62: How to Take Your Private Practice Full Time
Private practice provider with your practice “on the side” of someone else’s business? If you work in a hospital, school, agency, or university, you might have your private practice “on the side.” Which is totally cool! It’s how I started my business and am a huge fan of therapists starting their practices out this way. But if you are ready to move from “on the side” to full-time, this episode is for you!
Three Things You Need to Do to Take Your Practice Full Time
Figure out how much money you need to replace
Decide on an aligned marketing strategy
Reframe cognitive distortions
Want more?
I’m a financial therapist and consultant for other therapists. When it comes to mental health practitioners, I believe that financial self-care is a cornerstone of self-care. It took me four years to say goodbye to a “good social work job” when the red flags were there from the beginning. To that end, I’ve created a 1-hour workshop for therapists who are ready to take their private practices from “on the side,” to full time. In this workshop, my goal is to help you create the full-time private practice you’ve always wanted. We’ll cover the “how” of figuring out how much money you need to bring in, choosing and sticking to the best marketing strategy for you, and ways to reframe your cognitive distortions. Learn more and register here!
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Today I am talking about how to take your private practice from on the side or part-time to full-time, and I love when folks in the health and wellness space start out their private practices on the side, it's what I did. I think it's a really great way to kind of dip your toe in and see if it feels like a fit for you, and it's also a way to understand what works for you, what doesn't work for you, and to also get all of this system set up on the back end, so you're ready to go when you're ready to take your practice to full-time or whatever your version of full-time is, and to do it in a way that supports you and your wellbeing. So I think that taking your practice from on the side to full-time, like I mentioned, is beautiful.
Love it. But what I see happen a lot is that private practice therapists who have their practice on the side, keep it on the side for far too long, and it's not because of scarcity mindset. It's not because they can't do it. It's not because they don't know how to run a business. It's because they keep putting these, "I'll go full-time," statements in place. And then what happens is when they reach those statements, they change their mind and they push that goal out even further. So let me give you an example. They'll say something like, "I'll take my practice from on the side to full-time when I have four private practice clients." Then they hit four private practice clients and go, "Ooh, I lied. I actually meant eight private practice clients." And then they push it back until they hit eight.
Or it sounds like "I want to wait until I have an office space available." So they wait. They keep their eyes open for the perfect office space. They find a great office space. They even sign a lease. And then they get in there and they're like you know what, maybe I'll, maybe I'll wait until I take it from a sublease until it opens up into something available five days a week. Right?" They keep pushing out these deadlines for themselves and until they know it, they're on the side private practice or they're, I'm gonna dip my toe in. Private practice has become something that has been months, years in the making, and what I want to help you do today is figure out what your balance is so you can take your practice and make it your full-time business.
So here are a few things that you need. If you're getting ready to take it from on the side to full-time, you need to actually understand what your number is financially so you can leave your full business or somebody else's full-time business rather. Right? So most on the side, people are working for a therapy agency. They're working at a hospital, at a VA system. They're working at a school, they're teaching or lecturing at a university or at a college, right? So they are working as an employee or a 1099 of somebody else, and they haven't figured out how much money they actually need to be bringing in in their on the side practice.
So what I want you to do is figure that out. How much money do you actually need to be bringing in to make your ends meet? So that's the first thing you need. The second thing you need to figure out is creating some sort of marketing strategy. And if you are like me and when you first started out, you heard the word marketing and wanted to barf or run away again, you're, you're in good company.
I now think of marketing as a way for me to share with folks why and how I can help them, and less about trying to convince people to work with me because A, that doesn't work. And B, it's gross. So figuring out which marketing efforts are efforts are actually going to call in aligned clients to your practice, and which ones are like flash in a pan aren't gonna work for.
And notice how I said for you because marketing your private practice is not a cut and paste. "Do what somebody else says and it's gonna work for you." Deal. Just like you wouldn't tell any of your therapy clients, "just do this thing. It's work for all of my other clients and I guarantee it's gonna work for you." I don't play that game with marketing either. Right. I want for you to figure out what are the things that are gonna move the needle in my business? Is it word of mouth referrals? Is it creating a beautiful and hardworking website? Is it showing up on different social media platforms? Figuring out what marketing efforts are worth it for you, and which ones are just going to make you feel like you're pulling your hair out or you're on this never ending hamster wheel, chasing all these shiny.
And then the final one is you really need to create boundaries and loving reframes because inevitably what will happen is you start, as you start to move toward full-time private practice. Is you're gonna have these mind gremlins pop up, you're going to start telling yourself things like, "you know what if I just meditated more and practiced more yoga and, and got outside daily, I bet I could make my hospital job work."
Or, "you know what, if I actually took my PTO at, at the university, I bet I could show up refreshed and I could keep making it work." You're gonna start to tell yourself these things to make somebody else's business work instead of your own. That's okay. Right? That's a safety mechanism. Our brains are trying to tell us how can we stay safe.
And for most of us, a traditional employment situation feels, looks very safe because that's the model most of us who have grown up in North America or Western Europe have seen as being successful or the path, right? You go to university, you get a safe job, you work there for 30 years and you retire to, you know, 30 years of bliss, whatever that means.
So we don't have a ton of role models of what it looks like to create a sustainable and profitable private practice, because in the online space, what we see is all of this like garbage about, you know, about appropriated ways of taking a business and making it work. Meaning you're gonna see a lot of messaging in the online space about go big or go home, jump in and a net will appear. Push against the grain and, and make it work, right?
All of this stuff that is incredibly dangerous, not just from a mindset standpoint, but also from a financial standpoint. Quitting a full-time job or an 80% effort job, or a job that you've had for a while, that is bringing in consistent income, even if it is in the income you want, even if it isn't serving the clients you wanna serve, even if it's working with a toxic team.
That is what you know has created financial security and stability in your life. So saying goodbye to that is really, really scary. So I want for you to reframe this. From, oh my gosh. It's gonna be really scary if I leave and if I could just meditate more and, and take my pto, I could make this full-time job work.
I want for you to say it makes sense that I'm scared to trust myself by taking my private practice full-time, and it makes sense that I would want to make my traditional employment work, and I have many reasons why it's not going to work, why things won't change, or why it's not a fit for me and what I need in.
Which is why I started my private practice on the side, and then you can start to shift towards, I can create my private practice so that I can have those daily walks. So that I can have my version of paid time off. So that I can see clients that I light up when I get to see them in my practice. So that I don't have to be a part of a toxic team.
Right? So that's a loving reframe you can offer to your brain when it starts to get a little bit anxious about taking your practice from on the side to full. Another thing that is going to come up most likely is if I leave my traditional employment job, who is going to take care of my clients? Right?
We, we go into this field because we love creating personal relationships with folks and knowing that we can offer them tools and skills so that they can have healthier lives for them. What we don't do is get into this field to create codependent relationships with our clients. So when it pops up that if you leave, nobody else on the planet will be able to help your clients, I want for you to check that cognitive distortion with a little bit of, of love, right? Love and compassion.
You know, things that sound like, it makes that I feel like if I leave, nobody else will be able to help my clients, and what I know is that I can help them find other support systems outside of myself because I don't want to create a, a codependent relationship or a relationship where they're only dependent on me as I leave.
Right? So those are, I would say, the most common ones that show up is like, I'll just make it work because this is my financial security at my traditional job and what is gonna possibly happen to my clients or trying to radically shake around the way things are working at your traditional employment job.
Those are things that are going to come up, and I want for you to offer yourself loving reframes as you move into taking your private practice from on the side to full time. And if you're going, Lindsay, I don't know how to find my number of how much money I need to earn in my private practice so that I can safely leave my other job.
If you're wondering, I don't know. What marketing means, in a way, about how it can impact or help my private practice. If you're not really sure how to create these boundaries and loving reframes as you take your private practice from on the side to full-time, I'm so excited to share with you that I've created a one hour live workshop coming up.
If you're listening to this in real time. On July 9th at noon EST, it is going to cover how to figure out that number so that you can leave. It's going to cover how to figure out what marketing efforts are worth it and which ones are time suckers. I will cover how to figure out what other kind of logistics structures you need in place so that you can leave your full-time job and, and take your private practice and make it your full-time.
And also how to cope with some of those mind gremlins that pop up, those gremlins that "I'm the only one who can help these people," "if I just, you know, did more meditation, I'd be able to make my full-time job work," et cetera, et. I'll help you reframe those. And the cool thing about this workshop is that it will have time at the end for your questions and answers if you can show up live.
And I already had a couple of people join who said, look, I might have to pop off early, or my, my schedule's kind of up in the air and they emailed me in advance with their questions, so I'll make sure to get to them as well. If something comes up and you can't make it live, you can email me your questions in advance, and so you don't have to worry about like frantic note taking and you can be fully present during the workshop.
I will record the workshop and send it to all attendees. This workshop is $29. It's pitch free. What I mean by that is that I know at this point in time in your business, you've probably joined some free master classes or some free webinars that have included a pitch to work with that person. Look, I'm not opposed to pitching yourself or marketing yourself, I'm literally doing it right now, but what I don't get down with is, is the bait and switch move where you think you're getting something for free and you get maybe a little nugget or two, but then in the event that I do something free and I'm going to pitch something else that I do that is a paid offering, I always let people know at the top of it. And when they're registering, meaning I will say something like, "Hey fyi, I am gonna teach you this really valuable content, and at the end I'm gonna tell you a little bit about how you can work with me if you wanna work with."
So that's how I do it if I'm doing something free. But if I'm doing something paid, there's no pitch. Meaning this workshop is really just about what I told you it's gonna be about. There is not going to be a pitch to work with me later. The reason I created this workshop is because in grow a profitable practice from the inside out, my group coaching program for private practice therapists, 90% of those participants joined Grow a Profitable Practice From the Inside Out when their private practice was on the side of somebody else's business.
So I know that this is common. I know that this is a question that people have. I know that people are ready to take their practices from on the side to full-time, but they don't know how. Where they get nervous, rightfully so, and that's why I created this workshop. So if you want to join me it will be linked in the show notes.
If you follow me over on Instagram, there will be a button at the link in my bio where you can find it. And if you're on my email newsletter, I'm sure you have seen emails about it. And if you're not, get on my newsletter by going to MindMoneyBalance.com/Quiz. It's a twofer. You get to take a quiz on understanding what your financial archetype.
Learn more about the strengths and challenges of your financial archetype, and you'll be added to my newsletter list and I would love to see you if you're a private practice therapist this Friday during that workshop. If it's not a fit for you, no sweat, no big deal. I'm just so happy to have you as a member of this podcast, listenership community. And with that, I'll see you right here next week.