Adding a Scalable Offer to Your Practice
In this session of the Elevate Your Practice Summit, I had the pleasure of speaking with Mia Poklepovich, a mental health occupational therapist and founder of The Freedom Therapist Club. Mia shared her inspiring journey, from running her practice in remote Australia to building a thriving business focused on freedom and sustainability. We explored how therapists can incorporate scalable offers, like group programs and digital resources, to grow their practices while avoiding burnout. Mia emphasized the importance of aligning services with what lights you up, ensuring clients feel supported during transitions, and using mindset work to overcome doubts about scaling. She also reminded us that it’s okay—and even vital—for therapists to prioritize financial sustainability, so they can give back and create meaningful impact. If you’ve been feeling stuck in one-to-one work, Mia’s insights will empower you to think creatively and build a practice that serves both you and your clients.
Key Takeaways
Scalable offers allow therapists to grow their practices beyond one-to-one services while creating more time and energy freedom.
Burnout is common among therapists, but sustainable models can help avoid it and lead to longer, more impactful careers.
Start building scalable offers by identifying what already works well and aligns with your strengths and passions.
Group programs can provide greater accountability, community, and support for clients compared to self-paced courses.
Honest conversations about limitations and informed consent are essential when transitioning clients to new service models.
Feedback from clients is invaluable for improving scalable programs and ensuring they meet client needs effectively.
Mindset practices, like reframing limiting beliefs and defining your “why,” are critical for navigating fears around scaling.
Financial sustainability empowers therapists to give back and create a greater impact, making it ethical to charge appropriately.
The Freedom Therapist Club offers support and resources for therapists ready to scale with purpose and alignment.
Meet the Speaker: Mia Poklepovich
Mia is a mental health occupational therapist, entrepreneur, and the founder of The Freedom Therapist Club—a high-level program designed to help therapists create scalable, purposeful, and profitable businesses without burnout. With over a decade of experience in the therapy world, including several years running her own practice- OT Inspire in the remote Australian Outback in the Northern Territory, Mia knows firsthand the challenges therapists face—from juggling growing waitlists to navigating burnout.
After rebuilding her own business to prioritise freedom, sustainability, and alignment, Mia now teaches therapists how to scale their offers, diversify income, and build businesses that thrive- and love them a little extra too. The Freedom Therapist Club focuses on blending practical strategies with mindset shifts, helping therapists embrace time and financial freedom while delivering high-impact, high quality purposeful services to their clients.
Mia is passionate about empowering women in business to overcome fear, embrace growth, and redefine success on their own terms. Her insights blend real-world expertise with heart-led guidance, offering therapists the tools and confidence to expand their practices with ease. As a mentor, speaker, and therapist herself, Mia’s work is rooted in the belief that you can’t expand your business without expanding yourself.
Transcript
Timestamps
[00:02:14] Mia’s background: building her practice in remote Australia and overcoming burnout
[00:05:01] Recognizing burnout in therapists and the need for sustainable business models
[00:09:06] What is a scalable offer, and why it’s critical for practice growth
[00:11:20] Identifying scalable offers by starting with what you’re already doing well
[00:13:40] Aligning your offers with what lights you up for better outcomes
[00:15:21] Exploring group programs and balancing scalability with personalized care
[00:20:00] Supporting clients through the transition to group programs or scalable offers
[00:26:41] Mindset practices to overcome fear and self-doubt when scaling up
[00:31:24] Addressing ethical concerns about making money as a therapist
[00:35:20] Details about The Freedom Therapist Club and free resources for scaling services
Full Transcript
[00:00:00] Samantha Mabe: You are listening to the next session of the Elevate Your Practice Summit. Make sure to listen along and then go to the Elevate Your practice.co website to follow up with the speakers and get access to the amazing resources they have shared. And don't forget, you can save 30% on your first three months of Practice Better at practicebetter.io, and use the discount code LATS 30. I hope you enjoy this session.
[00:00:30] Mhm.
Introduction to Mia Poklepovich
[00:00:37] Samantha Mabe: In this session of the Elevate Your Practice Summit, I'm talking with Mia Poklepovich about adding group programs to your practice. Mia is a mental health occupational therapist, entrepreneur, and the founder of The Freedom Therapist Club, a high level program designed to help therapists create scalable, purposeful, and profitable businesses without burnout.
[00:00:57] With over a decade of experience in the therapy world, including several years running her own practice, OT Inspire, in the remote Australian Outback in the Northern Territory, mia knows first hand the challenges therapists face, from juggling growing waitlists to navigating burnout. After rebuilding her own business to prioritize freedom, sustainability, and alignment, Mia now teaches therapists how to scale their offers, diversify income, and build businesses that thrive and love them a little extra too.
[00:01:24] The Freedom Therapist Club focuses on blending practical strategies with mindset shifts, helping therapists embrace time and financial freedom while delivering high impact, high quality, purposeful services to their clients. Mia is passionate about empowering women in business to overcome fear, embrace growth, and redefine success on their own terms. Her insights blend real world experience with heart led guidance, offering therapists the tools and confidence to expand their practices with ease. As a mentor, speaker, and therapist herself, Mia's work is rooted in the belief that you can't expand your business without expanding yourself.
[00:01:57] You can connect with her on her website, the freedom therapist.com dot au or on Instagram at mia. Poco and OT inspire therapy.
[00:02:08] Thank you so much for joining me, Mia.
[00:02:10] Mia Poklepovich: It's so lovely to be here, Samantha. Thank you for having me.
Mia's Journey in Occupational Therapy
[00:02:14] Samantha Mabe: Can you tell us a little bit more about your journey to working with therapists and also having a practice and how you got to what you do?
[00:02:25] Mia Poklepovich: Thank you. Beautiful question. It is a very long answer. I'm just prepping everybody.
[00:02:29] When I graduated high school, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do. Long short version is, Studied a few things and ended up doing a degree in exercise and sports science. And while I was in that one, I was like, Oh, I really liked the way the human body works, but I also loved the holistic ,connection the mind, the body and all of the parts working together. And then I ended up finishing that degree as a bit of an overqualified personal trainer back then and I ended up doing my master's in OT.
[00:02:55] When I became an occupational therapist, I loved the work so very much. And I worked for a few different organizations, cut my threads in different practices and working for others.
Challenges and Burnout in Remote Practice
[00:03:08] Mia Poklepovich: And I moved to the Northern Territory, which is in Australia in the top end region of Darwin. So it's right at the very top of Australia where it is very hot. There was a lot of crocodiles, a lot of snakes. It's very much Outback Australia vibes. But it is a city and I was working out there and I was supporting other people to set up their practices, realized, I feel like I could do this myself.
[00:03:33] And as we all do, we're a bit younger and a bit naive thought that's it, I'm going to go and set up my own practice. And I did, and I learned a lot along the way. It was a huge learning curve. We were very profitable. We did quite well within the first few years, but that came at a big cost to myself, as the story goes for a lot of practice owners in this space.
[00:03:56] I then had a few different locations of the practice. So we had a Darwin location, the top end, we had a Catherine location for a little bit. I ended up moving down to Alice Springs where, if people don't know he's right in the middle of the middle of Australia, there isn't much there. There is a lot of kangaroos that hop in your backyard. I ended up running my practice down there, completing clinical outreach.
[00:04:18] I was getting bombarded with requests for supervision. I was loving supporting other OTs, but I was working in the middle of the outback. I was doing remote outreach to Australian indigenous communities throughout the Northern Territory. I had a beautiful team but I was also experiencing a lot of my own challenges too.
[00:04:36] And what I was seeing on the ground was that people were coming in full of energy, full of beans, full of amazing ideas. And then within six months, They would be burning out, staying a little bit longer, burning out twice over. And I was just seeing all these incredible human beings coming into service these regions and not being able to sustain that service.
Rebuilding for Freedom and Sustainability
[00:05:01] Mia Poklepovich: And I felt like it honestly didn't matter who you were, what background you were coming from, whether you had a big company behind you, whether you had a lot of money, whether you didn't, whether you're a sole practitioner, nobody was protected from that. Burnout was so surreal.
[00:05:14] I'm not sure how familiar you are with working with remote indigenous communities in Australia, Sam, but the work can be really traumatic and it's very isolating. And sometimes these places that we were visiting, we'd have to drive for 14 hours or we'd fly like a very small charter plane. So you're going out to regions where there is significant challenges in housing, significant challenges in health and conditions, and it was awful seeing so many people come out with big dreams and wanting to make such a difference and then running themselves ragged.
[00:05:47] Eventually I was like, that's it. We need to have some sort of support here. And I know that when I started my practice, I couldn't find what I wanted. There was a few crucial components. There was having your people that you could trust, that you could talk to, who really got it. There was having that knowledge of people who'd done and tried things before you. And there was also having that space to debrief, to reflect, and to be able to grow.
[00:06:12] The only vision that I had ever seen of a practice was that you grew your clinic locations. You grew your teams, you grew your space, which is what I did. So I had all the boxes ticked, but I was incredibly miserable and incredibly burnt out. And that was when I realized I had to make some changes. So I it was so much better. And it is still to this day, it blows my mind how different it is now. And that's when I was like, I need to put this out into the world because we're seeing too much burnout in the space.
[00:06:43] Samantha Mabe: Yeah. And it's so hard when you're starting your own business, you can only follow what you've seen people do. And that's where it's so important to think about other ways to build a business, not only for you, but I think it also helps our clients as well when we think outside the box, to really think what is going to serve everybody best, even if it's not what they're used to seeing.
[00:07:11] Mia Poklepovich: Exactly. And I think that is exactly bang on the money because we were working in these spaces like it can cost thousands of dollars to travel somewhere. It's not a sustainable care plan, and we're working with a lot of people who don't have access to a screen, who don't have access to a phone, have very limited resources. We were like, okay, we need to be able to do things differently as a practice.
[00:07:35] And I remember, we would schedule out visits. And I was like, this is what I want the wraparound model to look like. And we would go through it as a team and work on that at OT Inspire. And We sat with this and I've seen it come that full circle now because there are those barriers people say, Oh, people won't be interested in that or they won't be able to do that or everybody just wants like regular therapy. And that's the thing. We were seeing therapists come into these beautiful regions with very tight knit communities, flying in for a day and then flying out again and doing that regularly. But there wasn't big progress being made.
[00:08:09] Whereas when we actually looked after ourselves, when we made sure that the clinical care was wrap around and looking after the people that we were serving, everyone was benefiting. We've run this model now for a couple of years and the progress and the outcomes that we have seen in people's care in some of the most remote places in Australia, I just think speaks volumes because that is somewhere where everybody was like, it's never going to work. And now I just jumped off of whole pile of telehealth today from people in remote indigenous communities that are so far away.
[00:08:42] And that's the thing when you're forced to think outside the box, you have to as well.
[00:08:47] Samantha Mabe: Yeah.
The Concept of Scalable Offers
[00:08:48] Samantha Mabe: And today we're going to talk about growing your practice with a scalable offer and thinking a little bit differently about that. So can you start by explaining to people what you think a scalable offer is? And then maybe some of the misconceptions that people have around them.
[00:09:06] Mia Poklepovich: Yeah, absolutely. A scalable offer in your practice is something that can grow and expand without relying on you one to one. And when I started my practice, the only way to make an income was to see your clients face to face and to run that one to one, trading that time for money, and that was it. That was the only options. That was all I knew. And like we were saying, the option for growth was you grow your clinic, you grew your locations, you grew your staff. And what came with that was more stress, more burnout and very small profit.
[00:09:41] And so a lot of us are running on these models and we're feeling really dysregulated, really burnt out, but we've actually got these models that are really set up not to perform well. And unless you are performing in that really high level, those profit margins are very small. And what actually comes out as well is that as the director, as the founder, you are becoming more and more. So this is a great one. You might be making more money, but you're having less and less time as well.
[00:10:07] So when we're speaking to a scalable offer in your practice, it is something that can scale and grow beyond your time and doesn't rely on you being on 24 seven, being in there. It is something that can grow beyond your time capacity. So it's things like a digital product. Having a series of webinars or facilitating like a community membership. There's so many options in the space, which is so incredible.
[00:10:32] But I think the biggest misconception there is that A scalable offer isn't a good service. And I think everybody thinks that as soon as you're running a scalable offer in your practice, you are sitting on a beach drinking margaritas. Don't get me wrong, I love to do that, but I also love what I do and I love being an occupational therapist. I love working with therapists and it is something that lights me up. Like I love the work so much that it was something that I didn't want to stop doing either. And a scalable offer in your practice when done well is a purposeful offer, it's meaningful, and it is really effective as well. And so it is something that is supporting your clients just as much as it is supporting you. And when done well, it's not a lesser amount of care either.
[00:11:17] Samantha Mabe: If somebody's thinking, okay, I am booked with one to one.
Creating Effective Scalable Offers
[00:11:20] Samantha Mabe: I need more space, I need more time and I want to be able to serve people, how do we start figuring out what we should offer? What we should scale in our practice that is going to still serve our people?
[00:11:39] Mia Poklepovich: I think the best place to start is to think about what you're already doing. We can get tripped up as therapists because we think that person's already doing it, right? Like they've already done it. I've missed my moment there. And I hear that all the time when I work with therapists in The Freedom Therapist Club, but the thing is, we all studied essentially the same degree. We're all running practices side by side. Everybody is still fully booked.
[00:12:02] So I think the first thing to speak to is that you haven't missed your moment if somebody else is already delivering it, it is no different to having a face to face practice as well. If anything, there is more room for expansion and growth because you have more capabilities to reach more people, which is the most beautiful part. But I always say, start with what you are already doing well.
[00:12:22] Usually I see a lot of therapists when they have reached the burnout phase or they've been out of the other burnout phase. So I'm like no, no guys, let's start this is a bit earlier. So if we're thinking about this earlier, like you're 10 steps ahead here, but the best time to think about it is before you get to that stage, before you're fully booked, when you still have a little bit of capacity. If you're doing it in the early stages of your practice, you are going to be so far ahead. But that's also not to say that if you're doing it later, you've missed your mark either, because that is where I work with so many therapists. And it's just about creating that space and time.
[00:12:53] So we look at what you're already doing really well at what's already serving your clients. And that is where we start because if you're already doing something amazing, if you've already got clients who are really benefiting from that service, that is usually our key indicator that could be something that could be scaled.
[00:13:09] The other part that I really look to that isn't the strategic, scientific part is what actually lights you up in your business? I come back to that time and time again, because you are going to have to talk about this thing. You're going to have to plan on this thing. You're actually going to get obsessed with it to the point where you're like, I don't want to think about it. I don't want to talk about it anymore. And then you're going to put it out into the world and everyone's going to love it and you're going to become obsessed by it all over again. It has to be something that you love because if it's not, the fire's not there and the energy and the heart and soul behind it isn't either.
[00:13:40] Samantha Mabe: I think that's always key, especially when you are in a field where you could work with so many different populations, you could offer so many different things, is finding the thing you really love, because It's going to light you up. It's going to give you energy and you're going to be able to show up better for your clients.
[00:14:01] When my son goes to OT, he has therapists that love working with kids, but if he had somebody who didn't love kids, it would not be as effective for him. It wouldn't be useful for them. So finding that population and the way you like to work with people is so key.
[00:14:20] Mia Poklepovich: It's so key. And the magic and the power is that you're you and the way that you practice and the way that you show up in your business is why clients come back to you time and time again. It's such a privilege to work as a therapist, such a privilege to work with clients, such a privilege to work with families. Too often, when we do fall into that burnout cycle, we tend to forget that, and it becomes really that repetitive, urgent, reactive care model.
[00:14:46] We're always talking about strengths based models with our clients. It's exactly the same for us. when we are leaning into our strengths, when we're leaning into what really lights up to work and practice in, obviously within all of your clinical regulations, then you are going to create an amazing service and that is just going to be so much easier to message to market, to strategize and to do all of those things because that true passion is there as well.
Delivering Group Programs
[00:15:10] Samantha Mabe: You mentioned a couple earlier, but what are some of the options for delivering a group offer? And how do we decide on which one is going to work best for us in our practice?
[00:15:21] Mia Poklepovich: It's a really personal thing. At the end of the day, it is how you like to show up and work with clients. If you don't like working in groups, then you're going to want to find something that has containers that are a bit smaller. When you are looking at a scalable offer, a lot of people tend to think, okay, I'm going to develop this resource and I'm going to get that out into the world and that's going to create me some passive income. However, we put so much time into these resources, we end up selling them for a much smaller amount and so it's very hard to make that return back as well.
[00:15:52] So when we look at scalable offers in the Freedom Therapist, we're really comparing like, what is the investment of my time? What is the investment of my clinical expertise? And what is that return on the investment too, not only for us as therapists, but also for our clients? And so what are they getting out of this program as well?
[00:16:09] When we talk about what kind of program is going to be best, we have this discussion, pretty much on the weekly when we're going through with members, especially in our first few welcome rounds. But I'm always saying to them, if you could provide this service that you love in your dream way, what would that look like? If you had no limitations whatsoever?
[00:16:27] We've just created one recently and it's a parent based service. And the therapist was like, I want this to have a daily chat where they can connect with other parents. I want this to have a face to face component because I live in a small community, and that's really important to where I live it to my values. And then I want this to have an online meet up for those days when we're not feeling like we're having that in person thing, and then there's going to be a certain amount of course and curriculum content in there, too, that people can lean on.
[00:16:55] It's really about saying How can this be done better? How can I keep doing this better? How can I show up better? How can I serve my clients better? Because when we come from that place the technicalities just tend to fall into place because we're like, okay, I want to have that available for them. So that's going to look like through that. All right. I like that human connection. So that's going to come in through that.
[00:17:18] And when we come back to something scalable, I'm coming back to what element of community could support this too? Because, yes, we can have a lot of people coming into our offer. Sure, you can put a course up and you can say, join my self based course, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's going to be amazing. However, how are you making sure that you're seeing the progress that your clients are making? How are you making sure that you're making those adjustments as needed? How are you showing up on that really deep connection level? Now, when we start to do all of those, it's obviously going to have a lot more personal touch points, have a lot more value, have a lot more progress outcomes there as well.
[00:17:51] And so it's going to be an incredibly profitable offer as well. And I speak to that because I think it's really important. Not to just say we're going to create a higher value offer because it's going to make us more money, but we're actually going to create something that is amazing, that is going to make such a big impact. And yes, it is going to make us money because it is okay to make money as a therapist and it is okay to make good money and great money as a therapist too.
[00:18:17] Samantha Mabe: I love the point of having the community. I think at least In what I have seen, and this might be different for people who don't spend all day online, there have been so many online courses that are self paced that people will purchase and then they will never follow through on them and they will not get the outcome.
[00:18:38] But when you can add in that community, that's really what people want. They want to be accountable. They want to ask questions. They want that one on one and This is just delivering it in a way where you don't have to be available all the time. And we can learn from each other as well, which is so valuable when you can build the community with other people.
[00:18:59] Mia Poklepovich: It is so valuable and I know when we've run group parenting programs through my practice, OT Inspire, and then through The Freedom Therapist Club, we have a group for therapists. And when I will sometimes run a discovery call and someone will ask me about one to one and I'm really honest and I'm like, yes, we could book in for one to one, but I know that this is going to give you so much more. And That's why, because there is that accountability level. We all purchase things because we want to create some sort of change, but change is so hard, whether we're therapists, whether we're families, whether we're clients it's really hard to do. And so having that community element is so important.
[00:19:39] And I think having that personal touch point, having that connection, that's our duty of care right there as well. It's showing up for our clients, it's having that deep personalization, but it's also creating a program that is going to work. And when you're working with a scalable offer, you need something that's going to work because it needs to have that backing behind it too.
Supporting Clients During Transition
[00:20:00] Samantha Mabe: Are there other ways that we can make sure that our clients feel really supported as we transition from mostly one on one services to a more scalable offer?
[00:20:11] Mia Poklepovich: Yes. There's so many ways. And I think it's about having those really honest, tough conversations. So when we are transitioning to scalable offers, I work with a lot of therapists who are working in remote Australia as well, it can be really different. It's like out in the country, there's not a lot of screens. There can be that apprehension to a different model, to learning online, to using technology.
[00:20:36] I encourage therapists to have those conversations really openly, really honestly, and take it on because what somebody is telling you about their limitations, their barriers and their challenges is going to tell us so much more than them saying, Oh, yeah, that looks great. Because it is going to mean that in our marketing, we can speak to those, not in a way to be manipulative, not in the way to cover it over or pretend it's not there, but we can say, okay, this is the limitation that we've acknowledged where either, how do we do this better to make this program better and to make this offer better, or how do we make sure that it's addressed?
[00:21:13] When you are creating something that is in the online space, it's like the wild west out there at the moment. There is so many people, everyone's got something to sell, which is amazing, but it's also very saturated market and it can lead to a lot of challenges, some distrust, which is so credibly fair. And I think when you are speaking to those limitations and you are looking at them from a place of acknowledgement. All right, we can either do this better or we can speak really honestly to it and say, yeah, it is a limitation. You won't get that in one to one. Often it just changes the way that people are going to view it because we only are really afraid of what we don't know.
[00:21:51] And I just had one of our therapists who created this incredible, beautiful, scalable group offer. She'd done it a different way. She was living in a country town and it was something that she was quite apprehensive about putting out there. And we did a lot of this work. We went really deep on saying, okay, what are the barriers? What are like my perceived barriers? What am I worried about seeing as a therapist versus what are things that I think I'm going to see versus what have people told me?
[00:22:16] And the other thing we did is we got consistent feedback from the start to the middle to the end. And people love to give you feedback. As long as you're not making it really overwhelming and really tedious, nine times out of ten people are so happy to give that feedback. So if we're constantly showing up and asking from a place of hey, we really want to make this better. It actually just causes so much change and impact in that program.
[00:22:39] And in long shot, we got a feedback from her first initial block and she sent it into our group chat this morning and she was just like, it was the most beautiful feedback she's ever received. But it is because we did all of those things, we sat with all the barriers. We kept asking how we can do this better. We kept asking if there was better ways to be doing things. So it's really about staying really curious, being really open, and asking those curiosity questions with your clients as well.
[00:23:07] Samantha Mabe: When you're in a health and wellness field, it can feel a little bit unethical to do a group program because you don't know if somebody is going to get the results. But when you're digging in, you're saying these are the barriers. We either need to address them or we need to be very honest about them so that the right people get in there. We're doing that piece in our research up front so that we can tell people this is a good fit for you, or I actually don't think this is going to work.
[00:23:37] And I also love the feedback piece. How do you recommend like measuring progress and feedback from people when you're not seeing them maybe in your office every week To see the actual progress being made and they're having to self report.
[00:23:53] Mia Poklepovich: Yeah, absolutely. I think I'm just circling back as well. I think like addressing all those limitations, like it's informed consent. It's like we're giving people the knowledge to make that informed consent about the program, knowing, whether it is that right fit. And that is so key as well, because it's what we do in our practice face to face and the online space shouldn't be any different there either. So I really loved that we touched back on that.
[00:24:19] But when we're talking about feedback, there is so many things that we could do. Now, I think the big thing came when I was working out remote, we couldn't travel four hours on a tiny two seated charter plane just to check on someone's progress. We had to really find some other options. And so video is an amazing technique that you can really implement into your practice and you can use as long as you've got everybody's informed consent around that, you're following all your privacy and confidentiality guidelines. But video can be such a big tool in your business to really see where people are at, where our progress is actually sitting and do those clinical observations.
[00:24:54] The other way that we get feedback is through our qualitative feedback. So through sending out those feedback forms, through making sure that we know that people learn and communicate in different ways, having ways that it may be online that they can check boxes, having some that are maybe more, you show up for a quick video call and do that interview with somebody in the practice.
[00:25:13] There's so many different ways. And I think it's really about acknowledging how people like to learn, acknowledging that there's differences and also really figuring out, okay, if I want to see observations and progress on something, I need to find a way to do that.
[00:25:27] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, I love that. And getting the informed consent, meeting people where they're at. I think that's so key. That's something that has been missing in a lot of online spaces. And that makes people who are very conscious about that in their practice and in the work they do hesitant because they haven't seen it done well. But there are ways to do it. It just takes time, being thoughtful, getting feedback from other people to say, what works for you?
[00:25:56] Mia Poklepovich: I think it's so key. And I think sometimes we're so scared of doing things wrong that it stops us from doing things at all. And in the therapist space, I see that so often. I think we've come a long way than what we were, a few years ago, but I still see So many of us being, Oh, I don't know if I have enough knowledge. I'm going to go do that extra study to be able to inform that course. Or I don't know if I have the technology around me to do that. And those things really stop us, but it is, it's just the same services that you're providing on the ground that you're doing the most amazing job at doing, but you are just acknowledging, it's the same as if you were providing remote outreach. We can only visit this many times a year. It is an option. You can choose this service. You can choose another service. That's okay as well.
Mindset Practices for Scaling Up
[00:26:41] Samantha Mabe: So if somebody is feeling fear or doubt around scaling up, what mindset practice would you recommend that they do?
[00:26:51] Mia Poklepovich: Oh, so many. Oh my gosh. My favorite thing ever. I think the biggest thing that comes from therapists is, Being hesitant is that self doubt. It is that imposter syndrome. It is that confidence around am I going to get in trouble for going online and for putting things online? Am I unethical? Am I a bad therapist?
[00:27:09] At the end of the day, we've had a lot of stories in this space. I know that, sometimes there is a lot of talk that If you're charging these prices, do you really care about your job? And it's actually, yes, I do. And I really also care about my family that I need to support and everybody else. And also with the profits that we make, we are able to provide a lot of other services, which are probably not for profit. I really see that money thing as being such an energy thing, like when you are getting more in, you're able to serve more, you're able to do more amazing things. But I do think that it all comes down to that mindset practice and to some of those limiting beliefs.
[00:27:42] It's really coming back down to ground and there is no fancy ways of doing it, but it is, again, what we say to all of our clients, we need to rewire our brain. And I can hand on my heart say that even when I've been creating online programs and I've been doing it for a little while now, there are still times when I'm like Oh, and then you catch yourself in that old thought pattern and it's just about checking yourself and going, is that actually serving me? Is that something I've heard from my clients or is that something that I've created as a bit of a story here.
[00:28:15] And so we do a lot of this unpacking in The Freedom Therapist Club because it can really limit us. And so one of the exercises that we do in our welcome module is we come back and we define what freedom is to us and what freedom looks like in our practice. And they become our values that we underpin our practice to. We then also talk about our why and our why in this space, though it seems like such a simple thing, we all have one, it's all individualized. And when you are coming back to that time and time again, you are operating from such a different place.
[00:28:49] Yes, we need a business strategy. Yes, we need to have a good marketing strategy. Yes, we need all of those things, which is why we do all things, but we need to come from that place that lights you up and that place that is your purpose. And when you are coming from that, you're showing up as a completely different therapist.
[00:29:04] Now, there's definitely going to be times where it's going to be sticky. And one of my favorite things is to go through, write down all those limiting beliefs, reframe them, write them down into another story. What's serving me? Let go of what's not, and just really stick them up somewhere where you're going to see them.
[00:29:20] Another thing that we also recommend that I love to do is doing a purpose map. So who are you supporting? What are you supporting them with? What are you hoping to achieve from this? And when we can come back to our purpose map, it really just sets us on that right course.
[00:29:36] There is going to be days when you are going to be showing up Whether it's online, wherever it is, and it's going to feel really crap and you're going to feel really exhausted and you're going to feel really flat because when you are selling in the online space, there can be a lot of up and down, like you can get a lot of people interested. You go through a launch, you have the high of a launch, and then you come out the other end and you're like things are just a bit quiet. Am I not doing things right? No, it's just not a launch season. Not a busy season. And so it's a different type of work routine that we're used to.
[00:30:05] As simple as it is, I think that these little mindset tips really can begin to create some big change for us as therapists. And we have a whole section like meditations, affirmations, all of the things in there too, because I know that in the stickiest times of my, of running my businesses, coming back to ground. There's never a day when I finished that practice and I don't feel a lot better or even a little bit better than when I started.
[00:30:33] Samantha Mabe: Yeah.
Ethics and Financial Sustainability
[00:30:34] Samantha Mabe: That reminder that it is okay to make money and to make a lot of money is so important when you're in a field where you have been told That you're doing this for your clients and all the people around you are probably thinking that you didn't get into this to make money. You got into this to serve people, but remembering you can serve people best when you are also being filled up and when you are being served, when you're able to provide for your family and take time off and not feel like every day you're just fighting to stay afloat because you have to be there for the clients to make the money. That's never going to be the best outcome for them or for you.
[00:31:24] Mia Poklepovich: No, it's absolutely not. And I know that it is such a sticky thing to talk about as a therapist. And if I had a dollar for every time, when I first started my practice, went to conferences, was asked by males about how old are you actually in this space? And I'm like, how old are you? It's those sort of things: you're too young, you're too this, you're too that, you're too caring, you're too that. There's always going to be these stories.
[00:31:51] And I think, especially as females in business, we not only come up against those stories internally, but we get them a lot more from the external world as well, because we are supposed to be those caring, beautiful humans.
[00:32:06] You're a therapist because you love your clients. I love my clients. I love my work, but I also love being able to provide for myself and being able to have the freedom that I deserve. A comparison that I often will come to is when you see, even with other women in, on the online space, if we see a women CEO, who's making, half a million, million dollars, we're all like, that is amazing. If we see a therapist or a health practitioner or health professional doing that, It's a completely different perspective, and it needs to change.
[00:32:34] Not only is your own cup going to be filled, but when our practice has had really great profit margins, when we've been turning over really great profit, we channel those profits into some really great things. We've run things like a Christmas drive. We've done things like a whole pile of donation drives out to remote communities.
[00:32:50] I think therapists are the best people to be making money because we think outside the box and we don't just think about ourselves. When we make money, we often think about the bigger collective too. And when you have a roof over your head, when you're not worried about inconsistent revenue. When we talk about money, we're not just talking about not having any, but we're talking about the challenges that we experience as therapists, with invoices outstanding, or trying to wait for payments, or having to chase up payments when we know clients are in crisis, or having that inconsistent revenue in our practice, like how many therapists over Christmas experience probably half or less than half of the profit that they would make the rest of the time of the year.
[00:33:30] And I think all of these things contribute and that it often leads to a lack of sustainability and a high turnover burnout in our field as well. Which then if you were to ask me if there was going to be two therapists in the field and one was going to do really great work for two years and then leave the field and one was going to stay and offer a whole variety and still do really great work, but stay for 10 years. We all know that we would pick the one who was going to stay for longer because you're going to be able to reach more people that way.
[00:33:57] And when we start to look into things like scalable offers, you are not only creating a pay scale, so you're making your services more accessible for families who maybe wouldn't be able to afford one to one, but you are also creating that space, that energy protection for you as a business owner and that sustainability and that regular income that is going to support you for so many years to come.
[00:34:20] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, I love that reminder that when you make more money, you can do a lot more to give back. And if one of your concerns is this doesn't feel ethical, how am I going to serve people if I charge this much? We have to remember, when your heart is to help people, that's going to be where you're putting the money anyway. So that's not as much of a concern as we really make it to be in our minds.
[00:34:48] Mia Poklepovich: Exactly. And I think that speaks a volume to the type of people that are in this space. If you are sitting there and you are asking the question about being ethical and making more money, and if it is more ethical, there's a pretty high chance that you're going to be pretty bloody ethical if you're making money.
[00:35:03] Samantha Mabe: Awesome.
Connect with Mia
[00:35:04] Samantha Mabe: As we wrap up, is there anything we didn't cover that you want to share?
[00:35:08] Mia Poklepovich: I would love to. So we currently run The Freedom Therapist Club for therapists, health practitioners, health professionals, beautiful humans who are in this space to have a purpose and have an impact.
[00:35:20] We run The Freedom Therapist Club throughout the year. It's a six month in depth program that we support clients through. And it's working through all of these things. And I honestly love this work so much because not only do I get the privilege of working with some of the best humans on the planet, but we get to create some massive change in the space as well. And there are some amazing, forward thinking, absolutely huge ideas, big dreamers in this space. And I really think that it is so important to go after those dreams as well, because if your dream is a little bit scary, if it is a little bit big, it's worth going after, because you're going to make a real big impact with it too.
[00:36:04] We also have a whole pile of free resources as well. And one of those that I want to speak to is we do have our expanding your service checklist, which is the freedom therapist checklist to create a sustainable and scalable therapy offer. You can find it at www dot the freedom therapist dot com dot au forward slash checklist. And you can also reach out to me on Instagram as well, because I love connecting with therapists and love having them flood my DMs with all the good stuff that they're doing in the world over at Mia Pocco too.
[00:36:35] Samantha Mabe: Thank you so much for sharing all that. We'll link to everything and I'm excited for people to connect with you.
[00:36:41] Mia Poklepovich: Me too. Thank you so much for having me, Samantha. And thank you for creating such an awesome space for professionals.
[00:36:53] Samantha Mabe: Thank you so much for joining me for this session of the Elevate Your Practice Summit. If you enjoyed it, make sure to go to the elevateyourpractice. co website in order to connect with the speaker and get access to the free resources they mentioned in their session. You can also share the summit with any of your friends in the health and wellness space and send them to the website.
[00:37:15] Elevate your practice dot. You can get 30 percent off your first three months of practice better at practice better. io and use the code L A T S 30.
