Mindset

Signs You’re Building The Wrong Practice (and What to Do About It)

For those of you who have worked in toxic agencies, do you remember the “Sunday Scaries*?” Laying in bed, dreading the work week. Maybe you didn’t go to brunch or get together with friends on Sundays in order to have enough downtime to bear the next 5 days. It’s places like that that led me to private practice. In my last job, I never knew if I’d be therapizing my clients or my coworker-friends more on any given day. Or if I’d be…

Guys, I’m excited to introduce you to Lauren Woodard, LCSW for a couple reasons. I know, guest posts are usually the last week of the month, but we’re doing ‘em back to back because Lauren is a badass and she's sharing some lessons learned. Lauren is an Abundance Practice-Building Group Grad. In the last year she has built exactly the private practice she wants despite some hurdles and, within the first year of her practice, was voted “Best of Western North Carolina” in the Psychologist/Counsel…

What To Do About Those First Year Experiences

Impostor Syndrome

When I first started working with folks who’d experienced trauma I used a handout. A you’re-not-crazy-these-reactions-are-normal-for-this-circumstance list of symptoms with brief descriptions of why. One of the members of the Abundance Facebook Group (jump in!) said it would be helpful to have a list of normative experiences in the early days of your practice. A brilliant suggestion and I’m happy to flesh it out like that list I used back in the day. I’m not going to pretend like there’s ONE ex…

A few months ago when I wrote Healing From Client-Related Trauma, Wendy Williams reached out and proposed a post about how to stay safe in private practice. As an avid fan of safety, I agreed that it would be really helpful to the Abundance community. Wendy breaks it down into what may seem like obvious steps to some, but I’m pretty sure I’ve personally broken at least half of these in the past week, lulled by my assumption that I’m safe. Interesting given that not long before I wrote that blog …

Market Perspective

When my family moved to Seattle this phrase “saturated market” kept coming up. I worried that in a city with more than 1,200 therapists listed on Psychology Today, I wouldn’t have a place.

Because I didn’t really have the option to fail, I tried my best not to pay attention to it. I held on to my business mantra and did what I had to in order to build. I came at my business with the same plan I was using in my life: a smaller community within a much bigger system. It all wor…

Boundaries

So we’ve talked about saying no in our practice. We’ve talked about making sure you’re fitting your practice into your life (rather than vice versa), working when you want, marketing the right way for you, upholding your no show and late cancellation policy… I could go back over alllll the blogs and I’m guessing 90% of them mention at least something boundary-related. It’s not that I’m obsessed with boundaries. Not really. It’s just that those boundaries are the difference between w…

I haven’t written for the sake of promotion since last August when I went on my launch/promotional blitz and hated it. Those of you who hung in there with me through that, thanks! Last week I talked about how one of the company values is that we are ambitious and not afraid to sell. Then I sat down to write this post and found that I was, in fact, stupidly squeamish about telling you about what I truly consider an opportunity. If we were having coffee I wouldn’t feel that way. Like if you said…