Therapy Business Brief

Why Talking About Yourself Feels Wrong Over the past few weeks, I've been working with several therapists on positioning their private practices. These are experienced clinicians. Some have been practicing for decades. They have extensive training, strong referral relationships, and years of experience working with the kinds of clients they want to attract. But I've noticed something interesting happens when we try to translate that experience into marketing. It's easy to say, I've been...

Last week I saw a LinkedIn post about a practice owner struggling financially despite having a full caseload. The therapist in the post viewed it as an inevitable consequence of being "bad at math". Honestly, I can relate to being bad at math. It's a running joke in my house that when my kids need help with their math homework, I'm the last person they ask. While my husband loves solving math problems, I get slightly nauseous when I look at algebra equations. Despite that, I truly enjoy...

In the past week two of my clients have told me that they'd gotten new inquiries from ChatGPT. Not only were those inquiries solid, but these providers were chosen based on specific parameters. Sure, the market positioning we developed together helped these therapists stand out. But there's something else they have in common: they've been cited by reputable publications and published articles expressing their own professional perspectives. And based on what I've been learning about AI search,...

If you're new here, welcome! I'm glad you joined us. Today I want to deconstruct marketing for you and put it in the simplest terms. To help me do that, I'll use a car metaphor. I don't know much about cars, but I do know that they need an engine and fuel to run. And so does your practice. So this is where we'll start. Many clients I work with often feel surprised and dismayed at marketing being a never-ending activity. Typically, when clients come to me they can be put into two categories:...

In the past year, I've talked to several people about the future of mental healthcare, specifically the future of private pay. I've talked to providers who're trying to decide if leaving insurance panels is the right move for them, the ones who've already decided to move away from insurance, and the ones who decided to expand as an in-network practice. I've also just had this conversation with someone who helps therapists sell their practices. And while therapists in conversations and online...

I've written over 200 issues of this (mostly) weekly newsletter. And frankly, there are weeks when I just don't feel like writing at all. It's hard to come up with new material that I consider to be genuinely worth reading. I don't like wasting your time on trite ideas that pollute your inbox. Judging by the open rates, I'm succeeding. Having said that, I don't consistently write because I think that every issue is a pearl of wisdom. I write because consistency allows me to keep our...

Therapists often tell me that they've learned nothing about the business of private practice in Grad School. Last week I heard this again from a client who's trying to transition from insurance to private-pay. She's been racking her brain on the right way to make this transition as she mentioned her training. My theory is that in school, your training is focused on making therapy accessible to wide swaths of population. As providers, you know that most people can benefit from therapy, so...

I just finished another novel by my favorite author, Irwin Shaw. His characters are my favorite part of the writing. They're often flawed and remarkably human. But they rarely ruminate. They make decisions, act fast and accept the consequences of their actions. I'm bringing this up because too often we spend time in self-doubt, worrying about what our decisions say about us. Decisions about raising fees, leaving insurance, expanding the practice, or investing in marketing. In the last decade...

Last week, I updated my Best Online Resources for Therapists in Private Practice guide for 2026. I've been maintaining some version of this list for several years, but as I was writing this year's version, I started wondering if we still need resource lists at all. There's so much information about building a private practice already. Podcasts about starting and growing a practice, newsletters, Facebook groups, blogs, YouTube channels, consultants, courses, and now AI tools that can answer...