64: Private Practice vs. Agency Work vs. Therapy Apps
Updated March 2024
Private Practice vs. Agency Work vs. Therapy Apps
Post last updated february 2024
Psychotherapists today have so many different options for how and where they want to work. Psychotherapists (social workers, professional counselors, psychologists, and the like) can choose to work outside of their traditional employment settings such as hospitals and schools. Through group practice, they can find employment, create their own private practice counseling business, or even join an online therapy app to provide services to clients over text and video. In this post, I'll share my (personal) opinions on the pros and cons of each of these three options.
Pros and Cons of Joining a Therapy Agency
The pros of being a therapist at a group therapy practice or counseling agency are numerous. Working at an established agency means a built-in referral stream, meaning it won't take long to get clients and build your way to a full caseload. You also aren't on the hook for the potential headaches that can come with signing a commercial lease. When you're at an agency, you most likely have an assigned office that you do your sessions in. You don't have to worry about contacting a landlord when something breaks or troubleshoot a leaky toilet. Most agencies also provide their therapists with start-up amenities, such as access to an EHR, phone service, email address, administrative or billing assistant, and a finished web page profile. Having other therapist friends around also means you might not get as lonely as you would if you worked in private practice or only on therapy apps. I worked at a group practice for years and loved it! It was a great blend of getting a feel for the business side of private practice while having additional professional support. I left for financial reasons that had nothing to do with the group practice owners or my former colleagues.
The disadvantages of a group practice or being a therapist at an agency are that you likely have less autonomy over the types of clients you see. Of course, pay is something to consider, too. Most therapist agencies give their contractors a fixed "fee split." In a fee-split model, the contracting therapist gets a percentage of what the full fee is. Usually, this a 60/40 or 50/50 split; the agency keeps 60-50% of the fee, and the contracting therapist gets 40-50%. This model is frequently used, and group therapy owners often use the language "that's just the way it is" when defending this fee split. The idea is that the contracting therapist has a lower risk of joining a reputable group and has access to amenities that they'd otherwise pay out of pocket if they were fully self-employed.
I've heard horror stories of not choosing your own clients or being penalized for taking time off. When I was first considering joining an agency, two of the largest and most well-known in my area made all new contractors work evenings and weekends to start before "allowing" them to work more coveted times during the day.
Finally, most positions at therapist agencies are contractural. Contractual therapists don't have access to benefits like paid time off, retirement matching/contributions, or health insurance. Those are things to consider as often the hourly rate will "look" better than traditional employment, but you miss out on some of the fringe benefits of working as an employee instead of a contractor.
Pros and Cons of Therapy Apps
The benefits of working for Talkspace, BetterHelp, LemonAid, or any number of the therapy apps that are popping up are . . . well, I'm super biased here because I don't think they are many benefits, so I've dug up what these apps promise to their clinicians. Paraphrasing here, the benefits of joining one of the apps are: work flexibility, the ability to focus on the clinical part of therapy, no business overhead, and a supportive clinical community.
The disadvantages of online app-based therapy as a psychotherapist are that they woefully underpay their contractors. Most therapists sign the NDAs, but info from Reddit, word of mouth from friends who have been on the apps, and other sources have told me the hourly pay rate is in the $18-30 per hour range. Notice I said “hourly” instead of “BetterHelp salary,” that’s because there is no salary when working for something like Talk Space or Better Help; clinicians are paid per word since most are text/chat-based, which is then calculated into an hourly rate. Additionally, therapists are paid more the more clients they see, and they prioritize "quick responses" and text as the primary form of therapy. So while they promise flexibility, the way to make as much money as advertised is by working. A. LOT. and by being super available. These apps infuriate me because they treat highly trained psychotherapist's as "side hustlers." I don't know about you, fellow therapist, but I didn't do 6+ years of school, two years of an internship, pass my boards, and maintain my licensure to treat my career like a nighttime hobby.
I don't know about you, fellow therapist, but I didn't do 6+ years of school, two years of an internship, pass my boards, and maintain my licensure to treat my career like a nighttime hobby.
I can't listen to a podcast these days without hearing an advertisement for one or get on social media without seeing another huge celebrity endorsement. These apps are everywhere because they are funded by deep venture capital pockets that funnel a ton of money into marketing and celebrity partnerships.
I heard Jeff Gunther of Therapy Den on my friend's podcast recently talk about something else I didn't know about these apps: data mining (Listen to the full episode here). My jaw dropped when I heard him say, "they take your data and sell it to Facebook, Google and Pinterest . . . the intake form is sent to advertisers that want to know more about you." I guess they get around HIPAA by de-identifying the data and selling the meta-data to advertisers. It's illegal (not to mention highly highly unethical) to share any of my client data with anyone else so I'm stunned that BetterHelp is getting away with this. Update March 2023! BetterHelp WAS sued for selling patient data and settled for $7.8 Million! The suit alleged that the app sold user’s medical data with third parties for profit, including Facebook and Snapchat.
This is yet another reason I won't be joining their app or any similar apps as a psychotherapist.
Pros and Cons of Private Practice Counseling
The pros of private practice counseling are that you are your own boss. You get to say "yes" to seeing aligned clients, "no" to clients who aren't a good fit, set your fees to ensure you can take care of yourself financially, work the hours you desire, set up shop in your home office or your hometown, and more! I'm biased, but I think there are so many pros to being an entrepreneurial therapist. I love getting to tap into the creative side of my mind and work on blog posts (#meta), podcasts, graphics, and videos for social media, and write emails to my newsletter list. As a private practice owner, I get to be CEO, CFO, and the head of marketing!
The disadvantages of being a private practice owner are that you are your own boss. If doing it all sounds like a lot, well, it is. This is why I recommend paying for additional help as a private practice owner. That might look like upgrading different software platforms to make your life easier or hiring a virtual assistant or billing specialist to lighten your load. I wrote a guest post on Hold Space Creative’s blog on what to hire out or invest in if you are in private practice and are feeling burdened by the administrative side of things.
It can be easy to slip from "work-life balance" into working nonstop when you are a private practice owner. Without someone nudging you to take time off or attend annual health appointments, you might delay some of those regular self-care items. In 2020 as a private practice owner, I only took eight days off (whoops!). I vowed never to do that again, but I doubt if I were traditionally employed, I would have felt guilty about taking time off or away from my clients.
Where Should You Work as a Therapist?
Deciding on where you should work as a mental health provider is a personal choice. I'm obviously against Uber-ing yourself out on therapy apps, but for some people, having a little bit of money and not having to deal with the overhead or office politics is worth it. Here are the questions to ask yourself as you make your decision.
How do I like to work? Alone with lots of autonomy? With lots of oversight and guidance?
How comfortable am I telling others what I do for a living? Can I work on being in my growth zone when it comes to marketing my work?
How important is flexibility to me? Am I comfortable setting my own vacation schedule? Do I trust myself to honor my energetic needs in my practice?
More Private Practice Help
I have a suite of mini courses designed to help you achieve your goals as a therapist in private practice. I decommissioned a group coaching program, but took the most popular modules and created self-paced workshops for you. Learn more about where to focus your time, how to take your private practice to the next level by going full-time, and how to create a sustainable marketing plan here:
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Welcome back to another episode of the Mind Money Balance podcast. I'm talking today about making decisions as a private practice owner, or if you're thinking about venturing into private practice. What I've seen today is three main options for people who are considering private practice and they look like private practice.
You know, running a solo show or solo agency work or joining a group private practice or a group practice, and then therapy apps. Um, these have been popping up over the last few years. Before I get into the pros and cons of each of these things, I wanna share a little bit about how I ended up choosing private practice and how I ended up in social work in general because I realized I hadn't really shared the story.
So before becoming a social worker, I held a ton of random jobs, and I mean, literally random. Um, one of my first jobs was helping out in a physical therapy practice for people who had rheumatoid arthritis or lupus. So I was like, you know, washing towels and heating up ultrasound gel and scheduling appointments for Electrotherapy Electro Road therapy. Things like that. And then the next kind of job I held was I worked at Big Boy. I helped to stock the salad bar and made desserts, and then I eventually moved my way up to hosting and waitressing and I ended up being a waitress, not at Big Boy but at a different place for years.
I think in Grand Total, I worked as a waitress for about eight years. Um, and one of my first jobs out of college was actually doing, um, promotions and marketing for cell phones at different concert venues. So, you know, like back in the olden days when you would go to a concert and you'd walk in and there would be rows of people selling things. That was my job. I actually didn't sell anything.
I actually just demoed how phones worked and, um, yeah, that was my, my first gig and out of college and I lived literally on the road out of a suitcase. Um, drove a truck with a 10 foot enclosed trailer I had to go to like truck school for a weekend. Um, so anyway, all that to say like, I chose social work because if you can't hear anything about those three jobs that I've held, I get bored pretty easily.
I get antsy. I get like ready to do something new. And so when I was considering going back to grad school, I originally thought like, "oh, I wanna go and get my PhD in sociology and teach and do research and write books and whatnot." But I realized like I don't wanna be in academia forever. I have no interest in spending seven plus years of going down the rabbit hole of getting my PhD and, um, dealing with the ivory tower politics.
So I was a server and I told myself, I'll apply for one MSW program. If I get in, then it's meant to be, I will go and get my MSW, my Master's in social work, and if I don't, I'll figure something else out. So I applied, I got into the University of Michigan and did my social work program, but the reason I chose social work is because it's so varied in the different career paths you can take.
I think a lot of people automatically stereotype social workers as people who are doing, um, like foster care placement or doing child protective services visits and. Social workers do work in those fields, but they also work as patient advocates in healthcare systems. They do school social work. Um, they can take the path that I've taken, which is therapy.
They can do case management, they can run non-profits. There are so many different options for social workers, which is why I ended up choosing social work as a career. So when it came time for me after being in a more traditional social work job, I, I knew I wanted to do private practice, but I wasn't sure which avenue I wanted to take.
I ended up joining a group practice, which I loved. They were incredibly supportive, incredibly collaborative. And it was a great, um, way for me to kind of get a sense of how to run a business and what I did want and didn't want in my practice. Um, and I eventually moved on from group practice to doing what I do now as a solo provider at Mind Money Balance.
Um, But I don't think all group practices are bad. Uh, I think in the online coaching space, there's a lot of noise about like leaving agencies and leaving group practices, but I think they're a great option for a lot of people anyway. Uh, let's shift into what we're talking about today, which is if you are considering branching out and doing private practice. What do you need to be thinking about in terms of running a solo shop like I do, joining a group practice or an agency, or the therapy apps?
Obviously I'm biased because this is my platform, my podcast. So I'm gonna share with you what I think about each of these three, but at the end of the day, you have to do what's best for you. I just wanna share like some, some things to consider as you're going down the road. So let's first start out with agency work or group practice.
The pros of being at a group practice or an agency, in my opinion, are numerous. Working at an established agency means you have built in referrals, so you don't have to worry about marketing yourself as much as you would in a private practice. You, you, if you join a group practice or an agency that's already established in your community, they already have that built in, um, that built in connection with the community.
So you can typically build your caseload much more quickly than if you were going out on your own. You also aren't on the hook for potential headaches that come along with being the person who has signed a lease in a commercial property. So for example, if like the kitchen sink starts leaking, or the wifi is a nightmare, you don't have to be the person to troubleshoot it.
Somebody else in that group practice is usually assigned to connecting with the property manager and troubleshooting those and there's often a, a built in administrative assistant or admin help that might look like them helping to onboard you into their electronic health record and might look like somebody who actually answers the phones and assigns clients to people based on what they say.
So you have some additional administrative support and often you have additional billing support, meaning you don't have to. Super in the weeds about collecting copays and insurances and billing. You typically have somebody who can help you out there, and what I would say nowadays is most people who join a group practice have built in an established web presence.
So yeah, you might not get your own website, but you'll typically have a profile page or a biography where you can direct potential clients to or share with other community members. As I mentioned before, I worked at a group practice for years. I really loved it. I felt like it was a really great fit. I'm still good friends with the people who work there, and I left honestly for financial reasons.
Being a financial therapist in the pre covid world already, I was doing a lot of online work. About 30 to 40% of my clients were online based, um, just because it's such a unique niche. So I had people. Doing therapy with me from hours away within the state of Michigan, and I kind of saw the writing on the wall that as I continued growing my financial therapy practice, I wouldn't need as much of a physical office based presence.
And thus, that's why I decided to leave. So the disadvantages or the cons of joining a group practice or being a therapist at an agency is that you often have less autonomy over the types of clients you see. Meaning they try to fill your caseload with the people who are calling in and requesting help, because again, they tend to have more established connections in the community.
So while they could build your caseload quickly, it might not necessarily be with the types of clients you want to see most therapist agencies offer or, or run off of this fee split model, meaning, There's like a 60/40 split or a 50/50 split, meaning the agency keeps 60% of whatever you're billing out hourly, and then you get the remaining 40%.
Um, sometimes it's 50/50, sometimes it's 70/30. But this is the, the model that I've seen most frequently used. And a lot of group therapy practice owners kind of say like, look, that that's the way it is. This is kind of our standard fee split. Um, and they sell it saying kind of, kind of the way that I've shared with you the pros of joining an agency or a group practice.
They say, look, "we are preventing you from having to take on that overhead from having to hire somebody with admin. You don't have to deal with marketing. You kind of show up. We give you a client and therefore, you know, that's kind of our, our commission, if you will, for bringing you into the agency." I have a lot of thoughts about that.
I think there are different ways to do it that might be a bit more equitable, but I would say that that is hands down, the most frequently used approach that I have seen. Um, so rather than getting, let's say you, you're, you're charging a hundred bucks an hour for a session and you're doing a 60/40 fee split model, you get 40 bucks after that session.
And let's remember, you still have to pay taxes on it. Um, so it. You know, like $32 a session, which in my opinion isn't super great. And even if it's the, the reverse, you get, you get 60% of that. You get $60 a session, but then you take out taxes, you're like at 52 bucks a session, which to me is like fine.
But in private practice, as I'll get into your, your take home is generally higher. The other cons of private or of joining a group practice are, these are not things I've experienced. These are things that I've heard, but the horror stories of, um, being penalized for taking time off. And it might look like if you take time off, you no longer get this like nice office with the window.
When I first was kind of toying with the idea of joining a group practice, I was looking at some of the more well known ones in my area. And they both had this policy that made new contractors who joined their agency. Work nights and weekends first, and then once they filled up their nights and weekends, then they can move to the daytime.
So you're getting kind of like the second shift hours, which to me, again, maybe that works for you working after or evenings and weekends. But for me, I didn't want to build a practice around evening and weekend work. So they, they kind of, again, just use this language of like, "look, that's the way it is. If you wanna join our agency, you'll get clients right away, but you have to work from, you know, 5:00 PM to 10:00 PM weekends". So that just like doesn't feel super good to me. And then finally, most therapists who join a group practice are contractors, meaning they're 1099 employees. They're not W-2 employees, which means. They do not have access to things like paid time off. They don't have access to things like healthcare.
They don't have access to things like retirement contributions. And as a 1099, what you might not know is that they actually can't mandate what hours you work, but a lot of group therapy agencies kind of operate under this model of "you have to be here such and such days for such and such hours." So you're not getting some of the, the, um, amenities that you would be getting if you were an employee.
Right? An employee means that you are entitled to some of those other benefits, um, that, that you just don't get. So the way that I often see. Used from group practice owners is like, look, we pay you $60 an hour at the end of the day, which is way better than you could get at like joining a hospital, right?
They, they probably pay you $20 an hour, but what they're not including is that that $20 an hour social work, job, or therapy job probably includes paid time off sick leave. Access to health insurance, retirement contributions, things like that. So it looks better at an hourly rate, but those fringe benefits that are offered in traditional employment are missing from group agencies.
So, to summarize it, the pros of joining an agency or group practice are a built in referral network. There are colleagues, which can be super helpful, administrative support, um, and a lower risk tolerance or lower risk factor if you get anxious about taking on risks. The cons are that you have a less say over the hours you work, the types of clients you see.
You don't get the types of benefits you would if you were a traditional W2 employee. And the other thing I didn't mention, but I think is worth mentioning is you have like little to no creative control. If they have a janky website, like you're just stuck with the janky website, you don't get to really showcase your personality in the way that you can in another way.
Um, alright, moving on to therapy. At the time of this recording, there are so many therapy apps coming out, like Talk Space, Better Help. I just saw one the other day called Lemonade, and I'm sure by the time this hits the sound waves, there will be more.
Um, I'm super, super biased here because I don't think there are a ton of pros of joining these, so I have pulled what these therapy app websites say their benefits are to their therapists who join. So they say the benefits are work flexibility, the ability to focus on the clinical part of therapy because you're not doing the marketing, um, no business overhead and a supportive clinical community.
So that's what they say. Again, I'm super biased, but that's what they say the perks are. The disadvantages here of being a therapist on an online app based platform is that they woefully underpay, in my opinion, their therapists. Most therapists have to sign NDAs. Um, Where they can't disclose how much money they're earning.
But info I've gathered from places like Reddit, word of mouth from my friends who joined the apps and other sources have essentially told me, look, the hourly rate ends up being in the 18 to $30 an hour range, but it's tricky to nail down how much they're actually being paid because oftentimes, Rewarded if you are contracting yourself as a therapist for these apps, you are rewarded for quick responses.
Um, And they prioritize texting as the primary form of therapy. So this is where it's really hard to, to be objective, but they promise this, this flexibility, this work life balance. But the way to make the type of money closer to that $30 an hour range is to be working a lot and to respond quickly. And that's really frustrating for me.
In the therapeutic relationship, in my mind, the goal is not that the client ends up relying on me for everything. The goal is that we work together in a boundary way to help them gain skills and tools so they don't need me. At the end of the day, my goal is to unemploy myself from working with my clients, meaning in our work together, however long that that time period.
At the end of our work together, they are able to engage in the world on their own, and they have the skills and tools and resources that they need that they don't need quick access to me. So like the, the quick texting and quick responding to me can, especially if you have a client who has anxiety or OCD, in my opinion, that can reinforce some of those anxious thoughts and feelings or those obsessive tendencies.
Whereas in traditional psychotherapy, we put up more boundaries around that so that they can, again, with coping skills that you've infused in your work with them, they can cope with that discomfort of not being, being able to reach you 24 7. Right. So these apps really, really are hard for me as a person who, um, obviously talks about money on a financial therapist, they treat therapists.
As side hustlers, and I don't like that because most therapists have at least six years of school, right? They've got four years of undergrad, two years of grad program. They have two plus years of supervised internship and hours. They have to pass their boards and they have to maintain their clinical licensure.
So what's not, this is not a side hustle to me. Meaning, I don't think that saying, "oh, um, you know, yes, you are a mid-level or higher healthcare provider, but I just need you available on text." Like I, I did not go to school and maintain my licensure so that I could treat my profession as an on the side hobby.
Does that make sense? The other thing that's hard for me is that I'm a big podcast fan. I cannot listen to a podcast these days without there being an ad for Better Help, Talk Space, Lemonade, or without them having a huge celebrity endorsement. And these apps are everywhere because they're funded by venture capitalists who are funneling a lot of money into marketing and these celebrity partnerships on the guise of improving mental healthcare. But what we know about therapy is that you can have the most highly qualified therapist, but at the end of the day, what moves the needle in terms of client outcome is the fit between the client and the therapist, and the rapport between the client and therapist and I do agree that some people have high anxiety or, um, have life situations where it is really hard to carve out an hour for therapy. I don't disagree with that, but I, I don't think that text based services is really psychotherapy. I think text has a great space in psychotherapy as like a quick, "Hey, I'm running late," like, I think that's a fine way to use text or, "Hey, I need to schedule another session tomorrow," fine.
But I don't think having your therapist kind of in your back pocket, everywhere you go is appropriate and they, they funnel all of this money to celebrity endorsements and to advertising to try and say like, "Hey, we are all about mental healthcare." And what I recently learned, which literally jaw hit the floor, I was listening to one of my friend's podcasts, The Modern Therapist Survival Guide Podcast with Katie Vernoy and Kurt Winhall, and they had on the founder of Therapy done Jeff Gunther. And Jeff shared how he was approached by the founder of Better Help to partner with them. And what he learned was that these apps take client data and sell. To Google, Facebook, and Pinterest so that advertisers can learn more about you and when you are struggling or most in need of help.
I don't know how they legally can do that. My guess is that they got around HIPPA, which is the law that mandates that your health information stay private. I think they got around HIPAA by de-identifying the patient information, um, and selling it as like bundled de-identified information to advertisers, but essentially what they are doing is they're saying like, "Hey, from midnight to 3:00 AM there are a lot of people on the East Coast texting their therapists saying they're feeling really low. Hey, advertisers, what are things that you can do that maybe you could sell the to them from midnight to 3:00 AM that would make them feel good," like that feels like you're speaking to them. So that totally gross me out. Um, for me it's illegal, not to mention highly, highly unethical for me to tell anything about my clients to anybody else unless I am worried about their safety or that they're going to harm somebody else.
So I am just stunned that these therapy apps are getting away with it and, and I, I don't remember where I heard this, but essentially, if you are using a service that is free or is way cheaper than market rate, you are the product. So when we use apps like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and they're free to us, the reason they're free to us is because at the end of the day, the software is, is tracking our moves and selling our moves to advertisers.
We sign that we agree to that when we agree to those terms and policies, but as a therapy seeker myself, I would hate to know that in my most anxious moments, my darkest moments, my most vulnerable moments when I think I'm reaching out to my therapist, yes, I am reaching out to my therapist, but somebody else is collecting my data to mine and sell it to other people.
I just, I, I cannot in good faith join one of those apps because I would lose my license if I did anything remotely close to that. And again, not to mention that it's illegal for me, it's also highly unethical. So when I heard Jeff talk about that, I was like, just floored. Right? So again, if there is something that used to cost a lot of money and is now no longer a lot of. The reason is that you are probably the product.
Just like with, we've seen with like Uber and Lyft, those were subsidized by venture capitalists for years and years, which is why they were so cheap. Now that venture capital funding is running out and we've seen, of course the costs go up and people are going back to using things like buses and cabs and and things like that because Lyft and Uber really can't compete anymore.
Anyway, all that to say, let me wrap up the pros and cons of these therapy apps. So reportedly the pros are no of overhead. You don't have to market, um, and you don't have to deal with the office space. And the cons, in my opinion, are low pay. They're commodifying mental healthcare providers, reinforcing low wages inside hustling and doing things that I believe are highly unethical.
Moving into the pros and cons of private practice, I obviously am biased here because that's what I. The pros of private practice counseling are that you get to be your own boss. You get to say yes to seeing aligned clients saying no to clients that aren't a good fit for. Setting fees that can assure that you can take care of yourself financially and sustainably, work the hours that you desire, set up your shop in a home office like me, or, um, in a cool part of town that feels good, et cetera, et cetera. I think there are so many pros to being a, an entrepreneurial therapist. I love getting to tap into the creative side of my mind by writing like the copy on my website, by writing email newsletters, by doing podcasts, um, Instagram Live, stuff like that.
And as a private practice owner, I get full transparency over what's happening in my business. I get to be the CEO, I get to be the CFO, and I get to be the head of marketing. And as you can probably, man, imagine, Those are also like the disadvantages is that there is a lot of stuff to do if it sounds like, wow, CEO, CFO, COO, and the head of marketing is a lot.
It is, which is why I typically recommend once you kind of get in a groove as a private practice owner, you. , get additional help in your practice, and that might look like just increasing the type of electronic health record you have. Like I pay for one that includes scheduling and billing help, right?
Like that makes my life so much easier. I didn't have to hire somebody to help me, but I'm not trying to cobble together an electronic health record. Um, I'm also a fan of bringing on a virtual assistant or a billing specialist to help lighten your load. I also know where my zone of expertise is, is when I tap out and get help.
I've shouted out Kristie of TherapieSEO and Monica of Hold Space Creative a number of times here, but I really cannot speak highly enough of them in their work in that they've helped me. Kristie has helped me with SEO to make sure that my website is attracting new and aligned clients and Monica of Hold Space Creative has helped me with the template and the words on my website so that when they land on my website from the SEO that Kristie's helped me. It's easy to navigate, it's beautiful. It's hard working. So I'm all about getting help on your team, even if as a solo practice shop like you're a team of one.
I wrote a guest blog post over on Monica's blog about when to hire out or invest in additional help in private practice if you're feeling burdened by the administrative side of things. It's at the end of a blog post on the Six Money Beliefs that lead to therapist burnout. I will link it here and you can go check it out over there. The cons really is that it can be really hard to separate. Like it's really hard, in my opinion, to create a work life separation when you are doing all of the things and wearing all of the hats. When like last year in 2020, I only took off eight days for my private practice, not because I needed to work that much, but because I didn't have somebody saying like, "Hmm, Lindsay, maybe you shouldn't be working all the time."
I vowed never to do that again. At the time of this recording, I'm halfway into the year. I've already taken off eight. And I plan to take off another 12 to 13 days. Um, so I'll have over a month off in my practice. But I think if I were traditionally employed or working at a group practice, I wouldn't have that same type of guilt about taking time away from my work or for my clients.
So in summary, the pros of being a private practice owner is that you get to run your practice the way that you want. You get to set your fees, you get to decide whether or not you take insurance or do sliding scale. Do group, do one-on-one, do couples, whatever. You get to work with your ideal clients have creative freedom, but the bo or the cons are that it can be lonely, it can be harder to create boundaries, and there is more startup labor.
So deciding how you want to engage in private practice is definitely a personal decision. I'm obviously against Ubering out yourself on those therapy app platforms, but for some people they might be in a situation where they literally can only work Tuesday and Thursday evenings enjoying an app like that for them is, is generating a little bit of income.
It's keeping their clinical skills sharp and it's enough for them and it feels good. So no shade to the people who it is working out for them. Right? I told you, I'm sharing my very biased opinions here. Anyway, let's think about. Questions you can ask yourself as you decide between joining an agency, going all in on your own private practice or joining a therapy app.
I think it's worthwhile to journal on how do you like to work. So I guess the question if we were journaling it is how do I like to work? Do I like to work alone with a lot of autonomy? Do I prefer a lot of oversight in scaffolding? Then I would shift into how comfortable am I telling others what I'm doing for a living? Can I work on being in my growth zone when it comes to marketing my work? And I think that question is so important because as therapists who go into private practice, we do have to tell people what we do for a living. So how comfortable are you sharing with others what you do for a living? And then the third thing I would think about is how important is flexibility for me? Am I really comfortable setting my vacation schedule? Do I trust myself that I can honor my energetic needs in my practice? Um, and then I would say underneath or these three questions really are housed underneath a big one for me, which is, which one of these three options will provide me with the most financial stability for the type of life that I need to live?
So those are the pros and cons in my opinion, of joining a group practice, of joining the therapy apps, or of doing your own private practice. I wanna let you know that if you are a private practice provider, doing your private practice on the side of something else, on the side of hospital work on the side of an agency, on the side of, um, school, social work.
I would like to let you know that I am running a workshop on Monday, July 19th at 5:00 PM Eastern, helping you take your private practice from on the side to full time. It's a one hour workshop. It is pitch free.
I would love to invite you to join me. Everybody who joins will get a copy of the recording if you can't attend live. Um, or if you just wanna be fully present and don't wanna take copious notes, don't worry. I've got you there. You can learn more about registering for that at the link in, my bio, but I'm such a huge proponent of taking your practice full time if that feels good for you. And I love an on the side approach. That's how I started out my private practice. It took me, I think eight months of like keeping my practice on the side before I really went in on it. So you're not alone if that's what you're doing. I think sometimes we can feel really judged when we go onto the innerwebs and there's all these therapy coaches talking about like, "go big or go home," " jump right in," "three extra prices," "open your private practice today."
And it's like, yeah maybe, but also like we're humans and sometimes it just feels better for us to slowly take our steps towards moving our practice full-time. So if you're in that space of thinking about moving it full time or you want some help moving it full-time in the workshop, I'll break down what kind of money you need to kind be thinking about replacing when you move from on the side to full.
Some of the mindset shifts you need as you take your practice from on the side to full time. And then also thinking about the dreaded M word, thinking about marketing your services in a way that feel good to you and won't burn you out. So again, if you wanna join me in that, I will be linking to it below.
And if you're watching this on Instagram or YouTube, it will be either in my bio if you're on Instagram or in the show notes if you are on YouTube. Thanks so much. I will see you next time.