If you are like most new private practitioners,
you will start out by trying to offer your services to everyone. Given the
competition you face for new clients, you might convince yourself that you
cannot afford to turn down anyone who is interested in working with you. Also,
having trained as a generalist, you probably feel confident that you can
provide good quality therapeutic or consultation services to any and every client who walks
through the door.
If you are not careful, you might wind up
making two of the biggest mistakes a new private practitioner can make. The
first is opening an office before you have enough clients to pay your bills.
The second is running a generic ad, either in the newspaper or yellow pages,
that simply says that you offer traditional psychological services and places
you into direct competition with all of your fellow therapists.
How does this happen?
New professionals
who fall into the first trap generally do so despite their best intentions. Like them,
you might believe the classic line from the popular movie, Field
of Dreams: "If [I] build it, [th]ey will come." So, you
set up an office, print business cards, and sit at your desk, waiting for the
phone to ring. Having received positive feedback during your training, you
might feel confident that "I am so good at what I do that prospective
clients will beat a path to my door and do what it takes to find me." You might even secretly
believe that clients have been "just waiting for me to graduate so they
can start working with me."
Or, at the other extreme, you might not have
taken this positive feedback seriously and still feel quite tentative about
your qualifications. You might believe that, no matter how hard you try to
persuade them, only a limited number of people will have interest in working
with you. This leads you into the second trap: You feel so unprepared that you
channel your uncertainty into paying whatever it costs to rent a nice office.
And cling to simple hope that regular advertising will attract enough
interest to fill your client schedule.
If this were all it
takes to build a private practice, however, no therapist would ever have to learn
marketing skills, and every private practice office in the country would have
a full reception area with a considerable waiting list. Ask around.
Unfortunately, neither of
these scenarios is true. In fact, for most private practitioners, the
reality is just the opposite. The typical therapist spends a great deal of time and
energy chasing new clients and building referral sources.
You probably even
know deep down how much competition you face in opening your own practice. All
around you are professionals who want to become self-employed: social workers,
licensed clinical professional counselors, substance abuse counselors,
ministers, nurse practitioners, and family therapists . . . not to mention
life coaches, executive coaches, personal coaches, and anyone else who cares
to hang a shingle in this rapidly expanding new field.
In truth, there are probably more new therapists
graduating every year than there are new Starbucks counters opening around the
country (according to my informal research). Soon, like the coffee shop many
of us love to hate, there will be a new therapist or two on every corner of
every city and town in the country (and, eventually, the world). And, most of them
will have the same basic
counseling skills that you have. So, how can you avoid making these fatal
mistakes while still pursuing your dream of working independently?
The
following guidelines will move you forward:
- Begin by developing marketing strategies that will
attract prospective clients to you rather than searching for new
ways to chase them down.
Instead of
looking for office space or developing an advertising campaign, start
thinking about what your prospective clients need. Rather than
looking at what other private practitioners are doing - and trying to
convince people that you can do it better - start differentiating yourself
from them. Instead of competing directly with them - in something as generic
as outpatient therapy - start finding ways to make yourself much more
distinctive. In short, offer prospective clients something they cannot get
from anyone else: Your unique combination of talents and skills that will
help them to solve their unique problems or accomplish their most
challenging goals.
Recognize that most people still have trouble
differentiating psychologists from psychiatrists, social workers, and
clinical counselors. This fact alone accounts a
major share of the challenges private practitioners face in attracting new
clients, especially in large cities. With so little understanding of why
they would choose one kind of professional over another, most people have
even less chance of knowing why they ought to choose you over your
colleagues. The more you can incorporate these realities into your marketing
strategies, the greater your success in standing out from your competitors.
Start by articulating your own beliefs about why people should choose to
work with you based on your professional background and training. Define as
specifically as possible what makes your approach distinctive and more
appropriate for prospective clients.
Uncover your unique talents and inborn gifts so you can
identify your particular niche. How do you get
started with this? You start by going inside. Through uncovering and
defining your particular blend of interests and talents and skills, you
begin carving out your own special niche. You find out what you alone have
to offer that gives you the edge over your competition in one particular
area. For additional input, you can starting talk with your professors,
previous supervisors, friends, and family members about what they view as
your unique gifts. As you combine their observations with your
self-understanding, you will soon realize that your discovery can start
removing you
from the realm of direct competition almost immediately: While others might have
similar skills and knowledge, no one else brings your unique combination of
competence and passion for working with their specific needs in a certain
way. And, it frees you from endlessly chasing new clients and allows you to
focus on refining and broadening your particular skills.
Start thinking about what is missing from your existing
work while tuning into your dreams and passions. This
is one of the primary reasons for starting a private practice: The
possibility of doing work you love with people you want to help while
getting paid well for your efforts. Few professionals do private practice
simply to find extra work. If you wanted that, you could spend more hours
working at your day job. Spend some time each day, making notes about what,
specifically, you dislike about your daily work. Each time you feel bored or
irritable, stop to zero in on what is contributing to these feelings and
write it down. After several weeks, review your notes to look for themes.
Within a short time, you will start to realize what is missing and start
formulating the basis for your private practice.
Again, the point of working for yourself is not simply
working more hours. No, it is being able to use your creative talents in ways
that you find enjoyable doing work that you truly care about and find
personally meaningful. And doing it on your own terms.
The benefit of starting inside yourself is that
you can start right now and keep working on your plans at your own pace while
continuing with your current source of income. You do not have to waste time
trying to find a good office location or creating an advertising campaign to
publicize your availability. Those steps will come much later, after you have
refined your particular niche and started laying plans for going after your
specific market.
Ultimately, your niche will naturally set you
apart from your competition. No one knows exactly what you know or approaches
problems in the particular ways you do. Once people start recognizing the
unique benefits of working with you and how you help them to reach their
goals, they will start telling all of their friends.
And neighbors. And colleagues. And family
members.
Before long, clients will start beating a path
to your door. You will have to start booking appointments far into the future.
And you will have to start looking for colleagues who can help you to handle
your overflow. Most professionals find this preferable to sitting in an empty
office, waiting for the phone to ring. Once you get started creating your
niche, you will certainly find that you agree with them.
