On my no-charge call this week: “Five Sweet Stratgies to Grow Your Business and Make Money Doing What You Love” I spoke about a mindset that ultimately defines each private practice.
This defining mindset is as unique as the clinician and yet I have found three that represent the way many practices are conceptualized. And the mindset comes from the answer to the question “What is the purpose of your practice?” That seems a simple question at first. To help people.
But you could help people in many ways. Why are you choosing private practice?
Is it to serve others? Maybe to serve the poor?
Is it to serve your needs? Your financial needs of course – but what about your own needs for personal growth? I have grown, and I imagine you have too, with every session I do. That is quite powerful and attractive – especially for many of us who started our careers as wounded healers.
Or maybe your business has another reason for being – one bigger than you, the owner. Maybe you are creating a business asset that can one day be sold – or run without you.
Often it is a progression. We start out in internships working for low or no pay seeing the poorest of the poor. One day we decide we really want to be our own boss and set our own schedule. We leave the internship – with our beloved, low-paying clients in tow. In not too long we are able to fill our practice because, well frankly, those really low-paying clients aren’t hard to find.
But there is a struggle to pay the rent and sometimes there is an accompanying feeling of shame for taking money for what we once did for free. This can be a tough stage for many and difficult to move through. In the end, this is not a sustainable business model for a practice. Compassion fatigue and poverty will overtake – if not consume – even the brightest and most caring clinician.
In a moment of clarity, many private practitioners in this stage wake up one day with a glimpse of an idea. “I could still serve the poor but I could do even better if I had more energy and more money.” The old issues of money are addressed. Marketing skills are learned and implemented. Sometimes wonderful “Robbin Hood” practices are born – serving both the wealthy and the poor.
But what needs does this practice serve? The clinician is taking very good care of her financial needs. But to what extent is the practice of therapy meeting the needs for personal growth and a sense of purpose? Our professors in grad school tell us to make sure we don’t ask our clients to meet our personal needs for fulfillment. But really, don’t we get a high when we feel those precious moments of transformation in a client session? We thrive on those moments.
Yet the professors are right but for different reasons than they probably intended. They want to make sure we do the best by our clients. I expect you do that. But I am looking at it from a business perspective. If the purpose, perhaps unstated, of the practice is to create a sense of purpose in the clinician, then is it possible that we could make choices that support us personally but aren’t in the best interests of the practice? This can be a bit sticky to sort out.
Other clinicians will adopt a different vision and model for their practice. They create businesses filled with multiple streams of revenue. The business can act as vehicle for retirement – either when it is sold or with the passive revenue from the business.
There is no right or wrong in these practice models and many will move from one model to the other over time – or to something else entirely. But I promise you, knowing and owning the purpose of your practice will fill you with incredible peace, focus, and excitement.
And when you know the purpose of your business, you can plan your next business and marketing steps to support the vision.
If you are called to serve the poor, do it in a way that supports everyone’s self-care. Get grants. Get donations. Get volunteers.
If your purpose is to move from “making a loving to making a living” – then learn the marketing activities that will get you clients. Set time aside to do them. Learn what works and do more of it.
And if you are looking to really move from private practitioner to business owner, then build a support team and create systems to support the purpose of the business so that if you want, it can run with out you.
Again – I ask you -
1.) What is the purpose of your private practice? (Let’s go deep on this one.)
2.) How does that purpose affect the business and marketing choices your make daily?
3.) What are your next steps?
I can’t wait to see what you think. Please share your thoughts below or by send us an email at Support@InTLI.com
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for both your questions and the article. I appreciated reading the comments from others as well. I opened my private practice this year after working more than 20 years in the helping profession with municipal and provincial government agencies as well as agencies contracted by the government. It seemed like a natural progression for me, an opportunity for another challenge, and an opportunity to build something the way I wanted to–free from politics or anyone else’s agendas. The idea of having more flexibility was also appealing as well as having more time with my family. The time dream so far has been just that, but it’ll come!!
My purpose has always been to help people using a non-pathologizing and strength-based approach–i.e. solution focused brief therapy. My most gratifying moments have been working with people who have gone from the depths of despair to feeling hopeful and doing what works for them in a relatively short period of time–no matter what their troubles were. My goal is to be able to do that while making a comfortable living. I am nowhere near reaching that goal, but I’m working hard at it. I look forward to hearing the tele-seminar tonight.
Sincerely,
Renee Meggs, Registered Psychologist
Focused Solutions Counselling & Coaching
http://www.reneemeggs.com
Great article! I think my purpose is to have as much fun as possible while helping others at the same time. In service to this goal, I only charge for the intakes in which I actually want to work with the client and the client wants to work with me. Fortunately this is most of the time, but it has gotten me out of the sticky situation of rejecting a client that has just paid me money to hear his or her story.
1) I feel my purpose is to support the community of urban gay men that I am a part of. It is my profession, and it also my biography. My purpose is to use my skills, education, talent, passion, and compassion to fight back against the social ills that affect the community of gay men who are my brethren. Ills such as homophobia, discrimination, violence, general antipathy, and also more specific situations like HIV infection, substance or behavioral addictions that enslave and disempower otherwise vibrant men from reaching their full potential, and psychiatric disorders that threaten to sabotage clever, compassionate, creative, brilliant minds. I can’t eradicate these ills, but I can do all I can — which after 17 years of experience is a lot — to minimize their impact and help “my peeps” to live vibrant, more fulfilling, and happier lives. And, I take Casey’s advice and I “make a living (and a good one, I admit!) by making a difference.” It’s a win-win situation. What’s not to love about that?
2) My business and marketing choices are simply to let the people who could benefit from my help know that I am there for them. The people who could benefit from my work can’t get the help they need or want if they don’t know who I am, where I am, what I do, how they can access me, and how our work together might benefit them in important areas of their lives. That’s why I advertise and do myriad marketing; I’m just telling the people who need or want to work with me to achieve their specific, individual goals that I am here for them. It wouldn’t be right for someone to need my help and not know the first thing about how to get it.
3) My next steps are to take YEARS of following Casey’s advice and take it to still higher levels — not just filling a practice with close to full-fee, non-insurance clients, but also to provide myself with Multiple Streams of Income by offering online products and services that help people whom I might not ever meet in person, but they can benefit from my experience, knowledge, skills, compassion, and passion in the specific areas that I study and serve. It’s expanding my sphere of influence from very local clients to potentially national or global ones, which my website visitor analysis indicates exists already from people all over the world. Every therapist could benefit from the MSOITs, no matter what “niche” we have chosen to develop as our “calling”. My next steps are also about recovering from this awful Recession and building an even fuller practice, using Casey’s techniques and other sources of inspiration that are PUT INTO PRACTICE beyond “awareness of theory”.
I hope this helps others, and as always, my gratitude to Casey for giving us all specific methodolgies that truly help us to make a living while making a difference. Good luck to everyone on this — it’s a noble goal worth pursuing!
Casey,
I expected to learn from you, but you altered my perspective on exactly what it is that I want! I really thought that I wanted to have a successful private practice with real paying clients, but you have opened my eyes to the fact that I have been called to serve the poor and homeless. I can’t believe that all it took was to have you point out that I can apply for grants and raise donations so that I can afford to do exactly that. Amazing how we can be totally blind to the obvious! Thank you so much for your insights. You will never know how many you have helped, but you will be blessed anyway.