Supporting Suicide Survivors With Nate Wagner

When Nate Wagner and I first spoke in 2015 I was struck by his passion for his practice and supporting those who have lost loved ones to suicide. His memoir, Sibling Suicide: Journey from Despair to Hope, tells his story from his perspective as a brother and as a clinician. He is very generously offering the first two chapters for free here (though I suggest you buy the whole thing).

Suicide is one of those issues that most of us therapists are very uncomfortable with. With the holiday season, i…

Read more…

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

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 t…

Read more…

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

I was having a conversation with one of my closest friends this week about spending money. She’s someone I lovingly teased when at craft night years ago she showed up with socks to darn and undies to mend instead of the thrift store frame + newly bought modge podge + various purchases for whatever later-unused and objectively ugly thing I probably created. Not that I judge my visually creative pursuits harshly or anything.

Anyway, my friend and I were talking about how thriftiness, a concept that…

Read more…

SEO for Therapists using Squarespace

Jeff Guenther of The Practice Academy has been so helpful to many of you in the Abundance Practice Builders Facebook Group (Hop in!) so I was thrilled he agreed to write a post about increasing your Search Engine Optimization (SEO), especially when he wanted to make it specific to Squarespace.

If you’re like me, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by this stuff. My I-don’t-do-tech brain starts to freak out and tell me I can’t do it. Jeff makes it easy. He breaks it down into manageable steps and shows…

Read more…

Should You List Your Fees On Your Website

This question has come up a lot in the Facebook Group (hop in!): Should You Post Your Fees on Your Website?  It’s a great question and we’re divided on it as a field so I’ll explain the argument for each side and I’ll give my two cents. Be clear, there’s no right or wrong as long as a client is clear on your fee before your first appointment. So choose whichever side feels like the best fit for you and your business and let us know in the comments.

Anti-Fee Posting

My business coach hosted a retr…

Read more…

7 Compelling Reasons to Launch a Podcast

You guys probably know today’s guest blogger, Melvin Varghese, as the founder and host of the Selling the Couch Podcast. Over the past year we’ve become friends and I can assure you he is just as kind, warm and genuine as you think. A few months ago, after playing with the idea of launching my own podcast, I turned to Melvin for a podcast consultation. I wanted to flesh out some ideas before taking the next step. Melvin blew my mind in that consultation. I knew he’d had huge success with Selling…

Read more…

What I Learned While Growing my Successful Private Practice

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/Counselo…

Read more…

What To Expect Your First Year: Part 2

Last week we talked about what to expect in your first year of practice. I left you hanging. Sorry about that! While I think it’s great to spend some time acknowledging that you aren’t a weirdo and that what you’re feeling is normal, sometimes it helps to have an answer to “Ok, so this is typical, now what?” Below are some suggestions for you that have helped me and those I’ve worked with along the way.

What To Do About Those First Year Experiences

Impostor Syndrome

Rest in what’s true. Even if…

Read more…

The Myth of the Saturated Market

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 worke…

Read more…

Boundaries and Passing The Buck

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 wor…

Read more…

Categories

Due to a website migration, historic links pre-fall 2022 may be broken; please get in touch for new links. Please also note that historic podcast episodes may contain out-of-date information and highlight sponsors that we no longer work with.