The Biggest Mistakes I Made Starting a Private Practice

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My entire mission in launching Private Practice Skills was to make sure I could teach you the skills I wish I had when I first started out in private practice. So I thought it would be helpful to make a video outlining what I think were the biggest mistakes I made first starting out in private practice so that you can avoid them. Stay tuned to hear the top 4 mistakes I made when starting a private practice.

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This video is geared for therapists of all kinds, including psychologists, MFTs, LPCCs, social workers, and others in the clinical counseling field.

Welcome to Private Practice Skills! I’m Dr. Marie Fang, psychologist in private practice. I post videos offering tools I learned the hard way about starting and growing private practice so that you don’t have to.

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This video is not intended as professional or legal advice. Be sure to seek the services of a professional if you are in need of them.

I’ve shared about my journey first launching into private practice as a pre-licensed intern in an earlier video. I’ll link to that in case you’d like to hear the nitty-gritty details of that process.

For now, let’s summarize the biggest mistakes I made starting a private practice:

1. I was disconnected from my values.

Rather than honing in on what matters most to me and building a mission statement for my practice from there, I ran around like a chicken with it’s head cut off trying every tactic someone suggested to me without really understanding my purpose in it all.

Instead, it would have been helpful to pause for a moment and create a document outlining my values and the reasons for launching a private practice. Then I could have measured every choice I made thereafter against this mission statement.

2. Not leveraging online marketing.

I launched in 2012. And though the internet has changed quite a bit since then, it was not so far back in the stone age that I couldn’t have launched a website and an online marketing campaign. Since I worked in an independent group practice, I relied on my therapist profile within the group to get referrals online.

Even though I did get many referrals through the group, I could have launched so much more successfully if I had my own website and built it up by writing weekly blogs while I was trying to grow my caseload.

3. Seeing other therapists as my competition.

Ugh. I regret this so much. If only I could go back and tell myself that other therapists are friends, allies, and referral sources. When I started out, I saw other therapists’ success as a threat to mine. I thought somehow they were snagging up “my clients.” This was such an unhealthy and unhelpful mindset.

Instead, I wish I had seen fellow therapists in private practice as my allies. We need to support each other and we also offer referrals to each other. Now I see another therapists’ success as a testament that the same success can be possible for me too!

4. Undervaluing my services.

I really didn’t think I was qualified enough to charge what my supervisor suggested I set as my starting rate when I began my practice. Undercharging is a huge mistake! Even while charging the right rate, it took some time before I felt I could fully “own” that rate during initial calls with clients. I think our clients can sense this trepidation and it makes them doubt the value of our work too!

Trust me, I made a LOT of other mistakes at the beginning and since, but if I could go back and change these four things, I think I would have been successful far sooner and I would have felt far less anxious throughout the process.

My guess is, if I’ve made these mistakes, you may be prone to making some of them too.

I hope you found this video helpful as you navigate the land of private practice. Let me know in the comments what some of your biggest mistakes were when starting out so others can learn from you too.