Burned Out, Broke, and Brilliant: How We Got Off the Chair

Aug 19

If you’ve ever felt trapped by your own success, stuck in the grind of growing your therapy businesses, or secretly questioning your career while leading others - this episode is for you.

We’re talking about the real cost of therapist burnout, what no one tells you about running therapy businesses, and how we finally stepped away from the chair (emotionally, clinically, and sometimes financially).

In this first episode of Off the Chair, we share our personal stories of crashing, questioning, and rebuilding from the ground up. Each of us has navigated the highs and lows of running a group therapy practice, often while carrying the invisible weight of perfection, responsibility, and fear.

We created this podcast because we know firsthand how often clinician mental health gets overlooked in the rush to grow, lead, and serve. And we’re not here to sell you a formula - we’re here to walk with you through the messy middle of leadership.

In this episode, we talk about:

The behind-the-scenes reality of therapist burnout - what triggered ours, and how we knew it was time to make a change
What it looks like to leave behind the “right way” of running therapy businesses and do it your own way instead
How running a group therapy practice can lead to both empowerment and exhaustion - and how to find your center again
The emotional and strategic impact of neglecting clinician mental health as a leader
Why we believe successful therapy businesses don’t have to sacrifice your well-being or your values

If you’re building a group therapy practice, leading a team, or silently battling therapist burnout, we see you. Listen now and hear what happens when clinicians stop pretending, start healing, and finally get off the chair.

New episodes drop every Tuesday.

WATCH THE FULL VIDEO EPISODE HERE!

[00:00:00] Jennifer Politis: This podcast for me is that beacon. I think we're gonna navigate the peaks and valleys of running a group practice together. I don't think anybody's too broken, too complicated or too far gone as a business owner or a clinician to find a better, brighter chapter.

[00:00:15] Colleen Long: Tired of being burned out, underpaid and boxed in by a broken mental health system.

[00:00:21] Colleen Long: Welcome to Off the Chair, where visionary therapists talk business burnout and building something better

[00:00:27] Jennifer Politis: because to lead, to earn more. Reclaim your creativity and truly change the mental health system. We have to get off the chair and into the role of visionary CEO and change maker.

[00:00:40] Colleen Long: I'm Dr. Colleen Long psychologist, entrepreneur, and founder of a seven figure practice I built.

[00:00:47] Colleen Long: Broke, rebuilt, and exited. I'm here to ask the hard questions. How do we adapt? How do we survive, and how do we fight back against a system outsourcing mental health to the lowest bidder?

[00:00:59] Erika Bugaj: I'm Erica Bugaj, clinical social worker, psychotherapist, group practice founder and doctoral student. I work with therapists who want to build brave values led businesses without burning out, because real growth doesn't just happen in the chair.

[00:01:16] Erika Bugaj: It happens when you step out of it.

[00:01:18] Jennifer Politis: And I'm Dr. Jennifer Politis, psychologist, entrepreneur, multi-site group owner of a seven figure practice and business coach, obsessed with making strategy simple, sustainable. 0% Bs. I help therapists lead like CEOs and build businesses that work for them, not the other way around.

[00:01:39] Colleen Long: No fluff, no fake success stories. Each week we'll dive into honest conversations about hiring money leadership. Scalable income and leveraging modern technology to build a more innovative, profitable practice. This is off the chair. Now. Let's get on with the ship.

[00:02:01] Colleen Long: So our intention, if we nail this podcast, at least for me, is to give people a better way. To see that there is a better way, there's an alternative way. It's not just having to trade your time for money in the way that the insurance companies would have us believe, and we do really need some sort of union or advocacy.

[00:02:23] Colleen Long: But until then, I think providing therapists with an alternative for how to use their unique expertise that they worked so hard for, that they've honed, that they've cultivated. Over sometimes decades and that they've paid dearly for emotionally and monetarily. Giving them a way to take that as a moat and make a living off of it where they don't have to become insurance companies, vicarious employee or advocate.

[00:02:58] Colleen Long: So that would be a win for me.

[00:03:00] Jennifer Politis: I think I have a similar win is I just wish I could help someone where I was maybe five or eight years ago. And just help other practitioners and other business owners who are completely stressed out, just not living the life that they set out to live. And you know, I just think that's the most important thing that I wanna do, is just, again, help people on the other side of this.

[00:03:22] Jennifer Politis: That's my main goal.

[00:03:23] Erika Bugaj: I agree. I also found myself at a certain point, just putting my head down, trying to. Soldier through and push myself to find the next best strategy for keeping my practice afloat. I got all kinds of coaching. I attended masterminds and received financial advice from professionals.

[00:03:47] Erika Bugaj: All of it has not necessarily added up to things. Always running smoothly, and I think that's to be expected. But I have found myself a couple times at Crossroads where I just am not sure if I can keep doing this, and I still sit there a lot of the time. I have a wonderful staff. I aspire to pay them well and offer benefits to them, but I still find that.

[00:04:16] Erika Bugaj: There are many systems in place like such as using commercial insurance, which I've opted to do in a high cost of living city because I think there are folks here that can't afford to pay for. The cost of therapy. So finding a way through navigating all of these different systems and forces has been very challenging and has at times, led me to feel burned out.

[00:04:42] Colleen Long: Yeah. And there was a book that I read, Oliver Berkman's 4,000 Weeks. Have you guys read that book? Mm-hmm. Oh, I have it. So good. So good. So it's called the Anti Productivity Book. And there's a million productivity books out there, but his is about how we're all just trying to squeeze in. A dollar out of 15 cents every day.

[00:05:06] Colleen Long: Right? We're all trying to like get everything done. And especially as women, you're trying to be the mom and carry the mental load and then also be the CEO and the therapist and all that, right? But his premise is you're really only here on average 4,000 weeks. Like all of us are here about 4,000 weeks, which kind of puts things into perspective and so.

[00:05:28] Colleen Long: He says, if you wait until the very end where all of the other stuff, the have toss are checked off to do the things that you want to, you're never gonna get to that. And so you have to just start doing the things that you want to in the midst of all that. That's really the key to balance and happiness and so.

[00:05:49] Colleen Long: For me, uh, the selfish reason of doing this podcast is I love the creative aspect of it. I love like being able to, I mean, this is almost gonna be like group therapy, you know, being able to talk with. Two other people who know not only the the struggles of just being in the mental health field, but being a group practice owner and all the stuff that comes with it, right?

[00:06:11] Colleen Long: There's not very many people in the world that understand that unique struggle. But then just the creativity of being able to build something out of nothing and hopefully something that becomes a really useful resource for thousands of people, I think is just like so cool. And the fact that we're actually like doing this.

[00:06:31] Colleen Long: That's

[00:06:31] Jennifer Politis: just

[00:06:32] Colleen Long: amazing.

[00:06:33] Jennifer Politis: I think it's been such an isolating process for me as a business owner in particular that I, you know, went through periods of trying to find support groups and masterminds and everything, and it's exhausting, and you're not finding your people and you're not really, you know, you're, you're trying to spend time and energy and money on these things, and sometimes you get lucky and find something, but I do think I could have used a friend, a colleague along this way.

[00:07:00] Colleen Long: Yeah. What do they call it? A business bestie? Yeah. I borrowed that from, oh, I can't remember her name now, but she's awesome. And she's also in our field and she was talking about that idea that like, she's like, Colleen, you need like a business bestie. You're doing this all alone. And I think so many of us do this all alone just because you gotta put your.

[00:07:21] Colleen Long: Head to the grindstone and just do it every morning. You gotta just do it even when you don't feel like it. So hopefully this will help the others that don't have that right now feel a little less alone. I also think a lot of the

[00:07:35] Jennifer Politis: business advice out there does not apply to our industry.

[00:07:38] Colleen Long: Yeah.

[00:07:38] Jennifer Politis: What comes to mind when you say that?

[00:07:40] Jennifer Politis: Even some of the financials, I know like meeting with certain people and they would have like different ratios of what works and where your profit should be. It's just not feasible, especially if you take insurance. Now we do take out of network insurance, so there's a little bit of wiggle room there.

[00:07:57] Jennifer Politis: It's not in network, but there is still a cap on how much that can be. Yeah,

[00:08:02] Colleen Long: and there's an unspoken rule in our field more so than others. Like if you listen to other podcasts where it's medical doctors, dentists, a bunch of dudes, they're all like about money. That I'm not gonna do that 'cause that doesn't make money.

[00:08:17] Colleen Long: But if we say that we are heartless, we're in the wrong field, maybe hundred percent need to reevaluate. You know, you can see the comments on Facebook if you're talking about, well, I'm not gonna take Cal Optima anymore because they pay me less than I paid my nail artist over the weekend. Uh, you're a horrible person then how dare you?

[00:08:38] Colleen Long: You know? And so I think that a goal for me at least, is to disrupt that narrative, which is like, oh my God. Like how much can you afford? $12? Great. I'm six figures in debt. But that $12 is gonna go a long way. You know, like, fuck that. I'm not gonna be in that space anymore. I refuse to hold that narrative.

[00:09:02] Colleen Long: And I say, you know, I've gone to school for 10 years. To six years of, of post grad and four of college. So 10 years total. Not to mention the $4 and 80 cents I worked per hour in a lockdown mental health facility to get my hours right. So, no, I'm not, you know? Yeah. I do wanna make money because I need to be able to afford my mortgage and to pay off my student loans.

[00:09:27] Erika Bugaj: Yeah. I think that is a common struggle I see with a lot of my younger clinicians too, is. Adapting from the selfless social service. Profession mentality into one of, oh, I actually deserve to make a sustainable income doing this work. And that's a huge part of my job in my role as the owner of this practice, is helping them to navigate billing and collecting fees.

[00:09:59] Erika Bugaj: And I find it to be one of the biggest pain points. I also wanted to say that in groups of therapists who are practice owners. I have often felt that there's a lot of pressure to not be vulnerable, to only share the wind and not share the dark behind the scenes challenges that we all, all of us face. I mean, if you're saying you don't face some of these challenges we've named, I think it can't be true because it comes up for everybody.

[00:10:28] Erika Bugaj: Some of the challenges we've named around insurance, also staffing, retention, and the competition with the venture capitalist folks who. You know, have leaders at the helm who are visionaries or MBAs, but who've never actually done the mental health training and worked in the low wage jobs and clocked to the unpaid internships.

[00:10:54] Erika Bugaj: You know, I think there's a lot that goes unspoken and unsaid. In when we get together as a field. Yeah.

[00:11:02] Colleen Long: I remember around Thanksgiving last year, I was in one of the darkest phases, and as we do this podcast, one of these episodes will be an autopsy of a practice, and I'll go through how we died by a thousand cuts.

[00:11:16] Colleen Long: But in my darkest hour, I reached out to a big group of therapists on one of the social media channels and and just said. Guys, I'm really struggling here. Like I don't know how I got here. I can't find a biller. I like, I can't, and I'm getting further in debt, trying to pay my clinicians, and I'm now a prisoner of my practice.

[00:11:41] Colleen Long: What do I, I can't shut the doors because I'll lose my home. All that money that I've paid, all my clinicians, while the insurance companies have denied. Is now tied to my home, like what do I do? And I assumed in that vulnerability that all of our helping profession would then go, oh my God, me too. I'm glad someone else said this.

[00:12:02] Colleen Long: You're not alone. It was the worst. It was like, I seriously would question myself if I'm that much in debt at this point, I would question your business practices. And it was like kicked while I was down. It was the, you know, and I thought, these are the people that people are going to for help. These are the people that are supposed to have empathy, and sometimes it's the most cutthroat group of people and judgemental.

[00:12:32] Colleen Long: So yeah, I'm right there with you, Erica. I hope that we can all be. Super open, super vulnerable with our deepest, darkest moments in this field, and people will feel a sense of relief like, oh my God, it's not just me. Like this is a thing that's happening in our field right now. What were some of your darkest moments for both of you?

[00:12:56] Colleen Long: I remember Thanksgiving morning my kids were super excited running around the house because it's Thanksgiving, they don't have school, we're gonna eat all day. And I was looking at a day of having to host an entertain family. And I couldn't make payroll, and I was being raped over the coals on social media by our patients because nobody was responding to them.

[00:13:20] Colleen Long: And so we at that point, were paying two intake coordinators, a hundred hours of pay, period. So they were not only billing me, but taking overtime. And I looked at RingCentral and it said 89.7% of our calls went unanswered. So I had basically been stolen from, and at that point I was saying to these employees.

[00:13:45] Colleen Long: Who are demanding their paychecks. Not only am I not gonna pay you, but if you keep on coming after me, this is gonna be a lawsuit. Because I have proof here that you haven't done your job. And in the state of Massachusetts where you employ people, if you don't pay your employees right away, you owe them th price.

[00:14:03] Colleen Long: And so not only was I. Not able to pay payroll and had to go further into debt leveraging my home. But these people, these two people who had polluted and stole, I now owed three times their salary. And that's just one of like 20 different stories that happened over the course of COVID where people really took advantage of working remotely.

[00:14:26] Jennifer Politis: How about you, Erica?

[00:14:27] Erika Bugaj: Well, I'd say that one of the most challenging moments was, you know, having a contractor, an insurance biller, who stopped doing the work that they were contracted to do, and then being in a contract that I could not get out of without an attorney for that reason, I can't say a whole lot about it, but it really was a moment of.

[00:14:54] Erika Bugaj: Questioning the motivations of folks who get into the field in a variety of ways. You know, to be an insurance biller, to stop doing the work you've said you were going to do, and then fight for a contract to keep being paid. Had that gone on? I think that the business probably. Would have folded. I was fortunate to now have found someone who's doing the work and following up and staying in touch.

[00:15:25] Erika Bugaj: But in my experience, that's been rare in. The life of this practice and is a reason why I did all the billing myself for many, many years until I just could not do it anymore. And I was told like by my coach, Hey, you have to stop doing this because you need to focus on other things. But giving that aspect away was a huge.

[00:15:51] Erika Bugaj: Active trust and that trust was broken.

[00:15:55] Colleen Long: Yeah. There are little T traumas there. Yes. Microtraumas that happen where you just lose trust for everyone. Mm-hmm. What about for you, Jen?

[00:16:03] Jennifer Politis: I think for me it was a few things all at once. It was kind of on the tail end of COD coming out, COD. My kids were still doing remote school.

[00:16:12] Jennifer Politis: I have three kids. They were little at the time. And my husband at that time decided to leave his medical practice. He's a chiropractor, so we were financially making a change. I was, you know, scaling but pretty miserable, burnt out. And at the time we had a huge insurance clawback of $300,000. It could have completely taken us under.

[00:16:37] Jennifer Politis: I had to use. Personal savings for payroll. I've done that many times. By the way, if I wasn't able to do that or take out a business loan, which I did have to do another time, I wouldn't have been able to keep the business. So around that time is when I decided to look to sell because I just didn't know what to do.

[00:16:55] Jennifer Politis: And around that same time, I got a pretty bad, you know, health diagnosis that just. Kind of was the icing on the cake of like, what am I doing? Like why am I so stressed out? What am I even doing this for? And I think the irony is like, we do this to help people at the end of the day. And it's hard for your staff to maybe sometimes understand that, you know, I think all practice owners really wanna pay their staff well and try to, you know, if the money's there we do.

[00:17:22] Jennifer Politis: It's, it's not that we don't want to, it's just, you know, people don't understand. All that goes into it, and maybe financially what's really in the books?

[00:17:31] Colleen Long: Yeah, I think there's an a feeling that your GM or Jeff Bezos, you know, that there's this endless pot of money that they're entitled to. And I found myself when my clinicians got really upset because I, I, at a certain point I couldn't.

[00:17:50] Colleen Long: Leverage anymore debt. I just, there was no more. And I remember a clinician saying, well, but this is what I'm owed. And I said, I, I understand. Would you like to call the insurance company with me because I don't have it? Please stop. I remember saying, please stop. Because they kept coming after me. And again, you know, I think.

[00:18:13] Colleen Long: When you have the money, and we all did during COVID because it was, you know, we were just trying to get our hands around the problem at that point, and we had the services and the setup and. Life was good. And I think anybody can tell themselves they're a great business owner when life is good and business is good, right?

[00:18:32] Colleen Long: Of course you're like, oh, I got this. But then when you know, brass tax starts coming around and insurance companies implement AI to deny every third claim, and your admin paperwork starts to come up and you have to start looking at, well, you're billing me three hours for that one hour, and I can only bill that one hour.

[00:18:50] Colleen Long: It becomes. A lot of difficult conversations and a lot of, I think, resentment, like we're somehow turning into the bad guy. And, and I do understand in a sense why these VC companies become more successful because they were taught systems, they were taught margins, they were taught how to forecast. If the insurance company's gonna pay you $53 for your clinician to do a 9 0 8 3 7.

[00:19:15] Colleen Long: You're not gonna be able to pay them $65 plus 401k plus matching.

[00:19:20] Jennifer Politis: Right.

[00:19:21] Colleen Long: It just doesn't work out right. And so there is something to having someone that has that business sense, that understands that. And I think all of us. Unfortunately, just had to learn those lessons the hard way. We got our MBAs. What did they say at the, on the, on the mean streets of being a group practice owner.

[00:19:40] Colleen Long: Absolutely. I agree with that. Yeah. So let's jump in, Erica. I want, so today is our first, uh, first ever podcast, our first ever attempt at this. And so we are gonna start today by just telling our off the chair stories. And I imagine. Each of these will be an episode unto itself, you know, and we'll have some, we'll have some days where we're, we're recording on our own, and maybe that's when we do our.

[00:20:08] Colleen Long: Deeper dive into our big stories, but we're each gonna take like 10 to 15 minutes to talk about our off the chair stories. What was our moment or moments where we had those pivots where we were like, this is no longer sustainable. Erica, why don't you just start with what came up for you and what were those moments like for you that really burns that fire within you?

[00:20:30] Erika Bugaj: Well, I wrote something that kind of goes way back and starts with me as a social worker. I'm not sure if that's. If you want me to, you know, rewind that far. Yeah. Well, I am the child of two career public school teachers, so I feel like being a helper is in my DNA and as a child I was in the gifted and talented classes at school, and I feel like as an adult, I learned.

[00:20:56] Erika Bugaj: What it really meant to have the drama of the gifted child. I learned that from my therapist through the book. We've probably all read by Alice Miller. You know, I was a very attuned child to all the emotional dynamics going on around me, and I think that's ultimately what led me to become. A therapist. I spent years as a public school teacher and as a social worker in agencies, and I landed as the pediatric social worker in a local teaching hospital.

[00:21:26] Erika Bugaj: There I was responsible for pediatric social work services, but most days I felt like a glorified administrative assistant to the psychiatric team. I highly value administrative work, but it wasn't what I wanted to do. It wasn't what I was trained to do. And so there was somewhat of a power imbalance there between the psychiatrists and the social workers.

[00:21:49] Erika Bugaj: I was asked to look things up on the internet, and they repeatedly paged me to find out when I'd have the psych patients transferred to a bed in the nearby psych facilities. I was the container for all the child abuse and neglect, the identified collar and child life. I got to do all the fun stuff like throwing parties and passing out donations.

[00:22:13] Erika Bugaj: They also got all the accolades. I felt invisible, and in that role I needed a magic wand. I've always joked that I needed one for my clients in one job. I actually had one in my. Pen jar, it didn't really work. But in that role, I also needed one for my coworkers and colleagues. So there I found it truly difficult to utilize the MSW degree and the postgraduate clinical trainings I'd completed and pursued.

[00:22:42] Erika Bugaj: I could not be a true clinician if I was not going to be seen as one. So I looked outside of that role and others I'd held for where I might make more of an impact to utilize my clinical skills. And to operate more independently. So that's how I landed in private practice. I aspired to have a practice that accepted insurance in a high cost of living city.

[00:23:06] Erika Bugaj: I wanted to provide therapy to folks like me and judging from my waiting list, I was correct in the notion that every day middle class in a big city, people needed therapy. Probably could not afford the current rates set in this town. I know I couldn't when a former social work intern who had impressed me, expressed interest in joining me in this endeavor.

[00:23:29] Erika Bugaj: I opened a group practice. I've now been running this practice for over 11 years, and sometimes I'm still trying to figure out how to provide therapy to folks who are using their insurance, provide decent wages and benefits to my team, and still get all the bills paid on time. It seems like this should not be a dilemma.

[00:23:49] Erika Bugaj: I admit, I've not always been the best with finances, but I've gotten help. I've gotten financial coaching. I have a CPA, I have an insurance biller, and I wonder why it's still so hard. I'm now pursuing my third degree in social work because I love my profession. I still have the heart of a helper, but I don't know how much longer I can do this.

[00:24:11] Erika Bugaj: I adore every single member of my team. They approach their work with humility. They have a shared vision for providing services to people who need it, but I have really found the systems emphasis on systems, not just one to work against us. My staff get independently licensed and they leave to work for venture capitalist therapy platforms with MBAs or visionaries at the top who have never been in the trenches doing unpaid internships, practicums, working for low wages, or learning the art and science of helping people.

[00:24:45] Erika Bugaj: The churn and the constant thrash has led me to wonder and reflect that there must be a better way. But sadly, I often question it. I haven't discovered it yet, how to make it work, and that's where I find myself today as the owner of this group practice. Love that. I

[00:25:03] Colleen Long: don't love that for you, but I love the rawness and vulnerability, and I think it's.

[00:25:09] Colleen Long: It has to apply to so many people. It certainly hit with me.

[00:25:14] Erika Bugaj: Yeah. And that's really my hope is that in finding other, you know, working with other like-minded therapists, we can find ways to crack the code. This mysterious code that. None of us with advanced degrees seems to be able to figure out. Yeah. Yes.

[00:25:32] Erika Bugaj: But we're all searching for it relentlessly too.

[00:25:35] Colleen Long: Yeah, I know. All right, well, I'll go into my off the chair moment. When I was young, I grew up in a very small town. Called Clarksville, Indiana. Very close to Louisville, Kentucky, and there were a couple of of ways out of said small town. And I love that small town.

[00:25:55] Colleen Long: I go back to that small town quite a bit, especially for Derby. But I knew this wasn't the landing point for me. And I watched my mom, who was a single mother post-divorce, really struggle with money. And when you struggle with money. Money is the thing that is talked about all the time. You talk about money all the time.

[00:26:16] Colleen Long: Do you know how much that uniform costs me? Do you know how much that costs me? Do you know? You know, it's all that. So I very much grew up in a scarcity mindset, and I think probably in all the psychoanalysis I've done, I've learned that money for me equals survival. It equals death if you don't have it, which sounds insane, but that's what happens to my body internally when I'm fearful around it, is that I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna live.

[00:26:47] Colleen Long: And so even now in, you know, uh, orange County, California, and we're in, we're, we're doing okay. We're not, we don't have any chance of going homeless anytime soon. I still feel that early trauma of growing up. Very, uh, in poverty. Um, and so the idea that was impressed upon me was you either become a doctor, a lawyer, or you marry one.

[00:27:13] Colleen Long: And since marriage didn't seem to work out for my mom, I thought, well, I'm not gonna bank on that one. And, and lawyering seemed very dry, so I said, well, I'll be a doctor. And, and like you, Erica, you know, I, school was one of those things that just came easy. Academics. It was, it was easy. I could figure it out.

[00:27:32] Colleen Long: Stats, I hated stats, but I could just throw myself into stats and I, I was the one that was teaching everybody else stats and physics and che and organic chem and all that. And so I was in the pre-med track and, um. I felt really safe when I was going down that track because I knew that once I was a doctor, I could always have that insurance policy in the back of my pocket, that I'll always have a job no matter what, that I'll never have to worry about not having a roof over my head.

[00:28:03] Colleen Long: No matter if I get divorced, I will always have an ability to support myself. And really that's where it started was probably that just small trauma, being a young girl, not knowing where things were gonna come from. So a lot of times when people get into therapy. If they don't have that scarcity mindset, I do think that they're truly coming from a higher level of being, which is like, I'm so fortunate and life is so abundant and I just wanna give to others.

[00:28:29] Colleen Long: That was not where it came from. For me. It was, I need to live. I don't wanna be homeless. How do I do that? Doctor? Great. So I did that. Took the mcat, didn't get into medical school the first year. No one told me like, take a gap year, go to the south of France. It's beautiful this time of year. That's not the kind of narrative that's happening in my town.

[00:28:51] Colleen Long: It's like, okay, well what are you gonna do? And so I wrote to some lady in grad school and I think she was on her way out, but she felt sorry for me and she let me in. Unheard of, but that's what happened. I got out, a lot of things happened. I was an egg donor, I had a blackjack thing. A lot of stories I'll probably tell later.

[00:29:12] Colleen Long: But that's how I got by and I got out, I was going to NYU, I was fully like writing checks for my college and it was a lot of creativity. But I got that PhDs EI got, thats E after four years of college in six years of post grad. So 10 years. Of, uh, unpaid work and I felt safe for a little bit, and this was in early two thousands, so.

[00:29:42] Colleen Long: When you're making 200 an hour. That was, that worked back then, especially when I didn't have kids and I was just married. And so I built a practice and it was a nice little bougie practice in Manhattan Beach. I saw couples, I was deep into the clinical work of David Snar and I was, you know, loving what I was doing.

[00:30:02] Colleen Long: But unless you've been a therapist, as you guys know, doing therapy that hour, that clinical hour. Takes so much out of you, even when you have all the right muscles and tools and you've done your own work and you know how to hold the space for someone else without it infiltrating, it's. A lot. You are fully, and for me as a, an ambivert, my battery runs low when I'm around people for a lot, and I was around people for a lot because that's how I make money.

[00:30:33] Colleen Long: So it was intense and I started doing testing and the days that I did testing, I remember feeling like. Oh yeah, today's gonna be an easy day because it didn't take that same level of bandwidth, that intense therapy, especially couples therapy takes outta you. So that's where that path came for me, is that I stopped doing the couples therapy after about 10 years and switched into testing, loved testing into testing.

[00:30:59] Colleen Long: I. Remember my husband saying, and there's a lot of themes of my husband going, have you looked at your bank account? These are the major pivots. He said, have you looked at your bank account? And I said, no. What? And he said, you don't have any money in there. And I remember doing all this work and I was working really, really hard.

[00:31:16] Colleen Long: And I thought, why don't I have any money? And. I just had a biller that just really wasn't doing anything, and I had no idea how to oversee them. I wasn't a biller. I didn't know. So I started doing all the billing and I started doing all the admin, and I was on the phone with insurance companies going, all right, you can only adjudicate three claims a day, and you know, all of that stuff.

[00:31:38] Colleen Long: So I read the four hour work week, which was a game changer for me, and I've read several times since then by Tim Ferris. I love that book. I love it. It's so good. And every decade of my life, it has a new meaning. But at the time it was like, look at your life and how you spend each hour and can you, are you the best person to be doing this activity right now?

[00:32:01] Colleen Long: And every activity I was doing, the answer was no. Am I the best person to be sitting on the phone with an insurance company quibbling over $15 when I can charge $200 an hour? Probably not. So it was time for me to hire. I hired my first practice manager slash biller. It quadrupled our practice income, and I was off to the races at that point.

[00:32:22] Colleen Long: I was like, got it. And that was the big, big lesson for me is every single minute of my time, am I the only person? Am I the absolute best person that could be doing this? And that was what really started to change the trajectory of the practice. Then I started to realize even after that, you can only make.

[00:32:43] Colleen Long: So much money a day, right? Because there's only so many hours in the day, and how much bandwidth are you gonna have for the next 20 years to do this? So I hired my first clinician. Then the next and the next I had a group practice, and all of a sudden I was a CEO. I was not a psychologist anymore. I was a.

[00:33:03] Colleen Long: I don't know somebody that I was not prepared to be. I did not have an MBA. I did not know how to do systems or operations. I did not wanna hold people accountable. I did not know what a KPI was, nor did I want to. And I had a lot of things that I was doing every day in building this freedom practice that did not feel very liberating.

[00:33:25] Colleen Long: I did not feel that I had achieved freedom even though yes, I had pulled myself off the chair and I was no longer trading my time for money and had figured out how to build something that would quote, make money in my sleep. I wasn't sleeping that much, and in fact, I was working more than when I was working as a therapist and started to envy my therapist who could just clock in and clock out for the day, and that was the end.

[00:33:49] Colleen Long: My husband could clock in and clock out. And there was no like, are we gonna make payroll on Thursday? Or how is this gonna work? Or do you know? And they didn't have to worry about that. And I had all of these worries all of a sudden and thought, what did you get yourself into? Why did you think you were good at this?

[00:34:05] Colleen Long: You know? And like, why are you here and how do you get out? So I went through that issue where I just. Was kind of in a place where it, it felt like the point of no return. And especially after COVID when we didn't know what was happening with the world, I just felt like I'm gonna have to just keep going because I, I don't know if we'll ever return to in office again, and I don't know what that means.

[00:34:32] Colleen Long: I maybe have to like save up money for the end of the world. I don't know what's going on. And fortunately, or or unfortunately, there was probably, we had arguably the, one of the biggest mental health issues. In at the time during then because everybody was locked up and so we made a good amount of money and we were doing okay.

[00:34:52] Colleen Long: Uh, I was not doing okay, but we were doing okay. And so I think I started to stroke my own ego, pat myself on the back. I was like, I can do this. Look at me. I've made this business out of nothing and. Then the cash grab that happened with physicians about 10 years ago happened in our industry where the venture capitalist saw an opportunity to exploit, and it was happening in front of our very eyes, and we didn't realize it was happening.

[00:35:25] Colleen Long: And so. The insurance companies figured out a way to be both the payer and the provider, and it got really bad. And so all that to say that I became a prisoner of my practice. My husband again, 10 years later said, after. Hiring my second in command. And at that point I was, you know, mind you, I was still in the, um, well, I've just, I'm the visionary.

[00:35:52] Colleen Long: I've figured this out and I, I must have all the chops to be a great business owner, so I'm gonna get my operator. And I did that e whole EOS thing and went through 300 applicants and all of her references and Colby Index, and I thought, this is great. This is my operator. This is gonna be my lifestyle, income, lifestyle business, and I bet on the wrong pony.

[00:36:14] Colleen Long: This person, while very well healed and very well spoken, had no clue what she was doing, and I learned all too late. So that'll be a story for a different time. But needless to say, my husband pops his head in my office and says, have you looked at bank account? No, I haven't. I haven't had a look at the make account in years.

[00:36:35] Colleen Long: And he said, you might want to. And there was no money in there. And that was the first time I had to borrow to make payroll. That culminated into over a quarter million dollars that I had to borrow. To keep making payroll, still thinking over a year, we're gonna get this back. We're gonna figure this out, we'll find the right biller.

[00:36:58] Colleen Long: We'll, you know, we'll figure this out. And the front office was not properly registering people, so we were getting denied on claims and then never getting paid for untimely filing. And yet I still had, I was left carrying the bag. I still had to sign off on all these reports and write all these reports, and at this point, all the clinicians had left because I couldn't pay anymore.

[00:37:19] Colleen Long: So I was stuck. And I remember speaking with bankruptcy attorneys and saying, how do I do this? Like I can't, this is unsustainable and. Most of their advice was, I, I don't have any advice for you. You, you, you're stuck unless you wanna lose your home, which was the personal guarantee. So I did end up rebuilding and restructuring.

[00:37:44] Colleen Long: I clamped down on cost. I became a nuisance to every person that worked for me because every single one of their hours was tracked and I exited. Last month I sold my company and walked away and bruised still and barely intact. And I still feel like that scene on, um, captain Phillips where Tom Hanks is in the ship and they're like, you're okay?

[00:38:10] Colleen Long: And he's like,

[00:38:14] Colleen Long: you know, I'm still in that. Like, am I okay? You know, because I don't feel okay for a year. I have felt like I was gonna lose my home. And even though, like if you look at all the dollars and cents, I'm okay now. It's okay. I'm on dry land. But it was super traumatic. And I would never, ever do that if I had to go back.

[00:38:36] Colleen Long: And I would never do that. Never. You know, and at the same time, like, fuck, I built a seven figure practice out of nothing. This kid from Indiana who was told like all like, you know, do you know how much that uniform costs? And, you know, all that stuff. I built that from nothing. And there's some really, really great moments in there.

[00:39:02] Colleen Long: But it was not fun and not something I would ever recommend anyone ever trying in this field ever again until we get help. So here I am, I'm in this next chapter, which is gonna be all fun. It's gonna be all creative, and it's gonna be just play. It's going to be going back to like what my kids do when they wake up in the morning, which is like, how much fun can I suck out of this day?

[00:39:32] Colleen Long: And life is short. And so that's, that's where I'm at, is I, I just wanna help rip that collar off and that blindfold off for, for clinicians that are maybe starting and help them find a way to feel freedom and to use that moat that we have.

[00:39:47] Jennifer Politis: Thanks for sharing, Colleen. I think Erica and I can't wait to see what you do next, and hopefully you can motivate us to have more joy in our life and start playing more.

[00:39:56] Jennifer Politis: Congratulations again, and that's really

[00:39:59] Erika Bugaj: inspiring

[00:40:00] Colleen Long: to hear. Yeah. Thank you. I, I really am so excited and I don't think it's fully set in yet that I have exited and I'm still, I'm still in it, right? Like I still am helping with the transition and all of that, but I don't think it's quite set in. There are moments though, where my practice manager will say, well, they're wanting this much money to do this.

[00:40:23] Colleen Long: What do you wanna do about it? And I can go. Not my problem, not my problem. And that's

[00:40:29] Jennifer Politis: where it starts to feel real. Is there a certain timeframe you're staying on for?

[00:40:34] Colleen Long: Yeah, so we have got a sort of earnout structure, which I think is pretty common in these deals where, you know, they want you to have skin in the game, which I get totally get.

[00:40:44] Colleen Long: So I'm staying on. We hit a revenue benchmark for the year one and two, and I'm confident this new buyer is. A rockstar. They've done this before and they've got way more operational troughs than I do. So I'm excited to see where they take this. Um, and you know, unfortunately or fortunately, have. A very cyclo, themic mind.

[00:41:08] Colleen Long: You know, it's, it's not at the point where I would say bipolar two, but I definitely have my moments of hypomania where I've got these ideas. And unfortunately, or fortunately, I've been released, the Beast. The Beast have been released to seek out these ideas now. And so I love that Mark Twain quote. Where he says, with enough ignorance and self-confidence, success is Sure.

[00:41:33] Colleen Long: That's a good one. That's where I'm at, is I've got a ton of ignorance, uh, and a ton of misplaced self-confidence, and I've got a ton of ideas that always come, and so I just am really excited about all the things that I wanna do next, and really also not being just scared to lose my, my literal roof over my head.

[00:41:55] Colleen Long: Awesome

[00:41:56] Jennifer Politis: story. Yeah. So let's hear yours, Jen. So I guess I'll start a little bit from the beginning. I think many people have always asked me, and I'm sure they've asked you, why did you wanna sit in a therapist chair? Why did you become a therapist for the longest time? I would always say, of course, to help people.

[00:42:13] Jennifer Politis: I'm an empath. I always could read people very well, but honestly, if you lock eyes with me and really ask me, the truth is, I was a perpetual new kid. We lived in five states before I turned 14. Moved within states, so there were more moves within that time. And you know, a move smack in the middle of my freshman year of high school, it completely shattered me.

[00:42:37] Jennifer Politis: 14, 15 years old, I was in a fog of depression. My parents were not very pro therapy people. And I remember watching like Oprah at the time and being like, oh, I need to see a therapist. I remember asking my mom for a very long time. She reluctantly agreed. I only went one time. And I can't even recall the therapist's exact words and what we talked about in the session, but I do remember I walked out of that office and I felt better.

[00:43:08] Jennifer Politis: I felt lighter. I felt validated, I felt seen. And even though that little office in 1995 was like dimly lit and you couldn't even find it, obviously mental health back then was not what it is today. But I left that office and I said, I'm gonna be a psychologist one day and I'm gonna have a beautiful office that's inviting and we'll just offer kids like me a safe space.

[00:43:32] Jennifer Politis: And around that same time, it was like sophomore year of high school, I also had my first psych class. It was like a general psych. And I just remember being like loving everything that I was learning. I was like, so in, I was like reading the textbook. I was like, oh my gosh, I wanna read everything psychology related.

[00:43:50] Jennifer Politis: So I definitely found my passion, and I remember thinking I would be the person who could read the silence. I could hand teenagers the vocabulary for their chaos. I wanted to remind families that being too messy isn't a thing. So I planted myself really for the first half of my career, I was in the school system.

[00:44:10] Jennifer Politis: I was a school counselor, school psychologist, and then I was a director of counseling. So I met students where they were. And I did enjoy that for definitely a long period of time. But of course, as we all know, school system income is only, you know what it is. And I was like, you know, I wanna make more money.

[00:44:28] Jennifer Politis: So I did eventually open a private practice after my daughter was born, after my second child, and I really wanted it to be a space where big feelings were welcomed and healing begins with being seen. I had a lot of goals and visions at that time, and I wanted to make it much different than my first counseling experience.

[00:44:46] Jennifer Politis: So I rented an office, a tiny little office one day a week. And I remember telling my husband and he kind of was like, what the fuck are you doing? Like what? Not that he wasn't supportive, but it was just kind of like outta left field. Like, oh, you're putting a shingle up, you're doing this. And I was like, I'm doing it.

[00:45:01] Jennifer Politis: My daughter was four months at the time. My, my little guy was a toddler. And I was like, it's now or never.

[00:45:07] Colleen Long: You gotta get it outta the house.

[00:45:08] Jennifer Politis: A hundred percent. Yes, absolutely. So I rented this space and I found, you know, again, it's interesting how things happen. I went to Fordham for, for graduate school in the city, and I ended up finding someone that randomly went to Fordham and had an office space near me.

[00:45:25] Jennifer Politis: So it just kind of, I felt like, you know, the stars were aligned. It was just kind of working out. So pretty much, you know, I was in private practice for five years, solo. And I was pretty much full and I only worked, you know, the hours I worked, but I started referring and filling all of my colleagues and friends and their practices, and then I kind of realized I.

[00:45:47] Jennifer Politis: What am I doing? Maybe I should help more people and give therapists, you know, balance and freedom so they can have a job they like. Right. We've all worked in places that I think were toxic and I mean, I have stories, we'll get to those another time, but, so I really wanted to have a space where I felt like, you know, so that's when wellness counseling was born and we really had rapid growth.

[00:46:11] Jennifer Politis: Again, it was coupled around the time of COVID, so we had three locations. I was juggling three young kids being home for remote learning. My husband at the time was leaving his medical practice with his partners to build his own practice. I ended up moving all three of my locations around the same time.

[00:46:30] Jennifer Politis: I would not advise that two of them, we included build outs. I also then had an insurance clawback happen of 300 K, and I had to dip into my personal savings to, you know, make payroll. I also had to take out a business loan, so I was just beyond exhausted, beyond stressed out. And then I had a crushing health diagnosis that I know could have been avoided because it was completely all stress related.

[00:46:56] Jennifer Politis: So I kind of stood at a crossroads where I was like. What do I do next? And I think so much of my identity was wrapped into being a therapist, a psychologist, that it was very hard to tease out of like, what do I do next? It felt like if I left the field I was like abandoning part of myself. So I did speak to a few people to sell and I was kind of toying with the idea, but I decided at that time I was just gonna level up.

[00:47:25] Jennifer Politis: Part of it was probably delusion at the time, just to kind of like keep going. And thinking that things were gonna get better. 'cause I think when you're a practice owner, you always are thinking like, oh, just gotta get through this. Oh, just gotta get another six months. Oh, just gotta hire three more people.

[00:47:40] Jennifer Politis: So I definitely think at that time there was a lot of delusion involved, but the irony of it all was, and I was someone who definitely chased money, you know, having a childhood where you move around a lot and things like that. I always wanted stability. I wanted enough money to make financial decisions so I wouldn't have to rely on certain people, and I just, you know, I wanted to have that freedom.

[00:48:02] Jennifer Politis: So I was actually making the most money ever made in the practice at that time, and I still was miserable, very unhappy, and just not sure of what I should do next. So I chose up. As I like to say, and I did spend some time on building out a leadership team. I hired one of my clinicians to be a COO. I hired a clinical director and I learned I had to, you know, pretty much trade my grit, which definitely got me to a certain point.

[00:48:32] Jennifer Politis: But I had to, you know, look more at strategy and I joined every mastermind I could. I read every leadership book under the sun, and today the practice is doing well. So I am happy about that and there's proof that there's another way to run the marathon. But if you ask me if I would do this again, I would say no.

[00:48:50] Jennifer Politis: I think sometimes when I talk to some of my clinicians and they wanna open a private practice, I'll say to them, if I was you, I would stay at a practice and I'd open, you know, all these other business ideas. 'cause you can make more money and work less so. You know this podcast for me is that beacon Together, I think we're gonna navigate the peaks and valleys of running a group practice together.

[00:49:16] Jennifer Politis: I don't think anybody's too broken, too complicated or too far gone as a business owner or a clinician to find a better, brighter chapter. I'm excited about this journey and I'm excited that we're all getting off the chair and into some more action in our life.

[00:49:33] Erika Bugaj: Me too. Yes. Amen. I was just gonna say to Jenna, that was a great story.

[00:49:38] Erika Bugaj: I really connected to so many things you said, and especially that part about continuing to keep going. Oh, this is just one setback, but then you get. Stable again, and then another one comes along. Yeah. And I think that is part of the recipe for burnout. Right?

[00:49:58] Jennifer Politis: Right. And I do think about that sometimes myself, even though I'm in a period where things are going well and I have built it to a certain point where I don't have to be involved in the day to day.

[00:50:07] Jennifer Politis: I'd lie if I said, I, I don't feel this like impending doom and dread at times of what's, what's gonna fall next and what's happening in our industry. And yeah, Erica, you're such a

[00:50:19] Colleen Long: therapist. You've got all the language. You are like, I really felt that I connected with that. It was very val. I, I felt validated and it wasn't even my story.

[00:50:31] Colleen Long: I

[00:50:31] Erika Bugaj: can't

[00:50:31] Colleen Long: turn

[00:50:32] Erika Bugaj: it

[00:50:32] Colleen Long: off. Oh,

[00:50:34] Erika Bugaj: you can't.

[00:50:35] Colleen Long: You can't.

[00:50:35] Erika Bugaj: I do. Do you still see

[00:50:36] Colleen Long: patients?

[00:50:36] Erika Bugaj: I do. I have a small caseload. I'm not taking any new patients right now, but yes.

[00:50:42] Colleen Long: Yeah. What about you, Jen? Are you still in the chair? A couple hours. I'm not Nice. Yeah, I haven't been for a while. Yeah. I mean, you know, that's all of the stuff that they tell you in the books, right, too, when you're trying to build to sell is that they wanna see you out of the chair.

[00:50:57] Colleen Long: They wanna see the owner out of the chair. Right? And so when I was listening to your story, Jen, what came up for me was the license is more of a liability than a ticket to freedom. Which I think we all thought that license was gonna be an insurance plan, but honestly, like it really, I still, and when we see in our practice, we see probably 300 to 400 patients a month because we do testing, right?

[00:51:24] Colleen Long: So we have a high volume and we accept insurance. And so of course you're gonna get your handful of people that are just. Maybe not the benchmark of mental health that didn't like their experience, and we get our board complaints, and I still get the fear of God running through me when I get that board complaint.

[00:51:44] Colleen Long: Right. Even though there's nothing that we've done, it's like they don't like our timeline or whatever. But I've often thought about resigning my license because it hasn't been the freedom. That I thought it was, it's honestly been more of a liability and a carrot that has been hung over me at more for out of fear than freedom.

[00:52:04] Jennifer Politis: I wish I had the stats, but I was on a conference, this was a few months ago, but they were saying that because you can do online for complaints, for therapist complaints, you know, most states now have an online portal, and ever since that was instituted, you know, obviously the numbers are through the roof of complaints.

[00:52:23] Colleen Long: Yeah. Yeah. And, and the board has to entertain every single one of them, regardless how frivolous they are. So then you have to entertain them and you have to teach a lawyer and, you know, it's a, a hassle. So, yeah, it's, um, you know, I think that the cool thing about where therapists are, and clinicians in the mental health field is that.

[00:52:47] Colleen Long: We do have a specific, uh, very specific and niche moat. I, I keep on using this term moat, but I've heard it used in other disciplines before where not everybody can jump in and, and do what we do given the experience that we have. And I think sometimes we forget how much experience we do have just because we're literally just trying to survive every day.

[00:53:08] Colleen Long: And so I do believe that one of these days, if not myself, somebody will create. Something to go up against the juggernaut that is the insurance companies. Right? But until then, we are gonna help people figure out how to take that expertise and leverage it in a way that feels. Good. Again, feels joyful and fills your cup and it feels like you're playing and you're helping at the same time, and you're not living in fear of your house being taken away.

[00:53:42] Erika Bugaj: Yeah,

[00:53:43] Colleen Long: I want that. Okay. I want that. I want that for you. We've said a lot. I hope that I don't come across as annoying in this whole podcast, but. I have felt very stifled for a long time. Like I have to toe the line and say a certain thing. And maybe that's because also when I was owning the practice, you know, you've gotta like kind of keep your people in mind, right?

[00:54:11] Colleen Long: You want people to still want to work, right? But. I also really hope to be that person that can be a voice for people that are maybe afraid to speak out. And I know I'll probably get the negative backlash as well, but I've been so torn down after this year that like, honestly, it doesn't, that that doesn't have a place to fall anymore.

[00:54:35] Colleen Long: It doesn't hit as hard anymore. And I really think that our field needs. Strong, outspoken people that have a different narrative rather than like, okay, thank you sir. May I have another Thank you sir. May I have another okay. And instead like, no, I'm not gonna put up with that anymore. I put all of this into my education and my time and we're worth.

[00:55:00] Colleen Long: So much more than what we're accepting right now.

[00:55:03] Jennifer Politis: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:55:05] Colleen Long: All right, well this was fun. I liked it. So until next time. Until next time.

[00:55:09] Erika Bugaj: Until next time, take care.

[00:55:14] Colleen Long: Thanks guys. Talk to you next week. Bye.

[00:55:19] Erika Bugaj: That's a wrap on today's episode of Off the Chair. If you're a clinician feeling a little more optimistic, a little more fired

[00:55:26] Colleen Long: up, or just a little more seen, that means we did our job.

[00:55:31] Colleen Long: We hope today reminded you that your clinical expertise isn't just a skill, it's a moat, a damn powerful one at. And you don't have to keep trading it in for pennies on the dollar just because the insurance companies told you. So there's so many ways to use your expertise to help, to heal, to build without burning out.

[00:55:50] Colleen Long: And we're just getting started showing you how

[00:55:53] Erika Bugaj: if this episode sparked something in you subscribe. Leave us a review and come hang out on Instagram. At Off the Chair pod, we share behind the scene chaos bold ideas and the tools you

[00:56:05] Colleen Long: should have learned in grad school but didn't. Until next time, think bigger, think sharper.

[00:56:11] Colleen Long: Think outside the box and get off the chair.

Off the Chair Podcast

Burned Out, Broke, and Brilliant: How We Got Off the Chair

In this episode, we talk about:

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Colleen Long, Psy.D.

Jennifer Politis, PhD, LPC

Erika Bugaj, MA, MSW, LICSW

Episode Transcript:

Group Practice - Business Growth or Burnout Multiplied?

Welcome to Off the Chair