Welcome to the Empower LEP podcast. I'm your host, Janna Parker, and licensed educational psychologist, a group practice owner and the owner and a mentor at Empower LEP. Today, I had the opportunity to host Dr. Jeremy Sharp of the testing psychologist podcast and the testing psychologist community and co-owner of ReBurb, which is an AI platform for report writing. Dr. Jeremy Sharp and I talked all about his career going from grad school into being a clinical psychologist, taking on employees, starting a group practice, growing a huge practice, taking it down a notch, and along the way, all of the other entrepreneurial things he's done, including starting the podcast, starting his consulting business for testing psychologists, leading mastermind groups, and getting into AI technology. He just always seems to be on the front end of the curb. I'm a little jealous. He's got like premonitions and is just like really ahead of the game. But what a pleasure to talk to him, just to really down to earth guy, very easy to talk to, and yeah, we had a great conversation, so I hope that you enjoy listening to this conversation as much as I enjoy having. Well, welcome back to the Empower LEP podcast. I'm here with Dr. Jeremy Sharp. Welcome Jeremy. Hey, thanks, Jana. Good to be here. Yeah, I'm excited to have you on. I have been listening to your show for years and years and years. For those of you who have somehow been maybe under a rock or in a box and haven't listened to the Testing Psychologist podcast, I highly recommend it. It's been really integral in shaping and kind of helping me think about lots of things, both business and clinically related for my own practice. And so Dr. Jeremy Sharp is the host of that podcast and I, yeah, I think it's great. So thank you for that. Oh, yeah, yeah. Thanks for listening. I really appreciate it. And thanks for having me on. Again, I'm excited to chat with you. Yeah, so I brought you on because you have done some really, really cool things with your career and I want to hear all about it. So I would love to talk about just kind of for the listeners like how you got into your practice, then how you got into other entrepreneurial endeavors and then what you're kind of working on now. So good. Yeah, yeah, that sounds great. Well, yeah, let's talk. Let's dig into like what got you excited about psychology in the first place and how you, you know, how you entered into the into the field of clinical psychology. Oh gosh, how far back are we going to go? So I think like probably a lot of us, there's a family of origin stuff involved here, right? So I grew up with a mom who was chronically ill with MS. And so I took on a lot of responsibility in our house and I think over time just sort of learned that a lot of my value came from helping others and listening and providing and doing things and so forth. And so the natural extension of that was to go into psychology where I could just listen and help people all day long or at least that's what I thought it was going to be. And yeah, to some classes in high school and then went that route in undergrad, did some shadowing, did some internships and was lucky enough to get into grad school somehow. So, you know, that's the very short version. But had some experiences in high school, I think as a teenager that made me, you know, a little more motivated to maybe help help other other teens, I think, similar place. So yeah, those are a few things, but like everybody, I think just some early experiences when we were little growing up. Sent me down that path. That was lucky enough to make it happen. And you went to school in Colorado and then you stayed in Colorado for your practice and everything. Yeah, yeah, I did. I did grad school in Colorado, did undergrad in South Carolina and then moved out here for grad school and just stuck around after that. Like a lot of people do. Colorado is pretty magical. Yeah. And so when you started out in practice, did you start by yourself or did you join a group practice? Yeah, I had a nice hybrid. I was technically by myself. So I've always been 100% sole owner of my business, my practice. And what I did, though, is I got the opportunity to join an existing practice. And that was really nice. You know, private practice can be lonely. I think a lot of us have experienced that. But I somehow got this opportunity to join a group of psychologists who were all on the tail end of their careers. So this was a group of psychologists who'd been in our town for probably 25 or 30 years. They were all at least 65 at that point. And the oldest one of them retired and they had an office open. And somehow I, through a friend of a friend, got this introduction and joined this group. And it was both completely bizarre, you know, because I was 30, I think at the time, but also really wonderful because I got to be mentored by these psychologists and learn how to be in practice and see their perspective, which is very different than mine. It was really a gift, but also kind of weird because I just didn't really know what to make up, you know, what to make up them. You know, they were still like running ads in the yellow pages and that kind of thing. So yeah. So you joined up with this group, but each of you had your own kind of separate practices, but you were part of like a kind of a group that had offices all next to each other. Like you weren't something that's annoying. Yeah, exactly. We just shared off a space. No. No. And did you start off in assessment or did you start off doing therapy or both? Yeah. So I was technically doing both when I started. So I did a lot of assessment in grad school and loved it. And but they got away from it during my internship and postdocs. So I did both of those in college counseling centers. So I thought counseling was going to be my thing. And then I went into private practice. I call it my former life at this point, but in my former life, I was, I got a lot of training and emotionally focused therapy for couples. That was my specialty for a couple of years. Almost got certified in that. And then you know, it was doing assessment a long the way, but it was just a minority piece of the practice. And it was probably two or three years in when I shifted and made that big pivot to diving all in on assessment and phasing out my counseling clients. Yeah. Okay. And then so how long until you decided to start a group practice? Oh, yes. So that was, it depends what you call a group practice. So as soon as I started doing assessment, the model that I knew just from being in grad school was that you had other people help you with the testing. So, you know, I was a psychometrist in grad school for a neuropsychologist. And I just assumed that's what you do. And so as soon as I started doing more testing, I brought a grad student in to be a psychometrist and you know, that led to another grad student and then that led to a postdoc and then another postdoc and then my first full-time employee. So, I guess if you consider that a group practice, it started pretty early, but I really think about, it took me probably five years. It was 2014 when I rebranded into like a group practice name and deliberately started to hire and grow and really scale the practice. Gosh, I can't even imagine what it's like to have somebody else doing assessment for me, you know, like it's such a, it's such a different model. I mean, as school psychologists, we do all the testing all the time and you know, maybe we have somebody else doing the achievement testing, but they're a credential teacher. But I don't know, there's never like, we do so much assessment. There's never a time when somebody else is doing any of it for us. We're doing the whole thing. And so for me to think like, oh, I would give up a piece. We're not allowed to do that anyway as licensed educational psychologists. Like we have to do our own assessments. But I can't even imagine what that would be like, but apparently it's quite common. Yeah, yeah, thanks. At least in the clinical psych world and neuropsych world for sure, you know, a lot of hospitals. I mean, I'm getting kind of on the tangent now, but how do you? I feel like there's so much that I get from just being with the kid while I'm doing that work. That if I wasn't the one watching them do all the things, I would struggle to feel like I really knew that, I guess. Yeah, yeah, a lot of people have that have that sense. And I do too. I'm not going to lie. It's tough to give that up. I don't know that I ever get like 100% of the data, right? Or the office.
observations using a psychometrist. But something that's helped a lot is just knowing the training is solid. So we bring on really good folks. And we almost emphasize the observational component more than the test admin component. Because to me, test administration is pretty easy, but the observation and what are they doing during the testing and how do they respond to these. We put a lot of emphasis on that and make sure that they're pretty dot-in. And we have a really robust behavioral observations, record form, and we talk with them. I'm in pretty constant contact throughout the day. How are we doing? And I meet with the kid too. Of course, it's not like they just hang out with the psychometrist. I'm in there at least for an hour when they're doing testing. Got it. Got it. Got them too. OK. Yeah, it's just like a whole different world. You know, that I'm so curious about. OK, so my next question. So you start about five years in. You kind of start bringing on employees. And was there anything else going on during that time entrepreneur wise that you were doing or were you really just focused on building your practice at that time? Yeah, let me see. 2014, that was-- I was just focused on the practice at that point. Yeah. The podcast didn't really come into the picture until 2016, I believe. So I had a couple of years under my belt with the group practice before going down the consulting path. And how did you kind of make that transition? Did you think to yourself? And I think you have had coaches too. I think-- Yes. Because I've listened to some episodes and I think Joe Sannock was a coach of yours, right? And so did you think to yourself, or like, how did this process go? I mean, I probably can't put the words in your mouth, but I'm wondering a lot of the lines of were you thinking, I want to coach people in this? And I think doing a podcast is going to be a good step to that? Or did you think, like, was it separate? I want to do a podcast. And oh, actually, maybe I should actually start doing consulting too. How did that come about? Yeah. I think it started pretty early in the practice journey. So before I did any coaching, I would return to our grad school department and talk with the students about private practice. I think just because when I was starting out-- I mean, this is 2009, right? Like, there were no podcasts. There were no resources, I think, like we have today. I mean, you know, the-- I always joke, like, I had a paperwork packet from one of my advisors in grad school, and that was about it, you know? So all the business stuff-- I just made so many mistakes and fell down and learned so much in those first few years. So I would go back to the grad school and do little seminars for the students around private practice. And here's what you might want to know. So I knew that I enjoyed that and wanted to find another venue or another way to do that. And so when I connected with my coach, Joe Sandock was my first coach back in 2016. You know, as we were chatting about that whole dynamic, and well, do I want to teach? Not really. I don't really want to be a part of the university. And how do you teach private practice? And it was his idea. And he said, you know, why don't you start a podcast? There's no podcast in the space. There's nobody talking about the business of assessment. And to be honest, I didn't really know what that meant or what it would entail. But I thought it sounded pretty good. And it was new and interesting. So I went down that path. Yeah. Have you enjoyed it? Oh, yeah. It's been amazing. Yeah. Tell me about some highlights of the podcast. Oh, gosh. I mean, this is interesting. So this is really time. I don't know when this will release. But I'm closing in very, very shortly on 500 episodes. So I've been thinking a lot about this. You know, what's been nice and what have enjoyed and all that. And it's been real. I mean, there have been some moments, for sure, like some fantastic interviews that I've been able to do over the years. I've had some amazing guests. I did a few what I call happy hour episodes, where I just got on with three or four other psychologists friends and we will talk about what we're doing and our personal and professional lives. I think those were highlights, for sure. The podcast. I mean, it's gotten, it's helped me connect with so many people around the country through interviews or through consulting. And those, I mean, that's probably the best part is just getting to connect with so many amazing folks who do this work and get to pick their brain and learn about them. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. I mean, for me, it's been a lot of that also, just meeting really cool people, hearing awesome stories and connecting. And-- Yeah. Yeah, it's been really cool. OK, so then you're still developing this practice that becomes pretty large. So I want to hear about that. And then I also want to hear how did you start to craft consulting, coaching, and mastermind groups and things like that? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's so funny. I mean, looking back, I don't know what I was thinking. So I got this coach because I was like, I thought I'd been there done that with my practice. I was like, OK, I've had a group practice for a couple of years. It seems great. I need something different. I've mastered this. So naive, so dumb, with the benefit of hindsight. I had no idea. But the-- yeah, so the practice kept growing. So the coaching that I did, there was two prongs. One was, hey, let's grow the practice. Let's be more deliberate about that. And then the other half of the coaching was around the consulting and the podcasting. And so let's see. With the practice, yeah, I started out. I was like, I'd like to grow to 10 practitioners. And that was my goal. Ten seemed like a nice manageable number. So we blew past 10 employees. I don't know within a year, 18 months, I don't know, two years, something like that. I moved to a bigger office space. And then eventually, we grew to, I think, our we peaked at 42 or 3 or 4 or something like that. So that was in 2023. And then started to scale back a little bit. In the meantime, I was doing the podcast. I started. I launched my first episode in January 2017. And I mean, from the beginning, it was meant to be a vehicle for consulting. So the ideas that start the podcast, start a Facebook group that corresponded with it, and then use those to leverage to get my voice out there and hopefully draw in some consulting clients. So that was really, really slow for at least a year or two, get a few consulting clients here and there. Then eventually, I can't remember when it really started to pick up, but it did take some time. I always tell people that if you want to start a podcast, it's going to take time. But yeah, after a couple of years, it started to grow more. And that became a lot more sustainable. And I turned to the group coaching really came from just the desire to bring people together. I kept hearing over and over that people were lonely in private practice. Nobody understood how to run a testing practice. It was a unique niche that was really hard to find. And so that just seemed natural. I love doing group work and bringing people together. And so I started the mastermind groups a couple of years down the road and have continued those ever since. And that's been a blast. Yeah. I mean, everybody has the same questions. And I was just working with somebody the other day. Who was-- like, it made me feel like I really knew what I was doing. You know? It made me feel like-- I mean, even though I'm still learning every day, I was like, wow, I can really help this person. Like, I actually know. Like, I could give her some tangibles of things she can do literally right now to help navigate the difficulties that she's going through. And it feels very rewarding. Kind of like working with an assessment. Oh, yeah, to make it work. Yeah. So and everybody has the same question. So you're either repeat yourself over and over and over again. Or you put people in groups so they can experience it at the same time. And then I'm also doing courses and things on my platform. But there really is-- I really think there's no comparison, though, to what you get from back and forth communication with a coach or a mentor. Yeah, it's been so valuable for me. I've had-- I don't even know-- 3, 4, 5 coaches over the years. And yeah, everybody brings something different. It's just so nice to be able to bounce ideas off of someone. And to feel safe doing-- so I feel like as business owners, [BLANK_AUDIO]
just so much vulnerability involved. And everybody feels like they're doing it wrong or not making enough money or it's gonna fail at any moment. It's like this house of cards. I don't know, maybe I'm projecting, but I think a lot of people will do that way. And yeah, to be able to talk to somebody and get some validation, like, no, this is normal and some help and some support. And it's invaluable. Yeah. - Yeah. And so you grew your practice to about 40 and you scaled it back and I remember listening to that episode where you got real full, and made the decision to kind of like take the counseling piece out of your practice and focus on assessment. How hard was that decision to make? - I mean, it was probably the hardest thing I've done, certainly professionally. And maybe I mean, it's all wrapped up in the personal as well. So yeah, I think it was one of the hardest things that I've done. There's just so much, I just had so much invested in the practice, both financially and emotionally, and a lot of years, a lot of time I had to, gosh, I had to work through a lot of the, like, what does this mean about you? You know, am I failure because I didn't keep growing or because I'm not happy with this? I mean, there are a lot of layers there. There's a lot of identity kind of wrapped up and being a larger practice owner, at that scale, people kind of look at you differently. And part of me enjoyed that. And there's like a little bit of prestige that goes along with that. And you know, go to conferences and such and have a little bit different vibe and admiration or whatever. And yeah, so having to like give that up or think I was giving that up, there's a lot of layers to work through. It was really, and not to mention saying a buy to 25 really good people, that was hard. That was really, really hard. That's a lot of time. Yeah, and so I'm the other side of that now that it's been some time since that has happened. How, you know, when you look back at that decision and how things are now, what are your thoughts? Yeah, I think it was the right decision. It was still very, very difficult. But I think it was the right decision. So, you know, for me, for my family, it's a lot less stressful. It just feels a lot more manageable. I feel a lot more joyful. I'm more excited to be doing what I'm doing. And I think it was better for our team as well. So the folks who are here, you know, we, like I said, eliminated counseling and just scaled back to only doing testing. So now there's, I don't know, 12, 14 of us. And we're just doing testing. We're like solely focused on testing. It's a really tight-knit group. We can solid, you know, move back into one office space instead of having a bunch of spaces kind of spread out. And I think it's been really good for our team. So overall, you know, it was super challenging, but now I'm really glad that I did it. And yeah, I think it was the best choice. Yeah. So one more question on that, 'cause you had separate, excuse me, so you had separate, a couple different separate offices. How was that in terms of like feeling like you had to be at the different places or like what was happening if you weren't at that place? Yeah, I didn't really, I mean, I didn't have any concerns about the work that was happening. Like the folks, you know, the folks we had at the different locations were fantastic. It was more the, I'm just the culture component. Like there's, it's each location, if you're out there, you know, if you have different locations, you know, like each one develops their own sort of personality and vibe and I couldn't control that. And that was, that was tough. I mean, that was one of the hardest parts I think of having a larger practice is like knitting together the different locations and trying to bridge that gap and extend the original practice culture to like our second location, you know. Yeah, I felt like I was never down there enough and they were on a little bit of an island. Yeah, I was challenging. It was challenging. They were doing great work, but the culture was hard. Yeah, I've thought about that. I have one space currently and I've thought about, you know, maybe I should move to different area in California or maybe I just want to go a little bit away from where I am now and I've thought about it, but I ended up just getting a bigger space like a bigger single space rather than having different offices right now. But see what happens down the road. But thank you for answering. Yeah. Is it indulging me? Yeah, yeah. So, okay, so now I want to kind of transition. I feel like you're all, I feel like when I look at you, not that I know you very well, but when I look at the trajectory of like what it looks like on the outside, looking into Jeremy Sharpe's life, he's been kind of on the cutting edge of the new things that are going on in our field, like podcasting, like consulting and now AI. So I want to kind of understand how you had a premonition that you should get into the AI space and what you've got going on there for our listeners to learn about. Yeah, well, first of all, this super kind. I don't feel that's so funny. It doesn't feel that way on the inside. I think, you know, I hear you say that and I'm like, I think I was just really lucky, right? Like I got hooked up with this coach who suggested a podcast and then, you know, that worked out pretty well. And then I had a, again, circumstance. So probably gosh, this was five years ago. It'll be five years this summer. We started this company reverb and it's, you know, I'm a co-founder of this company and it's my partner, it's my brother-in-law. Yeah. And I tell people like this is one of those living room ideas that actually happened, you know? So he was visiting one weekend and I was writing reports because that is what we do, you know? Right. One family is over. A lot of the time. Of course, yeah, when we're supposed to be hanging out with the people we love. And he said, he was just like, what are you doing? You know, why are you doing this work? And I explained everything like what we do and how we do it. And he just kept asking more questions. He's an engineer, you know, he's a software developer by trade. And by the end of that conversation, he was like, I will build something that will solve this for you. Just he said, give me a week, which now sounds completely ridiculous. But, you know, he said, give me a week. But he actually ran with it and he ended up, you know, building this little tool that would like, you know, generate score tables for me. And that was, you know, that was helpful. Let me share it with my practice. But then I think largely due to, you know, he had a lot of energy around it. And we just kept like kind of improving that, that first little product. But then when AI came on the scene to whatever that was two or three years ago, and people started to care about it a lot, that opened a lot of doors for us. And we just went all in on, you know, how can we leverage this AI to help with report writing? And so we've been working on this current product, which, you know, we call reverb for whatever that is, two years, two and a half years. And, yeah, it's an AI report writing software that is meant to automate the parts of report writing that I don't think we should be spending our brainpower on. And it frees up our cognitive energy to really focus on the parts that matter. Well, tell us a little bit more about this reverb. Well, yeah. So it is, it's meant to be, I would say like a drag and drop software. So essentially, if you know how to find a file on your computer and drag it somewhere else, that's all you have to do. So you drag in all your, for your evaluation data, so it would be, you know, it could be the demographic form, the intake notes, collateral interviews, collateral documents, score reports, of course, that you get from Q interactive or PAR wherever. So you drag all that data in and give the software some custom prompts, depending on what you want it to do and what recommendations you might want to generate. And then you go hit write report and it writes a report for you in about five or six minutes. And then you're editing a draft of your report instead of creating it from scratch or even using a template or anything like that. So that's the short story. Yeah. And as you have started using this about how long do you feel like it takes you now to write a report? Yeah, yeah. So full display, I mean, I'm a power user, obviously. You know, I'm a computer. I've been using it since literally day one. But for me, it has saved, I'm up in the range of like 70 to 80% of the time. So I used to be like a five to six hour report writer, you know, if I sat down and, you know, wrote everything and start to finish. Now I'm very solidly an hour to hour and a half. So it's been pretty amazing. And we feel good telling people it'll save you at least 50% of the time that you spend writing reports. And then if you really work with it, it can go higher than that, certainly. What have you kind of put your
or product against others to see maybe what some similarities and differences are. How do you feel like yours works in comparison, maybe, or what are some things that yours maybe? What would make your stand out as what people would want to use versus the other options? Because I was just at a conference and there are like eight to ten different booths with AI report writers and it seems like there's still a lot going on there. It's hard to choose. Yeah, everybody's working on it. Yeah, there's a lot in the space, which is cool. I think it's nice to have choice. It's funny. We got a text from one of our customers who was at the conference. I'm guessing it was a NASP. Was that a NASP? Yeah, it was a NASP. Where you were? Yes. Yeah. We got a text from one of our customers at NASP and this customer said, "Hey, I just want to let you guys know. I've demoed seven or eight different AI report writers here and you guys are light years ahead of everything else out there." I don't know exactly what they meant by that, but it was really good to hear. We've kind of purposefully, I don't know if this is a good business decision or not, but we've kind of purposefully stayed away from looking at the competitors just so that I don't know. There's a part of me that doesn't feel like it's like spying or something. I don't know. Maybe I should look at them. But my understanding from what people have told us who've seen a lot of different products is that reverb is much more comprehensive than a lot of them out there in that you can bring in literally any piece of data that you gather during the Eval. It learns from you and gets better over time. It was designed by a psychologist and I think that shows through in the user interface. What else? It's just a little more elegant, honestly, and I think works better and it saves your preferences so you're not starting from scratch every time. Those would be some of my guesses just based on what people have told us. When you have a practice, do you kind of personalize it to your practice? Can you kind of put things, can you put your logo? Could you put things in the order that you want them? How much of it can you personalize, I guess? Yeah. I think that's one of the other pieces that distinguishes reverb from others is that, yeah, we build your template into the software from the very beginning. The output, the report that comes out is on your work document with your layout formatting, template letterhead. It looks like what you're used to and I think a lot of people appreciate that. Do you work in Word or in Google? I can't. Yes, so our practice is all in Google Workspace, but we write our reports in Word because I hate the formatting of Google Docs and I don't like how they handle tables and bullet points and that kind of thing. I'm the same way. I can't. That's funny. Yeah, I just, I don't know why they have to be different, but I don't like Google Docs. Everything within reverb is word based, so, or PDF, of course. I tend to think it's a bit like a generational thing too. I feel like we were the last, you know, us, you know, in our age bracket, I feel like still love Word, whereas people who are a bit younger are like Word. Why would I use Word? I use Google for like everything. Right. You're such a boomer. You're such a boomer, Janna, you know, using Word. Yeah. That might be true. That's so funny. And now I'm thinking about it. I'm like, my kids have no idea what Microsoft Word is. They're all like, yeah, I always find it interesting when people are using pages like pages. Oh, I have no idea what pages I never got into the Apple ecosystem for these productivity apps. I can't, I don't know. People like pages, people like whatever. I forget the other one, but I don't, I don't do it. Yeah. Okay. Is there anything else that you think that our listeners should know about reverb? Like how do you know if somebody wants to get more information about it? How do they do that and do you offer a demo? Oh, for sure. Yeah. So people can request a demo just by going to the website. It's reverbreports.com. And I think it's super easy to book a demo. There. And yeah, it's really aimed at anyone who's doing assessment. Is the person who does the, those calls, is that your brother in law? Yeah, we both do. So I, at this point, I'm doing probably seven, five or 80% of our demos and he does the remainder. Now, this is another call to action for your audience. If you are out there and you have a sales background and you want to sell reverb for us, we are hiring a salesperson. So if anybody's out there, send me an email and we'll do an interview. Yeah. So where, you know, our team has grown, we're scaling, we're trying to, you know, as they tell us to do, like get out of the day to day. So yeah, I love doing the sales calls and to do kind of bigger things that we need to have somebody else helping with sales calls too. Yeah. Absolutely. So the first thing you say that because I've just, I've been on a bunch of calls around EHRs because I am about up to here with simple practice right now, given the amount of money that they want to charge me, they're already charging me. So I've been, you know, been looking at different EHRs and thinking, you know, for so many people who are burnt out in this field, especially like in schools, there's so many people who are burnt out. And, but they still want to use their skills for, you know, that they've learned, even just being the person who does the demos for these EHR platforms or working for a test publishing company or just there are actually different things that we can do that where we would still be helping the field. I was like, maybe when I retire, I will do an EHR, to look at the EHR sales shop for something. But it's a way to kind of stay in the field, I guess, but still be using what you know about things, right? Like a AI report writer platform. You have, you, you, the best person to do that would be somebody who is good at sales, but also a psychologist who understands the whole report writing process, you know. So maybe there are people in this audience because they are, or doubt school psychologists who would be interested. So very possible. Sure. I'd love to chat with them. Well, and I think that gets to it, something that we've been talking about through this conversation is just how flexible our training and our degrees are, right? Like, I kind of have these three separate, the very related pursuits in my professional life. But, you know, we are training and our degrees let us do any number of things. And, you know, I'm guessing sales for an AI software company is not on any school psychologist Bingo card. But it's not a big leap. It would not be a big leap, right? Or the knowledge that we have. It wouldn't. I would say that in one of the things that I do think is missing, especially for school psychology training is the fact that we literally learned nothing about business and nothing about industry. Like, I don't, I didn't know anything. You know, I've thought, I thought to myself before I really dove deep into private practice. I would think things like, well, gosh, am I going to stay in the schools for the rest of my life? You know, what, what am I going to do? Let me just look at LinkedIn and see what's out there. And I would not even understand the names of the jobs. You know, like, there are so many things that if you're just in education, you just don't know anything about business industry at all. So I felt a little right, right? I would say the same for. Yeah. It's difficult. Well, maybe that's something you could tackle. Right. Yeah. Even like making a LinkedIn profile, you know, it's like, you know, we never had to do anything like that. We were just school district employees, you know. So yeah, yeah. Well, I don't know. That's why I mean, I have so much admiration for you and the, just the work that you're doing. It's not, you know, and I get that like stepping into a space where we need this kind
business discussion and knowledge and I'm just I'm grateful that that you're doing it for school-like folks and thank you well writing something right I just I don't know you probably hear that I hear that over and over like I have no business knowledge I didn't learn anything about this and it's just yeah it's really cool that you're in the space and helping folks thank you well I say the same thing to you because I've been listening for a long time and it definitely as I was starting my practice in 2020 you know during COVID it was very helpful to hear from somebody who had who had done it you know and who was doing it so thank you for being in space absolutely it's been a blast yeah well in your free time so it'll be like kind of how we round out but in your free time what are some things that you like to make sure that you give yourself time for oh good question so there are a couple things running as huge so I run a lot that's absolutely my primary self-care you know it's yeah I don't know what I would do if I couldn't exercise so that's huge you know I'm a morning exercise or some me too pretty early yes yes I don't understand I have to go this afternoon actually and it just feels so weird I don't know yeah I'm a 5 a.m. how do I even do this and yeah when it's daylight but yeah running's huge another thing you know people talk about date nights my wife and I don't actually do a ton of date nights but we have a standing daily date on Fridays so we meet from one to three every Friday and when our kids are in school and you know walk the dog like check on the house stuff and just like talk you know we have the conversation and whatever and just that's been awesome it's like a very simple thing but she's also a therapist and she and a podcaster and has a you know some consulting going on so it's just nice we kind of understand what each other up to and can connect on that that's been huge and then yeah I love TV and movies so every now and again I'll get like a half hour at night to watch a show or something and otherwise we're just like hanging out on the sidelines of sports fields because our kids are 12 and 13 and very athletic and I actually get a lot of joy from that and watching them and taking you know connecting with other parents and that kind of thing so between those things and my businesses that's like my life that's my entire life well that's great that you have time to that you've like scheduled out time to make sure you get to all of those you know practices and games and things how do you uh this will really be a special but like how do you kind of set up your week so that you get everything done I just have recently had a question from somebody I was consulting with about um how to schedule it yourself yeah so I oh gosh I mean early on I don't know where those came from I'm sure it's something deep in my childhood or something but um before you know when we had our first kid in 2011 I said you know I want to be off to pick them up from school every day so for me that's like three o'clock you know give or take and so that was kind of my first personal boundary within work and um it just kind of grew from there and I it kind of evolved into this philosophy I suppose that we should really fit in our work time around our personal desires especially especially in private practice I mean if you're working for an entity or corporation or district or something I mean that's that's a little bit you know you don't have as much control but if you're in private practice um I love you know taking people through this exercise where you like put all of your personal stuff in the calendar so you know whatever your sleep schedule is you know do you work out in the morning do you go to lunch do you uh pick your kids up do you whatever on the weekend like put all the personal stuff in and then whatever's left is the time that you have to work and then that tells you okay I have 27 hours a week to work and that kind of dictates how much you need to charge depending on what your income needs are and you know it just kind of flows from there so that's that's where I've gotten to over the years and it you know there've been times like now especially with the software I'm like hustling more and like grinding more you know and working on the weekend a little bit but um that's my general philosophy is put all the personal stuff in and then like fit to the work around it and that has always worked in my practice you know yeah I love that it's uh it makes me think about that uh that curriculum scene which is a called seeing my time or something for uh it's a coaching program for kids who have ADHD or people who have ADHD um oh nice and you like schedule everything in with like personal and you have little pictures and that's a good way to to help kids who struggle with time see it initially um but I think that I I like yeah thanks for that tip I'm gonna do it yeah yeah I don't know how about you you're a busy person how do you do person at time um I I work out every day at five a.m so similar yeah when when it went slide outside like on a weekend if I work out on a week out I'm like what is what does the gym look like when it's light you know but I do cross it so um yeah uh and then I I'm a morning focuser like I know that I think best in the morning and so I've started to kind of not schedule calls typically unless like they have to but try not to schedule calls or meetings in the morning so that I can get some focus work done or if I'm doing assessment then I do get some testing done um and then like after five o'clock my brain is off so I just really don't do much of anything that is work related after five and I try not to work on the weekends but I also know that I am better writing a report on the weekend when I'm not in my office and nobody is bothering me or even if I do come into my office but if but like outside of the nine to five or eight eight to whatever um outside of that time is when I can do focused report writing time or I have to schedule it in the morning uh and so yeah I've learned like when my brain works best for different things and yeah some boundaries around that yeah yeah that's huge that's huge I'm glad you mentioned that absolutely if I had yeah I can't work in really like past three we're kind of pushing in here with this podcast in terms of the brain actually working but yeah like afternoon evening I am not I'm not productive whatsoever so yeah I love the morning time but just tuning into that knowing when you when you focus best yeah and people are different like my colleague says their her focused think time is two to four big two to four what like two to four I can have a meeting but I can't write a report you know or I can't like mm-hmm yeah well on on that note because your brain is almost off uh I will let you go but I really really appreciate you taking the time and joining me today on the podcast and how can people um connect with you mm yeah thanks so much for having me this was a lot of fun and uh let me see the easiest way to get in touch with me gosh probably just at the testing psychologist so that's my consulting business and podcast and it's just Jeremy at the testing psychologist calm and people should join your Facebook group oh yeah yeah of course of course uh we have a Facebook community or Facebook group it's called the testing psychologist community so it's for any practitioner who specializes in assessment could be school psychology could be neuropsychology could be any of those things and it's a great group it's like over 16,000 people at this point there's a lot of discussion every day it uh yeah it's a pretty wide ranging group like all assessment focused so yeah it's interesting jump in and hang out it is an interesting group yeah sure that's a good that's a diplomatic way to put it yes yeah interesting sometimes conflictual sometimes crazy but I do a lot of observing they're observing them yes me too actually yes all right well thanks this is so fun yes absolutely my pleasure that is it for today's episode of the Empower LEP podcast I hope that you found this conversation insightful and inspiring as you navigate your journey in private practice if you enjoyed the episode I'd love for you to subscribe and leave us a five-star rating and review on Apple podcasts it really helps us reach more.
LEPs and school psychologists who are looking to build their own path in private practice. For more resources and community, you can connect with me at EmpowerLEP.com, on Instagram, @ EmpowerLEP, on Facebook, in the Empower LEP Facebook group, or by email at
[email protected]. And just a quick reminder, the information shared on this podcast is for educational purposes only and should not be considered legal, business, or clinical advice. Be sure to consult with the appropriate professionals for guidance on your specific situation. Thanks for tuning in and remember you have the skills, you have the knowledge, and you have the power to create a private practice that truly makes an impact.
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