This Business of Therapy

Category: Earning a Living

  • Earning a Living From Therapy Practice

    A recent article in the Irish Times said that an average family spent between €45, 000 and €50, 000 between running their home and car, food, property and water tax, education and childcare. This figure does not include income tax, PRSI or USC, nor does it include provision for retirement. If we estimate that those…

  • What If The Boss Won’t Pay?

    At a recent workshop at the IAHIP offices, a group of newly and nearly qualified therapists brainstormed their associations with the word “Business.” After the course, I was reflecting further on our discussion and, in particular, on the question of cancellation fees (always a good topic for an animated discussion among therapists). I was thinking…

  • Earning More Money

    Most therapists charge their clients on an hourly or sessional basis. They sit with their clients for an hour or 50 minutes, and the client pays a fee based on the time. This is a fairly typical arrangement in professions generally, although it is slowly changing. One of the drawbacks of this approach from a…

  • Dilemmas, Obstacles and Opportunities

    Business Dilemmas Peculiar to Therapists Being a therapist is different from having other jobs. Issues arise in therapy work that would be ignored in other occupations. There can be a belief in therapy circles that these dilemmas can restrict us in seeing a therapy practice as a business. Earning a living is often seen as…

  • Clients Come Through People

    Where does the income in your practice come from? Well, obviously from the fees you receive from clients or organisations who pay on the clients’ behalf. But that’s only part of the story. We none of us exist in isolation. There is a constant process from birth to death of interacting with our environment. Basic…

  • Holding People Accountable

    I have said in many previous posts that if a therapy practice is not growing into the place you would like it to be, if it is not progressing past the early sapling stage into a mature tree, then there may be some underlying issues about money, wealth or deserving going on under the surface.…

  • CAO Time

    Learning a new skill, such as driving or becoming a therapist, involves a process. In learning to drive, the route is pretty simple. You learn the theory, then you do your driver theory test. Next, you go out and take some lessons. When you’re proficient enough, you do the test. And if you’ve learned your…

  • Reviewing the Situation

    I’ve written before about my belief that money is a bit of a shadow in our profession, and probably for everyone at some level. It’s a subject I have a lot of interest in, having some money related trauma in my past, and from my earlier career in accountancy. I recently came face to face…

  • Facebook: a good servant or a bad master?

    To Facebook or Not to Facebook? I was at a family function recently at which an argument was raging about Facebook. The pro-camp was strongly in favour, citing the benefits of keeping in touch with family and friends, and being able to share photos and cute and inspirational sayings. The anti-camp were pushing hard, pointing…

  • The Support Inside

    Often the challenge for therapists around what needs to be done to create the practice they want is not a lack of information. It’s not that people don’t know what to do. In truth, if you want to find out how to do pretty much anything, Google will give you the answer. In this high…