By Dr Rosie Gilderthorp
The podcast currently has 157 episodes available.
Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology Summer School edition.
Over the six weeks of the English school holidays, we are doing things a little bit differently around here. If you're looking to start up an independent practice in September, then this is the place to be as each week I'm dropping in with a quick lesson and tasks that can be completed in 30 minutes or less from your sun lounger.
By the end of the six weeks, you will feel ready to step into your practice in September, confident that you can find clients and have a safe and viable business foundation.
Each week, the lessons will go out on this podcast feed, but if you want the weekly tasks, workbooks, private community, and a live session with me at the end of the summer to hold you accountable and make sure nothing stands in your way, you will need to sign up here: PBS Summer School
I would love to see you in the community.
Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology
Links & References:
PBS Start and Grow
Discount code for Start and Grow: SUMMER200 valid until Wednesday the 11th September at 10pm
Episode 146: Data Protection for Psychologists in 2024 with Clare Veal
Rosie on Instagram:
@rosiegilderthorp
@thepregnancypsychologist
Legal contracts and celebration episodeWe have come to the end of Summer School, and as you might have noticed from the title of this episode, I'm combining two rather odd things here today, because firstly, I really want to say what an amazing summer this has been. Thank you so much for joining along with this journey. I have loved watching your budding businesses develop and hearing how your confidence has grown over the past few weeks.
I know September is going to be the start of so many epic psychology and therapy practices, and that is a fantastic thing. But one thing we haven't got sorted yet is your essential contracts and data protection policies, the legal bits. And these are critically important, but they couldn't really be fit into 30 minutes or less, and I did not consider them to be particularly sun lounger friendly, if I'm honest. But I do have a good solution for you for that one.
Firstly, listen to the podcast that I recorded with Clare Veal, where we talk about data protection contracts and policies, the ones that you need and what needs to be in them. So do go and listen to that podcast. It's really amazing free advice from a leading lawyer in this space.
Then I have to recommend that you consider using your special summer school discount to join us in Start and Grow and get:
That takes the total value of the package to over £3000, but the legal documents on their own are normally £495, and you can get all of that within Start and Grow for just £650 for one week only. It's normally much more than that, but I'm doing a big discount for those of you that spent this time with me over the summer.
But you don't have to take my word for how good Start and Grow is. I've got some really kind words that some of the people that have been through the course recently were happy for me to share with you guys. And I think that's really important because why should you believe me, that Start and Grow is great, when we've had hundreds of psychologists and therapists come through the course. I think it's so much more powerful to hear from them.
So this is what Dr Lauren Breese, who's a clinical psychologist focusing on neurodiversity in adults, had to say:
"In a few days of implementing some of the strategies and guidance, I had new inquiries to my private practice. Having the community, resources, and specific supervision around growing a business has been invaluable. It's hard to find all of that anywhere else."
And as you can hear, this feedback gets me a little bit choked up!
I also wanted to share what Dr Misha Nixon, another clinical psychologist, had to say:
"I was thinking about joining Start and Grow for months before I actually did. I'm so pleased I decided to go ahead as, even though it's only been a few weeks since I joined, it's helped give me focus, provided a safe place to share my experiences with others and learn from others. And it's reduced the feeling of overwhelm and increased my confidence."
And that is really close to my heart because as you know, if you've listened to this podcast for a while, confidence was my biggest problem when I started out in private practice. And having that community around you, and the knowledge and the skills to avoid some of the pitfalls of business can make such a big difference to your professional confidence, which should be sky high because you are all awesome.
And as I mentioned, there are a ton more testimonials and videos and you can go and find all of those on the sales page for Start and Grow, which I'll link to in the show notes. If you scroll down, there's loads down at the bottom.
I also wanted to mention that there is a special discount for summer schoolers, and I consider you a summer schooler, and you can use the code SUMMER200 until Wednesday the 11th of September at 10pm, at which point the discount will stop working. That will get you £200 off the normal price of Start and Grow. And as I explained, the legal documents alone make that a really good bargain. So I would love to come and see you in the program.
If you have any questions about Start and Grow or anything that we've covered over this summer, please do ping me an email, or if you are a registered signed up member of the Summer School, then please do come along to our wrap up Q&A session on Wednesday the 4th of September at 10am. That is for signed up summer schoolers only and I will be at your disposal to help you troubleshoot anything that's standing between you and the practice that you want to build. So again, thank you everybody for spending this summer with me. I've really enjoyed myself and I can't wait to see what you all do in September.
Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology Summer School edition.
Over the six weeks of the English school holidays, we are doing things a little bit differently around here. If you're looking to start up an independent practice in September, then this is the place to be as each week I'm dropping in with a quick lesson and tasks that can be completed in 30 minutes or less from your sun lounger.
By the end of the six weeks, you will feel ready to step into your practice in September, confident that you can find clients and have a safe and viable business foundation.
Each week, the lessons will go out on this podcast feed, but if you want the weekly tasks, workbooks, private community, and a live session with me at the end of the summer to hold you accountable and make sure nothing stands in your way, you will need to sign up here: PBS Summer School
I would love to see you in the community.
Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology
Links & References:
PBS Summer School Sign Up
PBS Start and Grow
Rosie on Instagram:
@rosiegilderthorp
@thepregnancypsychologist
Week 6: Third parties and insurance companiesWelcome to Lesson 6 of Summer School, our final lesson! Today I'm going to be talking to you about third parties and insurance companies, because often when we start out in private practice, it can be helpful to supplement our own referrals with some from third parties, the most common being associate work for a larger, well established practice, referrals directly from insurance companies, or referrals from case managers representing medico legal firms.
Associate workAssociate work can be great to help you get your confidence and practice processes up and running at the beginning of your practice. In fact, many people choose to stay working as an associate rather than creating their own referrals.
The upside is you get the benefit of steady referrals and the best associate practices offer training and supervision opportunities or other benefits like free room rental when you see their clients. They also tend to handle the admin for you, so it can be very welcome in the scary early days.
The downside of associate work is less money, but less costs as well, so that might actually be fine. Just check that you don't go below your minimum fee that we worked out a couple of lessons ago, and also possible limitations on your own business growth. You need to check an associate contract very carefully for non compete clauses. These are clauses that state that you can't poach clients from the associate practice, which is very much fair enough. But, some of them do have some quite drastic terms in them. The chunkiest I've ever read was, 'You can never work with any mental health client within a 50 mile radius of the associate practice for one year after you finish with your last patient with us’. And I won't get into the pros and cons of that type of clause here, but just be aware, and if you see one that you think might limit your potential business growth in the future, then walk away from it.
Finally, make sure that the associate practice aligns with your values. It can be really uncomfortable working for an organisation that has very different values to you. You went into independent practice to avoid those kinds of culture clashes, so don't put up with it, you don't have to. Only work with practices that you feel excited to work for and proud to work for.
Insurance companiesNow, you probably know if you've been in the professional Facebook groups, that insurance companies often don't pay the best rates. When I have a lot of referrals coming in, I do tend to decline insurance referrals because of that. However, when I was starting out, they were a very important referral stream, and they do continue to be useful when referrals are a bit slow. You just have to make sure that they don't take you below that minimum fee.
You can register for insurance companies like AXA, Vitality and Bupa directly, or you can register with lots in one go through the Private Practice Register, or the Health Code System as it's now called.
It's unpredictable, to be honest, whether these will bring you referrals or not. I have students in Start and Grow who consistently get referrals from the main insurance companies, and I also have students who don't get any. For me, it has been really postcode dependent. Where I am now, I am getting referrals directly from some of the insurance companies, but I definitely didn't in the two previous parts of the country that I lived in. It's nothing to do with me, it is everything to do with what they need in the particular location that you're in. However, I do think it's always worth registering because you might get ideal clients coming to you who want to use their insurance to pay you. I find this is happening more and more, and when we look at the economic trends, more and more people are taking out private medical insurance and they expect to be able to use it. So I think that this is going to become a bigger part of our work over time. Some people might say regrettably, but it is a trend that I'm seeing, so I would get registered. But make sure when you register, you're aware of the cap that they have on their fees, read their terms and conditions, save those terms and conditions on your desktop, or put them somewhere safe where you can check them. And make sure that cap is not below your minimum fee. Also make sure that you set your fee at the very top of what they will pay, because the chances of them ever upping what they pay you are very low. They do not increase their cap every year. They haven't done so for a very long time in a lot of cases, so it is worth getting the most you can possibly get from the beginning.
So my top tips for taking on insurance clients are:
When you take on cases from rehab companies, you're effectively working as an associate for them, so the same advice that I've already given for associate work applies. As an additional note of caution, however, and this is based on my own experiences, please do check the reputation of the company that you're dealing with before you accept referrals. I have seen psychologists and therapists treated really badly by these companies because they're quite prone to going under without paying their providers. They also often have completely unreasonable payment terms. You can't wait 90 days after submitting your invoice, or even worse, 90 days after the end of a whole course of therapy, to get paid. Not if you're in the early days of your practice, and not, to be honest, for most small businesses out there. It actually nearly put me out of business in my first year. So, where possible, check with peers if they've had good experiences of getting paid and working with these companies and triple check their payment terms are acceptable to you before proceeding. Some of them will negotiate with you. I did successfully negotiate down from 90 days to 30. It can be done, but just make sure that you do. And if they're not open to negotiating, walk away because it will be more trouble than it's worth.
Week six taskYour final task of the summer school:
Okay, that's your 30 minutes for the final time. Go!
Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology Summer School edition.
Over the six weeks of the English school holidays, we are doing things a little bit differently around here. If you're looking to start up an independent practice in September, then this is the place to be as each week I'm dropping in with a quick lesson and tasks that can be completed in 30 minutes or less from your sun lounger.
By the end of the six weeks, you will feel ready to step into your practice in September, confident that you can find clients and have a safe and viable business foundation.
Each week, the lessons will go out on this podcast feed, but if you want the weekly tasks, workbooks, private community, and a live session with me at the end of the summer to hold you accountable and make sure nothing stands in your way, you will need to sign up here: PBS Summer School
I would love to see you in the community.
Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology
Links & References:
PBS Summer School Sign Up
PBS Start and Grow
Rosie on Instagram:
@rosiegilderthorp
@thepregnancypsychologist
Week 5: Directory SitesFor lesson five of our summer school, we are thinking about directory sites. It's a good idea to be on a directory site or two if you're in independent practice. They can be a good source of referrals, but on top of that, they give you a home on the internet that you can direct people to before you get your own website up and running. They show up in search engines and they can give you a real boost of credibility.
There are a myriad of directory sites to choose from, and the good news is that most of them offer a free trial, so you can test which ones work for you.
What I do, and what I'm going to talk through today, is I create a perfect profile, which I save in a Google Doc, and then I just copy and paste it into different platforms that I want to try out.
At a minimum, I'd recommend trying out Psychology Today, Counseling Directory, and Find My Psychologist, but it's worth doing a search for a 'psychologist or therapist near me' and seeing what directory sites are dominating the search results near you, because it is different postcode to postcode, and you really want to make sure you're on those sites that are coming top for your area. For example, where I am, if I type in ‘psychologist in Tunbridge Wells’, the first results are from Harley Therapy, Psychology Today and Counseling Directory. So if I was starting out, those would be places that I'd really want to consider.
There are some basic principles for a good directory site profile, that if you follow, you're going to be streets ahead of most people out there, because most profiles on directory sites are really awful. I'm going to talk you through some top tips, and then if you're in summer school, you will be able to use my template, which I've put underneath this lesson, in order to craft your directory site profile.
Write as though you're speaking to a potential clientIf this is difficult and it doesn't come naturally to you, it's actually worth recording your side of a conversation with a new client and looking at the phrases that you use and what you say and how you explain who you are and what you do when you're really in front of somebody. For me, I can do this as a bit of an imagination exercise. As I'm writing, I just imagine that I'm speaking to a real person that's come to me and is asking ‘how can you help me with X, Y, or Z?’ But I know that that doesn't come naturally for everybody, so sometimes it's about recording those real life interactions, because if you've been a therapist for a while, you're good at this, it's just sometimes difficult to get it out on paper.
SpecialiseYou can't speak to everybody in your profile, you're just going to blend into the background. So make sure that you pick a particular client group to speak to. This is something we talk about a lot in Start and Grow; deciding on that specialism and who your ideal client is, is really important. But for now just pick your favourite type of client, the people that you've worked with most successfully in the past and go with that.
A few lines about your approachWhen it comes to talking about your approach, say a few confident lines about this, let them know about your experience and literally how you will help them, but don't go into reams and reams about how your unique approach to therapy is X, Y, or Z. People can't make sense of that if they've got no prior experience of therapy, it's likely that every single word you use will just come across as jargon to them, even though it isn’t to us. I would know what you mean, but we're thinking about the ideal client, and if they haven't had therapy before, things like 'safe space' even, just sound like rubbish to them. So try and steer clear of that sort of thing and just talk about ‘my 25 years of experience in therapy, experience in the NHS working in this area to help you overcome the problems that you're facing with X, Y, and Z. I offer...,’ and then maybe something like, talking therapies like CBT and trauma focused therapies like EMDR. That would be enough. You really don't need to overwhelm people with more, which is probably most often more written for our peers than it is for the ideal client. So steer clear of that and just a few confident lines.
Don't list every piece of trainingGive your core qualification and then maybe one or two other things which really say something about the way that you work. For example, if you are EMDR accredited, that's probably worth mentioning. But if you did a two day course in CFT, that's probably not worth mentioning, but if you've done the CFT Diploma, maybe that is. Keep it to core qualification plus maybe one or two other things if they're really important to the way that you work.
Have an easy booking systemHave an easy booking system and make sure it's really explicit. If the person needs to send an email to book with you, tell them to do that. If they need to phone, tell them to do that. Give one way of doing it. If you've set up something like Calendly or Acuity or you're using the WriteUpp booking system that we talked about in the tools lesson, then tell them about that and tell them exactly how to do it.
Tell them exactly what will happen nextIf you offer a free consultation, tell them that's what's going to happen and then afterwards you will follow up with your recommendations. However you do it, just make it really clear what needs to happen next and what will happen immediately afterwards.
Make your fees really clearNone of this kind of sliding scale, none of this inquire and then I'll tell you the fee. No. People get really anxious about fees, understandably. Put yourself in their shoes. When I've been inquiring about therapy, the thing that is on my mind is can I afford this and what am I going to pay over the next three months, six months, 12 months, however long I think I'm going to need therapy for. And it's terrifying. People do not want to have a conversation, get to the end of it and have to tell you that they can't afford you. Horrible for everybody. Don't put anybody through it. Make your fees really explicit.
Use a professional headshotIf you don't have one, put that on your list of things to get sorted, because people need to feel that they have a sense of who you are and what your presence is like and the photo really communicates that, and it's very difficult to get right on your own. You need to make sure that there are no weird shadows over your face, and that you just look how you really look. So making sure that you've got a really good quality image will really help. There's lots of evidence that people do use those to make decisions about who they contact. So make sure you've got the best image you can possibly get. I really recommend going to local networking events and finding a local photographer to do that for you. It's not that expensive and it can make a really big difference to your profile success.
So overall, the key here is to write your profile for an overwhelmed potential client, not for your peers. We talk about this loads in Psychology Business School and especially in the Start and Grow programme, and we spend a lot of time giving each other feedback on profiles because even I struggled to do this. After years and years of helping other people with their own, I still struggle to get mine right because it's very difficult to see your profile through the eyes of a potential client when you've got all your own stuff in your own head going on about it. So sharing what you've got for feedback is my biggest piece of advice. And don't worry if you need to tweak it a few times to get it right, because we all do.
If you're in summer school, then there's a template below this lesson that you can use to create a great profile. And remember, it doesn't have to be long to be effective.
Week five taskSo your task for this week:
Okay, 30 minutes, go!
Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology Summer School edition.
Over the six weeks of the English school holidays, we are doing things a little bit differently around here. If you're looking to start up an independent practice in September, then this is the place to be as each week I'm dropping in with a quick lesson and tasks that can be completed in 30 minutes or less from your sun lounger.
By the end of the six weeks, you will feel ready to step into your practice in September, confident that you can find clients and have a safe and viable business foundation.
Each week, the lessons will go out on this podcast feed, but if you want the weekly tasks, workbooks, private community, and a live session with me at the end of the summer to hold you accountable and make sure nothing stands in your way, you will need to sign up here: PBS Summer School
I would love to see you in the community.
Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology
Links & References:
PBS Summer School Sign Up
PBS Start and Grow
Rosie on Instagram:
@rosiegilderthorp
@thepregnancypsychologist
Week 4: Get your first clientsWeek four of summer school is here! And now we finally get to talk about marketing. But probably not the kind of marketing that you're expecting me to talk about if you've spent a lot of time, like I have, in the online marketing space, getting all kinds of ads about Instagram and Google and all of that sent to you all the time.
So the question we need to start with when we're thinking about marketing a private practice is, if you were looking for a therapist, where would you look first? And I'm willing to bet that your answer was not, I would scroll through Instagram looking for a therapist. Most of us would start by asking people that we trust, professionals, friends, family, for recommendations. And the best time investment you can make in the early days of your practice is to make sure that you are top of mind for the people your ideal clients are likely to go to for recommendations. So how to get started with what we call relationship marketing?
Local business networkingYou can start with local business networking. These events are full of people who might know your ideal clients. Go with a list of professionals or businesses that you think would be useful to your ideal client group and aim to find out enough about them to decide whether you would refer to them. If you do that you're very likely to find that they want to refer to you too.
Different networking groups will attract different people. So for example, because I work in perinatal, I'm looking for people that would very often see people either in pregnancy or in the early days of parenthood. So that might be nutritionists, it might be personal trainers, it might be physios, baby yoga teachers, private midwives, massage therapists. So I really only bother with events where I'm likely to come into contact with those sorts of businesses.
If I go to an event and I find out that it's not right, the right people aren't there, then I'm going to choose a different one for the next month. It's not that it won't be interesting, I'll still make a real effort to understand people's businesses and have some really interesting chats, but it's probably not the best time investment to keep going back.
So have that list in your mind of who you want to meet and make sure you're going to an event where those people are.
Join local mental health professional groupsAnother way of building that referral network is to join local groups of other mental health professionals. Alongside regular networking, it's really important to gather those professionals around you who are in a similar field to you.
I'm a firm believer that there's no such thing as competition in what we do. Sadly, there are more than enough people that need our services. So gathering a network of other local psychologists or therapists around you is really helpful in order to help you provide a good service. It may be that these are people that you refer to if you're overcapacity or somebody comes to you needing a different specialism, and I think it's really good to have strong relationships with those people that you do refer out to.
It may also be that this becomes a peer supervision type group where you can ask for advice. If you have a risk situation for example, having a local network who understand the difficulties and know where to signpost people to is really valuable. And you can also help extend each other's knowledge, so it's a really valuable resource and I really, really recommend it.
Link up with other health professionalsYou also want to make sure that you make some effort to link up with other health professionals, maybe outside of mental health, but who might have contact with your ideal client. You can find those people in the same way that your ideal client would find them, probably through Google, maybe you'll meet some at networking events, but often it's through Google and reaching out to those people. Again, you're approaching them with this idea of, okay, I might need to refer to you, so I want to understand more about if our values align and the services that you offer.
It can be really difficult to get a response because health professionals are really busy. For example, people often have real trouble getting hold of private GPs. So one way of approaching that is to think about what you might be able to offer them that would be worth them investing their time in. For example, for somebody like me, I might put together a really short 20 minute talk that I can deliver on the mental health impact of severe pregnancy sickness. This is something that very often other health professionals who are not in mental health don't know very much about, and they might really struggle to know what to do if they see a patient that they see is suffering. So I might just put together something really short about how you would identify that somebody was struggling and where you can signpost them to, including charities, the NHS route, and that's why it's good to have a local network so you know what that route would be… and also talking about my services too. So that's a good tip for that.
Use co-working spacesIt's also a good idea, if you're thinking about using any space outside of your home for working, to use a co-working space and chat to the people there. This can be a really great way of seeing the same people week in, week out, and really getting your name out there in the local community.
Often the people that run these spaces are quite invested in advertising the people that work there and trying to create a real business ecosystem of people that refer to each other. So again, this can be a really nice way of building those long term referral networks.
My top tips for building your networkIt's all about being reciprocal: Network with people you want to refer to and be explicit about that intention.
Personalised messagesOnly ever send messages to people that are really personal and show you've really thought about them, their clients, and the value that you can add for each other's businesses. Don't copy and paste the same outreach message to people. I find, because I often get a mind blank, because I'm an introvert, I'm quite shy, I do start with a template, but I'll always make sure that I adapt it to the person I'm sending it to. Otherwise, we just get so many, don't we? If you're anything like me, I get around 20 of those messages a day from people that basically just want to talk to my audience and haven't really got very much interest in helping me in any way. And you just delete them. So making sure that there's something different about your message that is thoughtful and personal is really important.
Making the most out of networking sessionsI often get asked, how do you make the most of a networking session? So if you make the effort to go networking, how are you going to make sure that you actually get some return on that?
I think something that's really key is preparation. So find out who is going to be at this event before you go. Most of them will have a list of attendees that you can look at before you go, so you can pick out, okay, I want to talk to this person, this person, this person, and this person, because I'm pretty sure that they're going to have contact with my ideal client group. Make sure if you have that information to hand, you know then who you want to speak to at the event. And if it's got their contact details, you could even send them a message in advance, saying ‘Hi, I'm Rosie, I'm really looking forward to meeting you at this event. It would be great to talk about mental health because I think that we have some of the same clients, so let's make sure we make time for a chat’. It's a really great thing to do if you've got access to that attendee list.
Know what you want to get out of the eventsSo think about, is there anything in your business that you could do with help on? Is there anything that you want to find out about your ideal client group that people that know them in a different capacity might be able to help you answer? It's a really great idea. If there's something that needs doing in your business, for example you're looking for support with search engine optimization, or you need some photos done, go to local networking events and look for the people who are going to do those things for you because people are inherently reciprocal. If you work with one of the businesses in the networking group and you pay them, it's very likely that both them and other people in the group are going to feel more like they want to refer to you. We're reciprocal creatures.
Have clear in your mind what topics of conversation you'd really like to get goingVery often, if you work with me in Start and Grow, and we go into more depth setting up your private practice for longevity and really working out how you're going to grow, something that's really key to that is getting a deep understanding of your ideal client. And very often, when we come to fill out a client persona document, which is basically where you really get under the skin of your ideal client, we find there are gaps in our knowledge that we just can't fill because we've only ever known our ideal clients in our capacity as a mental health professional, and people don't talk normally to mental health professionals. So often there are things that I'll go to a networking meeting and try to find out to flesh out that client persona. So if you've got any questions like that in your mind, make sure that they're clear. And if you're like me and you get blank because you're a bit shy, have it written down somewhere. I find that really helpful.
Take any opportunity you're given to speakMany events will make you introduce yourself to the group and some will offer opportunities for longer speaking segments as well. So make sure that you've got a two sentence introduction planned where you say who you are and who you help. It's really important and it sounds simple, but again, if you're a bit shy like I am, you might find that you draw a bit of a blank, so practising that is quite helpful. And if they do offer speaker segments, I'm not saying do it on your first go, but when you've gone to that event a couple of times, then do consider putting yourself forward for one, because it really does help people to remember what you do. You don't have to be a brilliant speaker, you just have to communicate who you're trying to help and what your passion is, why you want to help those people. It will stick in people's minds. I still get referrals now from events like that that I did years ago, so definitely worth doing.
Listen and help othersI know that that is probably second nature to you much of the time, but for many of us who would consider ourselves introverts, you go to an event like this and you get so overwhelmed that it can kind of switch off that connection to other people that might be so natural the rest of the time. It's actually really, really important, even if you go to an event and all you do is listen to other people talking about their business problems, empathise and try to offer some sort of perspective. You will probably demonstrate your skills and your expertise because we think slightly differently to many of the other businesses that will be there because we've got different professional backgrounds. I've often found that that's where I make the biggest impression, is just offering what my perspective on that might be, or have you thought about it in this way? Just those simple questions that you ask when you're genuinely curious about somebody else's problem can really demonstrate how good you are in the therapy room and with what you do. So make sure that you're really paying attention and not just constantly thinking about how do I get mention of my business in here? There will be so many people there doing that and it does not work. Go, be a human, have compassion and listen. You're good at that already, so just let yourself shine.
Don't put barriers in your own wayYou can start to build a solid professional network simply by searching for people with the same professional title as you on platforms like LinkedIn or Google. Google will also tell you where all your business networking events are. It'll give you a big old list and you can just try them out. Don't worry about things like, ‘I don't have a website’ or ‘I don't have business cards’. You don't need them. So long as you've got somewhere to send people, be that a Psychology Today profile or a LinkedIn profile, fine, that is all you need.
Get contact detailsMake sure you get contact details for the people that you speak to at the events and follow up with them. You have to keep that relationship going. It's like any relationship. It's not one and done. It's nurturing these relationships, even if it's just sending out an email once a month to say, hey, how are you doing? Do you fancy a coffee? Are you going to the next event? Or maybe if it would be relevant to them sending over the blog post that you've just written. If you do a lot of this, you might even start up a newsletter, which is actually just for communicating with other businesses and other professionals. However you do it, it's keeping that human relationship alive afterwards and you can't do that if you don't get contact details, so make sure that you do do that.
Week four taskSo your 30 minute task for this week: use Google to find three local networking events and commit to going to one per month from September onwards. Or if you're able to do it now for extra brownie points, go now. But assuming that you can't, make sure that you've got your September, October and November events in the diary.
Reach out to at least two other mental health professionals and set up a chat or a coffee and make a list of professionals or businesses that you would like to be able to refer to.
And then final thing for this week, create a two sentence introduction that you can use any time someone asks you who you are and what you do and practise it a couple of times.
I promise that if you don't overthink it, all of those things can be done within 30 minutes. So, 30 minutes, go!
Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology Summer School edition.
Over the six weeks of the English school holidays, we are doing things a little bit differently around here. If you're looking to start up an independent practice in September, then this is the place to be as each week I'm dropping in with a quick lesson and tasks that can be completed in 30 minutes or less from your sun lounger.
By the end of the six weeks, you will feel ready to step into your practice in September, confident that you can find clients and have a safe and viable business foundation.
Each week, the lessons will go out on this podcast feed, but if you want the weekly tasks, workbooks, private community, and a live session with me at the end of the summer to hold you accountable and make sure nothing stands in your way, you will need to sign up here: PBS Summer School
I would love to see you in the community.
Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology
Links & References:
PBS Summer School Sign Up
PBS Start and Grow
Episode 41: How to set your fees in your psychology private practice with “pricing queen” Sally Farrant
Rosie on Instagram:
@rosiegilderthorp
@thepregnancypsychologist
Week 3: Your business modelIn this lesson, we focus on making some key decisions that you need to feel comfortable with in order to start seeing clients. And these questions are basically about how you want to work and what boundaries you want to create around your practice. So, a great thing to be thinking about while you're on your sun lounger this summer!
In order to do this properly, you're going to need some way of documenting your decisions and doing a few calculations. Whether you're a spreadsheet person like me or a notebook person, just make sure you've got something to hand so that you can write down your answers as we go and work a few things out.
How much do you want to earn?First question, the uncomfortable but essential one. How much do you want to earn from your private practice? What income makes all of this effort worthwhile for you? Forget any comparisons or what you think you should expect. Just think about what is going to make this truly rewarding for you, and write down the annual and monthly figure.
How much time will you spend working?Then think about how many weeks of the year you will actually work. So consider holidays, sick time, unexpected work interruptions due to caring responsibilities. For many parents, you can only realistically expect to work 40 weeks of the year. Sometimes less, for me it is less because of the needs of my children.
If you're the one that is responsible for taking school holidays and sick days off, or you've got any other caring responsibility that means you're going to have to be the person that drops everything if something changes, you need to factor that in. Write down now how many weeks you actually think you're going to be able to work.
Then you need to think about how many hours in those weeks you will work in total, including your admin and your business development time, and write that down.
Next you need to consider how many of those working hours you want to spend in front of a client? You can't spend every minute in your practice working with clients. There's lots of other stuff that you need to do to run a business successfully. So you most probably already have an idea of what your personal threshold for therapy hours is. I think of it in terms of my ability to do my best work. I know that I do my best work when I have about three therapy clients a day in the diary. I can see more than that and survive, and I have done, and I did do for many years. But one of my values is giving a really high quality service to my clients. I like time to think, formulate, read around. I'm not just showing up and going back to back with clients anymore. I've done it, didn't like it, I prefer working the way that I do now, so I personally don't go above three. But this is wildly personal and it will depend on what other stuff you have going on in your life. So think about what that number is for you right now and write that down. But know that you can always change it if your personal circumstances change.
Now you're going to use the number of weeks that you expect to work and the weekly number of client facing hours that you've come up with to generate your annual number of client hours, and write that down.
What services do you want to offer?Next, think about what kind of services you want to offer. It could be therapy, supervision, consultation, coaching or group sessions. We're not thinking about the long term here because this is all about kick starting your practice for September. So think about what's going to be the easiest way for you to bring money into your practice and write that down too.
Where will you work?Next, consider whether you want to work online or in person or offer a hybrid. If you're choosing to work online, get some quotes for local therapy rooms and estimate the monthly and annual cost to you.
Other costsNext, you need to add up your costs. Include all the software that we talked about in the last lesson, insurance premiums, add a £1000 a year CPD budget, or more if you know there's something more expensive than that that you want to do. And also add in £350 per month for admin support for a full time practice (less if you're working less hours), and whatever rental you've estimated so far, pop that in as well. Don't be afraid of this. You're just estimating it really roughly for now. And keep those annual and monthly figures to hand.
This is why I find a simple spreadsheet really helpful, because you can just organise all this information and see it really clearly. So now you have all the information that you need to set your fees.
Week three taskYour task is to go and listen to Sally Farrant's podcast episode, which I've linked to in the show notes, and work out your minimum fee.
This is the fee that you need to charge in order to earn the salary you want to earn from your private work. And you will know that you can never charge below that without compromising on your salary and that knowledge is power, especially when something like imposter syndrome tries to convince you to drop your prices.
So, your 30 minutes this week is going to be spent listening to Sally's podcast episode, which may actually take slightly more than 30 minutes, but is very doable on a sun lounger, so I hope you won't mind, and make those key decisions about your working life and write those answers down in a spreadsheet. I want you to know your minimum fee before you come back for next week's lesson!
Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology Summer School edition.
Over the six weeks of the English school holidays, we are doing things a little bit differently around here. If you're looking to start up an independent practice in September, then this is the place to be as each week I'm dropping in with a quick lesson and tasks that can be completed in 30 minutes or less from your sun lounger.
By the end of the six weeks, you will feel ready to step into your practice in September, confident that you can find clients and have a safe and viable business foundation.
Each week, the lessons will go out on this podcast feed, but if you want the weekly tasks, workbooks, private community, and a live session with me at the end of the summer to hold you accountable and make sure nothing stands in your way, you will need to sign up here: PBS Summer School
I would love to see you in the community.
Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology
Links & References:
PBS Summer School Sign Up
PBS Start and Grow
Google Drive
WriteUpp
ProtonMail
Xero
Hardsoft
Calendly
Acuity
answer.co.uk
LastPass
Ring Light
Asana
Episode 56: Systems for success – streamlining your processes so you can achieve more with Amy Mitchell
Rosie on Instagram:
@rosiegilderthorp
@thepregnancypsychologist
Week two: Tools of private practiceWelcome back summer schoolers! Welcome to week two. Today we're going to be talking about one of the things I get asked about most frequently by my students in Start and Grow and by my coachees, and that's all about the tools of private practice. Most importantly, what we need to spend money on and what we probably don't.
So here I'm going to be taking you through the tools that I think are really essential to running a professional private practice and also some tools which aren't essential but are pretty nice to have and can make your experience and your client's experience just that bit better. So every tool that I mention here is linked to within our lesson in your Kajabi portal.
So I hope you're going to find it a really useful reference guide if you're just setting up in private practice.
Essential toolsWe'll start with the essential tools:
GDPR compliant cloud storage: The first thing that's really important to have is some kind of GDPR compliant cloud storage. And that means somewhere that you can keep your notes and everything relating to client information that complies with UK data protection laws. You need to consider getting something secure in place before you see anybody. This is a place where you can store all of your documents relating to your private practice and to your clients.
The one that I have tried and tested myself is Google Drive, and that comes as part of Google Workspace. It's very cheap, it's affordable, and it's very good in my experience. And if you use it correctly, it is GDPR compliant. You'll need to check their most up to date help documentation to make sure that you're using it in a GDPR compliant way - the reason I can't walk you through that step by step is that they do update their documentation regularly, and it's important that you see the most recent version of that, so do go and have a look for yourself. You can also use Microsoft System OneDrive and that's also very good. I don't use it personally, I have done for a bit of contract work, I have done with other organisations, and I found it to be really good. But again, you will need to check their documentation to make sure that you're using it in a GDPR compliant way.
Practice management software: The next thing to consider is practice management software. This is the stuff that allows you to keep track of all your appointments, invoice your clients, store your notes, your reports, and track any communication that you have with clients.
It makes the day to day running of your practice much smoother, and helps you come across as professional to clients and prospective clients, which ultimately allows you to make more money. It also takes all the worry out of things like freedom of information requests and any legal requests you might get for your notes, because everything's there under your client record, whenever you need it, at the click of a button. I really wouldn't be without mine. In fact, I believe in this so much that this is the only time I've ever got an affiliate link for a tool, and that's for WriteUpp, which is the practice management software that I use. I've never been an affiliate before, I've got no interest in affiliate marketing in general, but for WriteUpp I hopped on board quite early because it transformed my practice and I really wish that everybody got practice management software early on in their practice. So go and check out WriteUpp.
The other thing that you can do through practice management software like WriteUpp is get your clients to sign things like consent forms, terms and conditions, therapy contracts, all of that stuff within one piece of software. It also allows you to send them forms, which are then directly filled into their client portal. So you don't have to go backwards and forwards and worry about, you know, how are they sending that back to me? Do I need to send it with passwords and all of that stuff? WriteUpp manages all of that for you. So I really recommend having a look at them. There are other packages out there like Power Diary and Clinico, and you're welcome to have a look at those as well, I just haven't used them myself, so I can't vouch for them.
Now you might be thinking, do I need something like Google Drive if I'm using WriteUpp? And the answer is, if you are using a really simple, streamlined private practice, then no, you probably don't need both. You could use WriteUpp for everything. I've always found that it's useful to have something like Google Drive as well, so that I can store stuff that doesn't directly relate to clients, but does relate to my practice and the way that I run it, like my policies, things for me and my associates that I want to be able to share with other members of my team. But no, it's probably not essential if you are using something like WriteUpp, but probably worth having in the background as well for most of us.
Secure email: Another thing you need to get set up early doors is a secure email system.
Something like ProtonMail that encrypts our messages end to end is really useful if you're going to be having conversations with clients that contain any confidential information. This will also integrate with your practice management system so that messages you send through that are also secure, so I really recommend it. ProtonMail is brilliant, that's the only one I've ever used, but there are others out there too, so feel free to check those out and just get yourself sorted with something secure.
In addition to that, if it's your intention to have your own website at some stage, and I do recommend that when you're building out your business fully, then you'll need an email provider that can link with that website.
Often if you purchase a domain name for your website, you will automatically be invited to create something like a Gmail account that goes along with it, and that uses your website's domain as the bit that goes after the @. So for example, my business is Know Your Mind Consulting, so my email address is [email protected], but that's actually run through Gmail. So you might want to consider at this stage, if you want to purchase something like Gmail, which you can then link to that domain. It's not an essential, but it is something that is quite nice to have.
Accounting software: Something else that I think is essential from the beginning of running your business is some kind of accounting software. Now I use a package like Xero, and that can be used to send invoices, track payments, track your spending so that your tax return is a lot easier and you can do accurate financial forecasting.
Most people that I know who've been in business for a while wish that they'd had Xero earlier in their business because it allows you to save all of your receipts in one place, make sure that you're sending out invoice reminders, and just generally keeps you on top of the finances in your business so you never get that complete overwhelm and that feeling of ‘oh my god, I don't even know what I'm going to say going into this meeting with my accountant’.
Having said that, Xero is expensive, and so when I started out in my practice, I used the free software that came with my bank account, which was FreeAgent, and I got that through NatWest, and that was perfectly adequate. Just make sure that you've got something in place from the beginnIng. So take a look at FreeAgent, take a look at QuickBooks, and take a look at Xero. If you can afford it, Xero is the best I've found. But if money is really tight, something like FreeAgent is probably fine at the beginning.
A decent computer: And finally, make sure that you've got a decent laptop or computer. Because you really can't run a business if you're seeing that circle of doom every five minutes, every time you try and do something on your laptop. You can't make do with a rubbish internet connection. You can't make do with rubbish video, rubbish sound. You need to be presenting a professional service to your clients, and you need to feel like a professional that can do their best work. So, make sure that your computer reflects those values.
If you are struggling for cash at the beginning of your business like I was, there are companies like Hardsoft which can allow you to lease computers, for a monthly fee. That might be something that's worth considering if that's going to hold you back at the beginning of your practice.
Non-essential, nice to have toolsOkay, so moving on to the tools that are nice to have, but not essential.
Appointment booking system: The first thing to consider is some kind of online appointment booking system.
You can get this function through your practice management system, like WriteUpp, for example. So if you already have that, you probably don't need to worry. But you can also get separate tools for this, like Calendly or Acuity. And these help you to share a simple link with a client, or a potential client, or somebody you want to have a meeting with, and they can then book and pay for an appointment using that link and it goes straight into your diary and makes sure that it doesn't clash with anything else that's in that diary. So you don't have to do any kind of back and forth about when you're free and when they're free. It just makes it really easy, which frankly is bliss to somebody like me that's rubbish with calendars.
Phone answering service: Another nice to have is a phone answering service. So if you want to provide a phone number where inquiries can call and have a quick chat with you rather than using email. For some client groups that is essential and for others it's not, but if you're going to do that, then I would strongly advise having a call answering service like the one offered by answer.co.uk where a receptionist will answer the phone for you and take a message and then email that message to you. That means that you can respond at a time which works for you when you're not in the middle of doing something else, when it's not going to be disruptive, and when you can give a proper and professional answer.
Password management software: Another tool that's nice to have, and which will help you work faster and more efficiently in your practice, is a tool called LastPass, or any other kind of password management software. It allows you to securely share your login details for other tools that you're using or websites or anything like that with somebody else without them ever seeing your password.
I use it to share my details for software packages with my VA, but I also just use it to make sure that I always know my password for all the software tools that I'm using. I find that really, really helpful.
A decent microphone:Something else you might want to consider is getting a decent microphone. It's not essential if you've got a decent laptop, because most of them do have a good built-in microphone and you can just use something like the microphone on your AirPods. But it does help you to feel more confident in your sound, and if you're doing a lot of online therapy, it can help your clients to feel more connected to you. So it's definitely worth thinking about.
A decent webcam: In a similar vein, you might want to have a look at getting a decent webcam. Again, it depends on the quality of the inbuilt webcam on your computer or your laptop, but it can help by pulling in a lot more light, which makes sure that you don't get weird shadows, and that your client really gets to see how you look and your body language in real life, even if you're working online. So I think it's really valuable in terms of improving that client connection.
Also this and the microphone would be useful if you're going to do marketing that involves an online presence at some point in your practice.
A backdrop: A backdrop is also something you might want to consider, but it's not essential.
Having a consistent backdrop or screen behind you when you do your online therapy sessions can help your clients have that sense of a containing space. A lot of my clients have commented on how much they liked it when I kept my backdrop really consistent during our work because it made them feel like they were really in the room with me and I think we can't underestimate the value of that.
You can get backdrops cheaply from shops on Etsy or Amazon that were actually designed for photographers and those kinds of businesses but have become really popular for people online working. It's much better than the kind of Zoom backdrops that you can create that don't look real and I think invite the mind to be curious about what's really there. So I'd always recommend a real physical backdrop rather than one of those kind of pretend ones that you can get on Zoom.
Also, it can help you to create that containment away from your normal space. So if you are having to do sessions in a less than ideal location, even having that backdrop behind you can help you bracket off from that kind of normal life.
Lighting: Lighting's really important for online therapy. If it's a bit dingy in the room that you're doing therapy in, it can create weird shadows that make you look a bit odd and make it difficult to establish a relationship with a new client. A very cheap ring light that you plug in via USB to your computer can make all the difference.
It can make you look more approachable, more professional and just brighter and more connected. I've linked to a ring light here, but there are a million out there that you could have a look at. They don't cost much and it can make a big difference.
Project management software: Our final nice to have is project management software; something like Asana.
If you listen to my episode on the business of psychology with Amy Mitchell, where we talked about
Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology Summer School edition.
Over the six weeks of the English school holidays, we are doing things a little bit differently around here. If you're looking to start up an independent practice in September, then this is the place to be as each week I'm dropping in with a quick lesson and tasks that can be completed in 30 minutes or less from your sun lounger.
By the end of the six weeks, you will feel ready to step into your practice in September, confident that you can find clients and have a safe and viable business foundation.
Each week, the lessons will go out on this podcast feed, but if you want the weekly tasks, workbooks, private community, and a live session with me at the end of the summer to hold you accountable and make sure nothing stands in your way, you will need to sign up here: PBS Summer School
I would love to see you in the community.
Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology
Links & References:
PBS Summer School Sign Up
PBS Start and Grow
Episode 118: Cyber security: What mental health professionals need to know to protect their practice
Episode 81: Insurance for psychologists and therapists who do more than just therapy with Catherine France
BPS Register of Supervisors: https://www.bps.org.uk/register-applied-psychology-practice-supervisors
ICO registration: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/data-protection-fee/
Sole trader set up: https://www.gov.uk/set-up-as-sole-trader
DBS certificate information: https://www.bps.org.uk/resources-and-benefits
DBS certificate list of approved umbrella companies: https://dbs-ub-directory.homeoffice.gov.uk/
Rosie on Instagram:
@rosiegilderthorp
@thepregnancypsychologist
IntroductionWelcome to your first lesson summer schoolers! It's fantastic to have you here.
I know that when you first decide to start seeing some private clients the setup can be really intimidating but in this course we're going to use your summer holidays to get your foundations sorted so that you can have the most fulfilling, rewarding and profitable September without one ounce of overwhelm.
Every week you're going to get a new lesson with a video or you can listen on the podcast if you prefer - I'll be putting all of these out on the main podcast feed - and a challenge for the week. Each weekly challenge can be completed in just 30 minutes. So it's a very sun lounger friendly course.
Throughout the summer, you can ask me and each other for help and support in our Kajabi community. Just make sure that you tag me so I see it. And because I'm on holiday with kids and all of the rest of the stuff as well, do give me 48 hours to respond.
Week one: Getting your essentials in placeI know that you're short on time over the summer so in this lesson I'm just going to cut to the chase and tell you what I would do in your shoes based on my experience. Everything I suggest is purely because I found it helpful or my students and coachees in Psychology Business School have found it helpful.
These are the things I think you must do before you start seeing clients and we can get them ticked off now so that you're ready to go in September.
InsuranceProfessional indemnity insurance is essential.
This is the insurance that covers you should somebody make a complaint about you as a professional or if anything bad happens to a client while you're working with them and you could be held liable for that. It's really really important to have.
Business insurance is also essential. Cyber insurance is something I would strongly recommend, but many people would choose to leave that until they're up and running.
So let's talk about professional indemnity insurance first. This is essential for you to practice as a psychologist or therapist in independent practice. Business insurance is not mandatory until you're at the stage of employing people, however, I think it really makes sense to cover all forms of difficulty that could prevent you from running your business.
So for example if you have business insurance and your laptop gets stolen, then you'll be able to get a replacement very quickly. We all know in the early days of a business, finding that £500 to get a new laptop can be really, really difficult. And it's not very expensive, business insurance typically is around £5 a month.
Cyber insurance is something I would definitely consider because we would typically not be very well prepared for any kind of cyber attack that resulted in a data breach, for example. And with cyber insurance, you get access to help and support through that kind of crisis. Now, these things do not happen often, but it's on the rise. I recorded a podcast that convinced me with a cyber expert that we should really be thinking about this. So I'd urge you to listen to that podcast and also listen to the insurance episode that I recorded with Catherine France, insurance expert, to make your decision about what kind of cover and what level of cover you need. But certainly at a minimum, I would get your professional indemnity insurance sorted, and I would think about looking into business insurance as well at this point.
SupervisionOkay, so next thing on the list to tick off is supervision. Choose a specialist who you're excited to work with, who you think is going to be able to bring something that you need to your practice. So for example, if, in the NHS, you really wanted to develop your EMDR skills, but you weren't able to do that, find a supervisor that can help you to do that. If you wanted to get supervision from somebody that's worked independently, perhaps in a particular area that you're interested in, like medico legal, LAC any kind of client group that you want to work with independently, and you're not quite sure how that's going to work, then plug that gap with your supervisor.
The wonderful thing about working independently is that we get to choose our supervisors, and we can look for multiple supervisors and sort of magpie people's expertise to bring into our own work. It's a fantastic opportunity, so make sure that you find the right person.
There are directories of supervisors. If you're a psychologist, you can use the BPS directory of supervisors, but also use the professional groups. Lurk a bit, search for topic areas you're interested in, and see who's speaking authoritatively on those subject areas, and that will be a really good place to start looking for a supervisor.
ICO registrationThe next thing you need to get sorted is your registration with the ICO. The ICO are the Information Commissioner's Office and if you're based in the UK it is mandatory that you sign up and pay £40, it's usually about £40 anyway, every year. And that just helps them to run their office.
Basically what the ICO does is provide advice and information around data protection. So they are the people who you can go to and say, I'm not really sure how much information I need to share with the courts from my confidential patient notes, for example, they can be really, really useful. They've got lots of free guides and lots of advice about data protection, and they've also got quite a useful chat function on there, where you can ask a question and then have your answer documented so that you know that if you ever had to prove that you'd thought properly about what to disclose and what not to disclose, you would have that proof in front of you.
Set up as a sole traderIf you've never run any kind of business before, setting up as a sole trader in the UK is extremely easy. You just go to HMRC, it's https://www.gov.uk/set-up-as-sole-trader and all you have to do is decide on a trading name and register for tax. You may decide further down the track that a different business formation, such as limited company, suits you better for tax reasons, for example. But for now, you're just trying to get set up and your first few clients through the door. So it's a good idea to take advantage of how easy it is to do that in the UK and just get going. Then when you've got some money coming in, you can use that money to pay an accountant to give you advice.
The only exception to this is if you're still working in the NHS or in any other form of employment, in which case it usually makes good sense to be a limited company straight away. If that's you, then book that consultation with an accountant because it's likely to be worth it early on. So get that in the diary for September. Or, if you want extra brownie points, get it sorted now so that you've got your company formation. It makes it much easier for you to then progress with the other things that you need to do to get your business off the ground.
DBS certificateNext thing is get a DBS certificate if you don't have one already through your employment. For anyone that doesn't know, a DBS certificate is simply a document that proves that you haven't had any relevant criminal convictions or investigations in a particular time period. So there's nothing very complicated about it, but it is a requirement if you're going to be working with vulnerable people or children, so it's very much something that we need to have in place in independent practice.
If you do already have one through your employment, then make sure that you're signed up to the update service. Because that means that you can just pay a renewal fee every year and your DBS certificate will never run out.
They're a bit of a faff to get if you don't already have one. If you don't have one already, don't panic. If you're a psychologist, you can use the BPS service in order to get your DBS certificate through them, and I will link to that in the show notes.
If you're not a member of the BPS, there are other umbrella companies that will help you apply, because you do need to apply through a company. So I'll give you links to those in the show notes so that you can find the solution that works best for you. But just make sure that you get that sorted.
Week one taskSo that is all you have to worry about for week one of the summer school. And I know that some of those things will seem daunting, but I promise you if you set a timer and you're intentional about it, this can be done in 30 minutes. Just don't overthink it, okay? Because none of these things need to be perfect at the beginning.
None of these things need to be perfect. They just need to be good enough at the beginning of your practice. You will continuously update your systems and change things as your business grows and develops. For now, we just don't want anything to be holding you back in September. So set that timer, 30 minutes, and get it done.
Alright, so your task for this week is just to sort out all of the above. It's boring, but knowing that you have this stuff in place will allow you to get on with the more interesting stuff in September. You don't want to be faffing around with this when you want to be working with clients. So, set timer, 30 minutes, go!
Hello! Just a quick note from me today to let you know about something really cool that we're doing in Psychology Business School over the summer. And this is something you're going to want to be part of if you are planning to start your independent practice in September.
Maybe you're thinking, new academic year, new me, new pencil case, and a new practice! And if that is you then PBS Summer School is here to make sure that you use the time over the summer to start laying those foundations for the practice that you deserve and want to work in, in September. So we're not going to stagnate over the summer, we're going to use the summer to do something really productive that's going to improve your quality of life in September.
If you join the PBS Summer School You're going to get the foundations of your practice in place so you hit that ground running in September. We're going to cover the legal essentials. We're going to cover the tools that are helpful and what is not so helpful in independent practice, so you don't waste any money. We're going to get your fees right. We're going to get your marketing strategy right to get your first clients. We're going to talk a bit about directory site profiles and navigating work as an associate or working through insurance companies.
You'll also get an email and a podcast episode each week, giving you a simple and digestible action to take in just 30 minutes.
I've designed this to be sun lounger friendly. So, don't worry if you're like me and you're juggling kids and holidays and all kinds of responsibilities over the summer, this is not going to be a big time sucking thing. We're just going to take incremental action each week that gets you closer to that practice that you want to be running, so you're ready to take big action when you have more time in September.
You'll also get a downloadable workbook to help you implement all of this, so you can see your progress as you work through. There'll be a wrap up live Q& A session with me at the end of the summer, so that anything that's holding you back at all, we've got a chance to address in person, but also throughout the summer you'll have access to a private pop up community where you've got help from each other and from me to address any roadblocks that might come up. So I think this is a really great opportunity for you if you're just starting out in independent practice, come and join us in PBS Summer School to create the practice that you want to work in for September: PBS Summer School
And I can't wait to see you there. Sun lounges at the ready!
Links:
PBS Summer School Sign Up
PBS Start and Grow
Rosie on instagram: @rosiegilderthorp
Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. Today's episode is the final episode in our series about different ways of working. It's an unusual one for me, as Dr Kirsty Harris isn't here talking about her private work. In fact, she doesn't even have a private practice. But she has written a much needed book about endometriosis and how to support your mental health if you know or suspect that you have the condition. I'm really glad to be concluding this series with Kirsty's story as I found our conversation enlightening, but also troubling, as this is another example of a group that isn't receiving the support that they deserve from public services, and it's a really great example of how our work as mental health professionals can make a big difference, even when it's outside our official role.
Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology
Links for Kirsty:
Instagram: @dr_k_harris
Book: Coping With Endometriosis: Bringing Compassion to Pain, Shame and Uncertainty by Dr Kirsty Harris
Rosie on Instagram:
@rosiegilderthorp
@thepregnancypsychologist
The highlightsIf you'd like support with a more than therapy project, I take on a small number of one to one coaching clients each month, and I'd be absolutely delighted to help you. You can book a free discovery call with me here: https://psychologybusinessschool.com/1-to-1-coaching-for-mental-health-professionals/
If you're getting set up in private practice and you want to make sure you build a business that makes the impact and the income that you want to achieve, then come on over and take a look at my Start and Grow group coaching program: https://psychologybusinessschool.com/psychology-business-school/
Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.
Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. Today we're joined by Clare Veal, a commercial lawyer from Aubergine Legal. Lots of you listening will already be familiar with Clare, as she is the legal eagle behind our legal templates, which are bringing peace of mind to hundreds of mental health professionals right this second. She also teaches in my Start and Grow course, giving our students a really solid understanding of what we need to do and why we need to do it, to protect ourselves and our clients in our independent work. But today we have Clare on this podcast because I think it's really important that everyone that's seeing clients independently has a good grasp of data protection and specifically how it applies to us. I find that once you understand that, then things like contracts and policies that we need to create, or that we've created for you in the legal pack if you have that, they just don't seem so scary anymore.
Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology
Links:
Data Protection Workshop: Sign up for the June 17th data protection workshop (recording available)
Clare:
Website: www.auberginelegal.co.uk
LinkedIn: Clare Veal
Facebook: Aubergine Legal
The legal pack of contracts and policies for psychologists and therapists
Try out WriteUpp (practice management software)
Psychology Practice - Data Retention Period Guide | Aubergine Legal Limi
Clinical Psychologist Legal Services | Aubergine Legal
Checklist for launching a website (auberginelegal.co.uk)
Psychology Practice - Data Retention Period Guide | Aubergine Legal Limited
BizCoach + Legal Toolkit for Business Coaches
What UK Businesses Need To Know About The UK Data Protection And Digital Information Bill (DPDI) (auberginelegal.co.uk)
Rosie on Instagram:
@rosiegilderthorp
@thepregnancypsychologist
The highlightsThank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.
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