How would you describe a successful private practice? What is your definition of success? My answer: it depends on YOU!
One of the reasons I love private practice so much is that you can build a practice that best aligns with your life, needs and values. So whatever success looks like for you might be different than what success looks like for me or another therapist.
I love how this idea reflects our humanity, because we are all different!
In this article I want to share a few tools to help you identify what a successful private practice looks like for you.
3 Questions For Evaluating Your Success
1) What Does A Successful Life Look Like Right Now?
- It can be really helpful to take a step back and identify what success looks like in life as a whole. Then, see how a successful private practice fits into that picture.
- For some, this question might be easy to answer, and for others you may have less clarity about your answer.
- For those who are less sure, one way to assess what success looks like for you is to identify your values.
- One way to identify your values is to run through all the arenas of your life and then ask yourself what your values are in those specific categories. What are your values when it comes to relationships? What are your values when it comes to family? How about work? Or physical or spiritual health?
- As you go through each of these arenas and identify your values you are likely to notice trends and themes. Or you may find that a value in one specific category is your biggest priority right now.
- To help clarify, here are some of my values that I’m prioritizing in this season of my life. One of my overarching values is: being a person of integrity. Another major value is to be a healthy person for my kids. Other key values include: financially supporting my family, and making a positive impact on the world (outside of my family).
- Once you have generated a list of values, you can weigh their importance. You can do this by listing the values in order of importance or creating a pie chart visual.
2) How Does Private Practice Fit In With My Values?
- For me, so many of my values are focused on spending time with my kids. Therefore, it wouldn’t make sense for me to try to spend lots of time with my kids and try to work full time in private practice. I needed to take this into consideration as I defined what a successful practice looked like for me.
- While holding a visual representation of your values in mind, start to think about different aspects of private practice and see how your values might influence those.
- For example, think about your schedule. Ask yourself: how many clients would I want to see per week? How might that align with my overall values?
- Other aspects to think about include: what rates do you want to charge? What types of clients do you want to see? Will you take insurance or only have cash paying clients? Do you want to work solo or in a group practice?
- Trial and error will be your friend. You might look at your values and have a good guess as to what they might look like in a successful private practice. Then you go and start implementing things and along the way learn new things. It’s hard to know exactly what something is going to be like until you do it.
- See this as a process of experimentation. You’ll get to discover over time what success looks like for you.
- If you start to notice that your success is looking a lot different than the success of someone else, check in with your internal rubric of values. Ask yourself: am I leaning into what matters most to me? If the answer is “yes”, then it will make it easier to shed the self-doubt, anxiety, and imposter syndrome that can come when we compare ourselves with others.
3) Are My Clients Experiencing Success?
- Make sure to pay attention to how your clients are doing. Are your clients also experiencing success as you are leaning into your success?
- Are you checking in with your clients in some way to see if they have any feedback?
- It can be helpful to ask: what kind of modifications would you like to make to make our time more effective and supportive for you? Is the work we have done in line with what you were hoping for from this time?
- Check in with your clients If you start to notice that quite a few folks are dropping off much sooner than anticipated. Or if you are having several clients come for one session and then not return.
- If this is happening, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you are offering unsuccessful therapy or running an unsuccessful practice. But, it’s just something to notice and bring up in a consult group.
- I also have an article If you want to dive deeper into what to do if clients are stuck.
I really wanted to drive this point home: a successful private practice looks like whatever you want it to look like. As long as you are offering support and care for your clients as well, everybody wins.
Consider Your Niche
Another reason that considering your values is important, is that it often points to your niche.
If you have not discovered your therapy niche, I have a video that may help. Having a niche can also help you feel successful in marketing your practice and finding clients who will be successful under your care.
Until next time, from one therapist to another: I wish you well.
-Marie
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay
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