Is Private Practice Right for Me?



Y’all know I’m a private practice proselytizer. I believe private practice is an excellent fit for the vast majority of the people it appeals to, but you can get stuck in a huge loop of private practice-free resource overload and not realize private practice may not be a good fit for you. 

Let’s talk about what would make private practice a bad fit for someone.  

If you have no job or a job you have to get out of ASAP and no savings, and no way to pay your bills, now may not be the best time. St…

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Is There a Niche Gray Area?

One of the questions I get most frequently is, Do I Have to Have a Niche? And I usually come down on the side of pro-niche. Here’s why:

Having a niche helps you:

  • Define your marketing strategy.
  • Know where to network.
  • Gain clarity for your practice. 

I think of niches as necessary to build at a reasonable pace for anyone and necessary for private-pay practices. Non-specific niches that therapists feel they have that clients don’t see themselves in are “people in a life transition” or ‘people w…

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Finding Out Your Ideal Client is...You!

When we go through school, our internships, and agency work, we start to get an idea of who we do great work with and what clients bring out the best of our clinical skills and flourish because of it. A great fit for you is also a great fit for your client, and great fits lead to healing which, come on, is awesome.

I would say that out of the hundreds or thousand people I’ve talked to about niche, 85% of the time our ideal client is a version of ourselves. My ideal client for therapy resembles t…

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How to Show Up As Yourself In Videos

It took me some time and some work to get comfortable on video - my Vimeo account is just a wasteland of starts and stops, flubbing what I'm saying, or just feeling like it wasn't quite there yet. I have a lot to say on this subject so buckle up.

In the Abundant Practice Builder's Facebook Group I posted one of the first videos I tried to film. My scripts were written, my content was something I was proud of. I was launching a program and I know it was super-helpful too. I borrowed fancy photog…

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Stuck on the Niche Question

You’ve probably heard a thousand times that a niche is really important in building a private practice. Maybe you resisted it. Maybe you wanted to embrace it but couldn’t decide who you wanted to choose. Then you read another thing that harps on the need for a niche. And another. And all the sudden the pressure is mounting and you start to think that if you don’t pick the perfect niche it’s all going to be an awful, terrible shameful shell of a practice.

 

Take a breath. I got your back.

 

A niche I…

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Private Practice Won't Solve Your Problems

I love private practice. It changed my life. It changed my family’s life. It made me love therapy more than I ever had. It opened up opportunities I never knew were available.

 

I have also had moments of hating private practice. The weeks without phone calls. The insecurity. The inconsistent income. The many new skills I had to learn.

 

As a Private Practice Proselytizer, I want people to know that they can have so much of what they want in life through private practice (assuming they want time, fr…

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If You Market It, They Will Come

I see it all the time. People wanting to encourage each other in the FB Groups saying things like “Yes! If you build it, they will come!” My consulting clients say it to me with a hopeful voice, “If I build it, they will come, right?”

Well… not if they can’t find you. Not to be a downer, or to betray my woo-woo side, but your intention to be a private practice therapist is not actually enough to have a successful business. You can manifest like a mofo, but if you have no way of letting potential …

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The Role of Fear in Your Practice

“Feel the fear and do it anyway” is a mantra I’ve lived the last 20 years of my life by. At 19, after my second hospitalization for an eating disorder, depression, and anxiety it finally clicked that my natural reaction to fear (i.e. avoidance), wasn’t necessarily the instinct I should follow. And while eating what was on my plate, putting myself out there, giving less than 100% in school, work, friendships full on terrified me, I realized I would be stuck forever if I didn’t push through.

We kno…

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Imposter Syndrome

Imposter Syndrome

Hello. Welcome to the rest of your life. It’s not what any of us want to accept but, if we keep growing, we are all going to struggle with Imposter Syndrome off and on, forever. Like, I fully expect to be 110 years old and having some doubts about my abilities.

Instead of falling into the shit of it, since it feels awful, I’ve been very curious about it in my life and my consulting clients’ lives. I have some good news for you: Imposter Syndrome is actually a good thing in a num…

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Sample Private Practice Schedules

Whether you’re on the front end of starting a private practice or you’re managing a busy caseload, your schedule is a make or break situation. It’s not what you think; your schedule is a make or break for your longevity and happiness, not whether or not clients will come. Clients who really want to see you will make things work.

A part of what we do in the very first meeting of the Abundance Practice-Building Group is talk about what each person wants their schedule to look like. I’m a proponent…

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