Starting A Counselling Practice Posts
Steps to starting a private counselling practice
May 6th, 2010 | 
Author: Learning the steps to starting a private counselling practice are essential to save a therapist time, money, energy and to ensure that their actions result in a positive outcome, namely ‘running a successful and sustainable counselling practice’.
The majority of counselling courses do little to help therapists on this journey, instead imploring them to join an agency where they can refine their skills and gain valuable hours of counselling practice under supervision. By the time a therapist feels sufficiently competent and seeks greater autonomy in their work, they find little to help them identify how to start a practice.
There are some key steps:
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Be clear on why you want to practice privately.
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Identify and dispel the myths you have about private practice to ensure you avoid costly mistakes.
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Research your market – what are your clients looking for and why would they choose you?
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Develop a business plan of how you will develop, market and sell your services and what sources of income will be necessary to sustain your practice.
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Create a marketing plan to consistently promote your service, using online and offline methods.
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Evaluate the results of your actions and modify your strategy.
Many therapists are surprised to learn that a business and marketing strategy is necessary to develop their practice. It is however an important step in ensuring your success. Without one, you will not have any real idea of where you are going and as the maxim says ‘If you don’t know where you are going – you will end up somewhere else’. Don’t let your lack of business knowledge, integrated with highly effecting counselling skills, stand in the way of having a successful counselling practice.
One major barrier in the way to a counsellor’s success is their own myths and assumptions of what private practice is and the necessity of applying business principles to it. Many therapists believe that a steady flow of clients will come from a referral source that regularly sends clients their way. This traditionally has worked but today things have changed. Firstly, there are an enormous number of counsellors, coaches, psychologists and personal development specialists offering solutions to clients’ problems. This means the client has much more choice in how to overcome their difficulties. Secondly, the methods for finding help have changed to. Today the Internet is used widely by all sectors of the population and a therapist who doesn’t have an active, online presence will find that their would-be clients go elsewhere. However, it is not sufficient to just have a website; it must be active and filled regularly with relevant, rich content matched to your clients problems. Thus, a marketing strategy must be part of your business plan to ensure your success.
They are steps to being successful but it takes time, effort and dispelling any myths you may have that running a successful counselling practice is not a business. It is a business with an exchange of services and applying business principles to attracting, retaining and assisting clients to solve their problems, is essential to your success.
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Expand your practice – psychotherapy marketing
Attracting therapy clients can be challenging. Therapists develop their practices so they can do more of the work they love with the type of clients they enjoy working with and for whom they believe they have the most expertise. All may be going well except that there are inevitable ebbs and flows of clients – a concern for most therapists is ‘How can I maintain a steady of flow of clients and even expand my practice?’
What do we mean by ‘expand’ your practice? For many therapists, this means ‘have more clients or referral bases’. This is all very well but the reality is that today’s client is changing. They are becoming far more aware of what choice they have in the therapy arena. Anecdotal evidence from practitioners indicates that clients tell us that even before they call us, they do a Google Search to get some ancillary information other than our advert, the referral source or our website listing. Then after they meet us, increasing numbers of clients Google us again – this time looking for what articles or blogs we may have published, what talks we have given or even comments on our Facebook, LinkedIn or other social networking sources!
If you want to expand your practice, you have to think laterally when it comes to psychotherapy marketing. Do you leave the impression you leave on your potential and existing clients to chance or is there a better way? There is. If you want to expand your practice, you have to work ‘on’ your practice and not just ‘in’ it. You have to decide the best way to convey your attitudes, values, philosophy towards therapy through every source a client can research. In this way, new opportunities to expand your practice will emerge – some through new clients but others in terms of people contacting you to write, speak, consult and be sent referrals.
Creating a Thriving Counseling Practice
There are numerous reasons why psychologists, counselors and psychotherapists decide to develop a counseling private practice. These include a desire for greater flexibility, attracting different types of clients, greater autonomy and self-development. Many practitioners spend ample time and focus on their clinical skill development, believing that if only they can develop an effective referral service, they will have no problem in maintaining a full and effective practice. However, this is not true. There are a number of challenges they face along the way, not least that to attract a regular flow of clients and grow a practice without becoming burnt out, you must develop some key business skills. This often comes as a surprise to therapists who may even have changed careers to avoid the world of business.
When starting your own counseling practice, skilled practitioners must ask themselves a number of questions about what they want their private practice to look like and what it would take for it to be successful and sustainable. These questions include: Read More Here »