Counselors and coaches in private practice are very prone to burnout and compassion fatigue, and many times don't even know why. In this live conversation, we'll cover the various reasons for that, and what can be done to help you run your private practice with ease! If you'd like to brainstorm a gameplan together for your business you can schedule a free strategy call with us here: http://bit.ly/practicegameplan
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About the 6-Figure Practice Program:
The Six Figure Practice with Sasha Raskin, is an online program and community for helpers such as counselors and coaches, who are building their private practice. If you’re looking for a clear, step-by-step road map for creating and marketing your private practice, you're at the right place!
Free resources to grow and market your counseling private practice or coaching business:
Free 22 minutes crash course - "How to Create a Thriving Counseling / Coaching Private Practice": https://www.the6figurepractice.com/free-22-minute-crash-course
Free resources about marketing for therapists and marketing for coaches: https://www.the6figurepractice.com/blog
Free 30-minutes strategy session with Sasha Raskin: https://www.the6figurepractice.com/schedule-a-free-30-min-strategy-session/
Our accelerator program for creating a 6-figure business:
The 6 Figure Practice Program: https://www.the6figurepractice.com/the-6-figure-practice-program-accelerator/
More ways to connect:
Website: https://www.the6figurepractice.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the6figurepractice
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2174406112863019
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/the6figurepractice
Chat with me on messenger: https://m.me/the6figurepractice
Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCITSmYvj-vpwuWrOuwqYr5w
About me:
My name is Sasha Raskin. I’m a Number 1 Best Selling Co-Author in 12 Countries, a Doctoral student in Counseling Education and Supervision, a coach, a psychotherapist and an adjunct faculty at a graduate counseling program at Naropa University.
One of the things I’m enjoying the most is helping other therapists and coaches build their successful private practice so that they could actually help the clients they were taught to help, and thrive themselves. I’m almost always fully booked, so my ability to work with individuals is limited. That is why I’ve created this program to deliver powerful results and create a community where you will feel supported by each other!
This program's primary goal is to help you build a thriving private practice, in a fun and authentic way. Counselors and coaches invest an incredible amount of time, money, and effort into building their helping skills. However, when their training ends, they usually find themselves lacking the business skills that are needed to start and run a successful private practice, feel isolated, discouraged and not knowing where to start.
I believe that to be truly helpful to others, therapists and coaches have to learn to thrive themselves and definitely know how to get clients whom they can help.
This is where this program comes in. If you're willing to learn and work hard, a 6-figure private practice is within your reach in a year - 2 years. This program will give you a clear outline, and detailed instructions on how to get there.
Transcription
Why are you so tired in your counseling or coaching private practice_
The 6 figure practice program which is a private practice accelerator for counselors and coaches to grow your practice. I know that I said that I'll be going live five times a week to teach you different tips and tricks to grow your practice in a way that's fast and efficient. And the reason why I'm going live today as well on Saturday is because there is something important that I want to talk about I don't want to forget, and it's a very relevant post that's going on Facebook right now which is basically my answer to a question of a private practice therapist who asked how many clients do you consider to have to be full.
And my answer was the following - it's not exactly how many clients you have to feel you're full, but how do you actually set up the operations part of your private practice because that would make a huge, huge difference. So we'll talk about that and about some other important reasons why you might be feeling tired in your private practice as a counselor or in your coaching business.
So first thing, the operations part, this is more the technical part of this, less the mindset. Other than helping your clients in your business there's the business aspect, right? It's the business foundation. And those are all automated systems - they should be automated - that you have in place to run your business. For example, a follow-up process that is super fast and efficient and minimizes the touch points between your potential client reaching out to you and a phone consultation is scheduled, right? You should be able to do this in one step.
Many times I see counselors and coaches have elaborate manual process, sometimes with my clients we count and before we start working together they have six or seven actions between a potential client reaching out and the session is actually being set up, which is a waste of time, of energy and you're honestly not doing what you like to be doing which is helping your clients, by the way, you're also losing clients along the path because they will go and talk to the counselor or coach that makes it easier for them to talk to them, right? So everything that is operations needs to be systematized and automated as much as possible.
You don't want to be the bottleneck for your business, right? So you can do it and make sure that you're not a bottleneck and you're not slowing your business down in two ways, both of them are outsourcing - you can outsource it to a human, someone that would be doing it for you, or you can outsource it to a software. And I honestly prefer the software side or a combination of both. So anything that's client management, scheduling, sending forms, intakes, storing credit card information, entering it, billing - everything needs to be automated. If it's not ask yourself the question, "What am I spending a lot of time on that is not sessions with clients that needs to be automated?" And then find out how to do it. It will require more work upfront but you will enjoy life so much more.
Which brings us to the second part, this is the recipe for a good business and a good life, find out something that makes you feel alive and then find a way to monetize it. Not to say that you can't have hobbies or things that you do for pleasure that are not monetized, right? That's not the idea. The idea here is figuring out what's your zone of genius in your business. Usually if you're a counselor or coach it's talking to your clients and helping them create changes in their lives. Everything else - the marketing stuff, the operations part, is probably requiring more effort and is less natural for you, right? So finding a way to, for example, when you do marketing instead of doing trial and error find a system and within the system find some good marketing strategies to actually implement so you won't be doing things that you don't enjoy doing.
I'll give you an example. This, for example, makes me feel alive - I love talking about growing your private practice, that's another reason why I'm going live on a Saturday. And this is important when you fill your day with things you're excited about it just makes it so much easier and keeps your energy levels high.
Moving on another important and very common reason, been there, done that, sometimes I find myself there as well, that you might be feeling tired in your private practice is having no boundaries or not having clear boundaries or not adhering to them once you have them in terms of scheduling with your clients in two main ways - how many sessions a week is your limit and when do you schedule them? For example, for myself I like having not more than four sessions a day, and that's my limit. And I also know exactly when to schedule those, right? I have specific time blocks so nothing is random. How do I make it happen? I simply schedule with my clients at the end of the session and I ask them, "Hey, can you do Wednesday at 12?" Instead of having them lead it I just make it easier for me and for them to schedule a time that works for me.
Now I also know that if I have more than three sessions in a row I'm not doing anyone any favors, my clients or me, right? So I know I need to have an hour of a break. Also I don't want to have a session spread out too much throughout the day. So my favorite template is two hours, one hour break, and two more hours, and free time or time to do some marketing.
So I hope that's helpful.
Another big reason for being too tired is under charging in your private practice. I made a lot of videos, wrote a lot of articles about that, about the mindset of helpers - for some reason we want to help a lot and there's some mindset block that keeps counselors and coaches from actually asking for what they're worth, worth being investing a lot of money time and effort into their education, for example, hundreds of hours many times in working for free in your practicum and internship, right? And what's the price that you can put on helping someone change their lives.
So if you under charge consistently you will be paying more but not making enough, right? So having 30, 40 sessions a week I believe is not sustainable and there's a lot of research that shows that it's not sustainable. Yeah, counselor will feel saying thank you, this explains why I burn out and quickly and stopped my private practice, here you go. And that kind of breaks my heart. So I hope counselor will ... you can find a way to whenever and if you want to use the opportunity of growing it again but from a place of, "Well, I know my limits, I know how many clients I want, I'm not going to go over that. I know what will be a good price to ask for," and sticking to it.
Another big reason for feeling tired in your private practice, this speaks to counselors not necessarily for coaches, is working just or mainly with insurance companies. Well, at least with my ADHD I do not work with insurance companies, I do not want to do paperwork, right? And if I want to do sliding scale I just give that sliding scale to my clients. And a lot of other clients are paying high fees. So I meet people where they're at.
You have a middle person basically bringing your clients that you can actually create yourself working with insurance companies. Nothing against insurance companies, I'm just saying if you're only working with insurance companies you're probably earning at least two times less than you could be earning if you are working with private pay, right? So if you're working with insurance companies only or mainly I would definitely encourage you to at least look at adding private pay clients to your practice. And if you don't know how to create those private paying clients, I created show 20 minutes free training, you can watch it at the6figurepractice.com, it's the link that you see below.
Another main reason for being too tired in your private practice is not taking care of yourself. So there's a lot of talk about self-care in at least counseling programs, and sadly many times it just stays theory, right? So I can't wait for my massage in two three hours. In 15 minutes I'm going to go to a hike, talk to my family, they're in Israel and we have a weekly call and I just want to be in nature while doing that. So making sure that you're constantly tracking how much you're actually taking care of yourself and not just talking about this concept with your clients, right? So definitely practice what you preach.
The last reason I want to talk about today for being too tired in your private practice is working with the wrong type of clients for you or having way too many clients that require a lot of effort from you. I'll give you a few examples. I coached a counselor who built her private practice, she's an EMDR private counselor and working only with trauma clients. And as you know if you're a counselor at least vicarious trauma is a thing, so she was paying a high price for working just with trauma clients. So if it's your calling, and many times I speak with counselors who actually feel energized helping people with trauma, but having more than 20 clients a week working just with severe trauma she's been paying a high price for it. And she quit her practice, right? She was about to quit before we started working together.
So this is extremely important. For me I love having both counseling private practice and within that doing couples therapy mostly because at this point in my career it excites me so much more than individual therapy. So I removed individual therapy from my website completely. And also working with coaching clients. And I feel I have a variety of challenges and also goals that my clients work with, so that keeps me energized, excited and interested.
So I hope it's been helpful. If you want to get some help with growing your private practice, simply message me on Facebook, Sasha Raskin, or on Instagram, and we can brainstorm a few ways to help you with that specific challenge. I hope you're having a good weekend. Take care.
