Tech, Community, and the Private Practice Journey: A Conversation on the LEP Collaborative Podcast
I recently had the pleasure of joining host Bethany Zoeller on the LEP Collaborative Podcast — a show dedicated to bringing licensed educational psychologists, school psychologists, and educational professionals together to share stories, swap strategies, and support one another in the work we do. We covered a lot of ground, from the tech tools I rely on in my practice to the exciting 2026 LEP Summer Summit, and we wrapped things up with a rapid-fire question round. Here are some of the highlights.
Running a Practice: Tech That Actually Saves Time
One of the biggest mindset shifts when moving from school-based work into private practice is learning to think of your time as money. I'll be honest — I did not come from a business background. But one of the best pieces of advice I received early on was simple: if a technology tool can handle an administrative task faster than you can, use it. That philosophy has shaped a lot of how I run Empowered Psychological Services.
For day-to-day business management, QuickBooks is my go-to. It keeps accounting and expenses organized, and with rules you can set up, it largely learns your spending patterns over time. For consent paperwork and contracts, I rely on DocuSign. Whether I'm onboarding a private client or supporting a school district on a contract basis, getting signed forms back via email is dramatically more efficient than paper — especially when you're not on site every day.
On the assessment side, I lean digital wherever possible. Electronic rating scales have a far better return rate than paper forms sent home in a backpack. I use Google Forms to collect health and developmental histories as well as teacher input, and a hidden gem is linking those form responses to a Google Sheet — it organizes all the data cleanly, and you can then drop it into an AI tool to generate a background summary in a fraction of the time it used to take.
Speaking of AI, Nova Note has become a valuable tool for in-person interviews and clinical conversations. Rather than frantically typing while a student is talking, I can simply listen and engage — the recording and transcript do the heavy lifting. I use Claude for communication support: drafting emails in a warm or professional tone, explaining concepts to families, and creating marketing materials. Claude's ability to maintain conversational context across a session sets it apart from other tools I've tried.
The LEP Summit: Building the Community We Needed
The other topic close to my heart is the upcoming LEP Summit — a professional development event designed specifically for practicing LEPs and "LEP-curious" folks considering private practice. We've been calling it the summer summit for short.
The idea came out of a shared experience most of us in this world know well: venturing into private practice with a mountain of questions and no roadmap. Things like how to handle contracts, what insurance you need, how to navigate Independent Educational Evaluations, and how to market yourself — none of that was covered in our training. Our group of five came together out of that collective need, and the summit is our way of paying it forward.
The sessions will tackle business basics (the practical tools and structures that school-based work never required), IEEs (a genuinely unique opportunity for LEPs who speak both the clinical and Ed Code languages), and much more. One of the things I'm most excited about is the emphasis on community — because imposter syndrome is real in this work, and having a trusted group to consult with makes all the difference.
If any of this resonates with you — whether you're already in private practice or just starting to think about it — I hope you'll consider joining us at the 2026 LEP Summer Summit. And if you want to hear the full conversation with Bethany Zoeller, tune into the LEP Collaborative Podcast wherever you listen.
