September in a private practice
September always feels like a new start in a therapy practice. It echoes the real world, summer coming to an end, schools going back, the weather starting to turn.
August wasn’t quiet but slower. August has a rhythm of its own. Clients away, the fortnightlies stretched to three weeks, and the enquiries that do come in want to start “after the holidays”.
Then September arrives and the diary does what it does every year. I checked mine this morning, it’s already fuller than the whole of August was, with new clients starting in the first fortnight. It’s been the same the last three years running.
That’s worth knowing about your own practice, because a quiet August tells you it’s August. It tells you nothing about the year.
September might mean the diary fills up and the business side of the practice is the first thing to go. It was never on the syllabus, so it never had a slot in the week to begin with, and once the clients are back it ticks along in your head as a vague “I should look at that”.
Here’s what I’d look at first. Three small things, twenty minutes each, fitted round the clients. Do one a week if that’s what the diary allows.
1. Look at your fee and the date you last changed it.
You’re finding out, that’s all. Whether you raise it is a different task.
Most of us set a number when we started and stopped noticing that the rent, the supervision and the membership all went up since. A date on a piece of paper is a good first data point.
While you’re there, check whether your contract says anything about reviewing the fee. Plenty don’t. A line that says fees are reviewed each January, or each year in the month you started, does two things. It stops the review depending on you feeling brave, and it means a client is told at the start rather than surprised later.
2. Find out where your last three clients found you.
If you already know, write it down anyway. Directories, word of mouth, Google, a colleague.
Three is a small number and still three more than a guess. It tells you what’s working now, as opposed to what you assume is.
3. Pick one cost and ask what it gave you back.
The room rent. The directory listing. The annual insurance.
Some costs bring clients, and you can count those. Some bring nothing you can count and you’d keep them anyway, like the insurance. Knowing which is which is the point.
This is the bit nobody taught us. Keeping the records is the homework. Asking them a question afterwards is the skill.
One more thing, and it belongs with number two.
Later this month I’m sending out a short free guide on why a therapist’s website doesn’t show up on Google, and what to check first. It goes to the newsletter list first. Subscribe
If the business side of your practice is the bit nobody taught you, here's how I can help.
The free therapist toolkit gives you an Insurance Boundaries Workbook, a Healthcode Cost Calculator and an Hourly Session Rate Calculator, so the fee and cost questions above take twenty minutes rather than an afternoon. It's here.
If insurer work is the income stream you keep putting off, From Overwhelmed to Insurance-Ready is a self-paced course on registering with Bupa, AXA, Aviva, WPA and Vitality, and it's open now. Details here.