[00:00:00] Linzy: Hello, and welcome back to another Feelings and Finances episode of the Money Skills for Therapists podcast. These are our short and sweet Friday episodes, where I answer questions from you lovely folks, the listeners of the Money Skills for Therapists podcast. And today’s question is from our very own operations and student care coordinator, Christelle Manke.
[00:00:21] Here’s Christelle’s question.
[00:00:22] Christelle: Hi, Linzy, and listeners of Money Scale for Therapists. This is Christelle, and I have a question that I hear often from people that are interested in taking the course Money Scale for Therapists but are not quite ready yet. And most of them don’t have yet a private practice and they’re working in agencies or for group practices, and they wonder how hard it’s going to be to start a private practice, and if it will make sense for them
[00:00:58] financially to make that shift. Because they don’t know what it looks like, they don’t jump, and make that decision. And so I wonder if you could give us some guidance on what to look for to know if your current situation is not working and it is time to start a private practice that will take care of you financially.
[00:01:22] And like one of the questions I heard was from 1 to 10, how hard is it to start a private practice? And I know that numbers will be very different from a person to another, but I wonder if you could give us a sense, on how hard is it to start a private practice in your opinion and in your experience.
[00:01:42] Thank you for sharing that wisdom.
[00:01:44] Linzy: Okay. This is a great question, Christelle. And there’s a few thoughts floating around right away as I think about this question. So the first thing is thinking about when is it time to start a private practice? If you’re in an agency or a group practice setting and you’re not happy, how do you know that it’s time to step out, or how do you start to step out?
[00:02:04] And the way that I see it, there’s two ways to start a private practice. The first way is the toe dip. You know, starting a private practice on the side, starting to see some clients privately an evening or two a week, maybe out of pocket through connections that you already have, you know, just starting to let folks know, Hey, I’m seeing a couple of clients
[00:02:22] on Tuesdays, by maybe subletting from a colleague of yours or just seeing folks virtually online. That’s something that has made starting private practice so much easier in the last few years, now that online therapy has become the default rather than something unusual. So that’s the first way to start to get into dipping your toes into private practice is just to start to see a few clients at a time.
[00:02:44] And I would say that that relatively speaking is easier because you can build up your confidence and skills gradually as you still have your regular paycheck from your day job. Right. And what I think is really affirming often for therapists who do that is they realize, Oh, people are willing to pay me this full fee amount, or all the money could actually come to me,
[00:03:07] and this is not as hard as I think. And we’ll get into the hard question in a second. So that’s, I would say that’s an easier route to starting a private practice if where you are is tolerable enough that you can stay there for a little while, is to do that, that toe dip and just let yourself see yourself, building up a practice gradually, but not making it your all or nothing.
[00:03:28] The second way of starting a private practice is the way that I started my private practice, which is what I call the jumping off a cliff method, where you just quit your job, because you’re not okay and you’re not happy and you can see that it’s impacting you in a way that’s not worthwhile, and you force yourself to make private practice work by giving yourself no other choice.
[00:03:47] This is the jumping off the cliff method. Also a friend of mine, I’ve heard her refer to it as burning the boats. This idea that, Vikings, when they used to siege, whatever the word would be on, you know, other islands, if they want to take over the island, they land on the shore and they burn the boats.
[00:04:03] So there’s no going back. You’re not dallying. You’re not toe dipping. You are fully in it. That’s the way that I started my own private practice. And that worked really well for me.There was a few reasons that worked for me. One is I needed to get out of where I was so badly that I was willing to just do it and take the risk.
[00:04:21] There was no going halfway. I had to find a way to make it work. It gave me the time and energy to just focus on building that. But also I had enough financial stability through some savings that I had, and through my partner’s income, that we could afford to do that, right? So that’s a huge part of the equation is what is your financial situation look like, and can you set yourself up to have some time to learn?
[00:04:43] Because I would say starting a private practice, hard is one word for it, mostly it’s just a lot of learning, right? The actual delivery of the service, the therapy itself, you know how to do that. Whether it’s mental health therapy, which it is for, I know, probably most folks listening to this podcast, or whether it’s another type of health practice that you have, you know how to actually do the service if you’re already doing it somewhere else.
[00:05:07] So it’s not as though you’re starting a business where you are learning how to do a skill for the first time. The skill you have, but it’s creating that business container around it, creating your systems, clear communication with your clients, laying out policies clearly. It’s those pieces that at first it feels like a never ending to do list of things to put in place that can feel hard, but there are things that you only have to do once.
[00:05:34] You only have to build the foundation of your business once. And then after that, you can tweak and improve, but you never have to do the full thing over again. Once you’ve built the foundation, you’re just continuing to build upwards from there. And so in terms of how hard that is, I think part of it is about what your emotional relationship to that work is.
[00:05:53] Surprise, surprise. So I would say for myself, starting a private practice was not hard. It was fun. It was exciting. It was energizing. It was liberating. It was all of those things. I remember having a conversation with my brother shortly after I had started my private practice, and I had almost no clients, maybe three clients at the time and saying to him that I was the happiest I had ever been.
[00:06:15] For me, immediately working for myself was a fit for my disposition and my energy and my needs. The relief of being out of somewhere that wasn’t working for me was certainly part of that, but getting to create a culture and be really intentional about what this business was going to look like and how I was going to communicate with people, what my policies were going to be, what my brand feel was going to be, learning how to talk about what I did in a way that made sense to people, you know, getting that elevator pitch down.
[00:06:40] All of it was learning, but it was all worthwhile, which meant that it didn’t feel hard. It felt challenging and interesting, but it didn’t feel hard.
[00:06:50] In terms of that zero to 10 or one to 10 scaling, Christelle, that’s so difficult because I think the biggest indicator is what is your relationship to that learning and that challenge? I would say in terms of effort, starting a private practice for most folks, especially if you’re going to go the jumping off a cliff, burning the boats route is probably a seven out of 10 effort.
[00:07:15] It’s effortful. There’s lots to do. There’s a big list. At first it can feel like a bit of a slog. Those early days where you’re just waiting for clients to call, and trying to get some traction off your Psychology Today profile, or you’re just networking, networking, networking, and planting seeds. And they haven’t come to fruition yet.
[00:07:30] Those days can be challenging, but they can also be exciting and fruitful. So I think so much of it is about the framing that you put around this. Why are you doing this? What does this mean to you? Can you lean into your gifts? Can you lean into the part of starting a practice that makes it worth it?
[00:07:47] You know, the freedom that you have, the ability to set the culture, the ability to practice with the folks you really want to practice with, set up a schedule that really works for you. The more you can connect with the possibilities and the power that you actually have when you are starting a private practice, that you don’t have an external boss anymore.
[00:08:04] You are the boss. You get to decide what your hours are, and you get to set a schedule that works for you. And you don’t have to exhaust yourself every day. And you get to stop and think about the numbers that will sustain you in your personal life, and you get to set up a schedule that will support those numbers while also supporting you.
[00:08:23] If you can really lean into the possibilities of that, then it is really exciting and empowering and a really rich time of opportunity. Are there going to be moments that feel terrifying? For sure. Are there going to be times where you wonder if you’re making a mistake? Definitely. Are there going to be fantasies about just going to work for somebody else because it’s easier?
[00:08:44] Probably. All of those things are true. And those are all normal. Cause we all have parts of us that are about escaping and keeping us safe and making life easy. But if you are connected with your why for doing this, and if you really own the power that you have when you start a private practice, I’m going to say that it is much more exciting and beautiful,
[00:09:06] and ultimately worthwhile, than it is hard. So that would be my answer. Seven out of 10, probably effort for most of us. But the hard is going to completely depend on how you relate to all of these tasks that eventually will lead to you building a practice that you really love and that can sustain you and your family.
[00:09:26] So that would be my, my initial thoughts on starting a private practice and what that looks like for, for most of us and how to make that an empowering experience. If you have a question that you would like me to answer on one of these feelings and finances episodes, all you need to do is click on the link in the show note, or go to our podcast page and scroll down a little bit.
[00:09:48] You will see a little record button. All you need to do is share your name, share your question. And I would be happy to answer it on one of our upcoming episodes of Feelings and Finances for the Money Skills for Therapists podcast. Thanks for joining me today.
