This Business of Therapy

Category: Starting a Practice

  • How to Work Out Therapy Fee Rates?

    In another post, (see here) I outlined the factors that you need to consider in arriving at a fee rate, and also what a budget looks like (see here). Here’s an example of how to work the figures. Start with what you want to earn. Let’s say for this example, you want to earn €500…

  • Struggling to Earn Enough in your Practice? Check Your Income Set Point

    If you struggle to earn enough in your counselling or therapy practice, there may be many reasons for that. Some of those reasons may be external ones, such as the financial climate, or the location you practice in. However, there may also be internal factors at play. The following exercise can help to identify one…

  • More About Accounts – Making Sense of the Figures

    Comparison With Previous Period One feature of your typical set of financial statements is that they give comparative figures for the previous accounting period (usually a year, but in larger organisations accounts will be prepared more regularly so the comparative may be the previous month, or quarter.) The benefit of comparative figures is that the…

  • How To Prepare For Meetings With Doctors

    A practitioner asked me recently how to prepare for meetings she had set up with doctors. She was concerned about how to convey to them what her job entailed, and what questions they might ask. It was a bit like asking me what she might be asked in an interview! When I visited our local…

  • More About Contracts with Clients

    recently, I wrote about contracts with clients, and the value of committing them to writing. I was talking there about the explicit contract, the practical issues of how the structure of the work will look. While the terms of the explicit contract are discussed and agreed, there is another level at which the contract is…

  • Contracting with a Therapy Client

    One of the first things we are taught in training to be a counsellor or therapist, is about contracting. One of the tasks of the first session with a client is to set out and agree the terms of the contract. Do you commit your contract to writing? It’s not essential, but certainly something you…

  • A Balanced Portfolio

    I’ve talked on several occasions about finding a niche or target market for your practice, and the advantages and disadvantages of having one. An argument that is often put forward against such a concept for therapy practices is that it pigeon holes you into dealing exclusively with one issue or client area. This does not…

  • Getting Inquiries but not Clients?

    A therapist told me recently about her challenge of converting inquiries from potential clients into actual clients. “Lots of people ring me and ask about my fees and my availability, but no one wants to make an appointment. What am I doing wrong?” You’ve probably experienced it yourself, someone rings and asks for information, but when…

  • Price War

    There used to be an old joke about a man selling eggs. One morning he put a sign outside his door saying “One dozen large eggs, €2.50.” An hour later, he looked out the door of his shop to see another shopkeeper on the other side of the road had put a sign out saying,…

  • Help! I Need an Elevator Pitch!

    A therapist client recently asked me for help in writing an elevator pitch. You’ve probably heard how it goes…you get into an elevator, there’s a potential client there, perfect for you, needing what you have to offer, what do you say? You have between 30 and 60 seconds to deliver your message before the doors…