Contractor vs Employee vs Owner with Dr. Caitlin Fanning, ND [Ep. #156]

In this episode, you are going to learn about the real-world knowledge on what can go wrong very quickly as independent contractor and what life looks like as a business owner, stay tuned!

Andrea: Hey everyone! Welcome to another episode of the Profitable Practice Podcast, I am your host Andrea Maxim. I have some really exciting news before we get into this interview; I’ve been working on this for the past 3 months. Yes, you cannot create a really solid Webinar in a weekend, I’ve been working on this Webinar for three months and I am so thrilled that I get to drop it for the very first time this week. People are already starting to register and watch it, and the number one reason why it was so important to me to put this together is that; this training is showing you that brick and mortars aren’t dead and having a stationary place for you to run your practice is not dead. But, I just read on the internet, like 50% of Canadian Businesses are starting to shut down, on the radio they said; restaurants are at a loss of up to 70% of their revenue, even though things are starting to open again and I just did a podcast last week on how while COVID is like interface three in some places and we’re starting to see things reopen, the reality is our businesses may not be thriving and I don’t want you to be shutting down your practice, I don’t want you to abandon the way that you’ve been doing things, but I do want you to step up into 2020 and be that practitioner that is merging online, that is using online tools properly to help bridge that gap between seeing people in the office and leveraging what every single lifetime value is for every patient or client to see. So in the show notes, there is a link for you to register and watch my free masterclass, you can simply go to maximizedbusiness.ca, there’s a link all over the homepage too. The point is, the more informed you are the more likely your practice is going to thrive during the pandemic because it feels like every week I’m hearing people in our tribe, people in our community giving up their practices altogether. And I just don’t want to see that for you, there are a lot of avenues that have opened up for how we can minimize our expenses while still growing our practice but it’s going to get you out of that frozen place that you might be in now, the panic place that you might be in now, and thrust you into the options that you have, and that’s what this free masterclass is all about, so please go register and watch it, and any questions that you have during, you just email me and I will just get back to you ASAP, of course, I’m always available on Instagram @AndreaMaximND and you can drop me a DM. But that was something like a passion project of mine that I’ve been working on, this was something that my Project Manager had wanted me to do, basically, since Q1 of this year, it’s out now and it’s available for you to watch. 

Now, 2 episodes ago we talked about the Contract Trap and that’s bringing me right into our conversation that I’m having with Dr. Caitlin Fanning, a Naturopathic Doctor in California, who I’ve had the pleasure of working with for years as a one-on-one coaching student, she’s in our Maximized Practitioner Program and she came on and wanted to really talk about her real life experience, her learning lessons from being an employee to being an independent contractor and now running her own practice and I imagine that’s going to be the journey for a lot of you and the big thing that we are talking about is the legal piece between what an independent contractor actually looks like and how you are most likely being treated in your practice and that is something that you really need to pay attention to and if you aren’t, definitely listen to this episode and we’ll have all of the time stamps in the show notes as well, but that is really an important piece, number 1 reason why; when I hired my associate in the Caledonia Practice, I had to hire her as an employee because I was controlling the times she showed up, I had mandatory meetings that she had to attend, the prices were fixed so she didn’t have any control over that, she’s using all of my products, she’s using all of my tools and services that I offer in the practice, and if any one of those things were going to be bridged, I could be liable for being dinged by the CRA for treating an independent contractor as an employee for us to escaping the taxes, and I think a lot of business owners are doing that and it is illegal, so pay attention. There’s a contract negotiation piece and how things are actually working in your practice is essential for you stepping into that business CEO role that we want you to be in. It’s not a free ride, it’s not a privilege of being in someone else’s business, it’s they get the privilege of having you there, and so Caitlin was just really honest and very transparent about what her learning lessons were and that’s why I’m so excited to start this interview with her right now, let’s get to it.

Hey Caitlin! Thank you so much, welcome to the Profitable Practice Podcast today, it’s always such a joy for me to be highlighting some of my student in the maximized practitioner program and you’ve had quite the entrepreneurial journey and I love that today we’re going to be breaking down the lessons that you’ve learned, not just talking about all of the wins, we’re going to talk about some of the losses as well. So thank you so much for coming on this show.

Caitlin: Thank you so much! I’m happy to be here! Thanks for having me!

Andrea: Now why don’t you give people a little bit of background as to what profession you’re in, where you practice out of, and how your journey has been up to this point?

Caitlin: Sure! I’ll do kind of a brief overview to start, so I am a Naturopathic Doctor, and I currently own and run my practice in Sta. Cruz California. I’m a little about 5 years out of school and I’ve been through quite the journey since then. So straight out of school, I did a residency to get started and after that, I joined a clinic as an employee, and then I started a clinic up in Seattle and I was there for a little bit of a year before I decided I move back to California where I’m from. So, when I came to California I joined a clinic here for I think it was a little bit of two years as an independent contractor and then approximately, I guess it was about nine months ago I started my own practice here in Sta. Cruz, which I actually found I was pregnant four days after I decided to leave that job. 

Andrea: Life is such fun right? Like life will serve you like “Oh you think it is this easy? Think again”

Caitlin: Exactly! So the timing of that was, it all worked out and then I was so happy that everything happened the way it did but it’s been quite the journey opening my own practice during pregnancy and then also having Corona Virus hit about 6 months into having my practice open.

Andrea: I’ve been so honored to be able to go through this journey with you we started working together I would say at least two years ago as a one-on-one coach and we were coaching you when you’re working in your other practice and to see that journey of your practice as an independent contractor stepping into the role of CEO with your own business and then of course life happens and the baby just chooses you and here we are you know a ‘Mom’ as well as doing these things. So where I would really love to start talking with you is going to be; what was it that prompted you to, like you kind of just had enough to be an independent and you wanted to start taking more control over your business and how you are working it and while it is such a scary decision, I know even for you it was a year kind of ‘should I? shouldn’t I?’ I would love to kind of just going through, what that transition was like, like what was it about independent contractorship that either it was the environment or that wasn’t just enough for you and you wanted to branch out.

Caitlin: Well you know I think it goes kind of a little bit further back, I was thinking about it the other day and I never really knew what an entrepreneur was when I was growing up, it was never modeled for me, I never know any of my life doing that. And during school, I think I realized that I would be running my own business at some point although I still had kind of visions of being an employee at someone else’s business. Once I really started learning about business through that HPBH Program at school, I realized it was something that I really love, enjoyed, and was excited about and it took probably about four years for me to really own that being an entrepreneur was something that was a necessity for me. Going through all of these employee positions and contractor positions and thinking about working from other people, I always had visions and ideas of more that I wanted to do and at some point, I realized that I just needed to step into my confidence and step into myself and do it and stop with the distractions and be able to implement everything that I am passionate about.

Andrea: Now, the first question that comes to my mind is; do you think you would’ve had the tools, the confidence, the tenacity to start your business right away, or do you think it was like a necessary journey for you to start as employee, independent, and bridge your way up almost like climbing a ladder so to speak.

It was absolutely part of the journey, I learned so much during each position that I went through, and it was part of the process.

Andrea: And I just wanted to hammer that point home because I think as a student, and you know thinking about what success looks like as a practitioner, so we often view it as you have the big multi, disciplinary clinic, and you have all these practitioners working for you and you automatically take on that role as CEO as soon as you leave school without any MBA, without any background and we think that that’s the dream, but I really encourage especially any new students regardless of the profession who are listening to also embrace the different levels of training and mentorship that you can get early on, so that when you do branch out, if you choose to you are in a much more successful place, than you’re just sort of like jumping into the deep end without even knowing how to swim yet, so I’m really thankful that you’ve mentioned that. But, one thing I would love to hear about the lessons that you learned during those phases, and we have quite a few podcasts on contract so we have one, I think it was a hundred fifteen on contract negotiation and I’ll reference the correct number in the show notes. We jested one contract trap that people are falling into, so there’s a different level of these things that I know you learned somewhat the hard way, and I’d love to hear about that so that our listeners can be kind of weary about what contracts actually mean and how to make sure you don’t negotiate a bad one.

Caitlin: Yeah, I do think that both the good and the bad about the position that I had was a necessary part of my journey. So with the residency; that’s where I started out, right after school I started out working residency position that contract was pretty straight forward because it went along with the residency requirements from the school. I will say though that my learning lesson was that when we were talking about what the job would entail I wasn’t really clear about what I would be spending my time doing. So that’s one thing that I tell people to really get a grip on before you start working, I ended up doing IV’s and shots and being an assistant all day long which I have incredible skills now from that, so I’m really grateful that that’s something that I was able to learn and that I was able to do I didn’t get to see any patients of my own and that was something really important for me and I didn’t realize that going in and that’s eventually why I ended up leaving that clinic. The next position that I had was as an employee, it was an employee position but I was paid based on how many clients that I saw, how many patients I saw and how much work that I did, so the pay scale for that position was based on how much that I saw and part of the contract was that they were going to be doing all the marketing for me and bringing the patients into my office. So when the pay was negotiated that was something that “Okay I don’t have to do any of that, so I’ll just have patients be rolling in” but there was no clarity about what type of marketing they were going to be doing, what that was going to be looking like, how often they are going to be marketing for me, what kind of opportunities, and how much of a roll I would be needing to play in that. If I would’ve known I would’ve done a lot more of the work, I would negotiated differently. So that was the position, and then independent contractor position that I had most recently was a lot more free and open in terms of you know I was responsible for paying my own practice for doing my own marketing, I have those types of ownerships over the business and the spilled was something I was comfortable with in terms of that but the requirements for being at the office at certain times and what days I had to work and had to be there, really look more like an employment contract and especially the long, California’s very strict about what’s considered an employee and what’s considered an independent contractor and there was a lot of gray area about the freedom that I had over the practice that I had over my business itself. So not having my own website, not driving patients to me but driving them to the clinic, even though I was technically a contractor, so that was something that I feel like is a huge misunderstanding in our profession and people are still hiring other ND’s as an independent contractor but treating them like employees and in my opinion, any ND that hires any other ND really should be under an employee position because that’s the way that the clinic’s going to work the best if they’re all working for the clinic.

Andrea: And I’m going to go deeper into this because this is a really important conversation that I think just like you said so many people just have a wall over their eyes that they don’t know the legalities around what the line is between an employee and an independent contractor and I agree with you a lot of clinic owners hire people as an independent contractor to avoid paying the taxes associated with paying an employee and yet still treat their contractors as employees, so this is something and it’s going to vary based on state, by country, by province if you’re in Canada but it’s very important that everybody who is listening who has signed on as an independent contractor, there are a few major red flags that you need to be looking for where the owner is actually bridging like merging the two and they’re actually not legally allowed to which if a complaint has risen to the taxing authorities then those people will get dinged huge. But it doesn’t matter if it is legal and this is what you need to be looking out for, so are you familiar with what those red flags are with regards to what an employee versus an independent contractor and can you elaborate on that?

Caitlin: Yeah absolutely! There are three things that they need to have in order to be considered an independent contractor and one would be freedom of time to get the work done, so there’s no ability to dictate when and where the person comes in, they have to use their own tools and supplies and provide those for themselves, and the third one, I’m blanking on the third one, but I do have some red flags in terms of you now my experience if you want to go through those. So one, would be the way that clinic is advertised, so is the clinic being advertised under the clinic’s name or are you advertising under your own name and bringing patients to you as the independent contractor so if you keep everything under the clinic umbrella, then you’re really not building your own business, you’re building somebody else’s business, so that’s one big red flag. The next would be the way that the patients are scheduled, the way they actually get put on to your schedule is that something you have control over, is that something somebody else is controlling and how is the payment collected, that’s something like are you collecting payment? Or is somebody else collecting payment and then paying you because if the clinic is paying you, then you’re an employee of that clinic, you’re not collecting the money yourself.

Andrea: So with that last point because oftentimes even how we set it up is we have an invoice that we write to the person and I think that the real caveat there is invoicing, is technical if the clinic is collecting the money then as the independent contractor you should be invoicing that clinic or it has to be written in the contract with regards to how payment is DV’d up. And in fact, that actually isn’t one of the big so to speak legal red flags but definitely, I’m kind of asterisk dinged this if I can say that word right, I had a lot of independent Contractors lose a ton of money because they weren’t tracking things correctly with regards to that. So absolutely there should be some sort of invoicing structure that’s in place so that you are invoicing the clinic to get your money back which means that you have to be tracking all of that or there has to be a very clear defined way of what your pay-out is, and one of the biggest red flags that I’ve occurred as an independent contractor is they don’t itemize the invoice they just give you a pay and that’s not okay like it should be clearly itemizes to what was purchase by whom on what day and if that isn’t clear then you most likely losing a ton of money you have no idea, so remember the business is going to be profitable base on your control over the money and the money is really the most important piece and this is where in the contract trap I was talking about is that you have to take full responsibility over everything, you have to take responsibility over your schedule just like you said you have to take the responsibility over the money that’s coming in just like you mentioned, and if you don’t want to do that then you can’t complain afterwards if things don’t go your way or your business isn’t growing the way you want it to. So on that note how was it when you started to realize these things through these lessons you’ve learned, how was the approach to try to make some of those changes with the clinic owners? 

Caitlin: It never worked out because they have you know when they opened up the position they had an expectation about what it’s going to be for them in our clinic and they think that they’re doing things the right way because a lot of them most of the successful clinic owners that I worked for they started things right after school. They started their own clinic and they set it up the way that they want and that’s you know their prerogative to set it up how they want, so something that I wish that would’ve taken a little bit more time with when I signed these contracts is really thinking about what I wanted in a long term and what was going to work for me, what are my non-negotiables because I think a lot of the time you think that oh I need to get a job or I need to start working and it will all be fine let’s just settle this contract and you kind of rush through it and you don’t really sit and think about what is going to be best for you in long term and In my opinion, the best in a long term is to stay in one place for as long as you can. 

Andrea: Yes I agree! 

Caitlin: So take the time on the front end to really understand what your signing, to really make sure that it works for you before you have to move again and move to another clinic and change and have your patients find you in another location and it just you lose people inevitably through that process. 

Andrea: Yeah and so the next part of your journey is you know making that step to no longer be an independent contractor and seek out and find your own practice and I would love to hear how even that mental journey was for you because the unknown is what keeps us in our place it keeps us in our safe zone you know we rather deal the devil we know instead of the devil we don’t and I would love to hear how mentally you’re just like “you know this is the move I have to make, I’m just not enjoying the way that this contract is set up, it’s really stifling my growth. How long did it take you to feel comfortable with approaching the clinic owner and saying “look like I’m going to cancel my contract” because again we just went through this with the few of our maximize practitioner students and the stories we tell ourselves also keep us locked into our safe place instead of just like being bold and asking for what we want. So how did that go for you? 

Caitlin: It was a process of kind of becoming comfortable with the unknown because I was making good money even though I was an independent contractor in this kind of way, area, and place. I was making a good amount of money so it was hard to say well I’m going to walk away and take the risk of potentially not making good money for a little while and building a path from the ground up and when I decided to approach the owner of the clinic about the way that I was feeling, it ended up working out in away. She actually was wanting to give up control of the clinic at the same time, I don’t know if you remember we talked about that but, so I kind of say “hey I’m out” and she said, “well I really don’t want to do this anymore either”. So we negotiated for a number of months that it didn’t end up working out for potentially me taking over that clinic, and I just decided that it was just best to just have a clean slate. I think Ultimately the decision point for me in terms of taking over that clinic was just starting a clinic anew is being able to start all the systems the way that I wanted it and create patient expectations the way that they needed to be, I felt that a lot of bad expectation has been set up and there were a lot of patients were really abusing the system and which it’s just was really messy and I just wanted a clean slate and starting my own clinic has been fantastic even with everything’s that gone on I just feel really confident that it’s been the right move for me and that things are continuing to grow and grow and grow and more patients are finding me and I’ve learned so much along the way about what not to do that I was able to set it up right from the get go and set up really good system and flow and create a really easy work system for myself and In fact now even with a newborn I’m back at the office and I’m working, and I’m working probably ten hours a month right now and I’m making just as much about as I was when sometimes I was working like thirty hours a week 

Andrea: Congrats! 

Caitlin: At some point, so even though like I haven’t built a ton of income yet I’m working a lot of last hours and making the same so it’s been really great have that flexibility, 

Andrea: And I would love now to talk about the transition of that with regards to patient retention and all of those type of things, now again you and I have the privilege of working together with one on one so I would also like to add on like did mentorship and coaching and things like that also helped with this transition because you had a tremendous successful retention rate with regards to leaving the old practice and starting your new one which not many practitioners experience. So if you could touch on all of those points it will be great. 

Caitlyn: I did have a great experience with patient retention. I think first and foremost I had good relationships developed with my patients and so right at the bat when I knew that I was leaving and this was part of the contract that I negotiated for this particular position, not for others, I learned that lesson, is that I was able to keep patients and they were able to keep seeing me as their provider and so I already had my email marketing systems all set up so that’s one piece of it as I already had an active campaign up and running. I had my patient contact information and I had already been emailing them and through that system, they were accustomed to hearing from me and I set up my website very very quickly and I ended up hiring a company just to do it for me in just a matter of a couple of weeks from the ground up. I’ve started my own website multiple times and I’m able to do that but I just didn’t want to spend my time and energy because I knew that would be best placed on patient care rather than building a website. So I have places for them to go. I have online scheduling all setup. I had electronic records transfer forms all set up and linked in the transfer email. So I just tried to make it easiest possible for them during the transition and I also hired a virtual receptionist so I have somebody else answering the phone from the get-go instead of me answering the phone which once again it something that I could have done but it would just take my time and energy and I only have so much to give during that time. So I think the main mistake that I’ve seen my peers make during the time of transition is just not being clear, and not making it easy for patients to follow you. 

Andrea: Talk now about the virtual assistant because I know people’s ears perk up as soon as you say that because it’s like “what is that like? What do you do? Like how does it like look?” So I love for you to elaborate it on what that was like and the other thing I commend you on and I hope people were hearing this, is as a business CEO you also then start to delegate the stuff that you should not be spending your energy and time on and you elaborated on two of those big pieces that just need to be in place. Yes, it cost money. Yes, it is an expense but in the long haul like what a difference I’m sure that it made for everybody and probably help increase that retention level and keep people informed and help in that transition. So I’ve really applaud you for that because that’s a very obvious telltale sign and now that you’re stepping in that CEO role, but circling back what it is like the whole relationship like with a virtual assistant? 

Caitlin: I found a woman who used to manage an office for an NDN Portland for I think over twenty years. She managed his office and then she ended up living down to Belize and opening up a virtual reception business, so she serves I would say somewhere between five and eight MDs at any given time and it’s been great. I started at a Google voice phone number that I could forward on to her phone so I could call from my phone if I needed to and it would come from the same number, so it’s something that I set up and it’s totally free. It’s something people can get right on, you don’t have to worry to get a lime line or anything like that just set up a virtual line, and then I set up a document with all my office systems and what I want her to say and respond to all the different questions like do you take in trends? How do I book? Etc. etc. and I voted all out and then just have her finding it as we go as things come up, so as I find that questions aren’t been answered as clearly I want them to or there’s miscommunications I go back and will find the original document for her and then I share it that with her Google drive so she and I can both add or editor look at it at any time and it’s kind of a living document of the phone system of the office. 

Andrea: And she is still working for you then and now your clinic is up and running do you have a reception in the office or just virtual? 

Caitlin: Just Virtual 

Andrea: How does it look then? So again this is kind of new to me. People come into your office, they just walk right into your room and then where does the payment transaction happen? Where does the rebooking happen? Or is she only manning the phones? 

Caitlin: So she’s only manning the phones and I just recently had her start answering emails as well, it was something that I have a hard time giving up control over but it was nice I actually can respond to patients as Amanda so I won’t be directly interfacing with a lot of people that had a lot of complicated questions. I do not have an in-person reception, I have a shared office space with another MD so she has a receptionist who says hello to people when they walk in but doesn’t do anything in terms of my business. The booking and payments system that I’ve been using is called intakeQ and I really really like them because they automate almost everything so when patients book it automate all of their reminders, their confirmations, it will send them their intake paperwork based on appointment type and the letter they been in before so it automatically will send all that. It’s all digital, they don’t have to print or scan or do anything. They just do their paperwork digitally before they come in and reminders are sent out about the paper works if it’s not completed. That is also really nice. They book online to my website through intakeQ and then I have everybody sign a financial consent when they first become the patient and that financial consent contains a credit card code basically so they put in their information on the financial consent and their visits are built automatically thirty minutes after the appointment time and you can add it all that to the system. So if they add on, say they could be twelve shot when they come in but it was not originally part of the appointment, I go in manually have that on, but then everything is just built to their card on file and I don’t have to do anything. I don’t even realize to remember they do it. My recommendation would be the more you can set up to have automatically the better if you’re going to be a solo practitioner. 

Andrea: What a great, and again this is just stepping into 2020 guys, this is using technology to our advantage and I’m sure there is a monthly fee with intakeQ but totally worth it for peace of mind and it gives you the ability to still run your business but only show up as a practitioner which I think is the dream for everybody. So this sounds like you’ve really set up a really beautiful practice and how was it now balancing motherhood and being a new business owner? 

Caitlin: It’s been great and I took about a month off completely after the birth of my little baby boy and then  I came back just super limited so between one and two hours just a couple days a week and I ended up renting out my room a couple days a week to an acupuncturist because I want to scale back my schedule so it’s been great doing that because I no longer have the option of coming in on Thursday through Saturday so I’m way more efficient when I just come in Monday through Wednesday and I just schedule thing back to back. I do my calls on the way in from home so if I got to call a pharmacy or call a prescription I just like to do that in a car and it’s been the most efficient I have ever been in my life. 

Andrea: That’s one like really big positive that kids make you re-evaluate where you spending your time, how you spend your time and it’s like a ticking time bomb you like okay I got in like till 6:05 where I opened the door to the house, I have to get all of this stuff done and sure like lights a fire under your butt which is great. 

Caitlin: Yeah and I want to say too that having a kid be the way that I’m approaching my practices different because I only want to come in if it’s going to be lucrative for me so I really start to emphasize ways that I can compound visits am I selling supplements,  am I doing beach tall shots, am I stalking things am I creating follow-ups, how am I getting referrals like I’m just trying to bring in as much as I can and stock it as closely as I can and make my time but also my money a little more efficient. For example, blood draws. Blood draws are something that I used to do a lot of. I’m pretty good at doing blood draw so It’s a service I used to offer for my patients but for the amount of time that it takes to draw the blood to spin the blood to cover lab to pack it up that something that I don’t have an assistant for here so I’m starting to outsource that so just outsourcing some of the lower-level tasks and start to bring up the level of work that I do I think is something that’s been a good realization to motherhood. 

Andrea: This is the very first I think vlog post and podcast episode that I have made which is about how giving birth actually made my schedule so much more profitable with all the things that you’re saying and it’s so sad that we wait until we give birth to a human to like make these realizations but it just is what it is. Are there any other learning lessons or really important takeaway that you think our audience should know with regards to running a practice or how things are important to certain things that maybe we haven’t touched on yet? 

Caitlin: Something you ask about that I want to circle back around to is mentorship and coaching so I think that having, I have spent a lot of money in the last five years or I guess probably about three years, three to four years, on mentorship and coaching and education and it’s something that I have really spent time and a lot of money on and it’s worth every penny and there’s a lot that we don’t know and there’s a lot you can figure out but figuring out yourself what you need to do  takes at least ten to twenty times longer than learning from somebody that already knows what they’re doing and that’s been there so I think that people should never be afraid to spend the money on finding either a mentor or coach or doing programs and it also keeps your brain active and keeps you thinking about thing in a new and different way and instead of kind of falling into a trap of “oh I used to work for someone that did it this way and I’m just continue to do it that way because it worked for them”. You find stuff that works so much better than anything that you’ve ever seen before so do not be afraid to learn, listen to podcasts, I’ve listened to, God, hundreds and hundreds of dollars of your podcast and other business podcasts like Lori Kennedy, Amy Porterfield. Learning more about kind of online space and practice and I just recently invested in another coaching program which has been fantastic so far. 

Andrea: When you do it and also you don’t have it there’s a dramatic difference in how you showing up to your business because there’s been a time that “oh I just want to take a break, I don’t want to spend the money maybe I can just do it on my own” and every single time I fall back like into way old habits where I don’t do things well or as efficiently then I’ll hire someone and I’m like okay new life new ideas like you just brings on this new level of creativity so it is something that and I agree like I don’t think my journey would be the same without it, I don’t think your journey would have been the same without it. Even if just having someone to bounce ideas often and as you said getting somebody else’s perspective on the same situation. Oftentimes you’re just so focused on your magnifying glass-like your “oh shit there’s a whole like a world out there that I’ve never explored yet” so that’s a very important point tonight I’m thankful that you shared that. Anything else that’s coming to mind that if you could do it differently if you knew what you know now would there be anything that you would do differently? 

Caitlin: I don’t know. I think like we’re talking before that you learn these lessons along the way and everything brought me to where I am now so I don’t think that I  would do anything differently at all and a lot of the times that I’ve spent say where I build my own website or didn’t hire somebody to do it, I learned how to build my own website and I’ve learned how to draft somebody how to do it so everything I’ve done myself I’ve learned from and everything I’ve outsourced I gained time from so I don’t think I would do anything differently. 

Andrea: If people would want to reach out to you specifically and ask you any questions what’s the best way? 

Caitlin: Probably the best way would they find me on social media. On Facebook under Doctor Caitlin Fanning and then my practice is a specific cause in rid of health and I have Instagram for that and a website and there’s contact on there. 

Andrea: And we’ll link all those on show notes but I just want to thank you again so much for being on the show for representing the maximize practitioner program, one of our star students and sharing these really honest conversations that need to be had especially from the independent contractor perspective and employee perspective so my hope everyone is really paying attention to our conversation especially around the legal difference between a contractor and an employee and really re-evaluating how much control you have over your business. So I hope people reach out to you if they have other questions so just want to thank you again and continue to wish you the best of success and luck that you already have 

Caitlin: Thank you so much Andrea it’s great to be here! 

Andrea: So I hope there was a lot of takeaways that you got from that interview. I thought that it was really phenomenal, just very honest, very open conversation but definitely shining light on some red flags that you need to make sure that you are not falling into and if you didn’t get a chance to listen to that previous episode on the contract trap that is podcast episode 154 go and listen to that now and I will reference that other podcast episode I did on contract negotiation from a business perspective side, business owners side, and a contractors side which is also important for you to listen to because you can change your contract really at any time. You just have to initiate that conversation. Please go check out my new free master class. The link is in the show notes. Register, watch it and merge your practice online ASAP and of course if you need that extra support, if you need that extra coaching if you want to have a chat with me about what it can look like to work with me or my team or just be a part of the maximize practitioner community book that 30 min game plan call and we will have a very frank conversation about where is your business is at now. Where the glaring gaps need to be filled and of course how I can support you. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the profitable practice podcast and I’m your host Andrea Maxim and I’m out.