She called 20 Therapists and NONE Answered. What is YOUR Community Saying About YOU?

Someone posted in a Facebook group last week. She's an MFT. She was looking for a therapist for her child. She emailed 20 practices. She got zero replies.

Zero.

She said she was mind-blown. But honestly? I’m not.

This isn’t the first time that I’ve seen this, and it won’t be the last.

There are at least a dozen reasons why this could have happened. Maybe she’s using Google and her email got marked as spam because she sent 20 of the same subject lines out. Maybe the therapist is on vacation or not taking clients and just didn’t see it. Maybe it’s at the bottom of a dozen other really important emails and it will be a few more days before they respond. Or maybe there is no system for handling inquiries at the practice and they quite literally dropped the ball.

The fact is that searches for mental health, counseling and therapy are NOT down according to Google and they are often trending searches on social media, so if people are still looking for therapists, why do so many therapists feel like they don’t have enough referrals?

I asked a question of my TikTok followers the other day. “How long would it take you to get through 100 inquiries?” Most said a few hours, maybe a day or 2. And that had my mind blown.

They weren’t lying of course. But they were grossly underestimating the logistics of growth and scale. Our practice routinely gets 100+ inquiries most months, and I know that between phone or email tag, scheduling conflicts, typos and such, we do our best but can sometimes miss our 48-hour window. And none of our admin team sees clients. So, I can only imagine a solopreneur doing all the things would have more trouble than me.

The thing that we can definitely learn from the platforms is that people want a smooth and seamless intake process. Not necessarily one that is filled with Chatbots and automations, but one that doesn’t feel more laborious or time consuming than necessary and NOT having that figured out for your business could quite literally be costing you money today.

But here's what I want to say about this, and I'm talking directly to the practice owner reading this, who really wants an influx of clients.

Prepare for what you’re hoping, wishing or praying for.

I've seen this from both sides. As the person who helped build a small practice to over $500K in annual revenue, one of the earliest conversations we had was about what happens to a referral between the moment they reach out and the moment they show up to a first session. Because that journey, that gap, is where most practices are hemorrhaging revenue and they don't even know it.

Emails go to spam. They go to the promotions tab. They bounce back silently. Voicemails fill up. Phone tag stretches to three weeks until someone gets tired and calls somebody else. And the practice owner, who is also the clinician, also the biller, also the marketer, doesn't have a system to even know any of this happened.

You can't fix what you can't see.

So here are the three questions I'd ask any practice owner who reads that post and feels a flicker of recognition:

1. When did you last mystery shop your own practice?

Have someone, a friend, a family member, someone who doesn't work with you, go through your intake process from the outside. Call the number. Send the email. Fill out the form. Time how long it takes to get a response. Ask them to do it with a fake name and email, sometime in the future when you don’t expect it. See what it actually feels like to try to reach you.

Most practice owners have never done this. And the ones who have are usually shocked. Not because they're doing something wrong on purpose, but because they built the front door for themselves, not for the person standing on the other side of it.

2. What parts of your intake process still require you specifically?

This is the one that stings a little. If a new client inquiry cannot move forward without you personally responding to it, you are the bottleneck. And when you're in session, which is most of your working hours, that bottleneck means people are waiting. And some of them stop waiting.

The question isn't whether you should be warm and personal with your clients. Of course you should. The question is whether every single touchpoint in your intake process requires your specific attention, or whether some of it can be handled by a person, a process, or a tool, while still feeling human on the receiving end.

Our office uses a combination of all three. People, processes, and technology, working in a sequence so that an inquiry at 10pm on a Sunday doesn't fall through a crack until Monday morning. That took time to build, and transparently, I’m revising it as we speak. New tech, tools and companies are created everyday, so the same tool that I’ve always used may not be the best option any more. This periodic review makes it easier for us to catch major problems before they balloon.

3. Do you have a way to audit for gaps, or are you operating on assumption?

Most practices don't have a tracking system for referrals. Our office quite literally has a log of every call and email that has come into our office over the past 7 years. If you are operating with a vague awareness of whether the schedule is filling. That's not data. That's intuition. That is not a system that protects what you’re building, it is a recipe for overwhelm and could be adding to your mental load and symptoms of anxiety.

Intuition doesn't tell you that your contact form has been broken for three weeks. It doesn't tell you that a specific insurance panel is generating zero referrals because your Psychology Today profile lists the wrong specialty. It doesn't tell you that your answering service is quoting a two-week wait when you actually have openings.

A simple tracking system, even a spreadsheet that logs where each inquiry came from and what happened to it, gives you the ability to see the breakdown before it becomes a pattern.

Here's what I know from doing this work: the administrative side of running a private practice is rarely taught, almost never trained, and almost always the thing that separates a practice that's profitable from one that's exhausting. It's not the clinical work. It's the systems around the clinical work.

And if your name was on any of those 20 lists and you never replied, not because you didn't care, but because something in your system dropped the ball, that's worth a conversation.

If you want to look at where your practice might be leaking revenue through administrative gaps, that's exactly what a Practice Revenue Diagnostic is designed to surface. It's 90 minutes. You leave with a map. You can find out more HERE.

But even if that's not where you are right now, mystery shop your practice this week. Just try.

What would you find?