WP 55 | Understanding Cash Flow in Your Business with Carla Titus

Written By Whitney Owens

In this episode of the Wise Practice podcast, host Whitney Owens interviews financial expert Carla Titus about understanding cash flow in your business. Carla shares her expertise as a fractional CFO and financial consultant, helping business owners grow their profits and manage their finances. They discuss the importance of cash flow, the challenges it presents, and how to improve cash flow in your practice. Let's dive into the show notes:

What is Cash Flow?

So when people say cash flow, what does that even mean? Carla Titus explains that cash flow refers to the money that is coming into and going out of your business. It is the movement of cash in and out of your bank account, which is crucial for the financial health of your practice. Cash flow is different from profitability, as you can have a profitable business but still struggle with cash flow if you have outstanding invoices or delayed payments. Carla emphasizes the importance of understanding the timing of cash coming into your bank account and when it is leaving. This is especially crucial for practice owners who may experience delayed payments from clients or have bills due before receiving payment. Without proper cash flow management, practice owners can find themselves in a cash crunch, where they struggle to pay their bills or make payroll on time. In order to effectively manage cash flow, Carla recommends focusing on revenue generating activities to ensure a steady inflow of cash into your practice. This means prioritizing billable services and actively following up on outstanding invoices. 

By monitoring and forecasting your cash flow, you can anticipate any potential cash shortages or issues and take proactive steps to address them. Understanding cash flow and actively managing it is essential for the financial stability and growth of your practice. It allows you to make informed decisions about business investments, expenses, and staffing, ensuring that you have enough cash on hand to cover your obligations and support the growth of your practice.

Common Cash Flow Problems for Practice Owners

Cash flow problems highlight the importance of implementing effective systems for receivable management, maintaining good banking relationships, aligning commitments with revenue, tracking cash runway, and optimizing payment processes. By addressing these issues, practice owners can better manage their cash flow and ensure the financial stability of their businesses. Common issues practice owners face include: 

  1. Lack of Receivable Follow-up: Many practices struggle with a poor process for following up on receivables, resulting in delayed or declined payments. Implementing a robust system for tracking and collecting payments can help improve cash flow.

  2. Banking Issues: Practice owners may face challenges when banks put holds on their accounts, which can disrupt cash flow and hinder their ability to meet financial obligations. Having a secondary bank account or building relationships with multiple banks can provide flexibility in such situations.

  3. Overcommitment and Cash Crunch: Some practice owners make commitments that surpass their actual revenue-generating capacity. Hiring ahead or expanding without sufficient cash flow can lead to payroll and operational challenges. It is essential to align commitments with revenue potential and plan for sustainable growth.

  4. Declining or Unreliable Payments: Private pay practices, even without insurance, may face cash flow problems when clients' payments decline or are not saved for future transactions. This can lead to challenges in meeting payroll and other financial obligations.

  5. Failure to Monitor Cash Runway: Cash flow issues can arise when practice owners don't have a clear understanding of their cash runway - the period between now and when funds may run out. Without proper monitoring, they may face unexpected cash deficits and struggle to find timely solutions.

Strategies to Improve Cash Flow

Strategies may vary depending on your specific practice and circumstances. It is always recommended to seek professional advice from a fractional CFO or financial expert to tailor these strategies to your business needs.

  1. Increase Revenue: Focus on growing the top line revenue by finding ways to bring in more money to your practice. This can include adding new services, revisiting your fee schedule, or exploring opportunities to generate additional income.

  2. Audit Expenses: Review your business expenses and determine if you are getting the maximum benefit from each expenditure. Look for areas where costs can be reduced or eliminated, such as overlapping technology or unnecessary subscriptions.

  3. Plan and Forecast: Develop a 13-week cash flow plan to proactively monitor and manage your cash flow. This includes projecting revenue, tracking capacity, and assessing any potential red flags in cash flow. By planning ahead, you can make informed decisions and take necessary actions to mitigate cash flow challenges.

  4. Build Cash Runway: Establish a cash reserve or cushion to provide a safety net for unexpected events or cash flow fluctuations. This can help ensure that you have enough funds to meet payroll and other financial obligations during periods of uncertainty.

  5. Evaluate Business Model: Assess your business model to ensure it aligns with your goals and objectives. Consider if there are areas where you can streamline operations or implement more efficient processes to improve cash flow.

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  • WP 55 | Understanding Cash Flow in Your Business with Carla Titus

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    Building a private practice can be challenging. Building a caseload, attracting clients who are the right fit, managing the business side of your practice. There's so much to navigate with insurance and billing and paperwork. It takes a significant amount of time and energy and that's all in addition to delivering great care to your clients.

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    That's helloalma. com slash wisepractice.

    [00:01:31] Whitney Owens: Today on the wise practice podcast, I am interviewing Carla Titus. She's a financial expert with over 15 years of combined corporate financial planning, analysis, strategy, and online businesses experience. She provides fractional CFO services and financial consulting to business owners looking to grow their business profitability, her priorities for her clients as they grow profits, have cash in the bank and pay themselves well.

    [00:01:56] Whitney Owens: So they can build personal wealth. Carla, thanks for coming on the show today. Yeah.

    [00:02:01] Carla Titus: Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be able to share some knowledge

    [00:02:04] Whitney Owens: with your audience. Definitely. And let me just tell you, everybody wants to talk cash.

    [00:02:09] Carla Titus: Oh, I mean, who doesn't like it? I mean, I would love to have my business generate cash, right?

    [00:02:13] Carla Titus: And so would everyone else, I

    [00:02:15] Whitney Owens: hope. That's right. That's right. But before we get into all that, I would love to just kind of get to know you on a personal level. Where are you from? Tell me about the business, all the beats.

    [00:02:24] Carla Titus: Yeah. So I'm actually originally from Peru, born and raised and moved to Oregon about 20 years ago, uh, to raise my family here.

    [00:02:32] Carla Titus: And, uh, we've been building this business for the last five years. They're really passionate about educating, uh, business owners on how to manage their business finances. Um, you guys can't see, but I'm wearing my Winnie the Pooh shirt. So I love Winnie the Pooh and Disney stuff. Um, and we love to have fun with numbers and really help people connect to.

    [00:02:53] Carla Titus: You know, what's important in their business, you know, how do they manage, um, you know, the cash and just numbers in general, the data that they have available, how do they make better decisions? Um, we feel every business owner should be able to create personal wealth through their business above and beyond what a normal day job could have done for them and that it should be enjoyable along the way.

    [00:03:11] Carla Titus: And. You know, how do you make it enjoyable when you have money available to do the things you want to do? So we focus so much on that because we want to make sure that you get the lifestyle and satisfaction out of your business that you need and that you went into for, we know it's hard, but it could be easier if you had money to solve problems with and pay yourself.

    [00:03:31] Carla Titus: So

    [00:03:31] Whitney Owens: why not? Right? That's right. That's right. Well, it's timely because I literally last night was on Disney world website and I was like, can we make this happen at Christmas time?

    [00:03:42] Carla Titus: Hmm. Yeah, that's going to be, uh, a big challenge. I think supply chain sometimes gets a little delay, but Hey, you could take your chances.

    [00:03:50] Carla Titus: Hopefully it all works out and it's great. Yeah, that's

    [00:03:52] Whitney Owens: right. That's right. Well, um, all right. So let's get into the nitty gritty of. Kind of what we're talking about managing that cash flow. So when people say cash flow, I mean, what does that even mean?

    [00:04:03] Carla Titus: Yeah, exactly. With that, like cash in the bank, right?

    [00:04:07] Carla Titus: Like we need to know how is cash going to land into our bank accounts because there's a lot of things we do in business activity wise that might not be generating results or cash for our business. And so we want to make sure you're focused on the revenue generating activities. That will then convert to people paying you and money landing in your bank account.

    [00:04:26] Carla Titus: And when we talk about cash flow, that is what we mean is cash in the bank tangible that you can now utilize to either pay yourself, pay your staff, or, you know, make some business investments that you want to do when opportunities show up. And what we're trying to really nail down is when are. The cash coming into the bank, and when are the cash leaving the bank and that is an important aspect of managing business.

    [00:04:49] Carla Titus: And the timing of it all is really critical because what happens is business owners get into business. People pay them late, but their bills are not late and they're due already. And so now they get into a crash crunch and they're not sure what to do about getting out of it because. They're like, how can I collect faster?

    [00:05:06] Carla Titus: How can I push on my due dates if that's even an option and then they owe money to people people money to them and the timing of all that can get really crazy. If you're not managing it and being on top of it and knowing that you have a cash runway to whether some of those. Unexpected delay payments, um, or when you have to send out money to creditors asking for payment terms extension, you know, the 30 days, 60 days, or maybe even payment plans that all impacts your cashflow.

    [00:05:34] Carla Titus: And this is a very separate topic than just being profitable in your practice. Like, you can start by being profitable, but that doesn't mean you've collected on that money or the money has come into the bank account. And that is the problem I see a lot of people run into.

    [00:05:49] Whitney Owens: It's so funny because it sounds so simple, right?

    [00:05:52] Whitney Owens: Uh, money comes in, you make sure you have more than you put out. Like that's simple, but when you start bringing up all that stuff, I can think of so many scenarios in my own practice and with other practice centers I work with, I'm like, yeah, that happened. Yeah, that happened. In fact, I was just meeting with my team and we were talking about, I'm a private pay practice if you don't know that.

    [00:06:10] Whitney Owens: Um, so I don't take insurance. But we even have cash flow problems sometimes, because the more we grow, the more cards that decline or they're not saved or whatever, and those numbers just get higher and higher every time you run payroll. Okay, well, 15 cards got declined the last two weeks. Well, that ends up being a lot when you're trying to meet payroll.

    [00:06:29] Carla Titus: Yeah, and you don't get to skip on payroll. Your employees are depending on their paychecks. So you can't be like, well, 15 cards go decline. So now we're going to push your payroll by 2 days till we collect on that. Employees don't care because they're being due for the work that they're, you know, doing and they're, they need to get that paycheck.

    [00:06:46] Carla Titus: On the deadline that you set for them to get paid and so I think understanding that has an impact and then having a good follow up process on. Okay. What happens when a credit card gets declined? How many times do we follow up? Do we do a call? Do we do an email? Do we send a statement and then fixing that issue?

    [00:07:03] Carla Titus: How quickly does that get resolved? And can we improve on those days to get resolution for getting a card? And it could be as quick as you make a call in the car, you know, a new card shows up and it's updated and you can run it and everything is good to you need to go. Okay. Cool. Find the person that owes you money.

    [00:07:17] Carla Titus: They're not answering your calls. They're not answering your emails. They're not answering your letters. What do you do? And that's sometimes happens not all the time, but if you start to compound, how many of those issues you're having on collections, while yet the bills are still due, you're still paying payroll.

    [00:07:33] Carla Titus: You're still paying the rent. You're still paying all the things, right? Um, it could become a big issue for businesses that don't have a way to float their cashflow, meaning they don't have enough runway or flexible line of. Credit to tap into while they're trying to resolve this. And that is really what cashflow does is it buys you time for you to solve the issues so that you can then take care of the problem.

    [00:07:53] Carla Titus: And then it won't be a problem going forward because you've found a solution for it.

    [00:07:58] Whitney Owens: You mentioned cashflow runway twice. What does that mean?

    [00:08:02] Carla Titus: That's essentially the time between now and when you're going to run out of money, um, in your business. And I think a lot of business owners have no clue where they stand on their cash runway.

    [00:08:12] Carla Titus: They're like, I don't know if I could make payroll for 2, 3 months, if not another. Payment came in, and that is something that we want to make sure that you have set aside some money for that. You either have it in a savings account, or even in the checking account that, you know, that you can sleep at night knowing that your team and yourself can get paid for the next 2, 3 payroll cycles.

    [00:08:32] Carla Titus: If not a single. You know, amount showed up by the door tomorrow, and that you would have 2 to 3 payroll cycles to fix the issue. Obviously, before it became a problem where you are out of business, because you don't have enough cash runway. We recommend, you know, the business owners have some kind of cash runway or cushion set aside that they don't use for the day to day operations of the business.

    [00:08:55] Carla Titus: That is just earmark for. When the unexpected happen, and we don't want everyone to go and think that this doomsday and to plan for the worst all the time, but we just kind of be prepared for the unexpected because, you know, business fluctuates things that used to work don't work anymore. And you need to be able to pivot and develop a new strategy and that sometimes takes time to yield results and be able to turn things around.

    [00:09:19] Carla Titus: And that cash runway is going to give you the time you need and sanity, peace of mind to sleep every night while you're trying new things out, that could help business grow again.

    [00:09:28] Whitney Owens: Definitely. Now, Carla, you work with group practice owners on a very regular basis. And so you probably have some common problems that you see with cashflow.

    [00:09:36] Whitney Owens: I'd love to discuss those. Yeah,

    [00:09:39] Carla Titus: we'll start like a high level because, you know, obviously we want to keep confidentiality for clients, but, um, we work with both private and, um, insurance based practices. So, on the private patients, that is more relevant to your audience. Um, what we see a lot is that there's just not a good established processes on following up on receivable.

    [00:09:56] Carla Titus: So those decline payments don't have a process. To get the payment from clients, we see situations where, unfortunately, banks have made mistakes and put holds on bank accounts for clients and that we're supposed to run payroll in the next 3 to 4 days and not having a secondary bank account to default back to run payroll out of has been a big issue.

    [00:10:18] Carla Titus: Now, in that case, that client did have a 2nd bank account because we recommend that they open a 2nd, 1 just in case and, um, you know, things like. Completely out of your control, there are nothing that you did wrong. The bank just decided to flag the account and then put a hold on it. And we couldn't access the money anywhere else, but physically.

    [00:10:37] Carla Titus: And so those type of things again, they're, they happen. They're scary. They're not common, right? But they do happen. And then you have to deal with them as a business owner. So we want to make sure that. You are operating from position of power and strength with having the cash runway. You need the safety net that you want to have.

    [00:10:54] Carla Titus: And it's just, you know, those 1 off that are going to throw things off if you're not ready. Um, but from a casual perspective, sometimes what we see is business owners have made commitments that are a little bit too high on cause more than when they bring it in. So, for example, if you're hiring ahead, because you see the demand coming and you see the needs, But you're yet not billing the hours that you want to see in your practice, even from a private pay perspective, um, then that could also create a cash crunch in your business because now you're paying for labor, but you're not yet billing for the billable hours.

    [00:11:27] Carla Titus: You expect it and especially if you put someone on salary now, you're on the hook for that, regardless of how many hours they work. So we tend to see some of those things where cash is just. Being eaten up in the practice and not enough generated to offset that. And again, having a hiring plan and timing on when all of this is going to happen.

    [00:11:44] Carla Titus: Planning ahead proactively is really going to help you understand where the cash needs, how much cash do I need for how long and then be able to prevent some of this from becoming a real issue. Um, and again, those cash runways go a long way to save the day when those things come up. Yeah.

    [00:12:01] Whitney Owens: Yeah. You're bringing up a lot of thoughts here.

    [00:12:04] Whitney Owens: Um, I definitely think that. We weren't raised on how to run a business, I mean, practice owners, we struggle, you know, and we have to learn along the way and get business coaching and all those good things. Um, but also I was thinking about education. I think a lot of therapists put a lot of money into these continuing education, which is great.

    [00:12:24] Whitney Owens: But when you're owning a business, it comes to a point where if you spend too much on that, right, you're not, you're not able to grow your business. You know, and yeah, some clients might come see more because you're have some kind of certification, but are you going to get enough more? That's going to be worth all that money.

    [00:12:39] Whitney Owens: You just put into your certification. I don't know.

    [00:12:43] Carla Titus: Yeah, and that's where we do a lot of projections and scenario planning for the practices we work with to say, hey, if we got this accreditation, if we got this, you know. Type of licensure would that bring more clients? So what are our assumptions around that?

    [00:12:56] Carla Titus: And then monitor if those actually became a reality. So we can say, oh, that was worth it. We want to do more of that, or that actually wasn't worth it. And we didn't make our money back on that investment. So we might want to think twice next time. And you know, there's things you're going to do for your own benefit, for your personal development.

    [00:13:12] Carla Titus: We understand that investing as well, um, in yourself. And then there's investing that you do for the purpose of growth. And so knowing how much to allocate to each is really important. Pardon to make sure you strike the right balance to your point. And then I think that what I see often is with practice owners, they tend to be such generous, kind hearted people.

    [00:13:30] Carla Titus: Obviously, that is your, you know, profession. And I think that in that we tend to be a little too generous at times and giving out too many benefits, too much pay and things that are not in alignment with the size of company that they have. And so the running the business part, I think doesn't. Just happen by accident.

    [00:13:46] Carla Titus: You really do want to educate yourself on like, what are the ideal percentages and allocation as you have for some of this cost? What is the ideal cost structure to the profits? I'm trying to hit to also the size of practice that I am and also the size of practice that I might be growing into. And, you know, scaling is not cheap.

    [00:14:03] Carla Titus: It's really expensive to scale a practice. So keeping that in mind and knowing that you have to keep a certain profitability profile along the way. And again, if all of this is sounding like too much and too complex and too overwhelming, I get it because there are a lot of moving pieces. And it's why we partner with practice owners to give them that insight in the data that we're seeing in the analytics and the forecasting and the scenario planning to say, here are some of the options.

    [00:14:29] Carla Titus: Here are some of the outcomes we expect. And here's some of the things you want to think about before making a decision. And it's really key that you have this information before. Before you make a decision instead of after, because you're just dealing with the consequences at that point. And it could be expensive or it could be great.

    [00:14:44] Carla Titus: You know, everything could just work out too. So like, don't be fooled by like you needing to have this. It's just going to give you a different level of insight and understanding in your business. When you do look at the numbers and have that to, you know, fall back on to make decisions.

    [00:14:59] Whitney Owens: Right. Right. I mean, what I'm hearing you say so much is just taking the time to think through these things.

    [00:15:04] Whitney Owens: Right. And some business owners are a little more money savvy, you know, and some of them need extra help and that's okay. Like if you're going to take time and get help on something, getting it on money is pretty important.

    [00:15:16] Carla Titus: Yeah. I mean, it's a strategic planning, right? It's setting the direction and the course for your business to intentionally make decisions that are going to help you grow and be more profitable and expand.

    [00:15:26] Carla Titus: You know, we all want you to grow. We want you to employ more people. We want you to help more patients that are in need of your services. And in order to do that, you need to have a profitable, sustainable, long term practice. And that doesn't happen by accident. It happens by you reviewing your numbers, making, you know, numbers based decisions as well as, you know, your gut.

    [00:15:44] Carla Titus: I know serve you this. Thank you. You know, this far, and that's not going to change, but what we're doing is pairing that gut instinct you've had with some data to make even better financial decisions.

    [00:15:54] Whitney Owens: Definitely. Definitely. Okay. Now, I'm going to throw you a random question. So, if we might not be able to answer this, because I couldn't answer it.

    [00:16:01] Whitney Owens: Um, so I had somebody reach out to me today, actually, and she said, what is the perfect. Number of clients that my therapist needs to see so that I have profit.

    [00:16:11] Carla Titus: Oh, that's such a great question. So we do pair a lot and I'm not going to give a number, but I will give, like, the model that we use to kind of think through how we tie it all together.

    [00:16:22] Carla Titus: We have to have our capacity management for, like, how many. You know, uh, sessions do we want to have weekly, uh, clinical billing hours to the pay that we're giving someone to be able to do this work with the margins we want to. See, from services that we provide, and so when we take 1 therapist that's doing 20 billable clinical hours, let's say we know how much cost that is to us and we need to know how much projected revenue we expect to see from that 1 person that's working for us.

    [00:16:53] Carla Titus: And when we look at that, and if you're not having a healthy 50 percent margin, it might be like 40 percent now and you have some room for improvement. Not everything is perfect, and then some people even less what we see is when we have people in leadership roles that are doing less clinical work, we, of course, expect them not to be as good of a margin as someone who all their sole purpose is to see, you know, clients on a weekly basis.

    [00:17:17] Carla Titus: And also keeping in mind that sometimes those sessions go down because there's late cancels, no shows, things happen, you know, life, and then a certain clinician in a given week to make sure they can hit their goal of. 20 clinical hours, um, really starts to kind of bring it all together, right? Cause if you're monitoring capacity and like, tracking how many sessions are actually happening, not the sessions that you said was the minimum or that they should be working, but actually how many book sessions were accomplished in that week.

    [00:17:47] Carla Titus: And then looking at, you know, the pay that goes along with that. Now you start to understand what is the margin on that. Person delivering a service, and then you up level that to a conversation of what is the margin for the whole practice. And now you start to understand what's driving it. What's, you know, helping it be lower and then striking the right balance between admin and clinical staffing is also going to be another component.

    [00:18:10] Carla Titus: Pricing is another component in this conversation as well. So you can see how it starts to get complex beyond just. The one person, and when you're evaluating multiple variables, you need to be able to kind of bring it all together. But those are the pieces we look at payroll costs, weekly clinical hours to really understand what is the margins in our practice and are we at a healthy level or do we need to improve on it or we're good and we can walk away and be like happy because we're performing at the right

    [00:18:34] Whitney Owens: level.

    [00:18:35] Whitney Owens: That's right. That's right. Okay. So I'm thinking about some practice owners I know who are struggling. With cash flow, you know, they're doing everything they can to try to get clients in their doors. And so do you have any suggestions on how to improve cash flow?

    [00:18:51] Carla Titus: Yeah. So it's going to start by doing more services and delivering more revenue to the business, right?

    [00:18:57] Carla Titus: You got to grow the revenue. And then second, I'm all for like, let's grow the top line, which is, you know, revenue, um, sales instead of trying to shrink. Cause there's only so much you can cut back in your business, right? At some point you're just hurting the business because you're cutting too far. Into what's needed to run the business that you really want to focus on.

    [00:19:16] Carla Titus: Let's grow the top line revenue side of it. So we can make more room for things to fit better and you can move percentages based on that. But on the cost side, you should be auditing. What are you paying for? Are you getting the benefit for everything that you're paying for? I see oftentimes we're adding a lot of technology or things or people and they have overlapping roles or technology has overlapping functions.

    [00:19:39] Carla Titus: And you might be able to just. Increase subscription on 1 piece of software and get rid of 3 and that could save you money. So it's not always about cutting back, but it's really strategically thinking on where your cost and what is your cost allocation. And then based on those numbers saying, is this still serving a purpose?

    [00:19:56] Carla Titus: Do we still get a benefit from that? And if not, do we want to consider? Either cutting, delaying, pausing or canceling altogether and those are the ways that we normally think about expense auditing is just to say what is no longer serving us. Maybe right now we don't need that. And in the future, we might bring it back or we might all together.

    [00:20:16] Carla Titus: Just get rid of it or say, like, maybe we need to increase the level that we're investing in that to help us. Alleviate hours of work on another side of the business. So it's not about just cutting for the sake of cutting. It's really thinking strategically. What is the allocation? And as a serving the purpose of the practice growth, when you free up some funds now, you can start focusing on saving some.

    [00:20:38] Carla Titus: Cash runway, because that's the number 1 and when we get clients that are like, in this cash crunch situation, right? We're going to look at everything. We can to reallocate funds to saving for that runway. And also, maybe we might drop some minimums on that payments that we were making before and say, hey, we're going to prioritize.

    [00:20:57] Carla Titus: Cush cushion 1st or runway 1st, and then we'll come back to attack the debt more actively. Um, sometimes some owners choose to pay themselves less if that's an option and they choose to do that temporarily to build the runway. So they're not stressed out. Um, again, that's a personal choice. We're not asking anyone to do that, but, you know, that is an area you can look at.

    [00:21:16] Carla Titus: Sometimes, you know, staffing, you know, changes happen and people leave and they decide to hire a different position at a different level that maybe will save them some money. And that could become part of the cash runway building process, or maybe they delay a higher 2, 3 months out to make sure that they have enough cushion so that they don't have to be here again.

    [00:21:35] Carla Titus: So there's a lot of things that you could start to look at, but really, where's the money going and can you increase how much money is coming into the practice are going to be our 1st areas of opportunity for us to build that runway.

    [00:21:46] Whitney Owens: Yeah, that's great. And so I see in your information here, we're talking about a 13 week plan for cash flow.

    [00:21:54] Whitney Owens: Can you tell me a little bit about

    [00:21:56] Carla Titus: what that is? Yeah, so when we do, uh, cashflow forecasting, for most of our clients that are not having cash issues, we are on a monthly forecast plan. You know, we know that we have enough runway. We don't have to worry. Obviously we try to get most our clients to that point where we're just like cashflow is not even a topic because we're good in the practices right now.

    [00:22:15] Carla Titus: Healthy margins, healthy profitability. For those clients that are feeling really stressed about cash, and you could be even a client in a good cash position, but they just made a big decision in their business. That's going to eat up into their cash reserves. So it could be hiring. It could be an expansion.

    [00:22:30] Carla Titus: Maybe they bought a building. Maybe they went to a second location. All of this is going to become a stressor on cash. And we just want to closely monitor it week by week. 13 weeks, because that's essentially a quarter. And we want to make sure that we see. 3 months out, what could happen with cashflow? Do we have any red flags?

    [00:22:51] Carla Titus: And we don't want to know that this is the case when we're already at a cash deficit, meaning we won't be able to make payroll in 2 weeks, right? We want to know this 3 months in advance. So we can do some things about it and make some changes necessary. Go get the line of credit if needed, right? Get that.

    [00:23:07] Carla Titus: Cash flexibility, we need to be able to expand and we're not thinking of this last minute trying to, you know, get whatever we can out of our personal bank account to fund the business, but we're really doing a proactive planning so that we know, hey, in week 11, we actually might have a hiccup with cashflow.

    [00:23:24] Carla Titus: We want to now think about. Um, can we offer a new service? Can we go back to our fee schedule and see if we need to revisit that? Can we bring in a intern or associate level to help us maybe generate some additional income that doesn't cost us as much on labor, like all those things and they're not going to happen in 2 weeks.

    [00:23:45] Carla Titus: That's why we go 13 weeks out so we can give you enough time and runway to really make a decision to make any change necessary and then allow it to also get the results we need from that decision or strategy we're implementing.

    [00:23:58] Whitney Owens: Yeah. I'm just over and over again, thinking about that importance of planning, you know, and just I see therapists like grabbing at things.

    [00:24:07] Whitney Owens: This will make me money. This will make me money. I'm going to create this course and do this thing and they spend all this effort and it doesn't create any cash flow because they didn't really think about who was going to buy it or what they were going to price it or what it was going to be like. And so I just keep hearing you say over and over.

    [00:24:21] Whitney Owens: We're going to we're going to plan for this. We're going to forecast out. We're going to know what's coming and be prepared for it as opposed to. Oh, no, like. I need money now and I don't have it.

    [00:24:32] Carla Titus: Exactly, and I think that if this is a function that you are not familiar with, or in your business, it doesn't currently exist, because maybe you have a bookkeeping team or an accountant that are not proactively answering your money questions or sitting down with you and saying, what are your goals?

    [00:24:45] Carla Titus: And where would you like to be in the next year? This is really the function that we can play in a business as a fractional CFO to come support and proactively start looking things. Forward planning forward and strategically thinking about what are the growth areas we want to go focus on? What are the expected outcomes and results?

    [00:25:02] Carla Titus: We want to see from those strategies that we're implementing and then that we meet those goals. Did we stayed on track or we completely off and we need to. Not do that activity anymore, like, we're not going that direction anymore because it's not yielding the results we expect and really be able to measure those outcomes to say, yeah, the practice is doing better because we added this new service, or that service is really not cutting it.

    [00:25:25] Carla Titus: And we might want to rethink. I think what we want to continue to provide that or do a different version of it. How can we make this profitable? How can we make this viable? It's always a questions we're asking as a CFO, so we can help the client plan for what comes next and really be intentional about hitting those goals.

    [00:25:42] Whitney Owens: Yeah, that's great. And I appreciate how you kind of delineated the difference between kind of what you're doing with forecast planning and an accountant, because I think a lot of people struggle with what, who does what? And so it is that perfect combination of you working with the business owner with their money.

    [00:25:57] Whitney Owens: And help exactly.

    [00:25:59] Carla Titus: Yeah, and it comes from our financial expertise and background, right? We've done a lot of projections, you know, for clients, we support them in that function. That is our bread and butter. Not every accountant and bookkeeper has been trained to do that. Um, they might know the accounting side of it, but this is really the finance side of the business where we're really proactively thinking about the future and also scenario planning and looking at all the variables and assumptions that go into what this plan might be.

    [00:26:23] Carla Titus: How does it become a reality? And can we stay

    [00:26:25] Whitney Owens: on track? That's right. That's right. Great. Okay. Well, Carla, you've given us so much good info. I want to give you a second to talk about the business and how people can get in touch with you.

    [00:26:36] Carla Titus: Yeah. We would love to have you, uh, reach out to us. If you're ready to hire a fractional CFO, we encourage you to book a call with us to see if we're the right fit and can help you with the issues that you're currently dealing with either cashflow or anything in general, with regards to money that your current team is not supporting you with.

    [00:26:51] Carla Titus: Um, and you can book that on our website at wealthworthwithin. com. Uh, we also put a lot of, you know, free content and resources on our newsletter monthly. So you're welcome to sign up on our website for that. And if nothing else, follow us on social media. We put out a lot of videos and topics around, you know, not just cashflow, but all the things we just discussed today and so much more that you can get for free.

    [00:27:12] Carla Titus: Cause we're really passionate about educating business owners to. You know, start to understand their finances and really start to love on their numbers instead of shy away from it, because it couldn't be fun to do if you actually are in control and things are going well, so we want to get you to that point where you feel that is fun to do and you can follow us at wealth worth within and Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, we hang out all over the place.

    [00:27:35] Carla Titus: So feel free to follow us there for free content.

    [00:27:38] Whitney Owens: Awesome. Well, we always like free content, especially when it helps us make more money. So you got it so much for taking the time to be on the show and provide all this information. It's super helpful.

    [00:27:47] Carla Titus: Of course. Thank you for having me. And I hope everybody took some action steps from this conversation today so they can start improving on their finances.

    [00:27:55] Carla Titus: Yes. Thank you.

    [00:27:57] Whitney Owens: Hello friends. And thanks for hanging out with me on the wise practice podcast. I know there are a lot of amazing podcasts out there and you choose to listen to me and it means a lot. Just thinking this morning I was flipping through podcast, trying to decide which one I wanted to listen to when I ran.

    [00:28:11] Whitney Owens: And yes, you do think about what you're going to listen to. And if you're choosing to listen to me, it means a lot to me. And so thanks for hanging out with me. Today, I'm going to do a solo show, which I haven't done in a few weeks, I think. And the last time I did a solo show, I got some pretty positive feedback.

    [00:28:28] Whitney Owens: So I'm going to try to incorporate more solo shows into the podcast. And today we're going to talk specifically about the wise practice community, wise practice everything, because what are all these things that Whitney Owens is doing? I'm figuring them out to not really I am going to share with you what they are, but I think it's important that you kind of understand how the process works and how you can fit into the community.

    [00:28:52] Whitney Owens: Um, and hopefully I can answer some of your questions about what are all these things that I get an email so that Whitney talks about on the podcast, I can kind of lay that all out for you. Also, as I lay these things out for you, it's a good way for you to think about your own business and how have you structured things?

    [00:29:07] Whitney Owens: What are the ways that people fit into the practice or into your side hustle business? Or maybe it's no longer a side hustle. Maybe it's a full fledged business. I think it's good to kind of look at what is your business plan? What do you want to create and how are you actually creating that? So by me sharing the different opportunities, That I do through Whitney Owens consulting.

    [00:29:28] Whitney Owens: Hopefully you'll see that even for yourself, where you fit in and maybe what you want to do with your own business. I'm actually reminded of my mastermind group. We meet every week on zoom and there are three other amazing, uh, consultants and group practice owners, and we do hot seats and during one of the hot seats, I was trying to actually decide at that point, if I was going to host a second summit and one of the leaders was like, or one of the other masterminds.

    [00:29:55] Whitney Owens: Um, people was like, Hey, what do you want your business to be? What is it that brings you energy? What makes you happy? What's fun for you? What do you feel drawn to? And how can you create that? And that question was really helpful for me to really sketch out what my plan was, because it helped me make decisions.

    [00:30:17] Whitney Owens: Where to put my time, energy, and my money. It was actually through that conversation that I decided to put the deposit down on the next summit location. And at that time was a very scary decision for me to make. And so having your business plan, knowing where you're going is important. So let me tell you what wise practice is.

    [00:30:36] Whitney Owens: Actually, I'm kind of laughing here. I'm about to share you a funny story, um, and then I'll kind of talk about the different aspects. So you might be wondering why is it called the wise practice community? Well, I am here to help faith based practice owners start grow and scale their practice. If you've been listening to the podcast for any amount of time, you've heard me say this on the intro.

    [00:30:58] Whitney Owens: Many times. So that's what wise practice is. Now I started the business as Whitney Owens consulting because people knew my name and I wanted people to be able to find me very easily. I also love the idea of a personal brand. That's just kind of who I am, that my life is an extension of the work I do. So that's why I call it Whitney Owens consulting.

    [00:31:17] Whitney Owens: If you jump on my email list, that's actually what some of my first emails are about for you to learn the difference between kind of a corporate and personal branding. All that to say is, I also really value community and the past few weeks and having the summit really honed me in on the importance of community is my thing.

    [00:31:37] Whitney Owens: In fact. It's my superpower and I am choosing to really embrace that and who I am. And I think for you, I want to encourage you to be thinking, what is your superpower? What is the thing that you're providing to others that no one else is providing or that you really love and are really good at? So I knew that I would love community.

    [00:32:00] Whitney Owens: I knew I was pretty good at it. The summit totally solidified that for me as I move forward in business consulting. So I did not want my community to be called Whitney Owens. Like I want it to be about you guys and not about me. I have the honor of facilitating and teaching you, but you are what makes the community so special.

    [00:32:24] Whitney Owens: But I already had this beautiful logo made for Whitney Owens Consulting. Thank you to Practicery. Uh, so if you're looking for a website and branding, check out Practicery. They are fantastic. And they really helped me in the branding of Whitney Owens Consulting. When I was in a place that I wasn't really sure what I was doing and what I wanted it to be.

    [00:32:42] Whitney Owens: They really helped me narrow that down. So I had this beautiful logo with the W and I was in the process of creating the membership community. I was like, I need a logo. I already have a W. What could I call this? So I called it wise, I went with wisdom for a while and then wits wisdom and all these different kinds of things.

    [00:33:02] Whitney Owens: So wise practice is how that name came up. I also wanted it to incorporate something that was kind of faith based, but not too faith based. Cause I, if you know me a little bit, I'm not very overt, but I also want to draw you in. And I also find God to be very important in the work I do. So I would love to tell you that I had some amazing idea behind the wise practice community and how that name came up, but it's not complicated.

    [00:33:27] Whitney Owens: There was a W and I called it wise practice and the name has stuck and I love it. So anyway, so that is why it's called the wise practice community. Now, everything since then, I've been trying to call wise practice with the wise practice podcast, the summit and other things. So, I like to think about business as a funnel and the top part of your funnel is how you're bringing people into your business.

    [00:33:52] Whitney Owens: And as they move down the funnel, it gets smaller and smaller as you can, as you can figure out. And so the services that are offered are more and more specialized. There's less and less people, but they're also more expensive. So, a lot of times, it's great to consider what are your offerings that are free that people can get a touch point with you.

    [00:34:16] Whitney Owens: They can learn something they can grow. And then how can they continue to work with you? I think a lot of times people struggle with their offerings past that. So it's really important that you're always showing people, Hey, if you want more of what you just got, here's how you get it. So the very intro parts of my funnel are freebies and not everyone's going to go past the freebies and that is totally fine.

    [00:34:40] Whitney Owens: I can't work with everybody anyway. Um, but I love that can help some people, you know, by doing things that. I enjoy, but also they have a lot of opportunities. So what some of those are for me are on my website. You can go and join the email list. So if you're listening to the podcast right now. And you have not got on my email list, please jump on my email list.

    [00:35:06] Whitney Owens: I share personal things going on, professional things going on freebies for you discounts on services, lots of fun stuff and it's totally free. So, if you go to Whitney Owens dot com, there's an opt in that's going to pop up for you in the 1st, few seconds and it's. PDF on how to market network with churches.

    [00:35:26] Whitney Owens: You can sign up for that. You're going to get that PDF and it's going to walk you step by step on how to reach out to a church. What do you say to them? How do you reach out to them and how do you get them to buy into your services? That PDF actually could be helpful in any kind of marketing, not just with churches, but that's specifically built for reaching out to churches and that's helpful for faith based practice owners, but also practice centers that are not faith based because.

    [00:35:53] Whitney Owens: Reaching out to churches is helpful in general. They need to refer people all the time. All right. So we're talking about the funnel. So the very top part of the funnel is, um, some of those free offers. One of them is getting that PDF. Another one is joining a free Facebook group. So it's called Wise Practice Community.

    [00:36:11] Whitney Owens: Um, and you should be able to get that also on my website where you can get the link for that. And it's a, just a free community of faith-based practice owners asking questions, a lot of business questions. Sometimes people ask for referrals, but it's mostly business questions for faith-based practice owners.

    [00:36:27] Whitney Owens: Um, actually the other day I posted a question on how to get, um, I'm sorry, I just stumbled on my words here. It was. About church and what makes you go to church and why do you keep going because I've been thinking about that. Actually, my husband just took his 1st appointment as a senior pastor. And so he is a senior pastor at a church in Rinkin, Georgia.

    [00:36:48] Whitney Owens: It's about 30 minutes outside Savannah called encounter. It's a United Methodist church. And so I've been thinking about what's drawing people to churches and why do they keep going to churches? That's why I asked. I got a lot of great responses or someone posted the other day. What great movies do you like watching as a therapist?

    [00:37:04] Whitney Owens: That includes therapy. But then people post other things like what phone systems do you use or, um, what kind of resources do you have for dealing with X, Y, and Z as a Christian therapist? So there's a lot of great resources there for you to grab hold of and use in your practice. All right. So the Facebook community.

    [00:37:24] Whitney Owens: And then another free way to get involved is the podcast, which you're already doing right now. So you already are part of the community simply because you're listening to the show and you are part of a community of other people that are listening to the show. And that's a beautiful thing and it's totally free.

    [00:37:39] Whitney Owens: So if you know other faith based practice owners, send them the podcast. It's a wonderful way for them to grow their practice. And when I was 1st, getting involved, I listened to so many podcasts when I was starting my private practice and they were hands down. So important. In fact, my husband would always be irritated.

    [00:37:58] Whitney Owens: I come home after listening to a podcast, he'd be like, gosh, you have so many things you say you want to do, like calm down. Um, cause I'd always get so pumped and every time I listened to a show. I tried to always enact that thing that I just learned into my practice and that's what allowed me to have success and grow the way I have.

    [00:38:15] Whitney Owens: So we've got these free offerings. Um, I also have social media so you can follow me on social media. I give tips. In fact, the other day I talked about hiring and how it's like dating. Uh, so I'd use those analogies and give you tips on hiring. So if you want to follow me on social media. Instagram is, uh, Whitney Owens Consulting, um, and then I'm also on Facebook.

    [00:38:38] Whitney Owens: Those are ways that you can get free information to help you in your practice and ways that you can have community wise practice. Is all about helping you grow your faith based practice, but it's also about community because it is a lonely place that we are in as faith based therapists. I can't tell you how many times someone will email me and say they don't know any other Christian counselors in their area.

    [00:39:03] Whitney Owens: And especially maybe they know a Christian council, but they don't own a business and those 2 things. are both challenging in and of themselves. And so people are feeling lonely. So the wise practice is a way for you to have intimate connections with faith based practice owners. Those are invaluable, invaluable.

    [00:39:24] Whitney Owens: So I encourage you however you want to, to get involved in the community. So those are the three ways that you can do that and connect with other faith based practice owners and get content. As we move down the funnel, the next thing that you can be a part of. Is the wise practice membership community.

    [00:39:42] Whitney Owens: So you might be thinking, hey, Whitney, you've been talking about that on the podcast for a few weeks. What exactly is that? Okay. So a membership community is fantastic because it continues to move on. Like, at any point you could come in and out of it. Well, I shouldn't say at any point. I do have doors open at certain times, but you can use it for whatever it is that you need.

    [00:40:02] Whitney Owens: And it's a low cost way. To get a touch point with other faith based practice centers and to get a touch point with me, people that are in the community, I do consider a priority. If I'm getting emails from someone in the community and someone not, I'm going to respond to the person in the community because those are the people that I work with because they're making their way down the funnel.

    [00:40:21] Whitney Owens: Right. They're making an investment in me and I am making an investment in them. Right. So let me tell you what the membership community is and how it functions. So we are on a platform called circle. It is a for membership communities. We used to, I used to do things more on Facebook, but I find that I like to use Facebook more for fun and social media and not necessarily for work events in the same way.

    [00:40:47] Whitney Owens: So I like that circles a separate platform, but it functions like a social media. And it's just because I'm focusing on work when I'm on there, there is an app that you can get on your phone. So it does make it easy to use on the go, but within the circle community, we have what's called spaces. And so you can go in there and comment in different spaces.

    [00:41:07] Whitney Owens: So there's a wind space when you have something great going on in your practice. There's a space for announcements. If I have something I want to share with you guys, there's a space for deals and discounts. So when I'm working alongside all these amazing businesses, I can give you guys special discount rates that you're not going to get anywhere else.

    [00:41:24] Whitney Owens: There's also a place for you to ask questions because you're going to have questions that come up. And I personally go in there and answer your questions along with some amazing other practice centers that are in the community, along with that interactive platform, there are spaces as well. For resources.

    [00:41:42] Whitney Owens: So there's courses that you can take. It's a plethora of information. It could be anything from SEO, Google ads, financial stuff, making faith based decisions in your practice. Lots of different material that you can go in and take on your own time. And then alongside that, I have tons of paperwork. So it could be you need a rate increase letter.

    [00:42:03] Whitney Owens: It could be you need a job offer letter. It could be a disclosure statement. It could be a performance improvement plan for your team. You can go in there, grab the resource, update it for your needs, like make a copy of it and you make your own policy from it. I actually have handbooks in there for an assistant and for an employee therapist.

    [00:42:22] Whitney Owens: People love the handbook. Some say that's their favorite thing about working with me. So lots of information in there. And then if someone doesn't have what they need, a lot of times we'll create something, we'll get it in there so that you have the resources you need. So that's how the platform itself works.

    [00:42:38] Whitney Owens: We also have an event section and within the events, you can go and attend every Wednesday at one o'clock Eastern. We have it at the same time every week so that you can consistently put it on your schedule. And I promise you, the people that come to the meetings on a regular basis are the ones that get the most out of the community.

    [00:42:56] Whitney Owens: And their practice grows faster. I see it happen over and over again. So when you're making an investment in you and your practice. It will make a difference. So we meet every Wednesday and other faith based practice centers. We get together on zoom and there is a rotation of events. The 1st Wednesday of the month is wise advice.

    [00:43:15] Whitney Owens: And so I come in with a presentation. In fact, today is this episode's coming out. I believe November 7th. So the November 1st, so this, you'll, you'll miss this one, but right before that, I'm doing a web webinar. Not, I mean, I call it a webinar, but it's our regular meeting on November 1st on how to grow an email list.

    [00:43:36] Whitney Owens: I'm going to walk through why it's important to have an email list, some platforms that you can use and what do you do on an email list? Just to give you an example, I did another one on, um, creating partnerships and networking with schools and I walked through how we do that at our practice and provided paperwork for practice centers to use to create those.

    [00:43:54] Whitney Owens: Um, we do risk assessments with students and we talked about that process so that you can do that in your practice. So some of the teachings are. Just practice related, and some of them are more faith related. But the great thing is in this conversation, we can always bring faith into the mix and not feel uncomfortable or have to feel bad about that.

    [00:44:12] Whitney Owens: Because in some communities, you might not feel like that's welcomed, but in this community, you can openly talk about your faith and your business. And it's like this beautiful. Oh, I love it. It's just beautiful web that we put together, um, as faith based practice centers. All right. So the 2nd, Wednesday of the month, we have wise teaching.

    [00:44:29] Whitney Owens: I bring in an expert in the field to come and teach on a certain topic. In fact, for November, I've got Michael teacher chest stain. I think he was on a previous podcast episode. He's going to talk about leadership. Um. And then I've had Jessica to Pana come talk about SEO. I've had Julie Ayers come talk about financial planning and taxes.

    [00:44:48] Whitney Owens: She's from Green Oak accounting. There's a lot of experts that I've had come in and talk about different things related to building your practice. So, those are in there and then the 3rd Wednesday of the month is called wise questions and it's basically open office hours. I love those because great questions come up and good conversations.

    [00:45:05] Whitney Owens: And then the last 1 is a work session. And so we jump on, we tell everybody what we're going to work on. We mute ourselves, we turn off our cameras and we work hard for 45 minutes and then we come back together at the end and discuss the thing is sometimes in our practice. We're so busy, we forget to take the time to really work on some things.

    [00:45:22] Whitney Owens: And so having that extra set of accountability can really help get things done. So that's what our weekly meetings are. We do record those. So if you miss 1 or you want to go back and watch something, you can do that. And then along with that, we also have small groups. So you would be every member is placed in a small group of other.

    [00:45:41] Whitney Owens: Faith based practice owners that are in a similar phase of private practice. So there might be, there's a group for like solo practice owners. There's a group for small group practice owners. There's a group for new practice owners. So there's a lot, and there is a group for very experienced practice owners, people who have 10 plus clinicians.

    [00:45:58] Whitney Owens: So there'll be a place for you to plug in. They are peer led. They meet at least once a month, but it's extra accountability. So think of it as your small group for private practice. That community has all of that to offer for 89 a month. Okay, that's not even a full client session 89 a month, and you can have access to all that.

    [00:46:22] Whitney Owens: Now, I think you're going to love it, and I think you'd want to stay in it, but if you decide it's not for you, you can always email me and let me know and you can leave the group at any time because I don't want you paying for and doing things that are not helpful to you. Like, there's no point in that, but I think the WISe practice community will be.

    [00:46:40] Whitney Owens: And you'll love connecting with them. So I am going to continue to tell you more about the funnel, but I want to make sure that, you know, that the wise practice membership community only opens its doors twice a year right now. And so I had it back in February and it's open right now while this podcast is going live.

    [00:46:57] Whitney Owens: It is open November 6th, 7th and 8th. So we will close the doors at the end of the day on November 8th. And I don't, I can't tell you when we're going to open them again. So I don't actually know. I plan those year to year. So, if you were thinking about joining, you're hearing me talk about this and you're like, gosh, I just need more connections with faith based practice centers.

    [00:47:16] Whitney Owens: It would be super helpful to get a little bit more direction from Whitney. Please join the community, you can go to whitneyowens. com slash memberships. Doors are open join now. And you will love it. Okay. We have over 60 faith based practice owners that are in there. It's, it's so much fun. I love this part of my job.

    [00:47:35] Whitney Owens: I love seeing y'all connect. Okay. So let's continue on our journey down the funnel. I want you to consider coming to the wise practice summit. Okay. The summit look, let me just be honest here. You don't make money off of hosting summits. Okay. I don't at least not very much. I could make a lot more money off of doing individual consulting with you guys and doing retreats.

    [00:48:06] Whitney Owens: Okay. I have a list of people wanting to do these things and I'm not saying that to toot my own horn. What I want you to hear from me is that I believe that community is important. I believe that y'all getting together, seeing one another, growing your practices together is vital. Okay, I love zoom. We can do things virtually, but there's something super special that happens when we get together.

    [00:48:29] Whitney Owens: Right. We can give each other a hug. We can meet people. We've never met before. We can connect with speakers, sponsors that we otherwise wouldn't have known. So, when I think about my business plan and what the wise practice community is, it is a community that we meet with every week virtually. And once a year, we get together.

    [00:48:48] Whitney Owens: We all make that commitment. We put aside our finances throughout the year and we meet. So that is what the summit is about. I don't do it for the money and I know it seems expensive when you see the ticket, but I'll tell you this last event we did, and we did a survey at the end. Every single person said that it was worth the investment that they made financially, which was wonderful to hear as far as the price of the ticket.

    [00:49:13] Whitney Owens: Hotels are expensive. I got to do it at a hotel though. Cause where else are you going to do an event like this? So most of the money that you pay me goes straight to that hotel. And just to tell you a cool God story real quick, and I'll let, you know, I am going to do a different episode on leadership and what I learned at the summit, because I learned so much about leadership at that summit, but the summit that we just hosted.

    [00:49:36] Whitney Owens: So this was just 3 weeks ago here in Savannah. Um, I was pretty scared as I was telling you before, I wasn't sure if I wanted to host another 1, but I prayed and I thought, and I went on ahead and I put a deposit down. On the next event, because it means so much to me for you guys to be able to connect with one another.

    [00:49:56] Whitney Owens: And I saw some truly beautiful relationships made people that are staying in touch with each other, people who made big decisions in their practice at that event. And as hard as that event was for me to host and also how beautiful it was seeing God's work in your lives. Makes it totally worth it worth every little penny, every little bit of work that we had to do leading up to that event.

    [00:50:19] Whitney Owens: So, the week before the summit, though, I went on ahead and paid a huge deposit on the next hotel and I did that believing in you guys that you would jump on this ship with me and that we would sail on. Right? So, at the end of the 2023 summit, I announced that we were going to Charlotte, October 3rd through the 5th of 2024.

    [00:50:41] Whitney Owens: We're going to be staying at the grand Bohemian hotel, which is fantastic. By the way, I have been there and I announced the tickets and gave a special deal to anyone who was at that current summit. I needed 20 people to sign up to pay for that deposit. Okay. Now I'll just let you know, I would have been fine.

    [00:50:59] Whitney Owens: I've got some cash set aside, but I didn't want to have to dip into that. Like I was hoping that I would get the money from ticket sales to pay for the hotel. And that is exactly what happened in Moore. Within about a week of the summit, I had 30 tickets sold to the next event. And I think that just speaks to you guys and your support of me and the wise practice community, but also speaks to how wonderful that event was and the growth that happened, that these people all had such a good experience that they're willing to put down money for the next one.

    [00:51:35] Whitney Owens: So that is what I want the wise practice community to be as we grow. So once a year, we are going to get together and have a summit. And we are going to grow and connect and it's going to get more beautiful and more wonderful every year because you guys are wonderful and beautiful, but also I'm going to get better at doing this.

    [00:51:52] Whitney Owens: Like, there were some things that came up, everything ran smoothly enough, but I am learning who I am and how to grow as a leader through this process. And you were teaching me and I am teaching you and it's a beautiful dance. So. That's the information about the next summit and how I'm running the business.

    [00:52:08] Whitney Owens: And as you go down the funnel, that's a way to get involved, you know, but some people only just came to the summit. A lot of people that came to the summit, join the membership community right afterwards, because I did do a special deal just for them to join the membership community, because I want to be able to continue to connect with you guys.

    [00:52:24] Whitney Owens: Right. Okay, so we've got the summit and by the way, the tickets are on sale. So feel free to go to Whitney Owens dot com and grab your summit ticket. I am going to be limiting the number of people to about 100 attendees. So make sure that you're grabbing your ticket. So, in combination with my speakers and sponsors, I have about 50 tickets at this point.

    [00:52:42] Whitney Owens: I am going to be putting out speaker applications. If you're interested in that, it'll be coming out in an email sometime in the coming weeks. So make sure you're on my email list for that. And if you're listening and you want to sponsor, shoot me an email. Whitney at Whitney Owens dot com would love to talk to you about that.

    [00:52:56] Whitney Owens: Okay, let's move on from the summit. So you're going down your funnel more interaction with me would be doing a mastermind group. So that's a group of 6 to 8. Practice owners similar phase of practice. We're working on certain goals. So it might be marketing. It might be systems and processes in your group practice.

    [00:53:14] Whitney Owens: It could be starting a group practice. Usually, it's got some kind of focus. I market those out throughout the year in my email list. So make sure you're on those. But a mastermind group is another way. It's a little bit more expensive, but it's another way to move down the funnel and get more connected.

    [00:53:28] Whitney Owens: And then the most intimate touch point is working with me individually. So I do offer individual consulting. I usually am only working with 5 or 6 people at a time because these people get the majority of my time and attention. And so I do a pre consulting call with anyone who's interested in working with me.

    [00:53:43] Whitney Owens: And you can go to my website and schedule that. And we can kind of talk about your practice and talk about if consulting is a good fit for you, because I want to make sure that I'm going to be able to help you with your goals and that you're the kind of person I want to work with. I mean, just like, you know, with your clients, you have ideal clients that you want to work with that, you know, you'll do well with and have better outcomes with.

    [00:54:04] Whitney Owens: That's how I am as a consultant as well. So if I don't feel like I'm going to be the best fit for you. I'll tell you that, or if I feel like your practice is not in a place to do individual consulting, I'll tell you that too, and make sure that I'm getting you to the right place. I don't just get on these pre consulting calls and say, Hey, I'm going to work with you because I want your money.

    [00:54:20] Whitney Owens: Because. I mean, yes, money is great to have and it's going to help me move forward, but if it's not helpful to you and not enjoyable to me, like, what are we doing here? You know, I want to make sure that you're getting the best bang for your buck and able to get your goals met. So, individual consulting is kind of the most narrow part of that funnel and I really just enjoy helping all of you with your practices, getting to know you, watching you grow, watching your practices grow and you.

    [00:54:47] Whitney Owens: In turn or impacting me, you're helping me find myself, finding God in myself and each of you and your love and support of me mean the world to me. You have absolutely no idea in the same way that you think about your clients and what they mean to you. So those are the different offerings as you go down the funnel.

    [00:55:05] Whitney Owens: So you can get on my email list. You can listen to the podcast. And you can join the free Facebook group, and then after that, look at joining the membership community where you can connect and grow with faith based practice centers every single week and have the resources that you need to grow your practice.

    [00:55:20] Whitney Owens: And beyond that, you can look at joining mastermind groups, doing individual work with me, make sure you're on my email list that, you know, everything that's coming out and I would love for you to purchase your ticket to next year's summit in the same way. I talked about deposits. I've got to make deposits on this hotel throughout the next year.

    [00:55:37] Whitney Owens: So I'm trusting that you will purchase your tickets so that I can have the money to invest in other things. I have some really fun ideas about what I want to do at this year's summit, but I can't move forward on those until I get those payments. And then I can do some fun stuff for the speakers or fun of it's for you actually at this summit.

    [00:55:55] Whitney Owens: We're going to be having a happy hour meal out on the lawn, which is beautiful area in downtown Charlotte. It's right by the hotel. We're going to have tons of fun doing that. Charlotte is a really fun city. So I would love for you to come and hang out with us. I personally gave every single person a hug at this event.

    [00:56:12] Whitney Owens: People that listen to the podcast. They came on their own, they didn't know anyone and we got to meet and hang out. And now they're connected to the community. And so it was a really cool thing. So make sure that you're thinking about that. Go to my website to learn all this Whitney Owens. com. I appreciate you taking the time to listen to me, share about the community.

    [00:56:30] Whitney Owens: I hope it has been helpful for you to understand how it works for you to get involved, but also for you to think about your own business and how you want to feed people in and how you want to nurture those relationships and grow them over time. So thank you again for listening to the podcast. I appreciate if you rate and review the show um, on Apple, I personally go in there and read every review and it means the world to me.

    [00:56:51] Whitney Owens: So if you can do that, I'd appreciate it. And thanks for taking the time to listen to the show today.

    ​ ​

Whitney Owens https://whitneyowens.com
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