As you can tell from the title, today’s episode is the best of 2019. I’ve done this kind of episode every year since I started the podcast, just looking back and reflecting on some numbers and recapping the most popular episodes for y’all from this past year. I love doing these episodes just to look back. And I think they’re helpful too, for anyone who might not have been listening to the podcast over the whole year. I know there are a lot of you that have just joined over the last few months. So if you’re looking for some highlights from 2019, these five episodes are a great place to start.
Before I dive into the best of 2019, and some of the numbers from 2019, I want to let everyone know that it is that time again when I’m starting to recruit for the next cohort of mastermind groups. These are group coaching experiences where you get to hang out with 6 other psychologists at your stage of practice and talk about building your practice and get some group coaching.
I have a Beginner Practice group and an Advanced Practice group that will both be starting in late March, or early April of 2020. I can say that the Beginner Practice group already has 4 out of 6 spots filled just from folks being on the waitlist and already expressing interest. So if you’re interested in group consulting, you can go to thetestingpsychologist.com, and under the start consulting tab, you’ll see the Beginner Practice and Advanced Practice group links. I would love to chat with you to see if it’s a good fit.
All right. Without further ado, let’s jump into the best of [00:02:00] 2019.
Okay y’all, welcome back. Like I said, we are here talking about the best episodes of 2019 from The Testing Psychologist podcast. 2019 was an awesome year for the podcast. We grew the downloads exponentially and both the number of total downloads, which I touched on back in the fall when we passed 100,000 downloads total. So the total downloads grew and we passed that milestone, which was awesome. But then the downloads per episode and average downloads per episode also went up quite a bit.
So I just want to say thanks to all of you who are sharing the podcast with your friends and colleagues. I’m hearing more and more chatter around the country and in our field about people who’ve heard the podcast. So thank you. Of course, I would always appreciate it if you continue to do that and continue to spread the word and grow the listening base as much as possible.
So a few numbers. Now, I touched on, well, I actually dove pretty deep into numbers back in the fall when we crossed 100,000. So, I’m not going to spend a ton of time on that, but I do like numbers, I think like a lot of us do, and data. So to speak to the numbers just a little bit, we had about 75,000 downloads in 2019 to bring us up to over 120,000 total for the life of the podcast. So that is pretty incredible. And again, I’m just so thankful to all of you who’ve spread the word and shared [00:04:00] info about The Testing Psychologist podcast.
The cool thing that jumped out to me here at this point is that the podcast has been downloaded in 104 countries across the world. So somewhere out there, I know that there are a lot of English speakers in foreign countries outside the US, but I can’t help but think that there are a lot of non-native English speakers who are downloading the podcast and hopefully getting some helpful info from the podcast about testing in their own locale.
I am still working on an international series for the podcast where I’ve interviewed a few folks practicing in countries around the world. We’ll look for that to be released here in the spring of 2020. So just a brief shout-out to all of you who have done interviews and we haven’t released your podcast yet. I’m still planning on it. But the podcast has been downloaded in over 100 countries. That to me is incredible. Thank you for doing that.
That’s all I’m going to say about numbers. Obviously, we’re up to over 100 episodes and over 100,000 downloads. Those are both pretty big milestones, but I spent time on that back in the fall.
So this time, I’d really like to just focus on the top episodes of 2019. I’m going to go in reverse order. So these are just based total number of downloads over time. And something that is remarkable to me is that the older episodes aren’t necessarily the most popular. So it’s not just the function of being out there in the world for longer and being downloaded more times as a result. These are actually the most popular episodes independent of when they were released. Here we go.
The 5th most downloaded episode of 2019 was [00:06:00] episode 93. Dr. Aimee Kotrba talked all about selective mutism. Aimee, so eloquently talked through many aspects of assessing and treating selective mutism. She is an expert in this area. She runs a private practice in Michigan totally focused on selective mutism. They have a really cool treatment model. They do an intensive treatment where kids will come for several days at a time, and it’s a one-and-done deal where they just work really hard for several days in a row, and then the hope is that they walk away with well, I don’t want to say cured, but they walk away vastly improved. So check that out. Dr. Aimee Kotrba – All About Selective Mutism.
I do want to say as well, she talked about the difference between assessing selective mutism and rather how to assess a child who is selectively mute and assessing for selective mutism. I hope I made that distinction clear enough, and I think that’s super important in our practice. So check that one out. Episode 93.
The fourth most downloaded episode of 2019 was episode 87 with Dr. Robin McEvoy. Robin is a local Colorado one. I was so happy when she reached out to me from down in Denver to ask about being on the podcast. Robin is a neuropsychologist in private practice. She worked at the Children’s Hospital of Colorado for many years. She’s also an author.
Robin talked all about Integrative Pediatric Assessment. We spent a lot of time talking about some of those more out-of-the-box assessment methods and some of those out of the [00:08:00] box characteristics to consider when you are working with kids. So a lot of the things we talked about fly under the radar, or maybe are just off the radar entirely for a lot of us.
So we talked a lot about diet. We talked about things like Craniosacral therapy. We talked about sensory issues. We touched on a number of topics that I think some of us maybe consider, but for Robin, she’s really spent many years diving deep into this world of more holistic treatment or assessment, and some of those things that are influencing kids’ behavior that we just don’t think about in a more medical model of assessment. So that one was great.
I’m going to back up and say that there are links for all these episodes in the show notes. So if you want to go back and listen to them, that will be really easy.
Moving on. The third most downloaded episode from 2019 was Dr. Stephanie Nelson – Neuropsychology in Private Practice. Gosh, what can I say about Stephanie? It was interesting to me that honestly, this was only number 3 because out of all the podcasts that I’ve done, I’ve gotten more follow-up questions, mentions, emails, etc about Stephanie’s podcast than any other. People loved Stephanie’s podcast.
We covered a lot in the podcast. She talked about the clinical aspects of neuropsychology in private practice. We talked about how a neuropsychologist might practice differently than a [00:10:00]” regular psychologist”. Stephanie touched on her selection of battery. We talked about executive functioning and the neuropsychology of that. So it was a wide-ranging interview. And Stephanie, talked about all of it with ease and brilliance, like she does everything else.
I think what has added to Stephanie’s allure or legendary status in the testing psychologist world is that she has been super active in the Facebook group and is really known for her thoughtful replies to some pretty complex questions. Stephanie, after the podcast or concurrently with the podcast, also launched her website, thepeerconsult.com, which many people have talked to me about as such a helpful resource in their own practice. So again, episode 84: Dr. Stephanie Nelson – Neuropsychology in Private Practice.
The second most downloaded episode was number 80. Episode 80 was Kellie Henkel. Kellie is a speech-language pathologist. The title of the episode was Dyslexia from a Parent’s Perspective. So this was a unique interview in that I don’t interview parents ever, but Kellie is a practitioner and had a really interesting, thoughtful, helpful perspective on dyslexia and dyslexia assessment, particularly from a parent’s perspective.
Kellie has multiple children with dyslexia. We talked a lot about her experience getting assessments for them, working with the school district, and pursuing recommendations and interventions that work for her kids in particular. So this was a super popular episode. And again, Kellie just talked through these issues very thoughtfully and brought a really unique perspective from being a speech-language [00:12:00] pathologist and a parent of kids with dyslexia. So definitely check that one out.
Okay. Finally, here we are. The top episode, most downloaded episode of The Testing Psychologist podcast for the year 2019. Drum roll, please. Take a minute. Those of you who are regular listeners, take a minute. Try to guess which one this might be.
Okay. The top episode of 2019 was Episode 81: Dr. Maggie Sibley – Differential Diagnosis and Assessment of Adult ADHD. This was interesting, and this is nothing at all to take away from Maggie or her interview, but I was a little surprised that this was our highest downloaded episode:
1) It is such a niche topic. Adult ADHD in itself is a little bit more of a niche than anything else or than many other topics.
2) It was really an adult-focused podcast. And for the most part, I think our listenership, the majority are pediatric folks. So this was really cool to see that the adult ADHD episode was the most downloaded.
So, Maggie, we can circle back and these are good reasons why it was the most downloaded episode. 1) Maggie is just an incredible authority on the assessment of adult ADHD. She is also an author. Her books are linked in those show notes of her episode.
Maggie just had a really nice style of answering questions very directly, very knowledgeably, and matter-of-factly. She answered some really tough [00:14:00] questions about: assessing adult ADHD, separating ADHD from trauma, what constitutes impairment in an adult, how that plays into the diagnostic criteria and how we get tripped up with that sometimes. So it was a great episode. We also talked at the end about Maggie’s approach to treating adult ADHD and the book that she’s written, which is super informative in that regard.
Again, just as a final recap, these are your top episodes of 2019. We had:
- Episode 93: Dr. Aimee Kotrba – All About Selective Mutism.
- Episode 87: Dr. Robin McEvoy – Integrative Pediatric Assessment.
- Episode 84: Dr. Stephanie Nelson – Neuropsychology in Private Practice.
- Episode 80: Kellie Henkel – Dyslexia from a Parent’s Perspective.
- The top episode of the entire year was Episode 81: Dr. Maggie Sibley – Differential Diagnosis and Assessment of Adult ADHD.
I can’t thank all of my guess enough for coming on and just providing incredible content on such a wide variety of topics. I’m so fortunate to be plugged into this community and be able to interview folks who are just at the top of their game.
I think that’s a nice segue to look into the future. The next few weeks will be a Winter Business Series. I have three episodes coming up focusing on the business aspect of things: One is all about just really diving deep into Google Ads and why you might consider Google Ads in your practice. One on financial aspects and bookkeeping in your practice: why that’s important, and why a lot of small businesses fail. And 3 is all about US-based virtual assistants and how a virtual assistant can be helpful [00:16:00] in your testing practice.
All of those were fun conversations. I hope that y’all will find them useful as well. So we’ll take a little break from clinical stuff and go toward the business world for the next three weeks. And then I’ll be back with more clinical stuff.
In the meantime, if you have not subscribed and hopefully rated the podcast, I would love to have both of those. You can take some time to just subscribe in whatever modality you might be listening to. The podcast is on Spotify now. So if you’re a Spotify preferer, check it out there. And again, if you have the time to rate the podcast, that’s awesome. I always appreciate it.
All right y’all. Happy new year. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye-bye.