This Business of Therapy

Category: Starting a Practice

  • Help! What Do I Say to my GP?

    You’ve made an appointment to talk to your local GP, or indeed anyone who might be able to refer work to you. What now? When you’re there, sitting in front of them, what do you say? No knowing what to say to people is often what holds us back from talking to them. So if…

  • I Just Can’t Do the Marketing Stuff

    “I just can’t do this marketing stuff! It’s not me.” That’s what the therapist said to me. And she was right. So I asked a question, “Do you want to do it?” She smiled and said, “That’s a good question. I don’t know. But I need more work, so it feels like I don’t have…

  • Help, Where Do I Start?

    Sometimes when we’re starting up in practice, or when we hit a difficult period, it can seem overwhelming, and we don’t know where to start. So many tasks seem to be calling out for our attention, and all of them seem to be equally important. How do we decide what to do? Sometimes when this…

  • How Should I Structure My Therapy Practice?

    It’s probably not a question you’ve considered, but what structure do you see your business of therapy taking, sole trade, partnership or company? Most therapy practice are sole practices, ie one person practising on their own. A much smaller number operate as partnerships, and still fewer as limited liability companies. In legal terms, the main…

  • 12 Ways to Put Yourself Out There

    Looking for ideas to promote your practice? Here are twelve ways you could do it. Pick some that appeal to you, and are most likely to attract the clients you’d like. Think about placement too. Where are you most likely to find your ideal clients? Will the medium you’ve chosen be seen by them? Ask…

  • 5 Strategies for Having a Stress Free Practice

    “Work would be great if it weren’t for the clients” was something I heard regularly in my former occupation as an accountant. It was said tongue in cheek, but really spoke to a truth about the ambivalence that many feel about their work, and not just in accountancy. We’d like it to be easy and…

  • Don’t Confuse the Map with the Territory!

    Someone told me recently that I can make the issues I write about here seem easy and enjoyable, and of course, that’s how I want it to be. However, there’s a saying in therapy, “Don’t mistake the map for the territory.” I was reminded of this sharply at a workshop at the weekend when the…

  • Value for Money

    Value for money is so subjective, isn’t it? And it’s also a very personal thing. What is a necessary expense for one of us, is a frivolous luxury for another, and vice versa. Writing about our values and beliefs about money recently left me thinking about the value we place on experiences and on things, and…

  • Fee Levels and The Price of Eggs

    It started out as a simple question about fee levels, what could he charge, what was reasonable, what were others charging…and I said he could charge as much or as little as he wanted to, it was a simple question of finding a willing buyer at the price point he  wanted to set. My answer…

  • Starting a Therapy Practice – a Ten Point Plan

    Ray Pembroke is a Chartered Accountant and Partner in Pembroke & Pembroke Chartered Accountants, 15 Ormonde Road, KilkennyTel: 056 7762027 email: [email protected] Firm specialises in dealing with the affairs of Medical Doctors and related Para-Medical Practitioners.Ray says: “The initial meeting with us is always free, and, we would be pleased to advise how we might…