59. New Client? Here's a System for You!

In today's episode, I'm walking you through how to create a system to use when a new client is added to your caseload. Follow this simple step-by-step framework to create a system that will save you loads of time! This episode also discusses the importance of keeping systems new, exciting, and enticing, especially for speech pathologists with ADHD. Learn why the initial fun and games of a new system can quickly fade and discover strategies to maintain motivation and effectiveness over time. 

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Transcript

This is Your Speech Path: Mindful Time Management for the Busy SLP. My name's Theresa Harp, and as a mom and speech pathologist turned productivity coach, I know a thing or two about how hectic life can be. If you're an SLP who's overworked, burnt out, and feeling like you're constantly falling short as a therapist and a mom, then this is the podcast for you. I cover time management and mindset strategies so you can learn to love your work and your home life at the same time. Let's dive in. 

Hello everyone. Welcome back to the show. This is episode 59 and it is the last episode that I'm doing in this series all about systems. Systems for SLPs, PTs, OTs, related professionals, to help make work easier, simpler, and faster. And so if you've been listening to the past several episodes, you've heard episodes about a whole number of different things: systems that you can adopt and modify based on what I have shared with you. Everything from systems for taking data in sessions to systems for managing your caseload, systems for keeping your office clean, you know, all sorts of things.

So if you haven't caught any of those past episodes and you, if you are interested in ways to work smarter, not harder, then make sure you go back and take a listen to episodes 54 through today's episode, which is episode 59. So in today's episode, I'm going to be focusing specifically on a system for the intake process.

So have you ever found yourself taking on a new client in your private practice, or maybe you are an employee and you've gotten a new client assigned on your caseload. I would imagine all of you who are listening to this would say yes, of course you have. Then you probably know how many little tasks come with every new case.

I'm talking about things like the case history form, HIPAA forms, release of information, your current goals for your client, or maybe you're doing a new evaluation, in which case, more tasks, right? Scheduling, contact information, all of it, right? The list goes on. And when you're already swamped with a really heavy caseload or a packed schedule, it can feel frustrating and overwhelming to have to check off all these boxes.

And in many cases, it's quite literally, you are checking the boxes on a list. It's a lot. It's not necessarily hard, but there's a lot of moving pieces. And so that's what today's episode is to, is geared towards helping you with. This is the problem that we're going to solve. Okay, so by the end of today's episode, you're going to walk away with a very clear but simple overview of how you can set up a system for yourself anytime you get a new client.

Let me clarify, you're setting this system up once, and then you're going to use it every time you get a new client. And so the idea, and if you've been listening to any of the past episodes recently, you'll know the idea is that a little bit of extra work and time up front will save you a whole lot of work and time on the back end. All right. So let me walk you through this overview of the system that I use to track new cases. And as you're listening, I want you to ask yourself, which parts of this can I implement? And what, if anything, would I modify? Okay, so in order to create a system that works for you, here's what you need to do.

Number one, I'm smiling as I say this because if you know me and if you are a podcast listener, if you've been around the show for a while, you can probably guess what step number one is. You might even be rolling your eyes when you hear me say it, but number one is to brain dump. Brain dump all of the steps that you must take when you start with a new client.

So just grab a piece of paper, grab a pen. If you do this on the computer, that's fine too. Whatever works better for your brain. But I want you to imagine that you've just gotten a new client on your caseload-- all of the things that you need to do before you can have that very first session. So we're talking things like sending out the intake paperwork, if you work for yourself, or if you don't, then obtaining that intake paperwork from wherever it is.

Once you send that paperwork out, you also have to make sure that you've received it back. How many times have we sent out paperwork to new clients and we have to sort of chase them down or send gentle friendly reminders to send the information back, right? It happens more often probably than we would like.

And I hate to admit it, but sometimes I I'm the one on the other end of the table, and sometimes it's me who is starting at a new provider for whatever reason, and I need some of those reminders to send in that paperwork. Setting up the file, whether that's a physical file, which I'm guessing for many of you who are listening, it's probably not.

But it could be an electronic file, whether that's on your computer or in your electronic health records system, right? What else? Getting them onto your schedule, obtaining their payment information, scheduling their recurring payments, scheduling their recurring sessions. So these are some examples of some of those steps, some of the steps that you might be taking when you get a new client.

Now, this is going to look different for everybody, especially based on what population you serve, what setting you work in, and what your role is, whether you are an employee, a contractor, or the business owner yourself. So keep that in mind. And if you are the private practice owner, owner, but you are not currently providing services, you have a team who are providing services for you, then if this is not something that you already have in place, take notes, follow along, because this is exactly what you need to do in order to get started.

So imagine that you've assigned a client to one of your team members. What would that look like? How would you--what would you expect them to do? Okay, now, once you have all of that out of your head and onto paper, you're going to start to look at what you've listed and put those tasks in sequential order as best you can.

One of the ways that I would do this is by imagining that I'm training a new employee or I'm training a CFY or I'm training a grad student and almost walking them through this process and explaining to them what they would have to do as if I'm training them. That often helps me to figure out, okay, what is the system here?

Like, what are the steps? So if that helps you, then go ahead, imagine that, imagine that scenario and start to sort of make sense of the items or the list that you've come up with on your brain dump. So, starting to sort of put them in some sort of order. Don't worry about getting it perfect. This is why we have erasers.

It's fine, right? This is going to probably take a little bit of trial and error and some scribbling and scratching and all of that. I know some clients I've worked with and we've done this. I've walked them through how to do this for their team, and we've done this with post its. So each step of the process, how to post it, and then what we would do is after we sort of, we would brain dump, we'd put the tasks on one task per post it, and we would start sort of lining them out sequentially, and having the ability to be able to move things around and rearrange was really, really helpful, because we even found opportunities for how to improve systems that were already in place, so that's another idea for you as you're working through this, is you can do this on Post Its if that sounds like it would be helpful for you and your brain. 

All right. So step one was the brain dump, step two was starting to put the tasks in sequential order. Step number three is to review that sequential organized list next, and identify any steps that can be broken down into smaller steps, okay?

This is helpful for those of you who are neurodivergent or for those of you who are working with employees or contractors or team members who are neurodivergent themselves, because sometimes in our mind we can write down, you know, a basic step, what seems basic to us, but we might not realize that it actually requires that one task requires a few steps in order to complete the process. And what is intuitive for us might not be intuitive for our team. And if you don't have a team, but you are doing this list and you're telling yourself, “Oh, yeah, I know what that means. Like, I see that here on my list. And I know what I have to do in order to get it done.” I would encourage you to just break it down a little bit further and see what happens. 

So let me give you an example. If you wrote simply intake paperwork, you might break that down into smaller chunks such as send intake paperwork, receive intake paperwork, file intake paperwork, whatever makes sense to you. For some of you, in order to send intake paperwork, you might have to first enter the client in the system.

You might need to create that file, that digital file, that electronic file, first. So think about how to break it down into the simplest, smallest. steps. So that way it is so obvious, clear, user friendly. You do not have to--later on when you're executing this, you do not have to think any more than is necessary. It's basically foolproof. Anyone could do this. 

Okay. So then once you have those steps further--broken further down, if there are any, you're going to use that final version and you're going to enter it into some sort of document, whether it's a spreadsheet or it's a checklist, some sort of visual that makes sense for your brain, okay?

So, number one, brain dump. Number two, sequential order. Number three, breaking tasks down into the smallest steps possible. And I would offer that those last two steps, the sequential order and the breaking tasks down into smaller steps, you could probably do those in either order. So it might make more sense for you to, after you finish your brain dump, to start breaking tasks down into even smaller steps and then putting everything in sequential order.

For others, it might make more sense to try and get the order first and then to break down any additional, you know, break down any steps that could get, broken down into smaller sub steps, whatever works well for you. But either way, at this point, you're now entering that information into a spreadsheet or into a checklist.

And it's very visually clear. It's very clear what exactly has to get done. I love when you have this in your spreadsheet or checklist, and it includes links or Let's say names or files, file names or any sort of direction or direct access to the programs or platforms that you might need to utilize as you are taking on a new client.

For me, any fewer, the fewer the steps, the better. So if I don't have to open up three or four different programs in order to, to do something like this, I'm happy. If I can have everything in one sheet in one place and then click from there, go from there without having to open up a window, another tab, another window, another anything, that's, that's a built in safety mechanism basically for my brain because it reduces the chances of me getting distracted, getting lost in, in what I'm doing, getting sidetracked, getting frustrated, so on and so forth, okay?

Alright, now that is essentially the steps that you need to take in order to set up a system that's going to work for you. I want to offer a couple of suggestions, okay? If you go back and listen to episode number 57 for an overview of my caseload tracking, that might be helpful along with episode 58, where I talk you through a system for managing inquiries, where we're kind of talking about, okay, new referrals, new people who are interested in services, and they might not actually become a client.

They've reached out and they’re--I have a system for that. And so I covered that in episode 58. I would offer that for those of you who are really interested in ways to streamline this and make it as simple and efficient as possible, is to consider the information from today's episode and along with the information in episode 57 and episode 58, streamlining all three of those things onto one.

So if you do, for me, the way that it, the easiest way I can describe it is for me, what I used to do is I would have one, workbook in Google Sheets. And then along the bottom, you can have separate tabs. You could have for separate spreadsheets. And I might not even be using the right terminology. That's how tech unsavvy, insavvy, inefficient, unknowledgeable, what are the right words here?

That's how little I know about tech. But I know enough that I can open up one spreadsheet in Google Sheets and then along the bottom I can have separate tabs for each of these systems. So I can have in that one file, I can have a tab for inquiries, then I can have a tab for the intake process, and I can have a tab for caseload management.

And in a beautiful world, I'll have the same clients or the same people on all three of those. So those who start out on the sheet up for inquiries, then become clients, so they go on to the intake process--spreadsheet. And then from there, they go on to the caseload management spreadsheet. So they sort of feed right into each other.

But that way, again, I have everything in one place and I'm not having to pull up three different trackers, three different systems. I just go to one, I click on one thing, everything I need to know is right there. That's what works well for my brain. But again, I really encourage you to think about what works best for your brain.

And on that note, you may not know offhand what works best for your brain, and I want you to keep in mind that that's okay. You don't have to know that. You'll figure that out as you go. There is no way to perfect a system. in advance of actually using it. In order for systems to work, you have to work the systems first.

I've said this before, I'll say it again. You have to actually work through the system and then fine tune. And that is the last piece that I want to offer for today's episode, is once you have this sort of system shell or framework, if you will, in place, then go back, just schedule 10, 15 minutes on your calendar and go back and ask yourself after you've used it for a little while, what about this system is working?

What about it is not working? And what do I want to try differently? Right? Try it out, audit it, modify it. And whenever possible, find ways to keep it new, exciting, enticing, because for those of you who are listening who have ADHD or suspect that you do, you know that systems are all fun and games in the beginning, right?

It all seems very exciting and shiny and alluring, only to fast forward, maybe several days, several weeks, and that system is so far in your rear view mirror, you didn't even remember that you had it in the first place. Okay. And that's not helpful either. So keep in mind that that is a risk factor when you are, if you are neurodivergent and that's okay.

It doesn't mean that you can't have a system. It just means you have to plan for that. It just means you have to think about ways to keep it fresh. That's exactly one of the things that I do in coaching sessions with my clients. So I hope that this was helpful. I would encourage you again to go back and listen to some of those past episodes if you're interested in systems and how you can do this very, very simply and easily.

And as we are wrapping up, I just want to say, make sure you tune in to the next week's episode and the subsequent episodes for more--for the month of August, because there's a lot of fun things that are going to be happening. I'm working on a couple of different things behind the scenes. I can't really share exactly what that is yet, but I am really excited about it.

So you'll have to come back next week, and the week after, I'll be sharing updates in the coming episodes. So I will talk to you all then.