The Abundant Practice Podcast & Blog Spot!

How Important Are Cheerleaders, Really?

Starting your own practice is daunting. And while it’s more intimidating than it is hard (if you have a solid plan), white knuckling it and trying to do it all alone is a recipe for disaster. You can succeed without hiring a consultant but you will have an extremely hard time if you don’t have people on your side. Let’s talk about why cheerleaders are so important.

There will be times when you are convinced you can’t do it. We all have these moments early on where that sneaky gremlin whispers in …

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Fear-Mongering, Bullies, & Jealousy

If I had a dollar for every time one of my practice-builders was discouraged by someone feeling stuck in their own agency job, I’d have a lot of dollars. Maybe we should start fining those naysayers a negativity tax.

I’ve had people announce that they were going to private practice and be flat out told they’re going to fail by someone who has never gone into private practice; someone who had no idea what he was talking about. We have to be so careful about these messages, especially early on when…

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Don't Be A Client Hoarder

Today we’re going to travel into the future! Exciting! We’re focusing on when your practice is full to bursting. Now before you say I’m putting the cart before the horse consider that this will actually do some early-practice mindset shifting.

Let’s talk a bit about waiting lists, shall we. It’s a pretty exciting thing to be full. If you’re like me when I first got full, at first you may try to cram new clients in to spaces without realizing it displaces current clients. Maybe you loosen your bou…

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F-ing Terrified of Public Speaking?

Join. The. Club. And don’t worry- it’s not a prerequisite to having an amazing practice. I don’t think I spoke publicly at all while I was in Seattle. I started doing a lot of public speaking when I got to Asheville and it really paid off. It’s not that I magically got over my fears and adored the attention (true story- I was so uncomfortable with attention that I had to take Klonopin for one of my wedding showers & my wedding. Luckily it was the right dose; I didn’t Sixteen Candles it). I still…

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50+ Blog Post Ideas in 30 Minutes or Less

So, you’re convinced that a blog is a good idea for your practice and you promise to be consistent and provide value. You’re all bought in but drawing a complete blank about what to write. No problem! Get out a sheet of paper or open a blank document and let’s generate 50+ ideas in the next 30 minutes or so. Not all of them will be great, but I keep even my lame ideas because sometimes they spark a good idea later. The trick to this is to not overthink it. For some of you that’s akin to stopping…

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You Need a Blog, A Good Blog

Guess what, you don’t have to be a narcissistic millennial who takes pictures of your food and humble-brags every other post to have a blog. Errr, sorry about that. I just showed my initial bias against blogs.

Here’s an awful, true story that may make you hate me: in the early days of LiveJournal (2001-ish), my then-boyfriend had a blog. I actually got mad at him, like a crying fight, for blogging about missing his deceased grandfather. My problem was that he blogged about it rather than talking …

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Raising Your Fees Could Make You a Better Clinician

Contrary to the subtle & not-so-subtle messages you got in grad school, having people pay real money for the services you provide doesn’t make you an awful person. In fact, it may make you more effective. I recently raised my fee to $150 per session. It had been $125 per session for 4 years and it felt like time for a raise. Plus I’ve been elbow deep in my own money work and decided to practice what I preach. I had the response you might also have when you raise your rates: fear that no one will…

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Go ahead & call me a traitor

People love to hate on insurance companies. I get it, they can be a pain, require diagnosis, reimburse as little as they can get away with and require a whole extra step that you as a business owner then have to manage (or pay someone else to manage). As a practice-builder, I'm not supposed to encourage you to even consider managed care. I'm supposed to say "follow your private pay dream! And I do! When the circumstances are right. Do you have more than nine months of living expenses saved up?An…

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And then I walked into a wall, again

How well do you know yourself? It’s a fair-ish assumption that as a therapist you have decent insight. You were bright enough to get into grad school and survive. You are aware of thoughts and feelings.

I thought I was totally clear on who I was and how I did life. I knew I wasn’t done growing (since y’know, I’m still breathing), but going into business taught me things I never thought to explore about myself. Sometimes it’s like a naked therapy immersion with all of your exes and all of your rel…

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What You Learned In Grad School is Ruining Your Website (and 10 ways to fix it)

Boundaries. I LOVE boundaries. If you’ve read anything I’ve ever written about practice-building, you’ll see that I find ways to infuse the importance of healthy, unapologetic boundaries. It’s the cornerstone of what makes a practice flourish. If you don’t have healthy boundaries, your business and your clients are going to stay stuck. What I am about to say may sound contrary to this, but there's a huge distinction between healthy boundaries and rigid boundaries.

Here are the erroneous messages …

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