitney Owens and the Wise Practice Podcast. Whitney Owens and the Wise Practice Podcast
[00:01:40] Before we jump in today's episode, I wanna personally invite you to a free webinar August 25th, The 10 Proven Strategies to Grow a Christian Private Practice. You might be wondering what it's like to really grow your practice. You're questioning where to spend your marketing dollars, not sure where to get referrals.
[00:02:00] Maybe you're trying to figure out, how do I get faith-based referrals, the type of clients I wanna work with? This webinar is for you. So in the webinar, I'm gonna be sharing the strategies that I have used to grow Water's Edge Counseling into a thriving, multi-location, seven-figure, faith-based group practice.
[00:02:18] I'm doing this because I believe in you, and I know that you can get there, and so I'm offering at no cost to you the 10 proven strategies that I have used at Water's Edge Counseling. You are gonna walk away with practical action steps you can implement immediately. Again, this webinar is totally free, and you're gonna walk away being able to do things to help you make money in your business.
[00:02:38] That's a win-win. Make sure you register. You can go to the show notes, or you can head to wisepracticeconsulting.com, check out the events, and you can register there. And if for some reason you can't make it live, you will get a recording afterwards. But for those that make it live, you might have a cool offer at the end.
[00:02:58] So make sure you register 10 Proven Strategies to Grow a Christian Practice on August 25th. Now let's jump into today's episode. So have you ever noticed that you're spinning your wheels and your practice is not going where you want it to go? And I hear this from practice owners all the time. And so then they're like, "Okay, what can I do differently?
[00:03:20] Where should I invest my marketing? I should hire another person, and I should go to a better space." Everything seems like a shiny object that's gonna make everything better, yet you keep doing the things and your practice isn't growing. It's not going anywhere. You have these goals that you've set, and you don't understand why you're not meeting them.
[00:03:42] So maybe you have a good month, then you have a bad month. Things feel inconsistent. And a lot of times we make decisions based on how we're feeling, right? Well, that seems to be a good idea. It feels good in my gut. Maybe I should do it. Or you talk to another practice owner. Well, that worked for me. Maybe it'll-- Maybe, Laura, that worked for them.
[00:04:04] Maybe it'll work for me. So we start moving forward, which is great, I want you to move forward, but we move forward based on what other people are doing or based on what feels good or what we think might be good, and so we're making these decisions honestly without a lot of data to back it up, right? Now, when I ha- I gave you that word data, did anyone feel eek, right?
[00:04:31] Like, "Oh, did she say data?" I hated statistics class in graduate school, right? Because data's not always the most fun. Uh, okay, I'm gonna be honest, I do kinda geek out on data, but most people aren't loving dealing with data. So one of the biggest reasons, though, I can attest to why Water's Edge Counseling is continuing to grow is because I track data, numbers, research, the true stuff.
[00:05:03] I don't always make perfect decisions. In fact, you should expect as a group pract- any kind of practice owner, group or solo, you will make mistakes, and the faster you realize that and move through them, the better. If you don't take risks in your business, you'll never get where you wanna go. You have to take risks.
[00:05:23] You have to make changes. What we wanna do is do calculated risks. We look at our data, and we know how we're gonna move forward in our business That's what this episode is all about. It's about measurements that matter, and what we measure actually produces progress. Like just simply measuring something, you're more attuned to it, you're working on it.
[00:05:52] So we're gonna talk about the 12 KPIs that I wanna make sure you're monitoring in your business. So if you're listening and you're like, "Whitney, I don't know a thing about data. I don't know how to measure anything," it's okay. You're already doing the right thing by listening, so give yourself a pat on the back.
[00:06:11] You won't know what your problems are until you chart, till- till you start tracking. And once you start tracking, you'll have a better understanding of what's going on in your business, and you can actually get to that growth you're looking for. So when I go through these, I will share a little bit about how I track things.
[00:06:28] There's so many different platforms and dashboards out there that you can look into. Um, you can head to my website and get, um, we have a trusted partner section of the website where you can get referrals, discount codes with people that I love referring to, and some of them have CRMs. So those are like customer management relationship platforms.
[00:06:48] There, there are a lot of different ways that we can track things. So I'll mention some of those as we go. But right now, all I need you to agree to is that data matters and that you are willing to look at it. At Water's Edge Counseling, I use EOS, which is Entrepreneur Operating System, which is in the book Traction if you're interested.
[00:07:10] These are for businesses. Really, it's kind of tailored to businesses that are making over a million dollars where you have the infrastructure to put this in place. So we started implementing EOS a little over a year ago, and I have a solid leadership team that helps me. And every single week we do our L10 meetings.
[00:07:27] L10 means level 10. I always thought that was so funny that it was called L10, but it's supposed to be about rating your meeting a 10 out of 10, right? So we want all of our meetings to go well. So it's like a meeting structure for effective meetings, and I'll tell you, it's really effective when you get it down.
[00:07:44] So every week in our L10 meeting, data is part of our meeting. We focus on the numbers, and I'm gonna tell you what those numbers are in this show, but that has made a big difference. We call them scorecards. It's a way to rack up the scores, right? These numbers are not to feel ashamed, right? There's no judgment here.
[00:08:06] These numbers are to create conversations and growth, to create strategy in your business. So when someone on your team or yourself is upfront and honest with where things are, that's when you can have success. You can't expect your practice to grow if you don't know what the problem is, or if you're not able to say, "Here's where I was, you know, last quarter, and here's where I am this quarter."
[00:08:28] So let's go ahead and get started on the 12 KPIs to track in your practice. The first one, I have them kind of in sections here, but the first section is intake You know, I love the intake process, so I do kind of get excited on this section. The intake KPIs are the number of intakes, the conversion rate, and the no-show percentage.
[00:08:52] Let's dive into each of these. You should know quickly what the number of new intakes are in your practice. This shows us if growth is occurring, right? You can put all your time and money into marketing, but if you don't know if people are actually converting to call, it doesn't matter. You can have the best-looking website out there, but if you don't have a good call to action to get people to actually, you know, take action, then you're not actually getting anywhere.
[00:09:23] This is your first indicator, is that you're tracking how many intakes are coming into your practice. If inquiries start to drop, we know that your revenue will drop with it. Um, and you can kind of see where revenue is going based on how many intakes. So if we have a lot, a slew of intakes, we know that three, four weeks from now that should really grow, right?
[00:09:45] You don't wanna wait until your schedule is empty to start tracking these things. You wanna notice it in advance, so that way you can invest in your marketing. Along with new intakes, we specifically track who's getting them, making sure that we understand how to fill our caseloads for therapists. A good rule of thumb, by the way, is if you have a group practice and you have a therapist who's full-time, so that'd be 25 clients or more a week, they should be getting about five to six intakes a month to stay full.
[00:10:14] A lot of group practice owners ask me what I should expect with that, and that's a good indicator. Um, we also have a kind of a way that we fill up caseloads when someone first starts at the practice. So we try to get them five clients their first week, or five to ten, three every week after that. So tracking the number of intakes, we specifically track those per therapist.
[00:10:36] But number one KPI, track your number of intakes. Number two, intake conversion rate. So it doesn't really help you if somebody calls and doesn't actually become a client, right? And not everyone that reaches out-- And when I say call, it could be whatever method you have. That could be, um, calls, contact the website, schedule online, maybe you do consult calls, website inquiries, social media inquiries, all the things, right?
[00:11:03] By, by the way, if you wanna take it to another level, track how people are reaching out to you and the conversion rate on the way they're reaching out to you, okay? But let's not dive too deep yet I want you to track conversion on your inquiries total. So how many inquiries actually became clients?
[00:11:23] Benchmarks for you to use. If you are a private pay practice, I would love for you to be at 50% to 60% conversion rate. Not many practices are. A lot of people sit at 30% to 50%. If you think about it, 30%, that means only three of every 10 people that call convert. Now, you might be thinking, "I'm private pay, Whitney.
[00:11:45] This is normal." It doesn't have to be that way. I have consulted practices for years, and I can help you get to 50. There is a whole script and way to do it. Actually, in fact, I have a course on my website if you're interested, how to build a private pay practice in insurance-based world, and it walks you through a video course and a workbook to go from getting those conversion numbers up and how to talk about insurance.
[00:12:10] So if you're looking for a course on that, head to the website and look at the products that we have on Wise Practice Consulting The conversion rate for an insurance-based practice, I wanna see that at 70 to 80%, okay? So if your numbers are not there, you need to go back and work on your scripts and your conversions.
[00:12:30] That's a whole nother training, but I wanna make sure you're tracking it. So how quickly are the calls being returned? Are people actually answering the phone when the phone rings? Are you handling objections? Is your intake process going smoothly? So many practice owners tell me, "Yeah, I set my practice up with Google Ads."
[00:12:48] And I'm like, "Well, that's great, but if you're not converting people, you're wasting your money on your Google Ads, right?" You can actually make money in your practice just by doing further training, just by creating a call script for your team, so you wanna make sure that you do that. The third KPI is the intake no-show percentage.
[00:13:08] So the person called, you tracked that. They converted, you tracked that, and now did they actually show up for their intake? The average practice no-show rate is 10% or less, and I want you to aim for that. Even if you could get to 5%, that would be excellent. If the numbers start to climb and you see that people are not showing up for their intakes, you need to look at how to fix that.
[00:13:31] Couple things that we do is reminders, confirmations, make the scheduling process as easy as possible. We have the therapists reach out to the clients in advance to introduce themselves, making them more likely to show up, and the expectations are discussed before the first session. We do that usually at the time of scheduling or on the intake call.
[00:13:52] So make sure you're tracking your intake no-show percentages. So for intake, conversion rate... Well, for intake, it's number of inquiries, conversion rate, and no-show percentages. Now let's move to marketing. Google Ads. Did your Google Ads bring in clients? Y'all, you are spending money on your Google Ads. I don't want you to just trust when someone emails you and says, "Hey, here's your cost per click, and here's the percentage, and here's this."
[00:14:17] It is great. It's great to know those things and you can see the growth, but I can't see if these people actually became clients, right? So I could have the best Google Ad statistics, but if I'm not actually getting clients, it doesn't help me. I think this is particularly important for a private pay practice 'cause I have found Google Ads, and another expert could say something else, but I have found that Google Ads are less effective for private pay than insurance-based practices.
[00:14:44] But with the Google Ads, we have a spreadsheet that we track all this, the number of, um, Google Ads that come in for intakes, the number that reach out, the conversion rate, and how many sessions they actually attended, right? 'Cause I wanna see what the financial value is of that client, and you also have to think about everything you spend to have that client, right?
[00:15:04] So I have to pay payroll for the therapist that works with the client, overs- overhead for those things, the admin fees of scheduling the client, all that kind of stuff. So if someone cam- came for one session That's not really helpful, right? The Google Ad is gonna end up being more expensive than the money I make.
[00:15:21] But if someone comes in for two, three months, that's a different story. So you wanna determine the value of the advertising dollar with your Google Ads. Next one, Google Search Console. This is one of the most underutilized free tools available through Google. You can go online and just type in Google Search Console and set up your account.
[00:15:43] It will track with your website. You can watch things like average Google positioning, so that's your position on Google pages. If you're in the top 10, you're on the first page. 11 to ni- 11 to 19 or maybe 20, second page, f- and it continues, right? So you wanna get in that first page of Google when they look for certain keywords for you.
[00:16:04] You can look at the impressions. That's how often you're kinda popping up, you know, what keywords are working, what clicks are happening. And so by using the Google Search Console, you can know if your efforts for marketing and SEO are working or not. Most practice owners just don't even look at it. We look at it every single week to make sure that our website is going where we want it to go.
[00:16:26] Google Business Profile, number six. Most owners are not paying attention. They set it up, and that's it. You've got to monitor it, and you've gotta be posting on it to make it work, but you can check lots of statistics, and we check both of my locations on a regular basis. Profile views, website clicks, phone calls.
[00:16:47] If the numbers aren't changing, it's often an indicator that something else has changed in your marketing. So the Google My Business is gonna help with your local SEO, which is really important for people finding you, and you wanna make sure you optimize your Google My Business, so your, your location, pictures of your building inside and outside, information about your practice, to make sure you're monitoring your Google My Business profile All right, we did intake, we did marketing, and now we're moving on to financials, the financial KPIs in your practice.
[00:17:18] Yes, these are important, and I want you paying attention to them. The first is revenue. The revenue tells the story of your practice. I don't want you to just compare month to month. That can get a little challenging. Oftentimes, I compare revenue last year to this year, right? Because private practice is up and down.
[00:17:38] What I get in July is very different than what happens in October or November, right? So I like to look at July last year and this year, and then I like to look at October last year and this year. So it's looking for those trends. I like to look at the year to date and where we're going and those seasonal trends.
[00:17:57] This helps us make action and identify patterns. It helps us prepare for the year and what we need to save for and what we need to be prepared for, and it looks-- makes it less of an emotional decision. A lot of times, practice owners, we see a number, and we feel an emotion. Let go of the emotion as much as you can and let your decisions be data-based.
[00:18:16] So the first KPI is revenue. The next one, if you are a group practice owner and, and even for solo practice owners, payroll, because you might be having payroll as a solo practice owner as well. Payroll is almost always your biggest expense. It's one of the numbers that you need to pay super close attention to.
[00:18:36] And when we talk about payroll, we're not just talking about, you know, the hourly rate that we pay. Payroll is more than that. Payroll is your tax, payroll tax. It can be your health insurance, retirement matching if you have other benefits rolled into your payroll. And this is something that I really like about the Profit First model is Profit First is a method for helping us understand how to track our money, and it teaches that healthy payroll percentages shift depending on the size of your practice.
[00:19:05] So instead of saying it's always gonna be, you know, forty-five percent, I know that the larger your practice, your payroll percent actually increases rather than decreases. So as your practice is growing, payroll is more and more important to watch because more and more money are going into it. Um, and so you need to make sure that you're paying attention to that.
[00:19:27] When payroll begins to increase faster than your revenue or the percentage is too high, it's time to ask yourself why and figure out what changes you need to make. I really recommend the book Profit First for Therapists by Julie Ayers from Green Oaks Accounting, 'cause it will be specific to practice owners, and it goes through what payroll percentages you should have based on your size.
[00:19:49] So I have always used it. I use the Profit First method and I can't recommend it more. Okay, number nine, operating expenses, your OPEX. Again, OPEX has to- it, it's with Profit First, your operating account. But revenue can grow while profits are shrinking and you're thinking, "What happened?" That's why you need to watch your operating expenses.
[00:20:11] Your operating expenses should be a percentage, right? And the larger your practice, the smaller the percentage it would be. And so that's a good number to look at in that book. I'm not gonna go through all the numbers here and the percentages there, but you wanna make sure that your operating expenses stay in a certain percentage of your revenue.
[00:20:29] And if that changes, that's a good indicator that you need to go and look at, okay, what happened here? What, what was the issue? Or maybe you need to get rid of an expense to be able to bring on an expense, something like that. Make sure that your spending is supporting your growth. Okay, now we're gonna move into the next section of KPIs, which are therapist KPIs.
[00:20:49] So you can do this for yourself if you're a solo owner, um, you can do it for your group practice if you're a group practice owner. Every therapist should have a number of clients they're expected to see, right? So when I hire someone, I say, "Hey, full-time, 25 clients a week," or, "Hey, if you wanna do 20 a week," that's...
[00:21:07] We, we discuss that in advance. It's not just a feeling and they just decide when they, "Oh, this week I'm gonna see this many and this many and this many." Like, they're expected to hit a certain number. We want to track that and see what's going on. It's not always a performance issue, but if we track something over time, then we're concerned, right?
[00:21:28] One thing that we look for is when a number is off for at least three weeks in a row, that's reason for concern. So if one of our therapists is expected to see 25 clients a week, and they drop to 18 or 20 for three weeks in a row, we check in on them. And it's not to wave a finger. It's to say, "Is this what you want?
[00:21:45] Like, you have told us you want to be full-time and you wanna see 25 clients a week. So if you don't want that, we can have that discussion about that." It really impacts everything. It impacts your revenue, the marketing, how to schedule clients, getting people in that need help, the confidence of the therapist, cancellations.
[00:22:04] So make sure that you're looking at the number of clients each therapist has, and that's their scorecard metric. The next is churn rate. Churn is the ability to keep clients. So when we churn them, they move out. So we want our churn to be low. A good rule of thumb is 30 to 40%. That means therapists are only losing 30 to 40% of their clients by session four We try to get them all the way to session eight, but we track churn first, which is getting to session four, and retention is the ability to keep a client.
[00:22:41] We track that to session eight. But right now we're just gonna focus on churn. So if we see that clients are consistently not making it to session four, again, it's not to wag a finger at a therapist, it's to say, "Hey, we are noticing this trend. Let's work together to improve it," because we know that clients get better when they show up for therapy, right?
[00:23:03] So you wanna make sure you're tracking that. You wanna set that expectation. We do it in the interview. We talk to the therapist about how we track this in the interview because we want clients to have a good experience. We wanna also pay attention to the therapist fit, make sure in the intake process we're discussing that, you know, therapy's not a one-and-done thing.
[00:23:21] We're explaining clinical approaches in the first sessions. While we're doing that, we're assessing therapeutic fit with clients and creating homework and follow-up. In fact, at our practice, we do a whole presentation on churn with our cl- with our team, and we do it every single year, so, 'cause we can all make improvements in how we work with clients and keep clients.
[00:23:42] It matters, 'cause that's how clients get better. All right, and last but not least, number 12, the average length of stay. This is the stay for a client in your practice. It's one of my favorite metrics 'cause it reflects the clinical care that we are providing and also the health of the business. When clients are staying longer in sessions, coming for more sessions, we know that they have had a meaningful experience and gotten better in therapy.
[00:24:09] Research shows that most clients don't get better in less than four sessions, right? We really wanna get them to eight. Really, I, I think three to, three to four months is, like, the ideal amount of time where a client came in, they connected, and they had improvement. Of course, we have a lot of our clients that come for years and continue to have improvement.
[00:24:30] So you wanna track that average length of stay in your practice and work with your team to understand why long-term therapy is helpful and good for the stability of your practice, and really emphasizing that this isn't just about the money. Even though money is important, and that's how we run this business, that's how we all have jobs, but being able to keep clients in treatment is a win for the client, for the therapist, who doesn't have so much turnover and work they have to do, but also for the practice Now, I've given you a lot of different things to track in your practice.
[00:25:04] These are the most important ones that I would consider. There are lots of softwares to do this. You, in fact, could create your own dashboard if you wanted to and track all these things. Um, I know that TheraSaaS, uh, also has some really great ways to track these things in your practice, and I've used that dashboard before.
[00:25:24] Um, and then another one that I really like is called Ninety. Yes, the number ninety, and that's what I use in my practice. It does go along with EOS, and you can kinda create your own structure for tracking your data on there. There's a lot of great CRMs. TherapyFlow has one. Productive Therapist has one. I, I could go on and on about all the different ways and dashboards, but they are out there.
[00:25:52] So make sure that you find a way to track and that you start tracking. We talk about this in the membership community consistently. In fact, I have forms that people can use to track their intake data and look at it. So if that is something that you're interested in, joining the membership community, we will be opening that up at the end of August, and you would have access to tracking all these things and so much more.
[00:26:17] So I want you to take this episode and think of one thing, j- even if it's just one, that you're gonna start tracking in your practice, or maybe it's that you decide that you wanna be a part of the Wise Practice community because that is where we talk about this stuff on a regular basis and we help each other grow and there's accountability there and you can meet with other practice owners and say, "How are you tracking these things?
[00:26:40] What are you using for that?" Knowing what to track is not just the hardest part, it's having that consistency and accountability to do it, and that is why Wise Practice community exists. So in the community, we have weekly consulting, practical trainings, trainings that you can watch on your own time based on your phase of practice, course catalogs.
[00:27:00] You have accountability groups with practice owners in your phase of practice around the country. We are opening the doors August 26th through the 28th. We only open it two to three times a year because I want you to come in together as a cohort and get to know one another, and I will be involved in your growth process.
[00:27:19] I show up almost every single week in the community and hang out with you guys, teach you guys, and we all talk and grow together. But if you're listening and you're like, "I don't know about all this community stuff. I've heard you say that, Whitney, but I'm just not sure," join me for the free webinar. It gives you a taste of what it's like to get the trainings that are in the community.
[00:27:40] So remember, that free webinar, August 25th, the 10 Proven Strategies to Grow Your Christian Practice. It's a great way to gain the strategy and experience what Wise Practice is all about. Thank you for being a part of the show. I love spending time with you, and I look forward to continuing on this series in your private practice
[00:28:03] So click on follow and leave a review and keep on loving this work we do with Whitney Owens and the Wise Practice Podcast. Whitney Owens and the Wise Practice Podcast
[00:28:21] Special thanks to Marty Altman for the music in this podcast. The Wise Practice Podcast is part of the SiteCraft 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.
[00:28:42] 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.
