This Business of Therapy

Category: Starting a Practice

  • What am I proving and to whom?

    I have recently become more aware of how much energy I put into proving my worthiness. In some respects, this is not new to me, but recently the extent of it is becoming clearer. I am trying to prove I am good enough to deserve love, appreciation, support, reward, rest, a place and more. It’s…

  • Adding a little love to your marketing!

    Adding a little love to your marketing! In February we celebrated Valentine’s Day. You could be forgiven for thinking it was about sales of cards, chocolate, and flowers, or that it was just for the young ones. It has got bent and twisted out of shape over the years, so much so, that many people…

  • Managing Your Practice and Personal Integration

    As with all business aspects of private practice, managing our practices offers us many opportunities to grow and develop as a person. Many people see our work as distinct and separate from business, and part of my mission is to change that perspective! In previous articles I have written about how engaging with the business…

  • If money was my sister…

    Like practising counselling and psychotherapy, self-employment is a personal development process. As we meet each new situation in our practice that asks something of us, whether it is learning to market ourselves, or finding appropriate rooms to work in, we are offered an opportunity to grow into the person we need to be at that…

  • Starting Out? Avoid these common mistakes!

    I’m often asked what in my view is the biggest mistake that people make when setting up a therapy practice for the first time. It’s hard to see what’s the biggest, but there are a few that crop up again and again. Spending too much time and energy on clients and their issues, and not…

  • Willingness to Create a Practice

    There’s a saying that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Taking that first step, and each of the steps that comes after it asks our willingness to move. Willingness is an essential attribute of being a small therapy practice owner. Not just willingness to do the client work, but also…

  • My Own Best Boss

    I’ve often said in these articles that when we are self-employed we are both the boss and the employee. I was thinking about that recently, and wondering what sort of a boss I would like to be to myself? The job of the boss is many layered. The boss Directs the business Monitors progress Supervises…

  • Integrating Therapy and Business: Making Our Practice Our Own

    In my last article I spoke of how the journey to create a therapy practice can also be a journey towards personal integration. In this article, I look at this journey from the perspective of the second pillar of a successful therapy practice, Knowing Your Practice. In the second pillar, we build on our decision…

  • The Business of Therapy: A Journey Towards Integration?

    If someone asks you what you do, I bet you tell them you’re a therapist. Okay, you might say counsellor, psychotherapist, family therapist etc, but I suspect you define your work by your client work. Am I right? But that’s not the full story is it? Because you are also self-employed. Most therapists I know…

  • Promoting Your Practice? 4 Important Questions

    Before deciding how to promote your practice, you need to do some preparation work. This is easiest done by asking four important questions of yourself. These four questions could be called the “4 Ps”: Product Price People Path