All That We Are: Best Selling Author Gabriella Braun

In this week's episode of the Business of Psychology podcast, I'm really thrilled to be here with Gabriella Braun. Gabriella is the director of Working Well, and she is the author of one of my favourite books of the past few years, 'All That We Are'. We are going to talk a lot about the book, because I know lots of people will be fascinated by the process.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links for Gabriella:

LinkedIn: Gabriella Braun

Twitter: @BraunGabriella

Book: All That We Are - Gabriella Braun

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• Gabriella tells us a little bit about who she is and who she helps 00:48
• Gabriella talks about who she wrote the book for and the feedback she’s had 02:30
• I ask Gabriella how she decided which case studies to include 09:05
• Gabriella tells us about the editing process 13:44
• I ask Gabriella how she came to the decision to be so open with her self exploration 18:41
• Gabriella talks about her work post book 22:13
• Gabriella tells us about the challenges in the process 28:54
• Gabriella explains how she got reviews for the book 34:59
• I ask Gabrille where she learnt to write 38:15
• Gabriella gives us her two action steps for psychologists and therapists 41:48
• Gabriella tells us where we can find her 44:33

Free Client Checklist

Are you just starting out in private practice? Feeling overwhelmed by all the stuff there is to do by any chance? Paralysed by perfectionism or procrastination? Never fear! Psychology Business School has got your back. And the good news is, there's actually not that much you need to do to run your practice safely and effectively. Download a free checklist today to find out exactly what really matters. Tick off every box and you can see your first clients with confidence that you've done everything important. Get your free copy at psychologybusinessschool.com/client-checklist 

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.

Educational Psychology and Disability with Dr Kirstie Rees

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. In this series, we're exploring the different ways that psychologists and therapists can work in independent practice. I've been talking to a lot of authors recently, and it's always a real pleasure to do so because the passion and commitment that it takes to author a book is infectious, so I've been really looking forward to our interview with Dr Kirstie Rees today. Dr Kirstie Rees is a child and educational psychologist, specialised in the areas of disability, neurodiversity and mental health and wellbeing. She is also the author of a new book, The Mental Health and Wellbeing of Children and Young People with Learning Difficulties.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links for Kirstie:

Website: www.kirstiereespsychology.com

LinkedIn: ​​Dr Kirstie Rees

Book: The Mental Health and Wellbeing of Children and Young People with Learning Difficulties: A Guide for Educators - by Dr Kirstie Rees

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• Kirstie tells us how she got started in educational psychology 00:51
• We discuss the language used around disability 12:05
• Kirstie talks about her move into independent work 16:13
• Kirstie tells us about what sparked the idea for her book 22:03
• I ask Kirstie about the writing process 26:52
• We discuss going direct to a publisher, rather than using an agent 32:42
• Kirstie gives us her advice for psychologists and therapists wanting to write a book 37:50

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.

How to make sure your marketing actually works: How to use authority for psychologists and therapists

Hello and welcome to today's episode of The Business of Psychology. Today we're going to be talking about how to make sure the marketing that you invest your time in actually works to bring people into your practice and attract the right kind of clients. 

Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links & References:

Episode 19: How psychologists and therapists can use an ideal client avatar to co create and market their services

Start & Grow: The Complete Course for Psychologists and Therapists - Psychology Business School

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

There are a few key questions you have to know the answer to before you can decide what kind of marketing is going to work best for your practice and what is going to be the most valuable use of your time.

Once you know the answer to those questions, you can effectively cut out all the unnecessary noise and busy work and focus on the stuff that's really going to move the needle in your business and your professional life. 

Authority

So we're going to get on to the questions themselves in a minute, but before we do, I want to talk a bit about the concept of authority, because the questions you need to know the answer to all link to authority.

In order for people to invest in your services, they have to be sure that you are the right service or person to help them. Different client groups are going to need different proof in order to feel that reassurance. But for all client groups, this is going to come from a mix of your credentials and content that you create that shows and tells your experience.

So what kind of credentials might demonstrate authority effectively? Well, that might be things like your experience, especially NHS roles that you've held or hold currently. It could be your core qualification, not stuff like CPD, people don't really get that sort of thing, but your core qualifications, your professional body. Even if people have never heard of them before, people do tend to be reassured by a logo or a professional body accrediting you.

It could be things like publications, journals, books, even some high profile blogs that you might have appeared on as a contributor. It could be things like institutional positions, like a position with a university, a position within your professional body or on the board of a charity. All of these things show that other people think that you are credible and that really helps people and media coverage, local media, national media, print, tv, and radio, all of those gate kept media sources. Give people some reassurance that other people out there think that you are worth talking to about your specialist area. 

So what then are examples of content that shows and tells your authority? Well, that could include things that you can create yourself, like blogs, podcast episodes, YouTubing, public speaking. Also, making guest appearances on other people's. So guesting on podcasts, guesting in social media groups, and being helpful on social media generally. 

Now before you get...

From Clinical to Coaching Psychology with Dr Rose Aghdami

This is a really special episode because today I’m talking with Dr Rose Aghdami, who was one of our students on our first ever cohort of Psychology Business School. I'm really excited to talk to Rose today about her journey because I know that Rose has trodden a path that many of you are thinking about and many of us consider as psychologists. Rose has made the transition from working in the clinical environment to doing much more coaching in her practice. And we talk today about what that journey was like, what it felt like, the training, and the route that Rose has taken.

The highlights

• Rose gives us a summary of who she is and how she helps people  01:13
• Rose tells us about how she decided that she wanted to start working more on the preventative side of things  02:04
• Rose talks about how she took her model for resilience forward and how she trained as a coach  08:39
• Rose tells us about her lived experience of the difference between psychology work and coaching  14:58
• I ask Rose about the value of the training she did for coaching  21:37
• We discuss why coaches are paid more than psychologists  26:55
• Rose talks about what life is like in business  35:48
• I ask Rose to tell us more about her FUEL model 38:52
• Rose tells us how Psychology Business School fit into her journey 45:11
• Rose tells us how to connect with her  51:12

Rose’s Links:

Website: http://www.rare-consulting.com

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/204651008058423/

Email: rose@dr-rose.com

**********

Are you looking to build an independent practice that is fulfilling, impactful and financially rewarding? Did you know that I run a business course that is designed to help you do exactly that without making all the mistakes I made along the way? Over 12 weeks we take you through everything you need to know to set up a practice that lets you live your values. Through a combination of teaching from experts, legal templates to make sure your practice is covered, peer support and group coaching sessions this is the place for anyone looking to get off the starting blocks in private practice.

Our last live cohort until after my maternity leave is starting in September 2021 so what are you waiting for join us at: https://psychologybusinessschool.com/the-psychology-business-school/

Do you want to help more people than you can stuck in an office? If you are a psychologist or therapist with big ideas then this is the podcast that will support you to make them real! Visit drrosie.co.uk to join the movement.

Link to Crowdfunder (ends March 30th 2020!) https://natwestbackherbusiness.co.uk/thebusinessofpsychology

Coping With Breast Cancer Author and Clinical Psychologist Dr Sarah Swan

Hello, and welcome to the Business of Psychology. Today I'm here with Dr Sarah Swan. Sarah was a senior level psychologist in the NHS specialising in severe and enduring mental health conditions, until in 2019 she struck out into the independent psychology realm and founded The Swan Consultancy. Since then, Sarah has also been on the board of the ACP, a body for clinical psychologists in the UK, and she's published a self-help book for people coping with breast cancer.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links for Sarah:

Website: swanconsultancy.co.uk

LinkedIn: Dr Sarah Swan

Facebook: @swanconsultancy

Book:

Coping With Breast Cancer: How To Navigate The Emotional Impact Throughout Your Journey - Dr Sarah Swan www.sequoia-books.com/catalog/swan/

*Listener Discount: 20% discount code for listeners: put 'Rosie' in at the checkout*

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• I ask Sarah about her independent work; if she find it fulfilling and what it looks like 00:39
• Sarah talks about her decision to leave the NHS, and her breast cancer diagnosis shortly after  06:40
• I ask Sarah about the best bots of independent practice 12:42
• Sarah talks about the inspiration to write her book 15:05
• Sarah tells us about the challenges along the way 18:11
• Sarah tells us about the most joyful part of the book writing experience 23:54
• Sarah talks about the challenge of sharing something very personal in a book 26:27
• I ask Sarah about her hopes for the book 28:33
• Sarah gives us her advice for independent mental health professionals writing their first book 30:43

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.

Psychology Business School: Start & Grow and Coaching

Is this the year that you take your private practice seriously? Maybe you are just starting out or perhaps you want to grow your practice with a team or passive income. Whatever stage you are at, I would love to support you. For new practices, I have our group coaching programme, Start and Grow where you will find all the support, resources and knowledge you need to create an impactful and rewarding practice. 

https://psychologybusinessschool.com/psychology-business-school/

For more established practices come and take a look at my coaching for growth packages. I have a couple...

Summer School Lesson 5: Directory sites

Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology Summer School edition. 

Over the six weeks of the English school holidays, we are doing things a little bit differently around here. If you're looking to start up an independent practice in September, then this is the place to be as each week I'm dropping in with a quick lesson and tasks that can be completed in 30 minutes or less from your sun lounger.

By the end of the six weeks, you will feel ready to step into your practice in September, confident that you can find clients and have a safe and viable business foundation. 

Each week, the lessons will go out on this podcast feed, but if you want the weekly tasks, workbooks, private community, and a live session with me at the end of the summer to hold you accountable and make sure nothing stands in your way, you will need to sign up here: PBS Summer School

I would love to see you in the community.

Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links & References:

PBS Summer School Sign Up

PBS Start and Grow

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

Week 5: Directory Sites

For lesson five of our summer school, we are thinking about directory sites. It's a good idea to be on a directory site or two if you're in independent practice. They can be a good source of referrals, but on top of that, they give you a home on the internet that you can direct people to before you get your own website up and running. They show up in search engines and they can give you a real boost of credibility. 

There are a myriad of directory sites to choose from, and the good news is that most of them offer a free trial, so you can test which ones work for you. 

What I do, and what I'm going to talk through today, is I create a perfect profile, which I save in a Google Doc, and then I just copy and paste it into different platforms that I want to try out.

At a minimum, I'd recommend trying out Psychology Today, Counseling Directory, and Find My Psychologist, but it's worth doing a search for a 'psychologist or therapist near me' and seeing what directory sites are dominating the search results near you, because it is different postcode to postcode, and you really want to make sure you're on those sites that are coming top for your area. For example, where I am, if I type in ‘psychologist in Tunbridge Wells’, the first results are from Harley Therapy, Psychology Today and Counseling Directory. So if I was starting out, those would be places that I'd really want to consider. 

There are some basic principles for a good directory site profile, that if you follow, you're going to be streets ahead of most people out there, because most profiles on directory sites are really awful. I'm going to talk you through some top tips, and then if you're in summer school, you will be able to use my template, which I've put underneath this lesson, in order to craft your directory site profile. 

Write as though you're speaking to a potential client 

If this is difficult and it doesn't come...

Just a quick note to say Merry Christmas and encourage you to take a moment to stop and reflect.

Here are my recommendations for some reflection:

Collect up your year, month by month what were the learnings, achievements and challenges (use your diary to help)

Ask yourself these questions:

1. what do you need to let go of from 2023?

3. what do you need to bring with you into 2024?

4. what do you want to create in 2024?

4. what does fulfilment look like for you?

Merry Christmas and happy reflecting! I will see you on the 29th for the new series of the Business of Psychology!

Finding Purpose and Meaning Through Trauma with Dr Yvonne Waft

Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. Today I'm here with Dr Yvonne Waft, a clinical psychologist, EMDR consultant, and author of her new book, Coping with Trauma. Yvonne has a unique perspective on trauma, having lived through life changing trauma in her teens to becoming a Paralympic athlete and helping others through clinical psychology and sports coaching.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links for Yvonne:

Website: www.catalystclinpsy.co.uk

LinkedIn: Dr Yvonne Waft

Facebook: @catalystclinpsy

Twitter/X: @catalystclinpsy

Instagram: @waftyvonne

Book: Coping With Trauma: Surviving and Thriving in the Face of Overwhelming Events by Dr Yvonne Waft www.sequoia-books.com/catalog/waft

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• Yvonne tells us what sparked her interest in psychology 01:13
• Yvonne talks about why she thinks she took decisions to try and seek out insight and meaningful activity post trauma 04:40
• We discuss EMDR training 18:00
• Yvonne tells us how her psychology career evolved 22:38
• Yvonne talks about her move to private practice 38:15
• I ask Yvonne about her book 44:42
• Yvonne tell us where we can connect with her 55:30

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.

Psychology Business School: Start & Grow and Coaching

Is this the year that you take your private practice seriously? Maybe you are just starting out or perhaps you want to grow your practice with a team or passive income. Whatever stage you are at, I would love to support you. For new practices, I have our group coaching programme, Start and Grow where you will find all the support, resources and knowledge you need to create an impactful and rewarding practice. 

https://psychologybusinessschool.com/psychology-business-school/

For more established practices come and take a look at my coaching for growth packages. I have a couple of spots left for individual coaching so let me help you get 2024 off to the best start possible.

How to know if any marketing activity is working for your private practice

Don't spend any time or money on marketing until you have listened to or read the transcript for this episode. Too often psychologists and therapists spend time on marketing because they think they "should" not because they know it works. There are no "shoulds" only what works for you.

This episode shows you how to work it out with two common use cases, blogging for therapy inquiries and Instagram to get more downloads of your freebie.

Key points:

Define the goal of your marketing activity

Take baseline metrics. For example: how many people visited my website in the last 28 days, how many therapy inquiries did I get in that period, how many new therapy clients did I sign up?

Work out your inquiry conversion rate: (number of new clients/number of inquires) x 100

Do the work!

Take your metrics again 28 days later

Work out what your numbers are telling you

Work out your cost per client

Intervene to improve the areas that don't seem to be working

Listen to the whole episode or read the transcript for the details of how to analyse the effectiveness and cost of any marketing activity.

Client Checklist 2021

In this episode social entrepreneur, fundraiser and art therapist Sue Hamilton-White tells us the secrets of writing successful funding applications for projects that help vulnerable groups.

Links

Join the Do More than Therapy Membership waiting list now to get in when the doors open for just two days next week.

https://psychologists.drrosie.co.uk/the-do-more-than-therapy-membership/

14 Steps to a simple launch

Are you planning on launching something new and innovative?

Are you hoping to reach more people and build a business that lets you live your values while avoiding burnout?

Then you need to download our cheat sheet 

14 Steps to a simple launch. We are sharing a foolproof process to make sure you develop your project WITH the people you want to help and then get it in front of as many of them as possible.

Sign up to get it in your inbox now

https://psychologists.drrosie.co.uk/launch-in-14-simple-steps

Find out more about the Do More Than Therapy membership

https://psychologists.drrosie.co.uk/

Know How Non-Profit

https://knowhow.ncvo.org.uk/

Untapped

www.untapped.org.uk

Summer School Lesson 4: Get your first clients

Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology Summer School edition. 

Over the six weeks of the English school holidays, we are doing things a little bit differently around here. If you're looking to start up an independent practice in September, then this is the place to be as each week I'm dropping in with a quick lesson and tasks that can be completed in 30 minutes or less from your sun lounger.

By the end of the six weeks, you will feel ready to step into your practice in September, confident that you can find clients and have a safe and viable business foundation. 

Each week, the lessons will go out on this podcast feed, but if you want the weekly tasks, workbooks, private community, and a live session with me at the end of the summer to hold you accountable and make sure nothing stands in your way, you will need to sign up here: PBS Summer School

I would love to see you in the community.

Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links & References:

PBS Summer School Sign Up

PBS Start and Grow

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

Week 4: Get your first clients

Week four of summer school is here! And now we finally get to talk about marketing. But probably not the kind of marketing that you're expecting me to talk about if you've spent a lot of time, like I have, in the online marketing space, getting all kinds of ads about Instagram and Google and all of that sent to you all the time.

So the question we need to start with when we're thinking about marketing a private practice is, if you were looking for a therapist, where would you look first? And I'm willing to bet that your answer was not, I would scroll through Instagram looking for a therapist. Most of us would start by asking people that we trust, professionals, friends, family, for recommendations. And the best time investment you can make in the early days of your practice is to make sure that you are top of mind for the people your ideal clients are likely to go to for recommendations. So how to get started with what we call relationship marketing?

Local business networking

You can start with local business networking. These events are full of people who might know your ideal clients. Go with a list of professionals or businesses that you think would be useful to your ideal client group and aim to find out enough about them to decide whether you would refer to them. If you do that you're very likely to find that they want to refer to you too. 

Different networking groups will attract different people. So for example, because I work in perinatal, I'm looking for people that would very often see people either in pregnancy or in the early days of parenthood. So that might be nutritionists, it might be personal trainers, it might be physios, baby yoga teachers, private midwives, massage therapists. So I really only bother with events where I'm likely to come into contact with those sorts of businesses.

If I go to an event and I find out that it's not right, the right people aren't there, then I'm...

Marketing an online course for psychologists part 4: Do you have the authority to launch an online course?

Hello and welcome to a slightly different episode of the Business of Psychology Podcast. 

Today I'm excited to share with you a very brief clip from one of our lessons in our upcoming course all around course creation for psychologists and therapists. So yes, it's a bit meta, I have created a course about online course creation, and I'm so excited to bring it to you guys. 

So this is an affordable option if you are somebody who is wanting to reach more people and help more people through an online course, but you haven't quite got the budget to go and spend £2000 with some of the coaches that are out there at the moment. Or if you have got that budget, but you just want to do it in the company of other psychologists and therapists and people who share your kind of ethical marketing background, then I'm really excited to be bringing this course to you. And I thought what better way of giving you a sense of what we've got to offer in the course than letting you take a little sneak peek at one of our lessons. 

So just to let you know, the course is going to be offered as a regular part of the Do More Than Therapy membership. That's our monthly membership that costs £47 a month at the moment. And it was really important to me to offer this course as a core part of that membership, as a roadmap actually running through the centre of that membership, so that rather than putting a big price tag on this course, which I could have done (and there are lots of really high priced courses about online course creation out there) but I wanted to make this really accessible so it's free for all of our existing members. If you're already a Do More Than Therapy member or a Psychology Business School student, you will get access to this at no additional cost whatsoever. And I've kept it at that low price point so that as many of you as possible who have a passion for reaching more people can jump on board and do that with us. I’m really excited to bring it to you and I know that today's content around building your authority is going to get you off to the best possible start.

I also wanted to share this particular lesson because I think it's something we don't talk about enough; and that is building authority. You can't expect the public to just understand that you know what you're talking about based on your years of experience and your qualifications. It makes me so angry, but it is true that the public generally don't have a good understanding of who we are and what we do. We've got a bit of an identity problem at the moment. So because of that, it's super, super important from the minute that you conceptualise the idea that you might want to build an online course, to start building up the authority you need with the public in order to sell that course. So if there was one thing I was going to say you need to get started right now on this, it would be building your authority. So this is just a really quick snippet of that lesson. You will probably hear me referring to resources that you don't have access to a couple of times during the lesson. That's because the people taking the course will get access to a workbook and they'll also have access to all of our Do More Than Therapy master classes. So I apologise for that, but I thought the content was so good and so worth sharing that I wanted to put it out in this format. So here we go, without further ado here is a little snippet of our lesson on building authority.

Building Authority Lesson Clip

Building Authority is absolutely essential if we're going to put an online course out into the world. People have to understand why they should choose to invest time and money with you. So today we're going to look at why you need to build authority even if you have loads of experience already. We're going...

What matters to our clients in private practice?

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Business of Psychology and welcome to the new season. I'm really excited to be doing a new series of the podcast and we're kicking off with three episodes that are all about getting more clients into your practice or getting those first few clients, and what it takes in the modern setting to do that, because what I'm hearing a lot from people is that it feels like things have changed and that the industry is starting to change.

I think there's an awful lot of positive change going on in our industry at the moment. I think that people are more interested and positive about mental well being than they ever have been before, and I think that they are far more likely now to invest in looking after themselves in terms of their mental health than they ever have been before.

But there are also some difficulties in the industry at the moment. Not least, the difficulties caused by the wider economic climate, and I'm really aware of that. So in these next three episodes of the podcast, we're going to be talking about what we can do to make sure that we're running our businesses in the most effective and efficient way in this new climate, and that means not spending hours and hours on marketing, but really focusing on the stuff that is going to make a big impact.

Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links & References:

6 Ways to Use Google Trends for Marketing (Hubspot)

The aspects of healthcare quality that are important to health professionals and patients: A qualitative study (Science Direct)

New Survey Asks: What Do Patients Want Most in a Doctor? (Everyday Health)

Measuring patient experience in healthcare (Science Direct)

Start & Grow: The Complete Course for Psychologists and Therapists - Psychology Business School

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

What patients or clients want from us in private mental health services and how this might have changed

In this episode, we're going to consider why potential clients look to private practice in the first place, and what aspects of the experience of private practice are actually important to them when they reach us, because I'm a firm believer that business and marketing decisions should always be made with a client first mindset. That's actually what marketing means; marketing is actually the practice of putting the client's needs and desires at the forefront of business strategy. It's not about persuading people to buy stuff at all, it's about creating stuff that people naturally want, whether that's to purchase our paid for services, or whether that’s services that they want to use in the public or the third sector.

Now, in order to achieve that, we have to get to know our clients inside out and give them the best possible...

Summer School: Legal contracts and celebration episode

Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology Summer School edition. 

Over the six weeks of the English school holidays, we are doing things a little bit differently around here. If you're looking to start up an independent practice in September, then this is the place to be as each week I'm dropping in with a quick lesson and tasks that can be completed in 30 minutes or less from your sun lounger.

By the end of the six weeks, you will feel ready to step into your practice in September, confident that you can find clients and have a safe and viable business foundation. 

Each week, the lessons will go out on this podcast feed, but if you want the weekly tasks, workbooks, private community, and a live session with me at the end of the summer to hold you accountable and make sure nothing stands in your way, you will need to sign up here: PBS Summer School

I would love to see you in the community.

Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links & References:

PBS Start and Grow

Discount code for Start and Grow: SUMMER200 valid until Wednesday the 11th September at 10pm

Episode 146: Data Protection for Psychologists in 2024 with Clare Veal

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

Legal contracts and celebration episode

We have come to the end of Summer School, and as you might have noticed from the title of this episode, I'm combining two rather odd things here today, because firstly, I really want to say what an amazing summer this has been. Thank you so much for joining along with this journey. I have loved watching your budding businesses develop and hearing how your confidence has grown over the past few weeks.

I know September is going to be the start of so many epic psychology and therapy practices, and that is a fantastic thing. But one thing we haven't got sorted yet is your essential contracts and data protection policies, the legal bits. And these are critically important, but they couldn't really be fit into 30 minutes or less, and I did not consider them to be particularly sun lounger friendly, if I'm honest. But I do have a good solution for you for that one. 

Firstly, listen to the podcast that I recorded with Clare Veal, where we talk about data protection contracts and policies, the ones that you need and what needs to be in them. So do go and listen to that podcast. It's really amazing free advice from a leading lawyer in this space.

Then I have to recommend that you consider using your special summer school discount to join us in Start and Grow and get: 

• All the legal training policies and contracts that you could possibly need. 
• My clear step by step course to build a practice that supports your values and rewards your hard work. 
• Twice a month,

Creating resilience in your clients and protecting it in yourself with Martina Witter

Today I'm talking to Martina Witter, founder of Rapha Therapy and Training Services, and the host of the Rivers to Resilience podcast.It's wonderful to have her on the show as I've been following her on Instagram for a while.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links for Martina:

LinkedIn:

Martina 'Motivator' Witter

Rapha Therapy & Training Services

Instagram: @rapha_therapy_service

Twitter: @mrobertaw

Facebook: Rapha Therapy Service

Website: raphatherapyservices.com

Podcast: Rivers to Resilience

Book: Resilience in the Workplace:From Surviving to thriving in the workplace, in business and as an entrepreneur

Other Links:

The Business of Psychology: Episode 106: A model for truly integrative therapy: SIP with Dr Melanie Lee and Bridger Falkenstein

The highlights

• I welcome Martina and she tells us who she is and who she helps 00:00
• Martina explains what resilience means for her, and tells us about her seven rivers model 00:58
• Martina talks about what sparked her passion for resilience work 17:30
• Martina tells us where we can find her Rivers to Resilience podcast 23:27
• Martina talks about what she does to protect her own resilience 24:03
• I ask Martina about the different projects that she’s bringing this knowledge to 32:20
• Martina tells us where we can find her and her book 38:25

Free Client Checklist

Are you just starting out in private practice? Feeling overwhelmed by all the stuff there is to do by any chance? Paralysed by perfectionism or procrastination? Never fear! Psychology Business School has got your back. And the good news is, there's actually not that much you need to do to run your practice safely and effectively. Download a free checklist today to find out exactly what really matters. Tick off every box and you can see your first clients with confidence that you've done everything important. Get your free copy at psychologybusinessschool.com/client-checklist 

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of...

Avoiding people and algorithm pleasing on Instagram with Elsie Owen (aka the people-pleasing therapist)

Welcome to Season 4 of The Business of Psychology! 

This interview with Elsie Owen, @the_peoplepleasing_therapist on Instagram, is one of those episodes that really reminds me why I began this project in the first place. 

Elsie is really inspiring to me; I get asked a lot of questions about Instagram specifically, and about marketing strategy in general, and often I feel like people are heaping tons of pressure on themselves to bend themselves out of shape to copy someone else or do something that they think they should be doing. Elsie's story gives a really refreshing insight into the power of what can happen when you do what feels right at the moment that it feels right for you. 

If you haven't heard of Elsie already, I'd really encourage you, when you finish listening to this episode, to look her up and check out her work, because she's brilliant. But I'd also really love you to listen to her story and think about what you can take from this when it comes to marketing your private practice or starting your social media project. 

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links for Elsie:

Instagram: @the_peoplepleasing_therapist

Website: www.elsieowen.com

Rosie’s on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• I welcome Elsie and she tells us how she got started in the world of therapy 01:33
• Elsie tells us how her business started and how it got traction 09:15
• Elsie talks about how she came to her ‘people pleasing therapist’ specialism 15:24
• We discuss how Elsie keeps her instagram account alive 22:14
• Elsie talks about the main uses for her instagram 28:40
• Elsie gives us her tips for getting people to interact on instagram 32:50
• Elsie talks about how to get people from Instagram to buying from us 34:54
• Elsie tells us how we can connect with her 42:07

Free Client Checklist

Are you just starting out in private practice? Feeling overwhelmed by all the stuff there is to do by any chance? Paralysed by perfectionism or procrastination? Never fear! Psychology Business School has got your back. And the good news is, there's actually not that much you need to do to run your practice safely and effectively. Download a free checklist today to find out exactly what really matters. Tick off every box and you can see your first clients with confidence that you've done everything important. Get your free copy at psychologybusinessschool.com/client-checklist 

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to...

3 blogs to write when you are starting out in private practice

Today I'm talking about a topic which sort of surprises me that I'm talking about, because I often really don't like it when marketing experts come out with 20 blogs you need to write now for your private practice (for example) because I think that undermines the most important principle of marketing, which is that you have to write for your ideal clients, and they will be really different to your neighbour down the road's private practice ideal client, so I don't think you can come up with these generic topics that work for everybody. I think that's why we see a lot of really time consuming content marketing, on social media, blogs, podcasts, YouTube that is just too generic and really doesn't work, and doesn't speak to anybody. So it's really important you always bear that principle in mind, that you are creating content for your ideal client, and that does need to be quite a tight group of people. When I say ideal client, I mean the ideal client group, and that that should have some diversity within it, and you should have thought that through, so do go back to my podcast episode about the ideal client to understand fully what I mean when I say the ideal client if you've not listened to that one already. But the principle is that we don't try to market to everybody that could ever need a psychologist or a therapist; we only try to market to a tight group of people who need us, our expertise and our specialism, and that have something significant in common with each other. Usually that's a particular struggle that they are going through at a particular point in their journey as well. So if you haven't nailed that down yet, you really need to think about your specialism and your ideal client group before you create any marketing materials at all. It's the first thing you should do when you set out in private practice. Do go back and have a listen to a couple of episodes I've created on specialising and the ideal client group. We will also be running one of our free trainings again soon (I believe at the beginning of June, although the dates are to be confirmed) where we will be helping you to nail down your specialism if you haven't done that yet. So that's a bit of a spoiler, but I will be talking about that and giving you the opportunity to sign up for that over the next few weeks, but if you haven't got any idea on that so far, then go back and listen to those podcast episodes first. 

But that all being said, I do think that there are three blog posts that you should get up on your site as soon as you possibly can, when you are launching your website and launching your private practice. These are blog posts that give you ready made answers that you can give to either prospective clients who get in touch with you, or to people that you meet through your networking efforts, whether that's in person networking, whether that is hanging out in Facebook groups or other communities where your ideal clients are. These are three blog posts that are going to give you some ready-made answers so that you're not always having to think from scratch, but also so that you're encouraging people to come over and check you out on your website. They're very useful pieces of content to have and they also help Google to get to know what your business is about as well. 

'How to find a therapist that specialises in…'

The...

Books That Make You Think - Stolen Focus Part 2: Nutrition and attention in our practices and marketing

Welcome to this week's Books That Make You Think. It's a moment in your week where you get to pause and reflect on a new book which I have found really interesting, and it's a bit of space for us to think about the implications of new books on our practice and on our marketing efforts as well. So I hope this feels like a little bit of a moment of luxury, where you actually get to reflect on some of the information that we're bombarded with in our daily lives, because if you're anything like me, it can feel like I read a lot of stuff, and I hear a lot of stuff, but I don't actually have that much time to reflect on it. So I hope that these little segments of your week will give you a bit of thinking space and a bit of time to reflect on some of the cool new stuff that is out there. 

This month we are focusing on Johann Hari: Stolen Focus, and this week I wanted to talk about the chapter on nutrition and pollution, and the fact that he presents a lot of very compelling evidence that the food that we eat and the environment that we live in is having a huge impact on our ability to pay attention, which in turn has a huge impact on all aspects of our mental health; everything from depression all the way through to neuro developmental conditions that can be diagnosed like ADHD. I won't go into all of the research that he cites, but it is very compelling, and it certainly convinced me that I need to be paying a bit more attention to my client's nutrition, and knowing where to point them for that, because I'm not a nutritionist, and I'm not going to become a nutritionist. But if we know realistically that nutrition and the environment are playing a huge role in mental health and the way that our clients are able to pay attention, then surely we need to be addressing that in our work directly. So I thought, what could that look like practically? How could I include this new knowledge in my clinical practice, and how can I also incorporate it into my marketing strategy? And one of the things that I thought of was, firstly, about formulation. And I think we always say that we try and formulate in a bio psycho social way, or at least a lot of us say that, but actually I've never drilled down too much into my client’s eating habits. I don't ask my clients routinely if they come to me with, you know, birth trauma, postnatal depression, that kind of thing, I'm not saying what food are you putting in your body? And maybe I should be. So that could be an element of it, adding that stuff into our formulation. Maybe formulating, if we know that somebody lives in a very built up area where there's lots of pollution, and then incorporating that into our formulation, that that might be making it more difficult for them to do the mindfulness activities that we are setting for them, for example, and setting that expectation with people, I think it's part of a compassionate response to acknowledge that we are living in quite a toxic environment in terms of our food being very super processed, and full of chemicals that make it hard for us to pay attention, and our cars churning out chemicals, plastics churning out chemicals, which make it difficult for us to pay attention, and just having that compassion that, okay, we're going to try and learn mindfulness here, and that's got loads of benefits that you will have already talked with your client about, but you are kind of running up an escalator that's going in the opposite direction, because of the environmental stresses that are on you, and acknowledging that and making it clear that you're asking them to do something really...

Reduce overwhelm by planning your private practice in projects 

Successful businesses don’t do the same thing all year long. They tend to work in focussed projects. This helps reduce the overwhelm and ensure that all your energy goes to something that will really help your ICAs.

To plan your projects you first need to be clear on your specialism so go back to the podcast on finding your specialism if you haven’t already given that some serious thought.

Then you need to decide on which ideal clients you want to support this year. In the training, I have been doing with the school for social entrepreneurs it has been really noticeable to me that the bigger social enterprises often service a few different groups with different projects. They aren’t trying to catch everyone with the same offer. So for example, the Heart of BS13 project has cooking, gardening and therapy projects all aimed at helping people with different needs. 

https://heartofbs13.org.uk/

It got me thinking that while we need to specialise in our clinical work we don’t need to make every project that we work on fit the exact same client. For example, you might have a specialism in workplace trauma and provide therapy for people who need it, online courses for managers that want to support staff who have been through trauma and in-person workshops for students who need to learn about workplace trauma. Those are three projects you could be working on in 2021 that all relate to the exact same specialism are for target different ideal clients. 

If you are running a business on your own, or with only admin support though, I do believe we should only focus on one project at a time. If we don’t it is hard to make any project as impactful as we want it to be.

So what “projects: could you focus on in 2021?

What could you do this year that relates to your specialism and would help your ICAs in DIFFERENT ways?

Brainstorm anything you can think of that might help your ICA

Eg. 

Downloadables             1:1 therapy

Books                      Workshops

Podcasts                   Supervision

Online Courses             Webinars

What does each project need?

We are all familiar with Maslow (1954). We need to think about the needs we have as people and business owners and the practical needs of the projects we are creating before we decide when to do them.

If you have unmet deficiency needs you will never be motivated to achieve the self-fulfilment needs. 

If you need money coming into your practice quickly you will need to prioritise projects that can do that for you. 

In my experience, for most of us, this is 1:1 therapy or supervision. Other projects tend to take more time to make more money as we need to spend time building an audience.

Action:

Map out your projects on a big piece of paper or white board.

Think about what you need in your business, what you need to make the project work

and how intense YOU will find the work. 

This is personal so I can’t tell you your intensity scores. 

For me, I find I am very drained after a therapy session (even though I love it) so therapy is 10/10 intensity. Whereas I can spend a day prepping a session like this and feel totally energised so that gets a lower score...

How to write for your website: Copywriting for Psychologists and Therapists with Allie Linn

Today I am talking to Allie Linn, who has joined us all the way from Philadelphia in the US. Allie used to be a therapist, got burned out and found writing. Now she helps other therapists to write the copy for their websites and I am thrilled to have her here to give us some top tips today.

The highlights

• I announce that we are running the Find Your Specialism webinar again on 1st April 2021 at 7:30 00:01
• Allie tells us about her journey, and how she found herself where she is today 02:53 
• Allie talks about why it’s helpful to be a therapist when writing for therapists, and finding the right fit 05:26
• We discuss the importance of knowing your own voice and how to find it 09:47
• Allie tells us the biggest mistakes she tends to see us making on our websites 13:22
• Allie tells us what bits of our websites are most important to work on, including how to rank in a google search 15:35
• We talk about crafting a good story, and where to use storytelling on our website 23:25
• Allie takes us through how we can tell if our writing is working for our audience 27:34
• Allie talks about when it’s the right time to use a copywriter 32:59
• We discuss some of the tools available to help with your writing 40:12
• Allie tells us the two action step she wants us to go away and do now 43:20
• Allie tells us where to find her if we want to connect with her 46:04
• I give a reminder about the Find Your Specialism webinar 46:35

Links to find Allie

https://www.allielinnwrites.com

Instagram: @allielinnwrites

https://www.instagram.com/allielinnwrites/

LinkedIn: Allie Linn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/allielinn/

I really wanted to take a moment to tell you about something very exciting that's coming up soon. On Thursday, the 1st of April at 7:30 we are running our Find Your Specialism webinar. This was a big hit when we ran it back in January, and lots of you got in touch to ask if we were going to be running it again, and I'm very pleased to say that we are. So in the webinar we are going to cover why you need to specialise, the secret of a successful specialism, and then we're going to help you figure out what your specialism can be. And I really encourage you, if you are feeling overwhelmed in your private practice, if you're struggling with all the things that you could do, all the shiny objects that are out there, and you need a bit of clarity to move you forward, this is the webinar for you. I'd really encourage anybody who's starting out on their private practice journey to join us for an hour of free training. I'll be there as well to answer any questions that you might have about getting started in private practice. And there will be a special offer at the end for anybody who's thinking about joining our next cohort of Psychology Business School in April. So that is the 1st of April 2021 at 7:30. I hope to see as many of you as possible there.

Link: https://psychologybusinessschool.com/webinar

************

TRANSCRIPT

SPEAKERS

Allie Linn, Rosie Gilderthorp

Rosie Gilderthorp  00:01

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast, the show that helps you to reach more people, help more people...

How to inspire on Instagram with Dr Chloe Bedford aka The Running Psychologist

Today, I'm really excited to be here with Chloe Bedford, aka The Running Psychologist from Instagram. I'm fangirling a little bit because I've been following Chloe for ages and I absolutely love her content. I feel there's a lot that we can learn from her about creating content that is educational, but also entertaining and interesting, and worth following. 

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links for Chloe:

Instagram: @the.running.psychologist

The highlights

• I welcome Chloe and she tells us who she is and how she helps people 00:18
• Chloe tells us how she got started on Instagram 02:15
• Chloe discusses anxiety about posting 07:23
• We discuss the stigma around mental health in the running community, and running as a coping mechanism for stress 10:60
• I ask Chloe about her private practice and future plans 23:58
• Chloe tells us how she finds time for social media 29:01
• Chloe shares what she learned about using Instagram 31:41
• We discuss why it’s important to take breaks from social media 40:18
• Chloe tells us where we can find her 46:31 

Membership Changes - Join Now!

Before you go, I just wanted to remind you that we are making some big changes at the moment to Psychology Business School and the Do More Than Therapy Membership. Don't worry, all the changes are very positive, and we're going to be bringing you more value, more content, more templates, pretty much more of everything! But just to let you know, this is the best time to join. If you've been on the fence about coming and joining us in Psychology Business School, our complete course and suite of legal documents for getting you set up in private practice, or if you've been thinking about joining us in the Do More Than Therapy membership, our monthly membership which helps you to grow and diversify your practice by getting outside of therapy room, including our complete roadmap to a successful online course, if you've been thinking about either of those things, now is the best time to join because you will get the best price and you're still going to get everything that comes with the changes that are coming in the next few weeks. So if you're on the fence at all, jump off the fence and jump in and join us. We're over at psychologybusinessschool.com Do come and take a look. I look forward to seeing you there.

Burnout in private practice with Dr Paula Redmond

Today, I'm really happy to be back after my break and talking to the wonderful Dr Paula Redmond. Paula is a clinical psychologist who specialises in burnout, which is a very pertinent topic for me right now, as I recently took a bit of a break from the podcast and my social media profiles because I managed to burn myself out. 

Paula is an extremely helpful and knowledgeable psychologist, she's a member of the Do More Than Therapy membership, and we've done some coaching together. I've been desperate to have her on the podcast for ages to talk to us about burnout, because I know it is a big problem in private practice, and it doesn't end if we leave the NHS.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links for Paula

Website: DrPaulaRedmond.com

The Burnout Toolkit: drpaularedmond.com/the-burnout-toolkit

When Work Hurts podcast: drpaularedmond.com/podcast

Creative Restoration Retreats: creativerestoration.org

LinkedIn: DrPaulaRedmond

Facebook: DrPaulaRedmond

Twitter: @DrPaulaRedmond

Other Links

Psychology Business School

The highlights

• I introduce Paula and she tells us who she is and who she helps 00:17
• Paula explains what Burnout is and what it really means 02:07
• Paula give us some examples of situations that might occur in the workplace that would be likely to lead to burnout 08:14
• Paula talks about the five profiles of burnout beginning with the overload pattern 18:05
• Paula tells us about the detached pattern 24:52
• We discuss problems around well being initiatives and movements 31:23
• Paula tells us about the self doubting profile 36:58
• Paula tells us about the traumatised and moral distress profiles 38:30
• I ask Paula what we can do after we recognise this stuff in ourselves and she tells us about compassion, connection, and creativity 43:38
• Paula tells us about how she’s working with people at the moment 57:02
• Paula tells about her plans for the business going forward 1:02:11
• Paula recommends some action steps for people to take 1:04:27

Membership Changes - Join Now!

Before you go, I just wanted to remind you that we are making some big changes at the moment to Psychology Business School and the Do More Than Therapy Membership. Don't worry, all the changes are very positive, and we're going to be bringing you more value, more content, more templates, pretty much more of everything! But just to let you know, this is the best time to join. If you've been on the fence about coming and joining us in Psychology Business

No one reading your psychology blog? It is probably because of your topic or title. I'm sharing a foolproof strategy for writing psycho-education posts people want to read.

Sign up to join the 5-day FREE challenge NOW

Choosing your topic

Good psychoeducation blog posts answer real questions that real people have in their real lives.

Real is the important word here. Whatever we write about it has to be something that a person would REALLY type in to their search engine.

There is no one size fits all for this. For example, if you are writing a blog for yoga instructors about how to incorporate more meditation into their practice a problem like “why can’t I get my class attendees to do diaphragmatic breathing?” would probably be very “real” for them. However, your average stressed out bank manager probably wouldn’t relate to the term “diaphragmatic breathing” at all.

There are some simple steps you can take to figure this out.

1.    Know your ideal client(s). Listen again to the podcast episode on creating ideal client avatars for your product or service and pick just one for this blog post. Then talk to them! There are lots of ways to find them and talk to them and I go into this in the episode.

2.    Record what questions they ask you (note common words and phrases). Go through your emails, voicemails, notes from sessions. What do they tell you they worry about?

3.    Record what questions they ask each other (note more common words and phrases). What is commonly talked about in FB groups where they hang out? What do you overhear?

4.    Read book reviews on Amazon on your topic and again note key words that reviewers are using to describe the problems the book solves. For example, if I am writing a blog for women diagnosed with ADHD I could look at the comments left on Amazon under “A Radical Guide for Women With ADHD.”

5.    Use a tool like “Answer the Public” to sense check the questions you have come up with and add some more.

6.    Use keywords everywhere to check search volumes. Avoid terms with very high search volumes as it will be hard to stand out in the crowd but do go for something that has some people searching for it.

Choosing your title

Now you know the sorts of topics people are really searching for and have a list of words they use to describe the problem. It is time to come up with a title that will make them want to read. I do this first so that I keep the structure of my blog tight around one very specific issue.

Key principles for titles

1.    Name the problem not the solution. People don’t search for CBT for anxiety. They search for “what to do when I can’t stop worrying?” They don’t search for “top tips to improve your attachment with your child”. They search for “what do I do if my three year old hates me?” We type our problems into search engines. But most of the time we title our blog posts with OUR chosen solution. If you name the problem rather than imposing a solution in your title you are more likely to come up as a match to someone’s search term. Your content “snippet” which we will create later in the week then needs to tell them that you have the solution to the...

How to keep the body in mind as a psychologist or therapist with Dr Nancy Bancroft

In this week's episode of the Business of Psychology, I am really pleased to be here with Dr Nancy Bancroft. Nancy is a clinical psychologist who you should be following on Instagram @thebodyinmind. She has a passion for mind-body connection, and is making the shift from the NHS to building a business based on that passion.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links for Nancy:

Instagram: @thebodyinmind

Blog: www.thebodyinmind.co.uk

Email: hello@thebodyinmind.co.uk

References & Links:

The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk

Wisdom of Your Body: Finding Healing, Wholeness, and Connection through Embodied Living by Hillary McBride

The Art and Science of EMDR: Helping Clinicians Bridge the Path from Protocol to Practice Paperback by Rotem Brayer

Beyond Healing Centre

Notice That Podcast

Wild Power: Discover the Magic of Your Menstrual Cycle and Awaken the Feminine Path to Power by Alexandra Pope, Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer

Red School

The Menstruality Podcast 

Business of Psychology:

Episode 94: Starting an Enneagram coaching business with Clinical Psychologist Dr Rebekah Tennyson

Episode 106: A model for truly integrative therapy: SIP with Dr Melanie Lee and Bridger Falkenstein

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• I introduce Nancy and she tells us about who she is and what she does 00:00
• Nancy tells us how she took her journey of personal discovery and decided to move it forward into her professional work 08:49
• Nancy talks about what she thinks we can do about it as a professional group, and what her hopes are for how Body in Mind might take some of these ideas forward 24:12
• I ask Nancy how we incorporate these idea into a therapy setting 29:32
• Nancy tells us what to go and explore if

Why you should never be ashamed of marketing your private practice

Today I wanted to start talking to you about a topic which I don't think I've directly addressed before, but that I think is a really big deal for a lot of us who are working in psychology or therapy businesses. A lot of us tend to be very values driven, so it means a lot to us that what we're doing makes a positive impact in the world. That's a wonderful thing, and it can give you loads of energy and drive to do all of the difficult things in business that we need to do. However, it also tends to come with a rather large dose of shame, and I think you'd be a very unusual psychologist or therapist if you haven't felt a bit of shame in your business journey. To be honest, shame is probably the emotion which characterised my first year in business; as much as I think I'm a bit of a natural entrepreneur and I was very excited to be working for myself, predominantly, most of the time, I walked around feeling like a very bad person. I found it difficult to tell people what I did for a living, I kind of scurried in and out of networking events, I felt like I shouldn't be talking about what I did, and I felt embarrassed to admit that I wasn't working in the NHS anymore. That really prevented me from doing what I needed to do; it prevented me from learning about business and about marketing in those first few months, because I just couldn't stand being on a course, I couldn't stand the thought of reading a book about it, because it made me feel dirty, and shameful and horrible. And I'm not sharing that because I think that's how anybody should feel, I think completely the opposite, I wish that I could go back and give myself a good talking to! But I am sharing that because I think that for some of you starting out, that might be where you're at right now, or it may be that you have made peace with marketing and the ethics of that for marketing your private practice, but now you're marketing something different, like an online course or coaching and you're starting to feel that shame bubbling up again. So I just wanted to address that and talk about why I really don't think you should ever be ashamed of marketing or being good at marketing, because fundamentally it is something that you need in your business and that will do a lot of good in itself in the world.

Why you shouldn't be ashamed of marketing in your practice

1. The number one reason that you shouldn't be ashamed to learn about marketing and to get good at it, is that all clinical practice involves selling skills or techniques to people anyway. Being good at convincing people that the technique you're going to use or the skill that you're showing them is actually going to make a difference in their life is absolutely critical to any therapy working. We know this. You know if you sound really under confident about something like EMDR when you're explaining it to somebody, they are never going to trust you with their time investment (even if they're not paying) enough to show up to those sessions and to do the work. It's the same with something like mindfulness, you have to really sell it to people in order to get them to practise it at home. You know, even if you're working in the NHS, that you need to be good at selling, otherwise people will simply not engage and show up to your sessions. So it's a critical clinical skill, and if you've been working as a successful psychologist or therapist for a number of years, I'm willing to bet you are already quite good at this. It's something that I personally had to really develop when I was starting out. In the prison service where I started, we were teaching the thinking skills course (I think when I started it was actually called enhanced thinking skills - that's not a very good, marketable name, but that's what it was called) and one of the things we had to do with every skill that we included in that course, was a section on...

Thriving through ambiguity with Dr Debbie Sutherland

Today, I'm here with Dr Debbie Sutherland. Debbie is an executive coach and an academic executive who, as an expert in behavioural science in the corporate world, has helped executives, leaders and business owners to thrive all over the world.

The highlights

• Debbie tells us who she is and how she helps people with systems thinking  00:48
• Debbie explains what her role was in the corporate environment  04:12
• Debbie tells us about her thesis on knowledge sharing in business  07:45
• Debbie talks about how she brought her research knowledge to the world  11:50
• Debbie takes us through the other main themes that emerged in her research  22:42
• Debbie tells us about her book  30:13
• Debbie talks about her consultancy work  34:12
• Debbie tells us where to find her book and where to connect with her online  37:21

Links for Debbie

Website & Book:

The Business of Ambiguity: Demystify the Unknown with Five Key Thinking and Behavior Strategies

https://www.behaviorsinbusiness.com

Instagram: @behaviors_in_business

Twitter: @BehaviorsinBusiness

Other Links

Course Creation Guide

Psychology Business School

Mentioned in this episode:

Free Client Checklist

Do you sometimes wake up at 2 am worried that you’ve made a terrible error that will bring professional ruin upon you and disgrace your family? I’m laughing now but when I first set up in private practice I was completely terrified that I had “missed” something big when setting up insurance or data protection. Even now, three years in, I sometimes catch myself wondering if I have really covered all the bases. It is hard, no impossible, to think creatively and have the impact you should be having in your practice if you aren’t confident that you have a secure business. BUT it can be overwhelming to figure out exactly what you need to prioritise before those clients start coming in. I’ve created a free checklist (plus resources list) to take the thinking out of it. Tick off every box and you can see your clients confident in the knowledge that you have everything in place for your security and theirs. Download it now - the link is in the show notes.

Client Checklist 2021

Ever wanted to know how to write a book that people will actually READ? Got a mission to help more people in 2020 but not sure how to make that happen? Or do you have a burning writing project you just can't get DONE? This episode is full of actionable steps you can take to make your dreams of authorship come true.

Book on to the Do More Than Therapy self publishing workshop with Tim on 24th April here: https://drrosie.co.uk/product/self-publishing-workshop/

You can find Tim at https://stonehampress.com/

Self publishing for Psychologists and Therapists

In this episode of the podcast Tim shared with me his personal journey into self publishing. Starting out in IT, needing a career change following the loss of his wife and unleashing the creative writer inside of him WITHOUT waiting for permission. Tim's story is inspiring as it exemplifies the opportunity we have in 2020. We no longer need to know the right people or wait for someone to "take a chance on us". We can spread our messages when we feel ready to through self publishing.

Tim beaks down his top tips into these key areas:

Know your purpose. All psychologists and therapists need to know why they are writing a book before they start.

Tim explains the advantages and disadvantages of traditional publishing and self publishing. He tells us that people use books in many ways, as business cards, reputation builders, for prestige and (often less successfully) for money. This part of the podcast is a MUST listen if you are undecided about whether to self publish or go the traditional route.

Create a perfect plan for your psychology or fiction book

Tim warns us not to start writing without knowing where we hope to end up. He has lived the reality of the fear of the blank page and gives us some helpful tools to consider such as Scrivener for getting a detailed plan together for the book before you write a word.

Write your psychology or fiction book quickly

Tim talks about his experience using National novel writing month to write his books quickly and avoid writers block. The community aspect of it sounds very appealing given how isolating writing a book can feel.

Let people know about it

Finally, Tim talks us through the best ways to get a book read by others including ebook marketing through Amazon, using physical book shops, google search and conferences.

And there is SO much more to this interview. Tim provided a wealth of knowledge and has much more to share so if you know there is a book in you and you want to get started then book the self publishing masterclass with Tim at https://drrosie.co.uk/product/self-publishing-workshop/ The workshop is taking place live on 24th April 2020 but if you have missed that date or you can't make the time you can still access a recording and the resources.

Using social proof ethically and effectively for psychologists and therapists

Welcome to today's episode of the Business of Psychology. This is a solo episode where I'm going to be talking about social proof. 

A lot of the time people assume that social proof is all about testimonials, and that's really frustrating to me because there are actually lots of ways that you can improve your marketing with social proof, and it really frustrates me that we overlook many of them when our less qualified, less ethical counterparts tend to be very good at exploiting them. 

A key way that we can improve our ability to transmit our psychological mental health expertise out there is by getting a little bit better at using the lesser thought about principles of social proof, so today we're going to be thinking about what social proof really is, the psychological constructs behind it, and how it works. And then we're going to think about how we can use it in line with our ethical frameworks. 

Listen to the whole episode or read the transcript for details of the three psychological concepts involved in using psychological proof in your marketing, the six types of social proof that we can draw upon, and the actionable techniques I've translated this into that would work for a psychology or therapy business.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links:

Dr. Robert Cialdini - 7 Principles of Persuasion

Melina Palmer - The Brainy Business Podcast

Advertising standards authority advice on testimonials (the bit for medical products is particularly interesting)

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

Email: rosie@drrosie.co.uk

Free Client Checklist

Are you just starting out in private practice? Feeling overwhelmed by all the stuff there is to do by any chance? Paralysed by perfectionism or procrastination? Never fear! Psychology Business School has got your back. And the good news is, there's actually not that much you need to do to run your practice safely and effectively. Download a free checklist today to find out exactly what really matters. Tick off every box and you can see your first clients with confidence that you've done everything important. Get your free copy at psychologybusinessschool.com/client-checklist 

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.

7 Ways Psychologists and Therapists Can Use LinkedIn to grow their practices

Firstly let’s not beat around the bush. LinkedIn is a powerful social media platform for psychologists and therapists looking to grow their authority and ultimately their practices. I think we have ignored it for much too long. I am not claiming to be an expert on LinkedIn by a long way. I actually have an expert speaker, Sarah Clay, coming into the Do More Than Therapy membership this month to teach us about how we can use LinkedIn to the full. That said, LinkedIn has been instrumental in the way I have grown the Psychology Business School and this podcast so I wanted to share some of the insights I have gathered along the way so you can get started now.

Psychologists and therapists! Do this before you do anything else on LinkedIn if you want to grow your practice.

Before you start reaching out to anyone on LinkedIn (LI) you need to set up your profile as an awesome business card that showcases exactly what you want to offer your LI audience. Don’t try and cover everything in your profile. Think about who you want to connect with and build relationships with on LI and create your profile for them. You can use this space to showcase what you offer to them and your relevant experience. Include good photos that make you seem professional but also easy to talk to. 

A good example from our own community is Alexandra Button’s profile. Alex is an EMDR consultant and offers EMDR and equine therapy to her clients but she recognised that LinkedIn was going to be most useful for reaching out to other psychologists and therapists who might want to book supervision or consultancy to help them through the EMDR accreditation process. Her profile is therefore tailored towards those people rather than trying to speak to both her potential therapy clients and her potential supervisees. This is a great example of knowing who your ideal client group is for a particular platform and making sure you create everything for them. We have talked about the importance of this in episodes on social media more generally, Facebook and Instagram but it is particularly true on LinkedIn. 

Get your strapline on LinkedIn right for maximum impact

The strapline under your name shows up everywhere you post and connect so is very important. It can only be a few words but should sum up who you help and how you help. If you have space you could also put some of your key skills like: Therapy. Podcasting. Online Courses. 

The most important thing is to write your strapline in terms your ideal client group would understand. For example, if I am trying to reach clients directly on LinkedIn I would probably say something more tangible and specific to a particular project I am working on. 

If I had an online course coming out for working parents struggling with anxiety and I hoped to talk to those people directly on LI my strapline might change to “Clinical Psychologist and creator of “become the boss of your anxiety” helping working parents to overcome anxiety so they can be rewarded at work and enjoy their time at home.” 

But if I was...

Insurance for psychologists and therapists who do more than just therapy with Catherine France

In this episode I talk to Catherine France who is an expert in insurance, and really helped me sort out my own insurance arrangements. We have lots of questions and anxieties around insurance, so I'm very happy to have her here today to answer some of the questions that come up when we're setting up in private practice and when we're thinking about doing more than just therapy in our practices.

The highlights.

How did you come to work in insurance?

• Catherine tells us how she came to work in insurance, focusing on small businesses 05:37

What insurance does an average psychology or therapy private practice need to have in place?

• Catherine takes us through the types of insurance we need to have in place, beginning with buildings, contents, and business interruption 09:36
• Catherine talks about public liability and employers liability insurance 12:16
• We discuss the big one: professional indemnity insurance 13:48

What level of insurance cover do psychologists and therapists actually need?

• We discuss the level of insurance you might need 17:08
• We talk about how increasing your insurance may not cost much more in premiums 20:47
• Catherine talks about insurance packages available for small businesses 22:04
• Catherine advises us to check whether our professional indemnity includes abuse cover 23:18
• I ask Catherine about critical illness cover and income protection 26:16

Do our insurance needs change if we start adding in digital products like online courses, blogs or ebooks?

• Catherine advises us on what to do to make sure our insurance keeps up to date as our business grows 29:25

What happens to our insurance if we have clients from overseas?

• We discuss why we need different cover depending on the location of our clients 33:28

Does our insurance have to change if someone from overseas buys a digital product from us?

• I talk about my experience of needing insurance to cover sales of digital products in the US 35:36
• Catherine tells us about why cyber insurance is important 38:41

Are there different insurance requirements for sole traders and limited companies?

• Catherine tells us about directors and officers liability 45:52

Do psychologists and therapists need different insurance if we offer training to corporates?

• Catherine advises us on what may be required 51:04

Where can people find you?

• Catherine tells us how we can get in touch with her 53:34

Catherine’s Links:

Website: https://www.catherinefrance.com

Instagram: @catherinefranceuk

LinkedIn: Catherine France

Twitter: @cathfrance

Blog: 10 Step Guide to Directors & Officers Insurance https://www.catherinefrance.com/post/10-step-guide-to-directors-officers-insurance-you-might-be-surprised-to-find-out-you-need-it

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Thinking about creating an online course?

If you are thinking about launching an online course in 2022 then I have a free guide that will get you started on the...

What tools do I need to run my practice?

One of the most frequently asked questions I get when people are thinking about setting up in private practice for the first time is what tools do I need to run my practice? So today, I'm going to be talking through the tools that I think are essential for setting up in private practice in 2022, and also some tools which are not essential, but are pretty nice to have, and make your experience and your client’s experience that little bit better. Every tool that I mention is linked to, so I hope you're going to find it a really useful reference guide if you're just getting set up in private practice. 

Essential tools for setting up a private psychology practice.

 So what are the essentials for getting set up in private practice? 

GDPR Compliant Cloud Storage: The first thing that you need to consider is getting some secure cloud storage that is GDPR compliant. This is where you can store all your documents relating to your practice and your clients. The one that I have tried and tested is Google Drive, which comes as part of the Google workspace. Very cheap, very affordable, and very good in my experience, and if you use it correctly, it is GDPR compliant. You will need to check their help documentation to make sure that you are using it in a compliant way, but they have thought all of that through for you, and I can vouch for it being very, very good, so I do recommend Google Drive. There are other options out there; I know Microsoft do a similar suite, and iCloud also have options as part of the Apple network. I haven't tried either of those and I don't know about their compliance, so I am recommending Google Drive, but do your research. So long as you've got some secure cloud storage, then you're all good. 

Practice Management Software: The second thing you need to think about is practice management software. I'm a big advocate for this. This is the stuff which allows you to keep track of all your appointments, invoice your clients, store your notes, your reports, and track any communication that you have with clients. It makes the day to day running of your practice much smoother, and helps you come across as professional to clients and prospective clients, which ultimately allows you to make more money. It also takes all the worry out of things like freedom of information requests, and any legal requests you might get for access to your notes, because everything is there, under your client’s record, whenever you need it, at the click of a button. I really wouldn't be without mine. In fact, I believe in this so much, that this is the one company that I have an affiliate link for. I've got an affiliate link for WriteUpp, which is a private practice management software, which I personally have used for a very long time, and really rate. And it's the only company I've ever had an affiliate link for. So if you click on the link through to WriteUpp, I get a small amount of money from them, because I referred you to them, and I don't do that for any other company. I just really wish that more psychologists and therapists got practice management software from the beginning of their practices, because I see so many people really bogged down in admin, and really stressed by getting their appointments muddled up, not being able to find their notes, not knowing how to secure things, and how to store things in a GDPR compliant way, and they really don't need to be. Practice management software, like

Funding perinatal support for all with Amy Woolston and Adele Phillips

In this week's episode of the Business of Psychology, I am delighted to bring you this interview with Dr Amy Woolston and Dr Adele Phillips from The Koala Tree. They're two clinical psychologists that set up a really inspiring social enterprise together, and I think that you're going to find their story very practically useful, as well as great inspiration. This is one for you if you've ever wanted to reach a group that can't afford to pay you in private practice.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links for Amy & Adele:

Website: www.thekoalatree.co.uk

Instagram: @wearethekoalatree

Facebook: The Koala Tree

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• Amy and Adele tell us who they are and how they help people 00:20
• Amy and Adele talk about how they got the word out about the Koala Cuppa 06:09
• I ask how long it was between starting the Koala Cuppa to the full-service offering 09:42
• Amy and Adele discuss the challenges and successes of doing this together 14:35
• We discuss Amy and Adele’s pragmatic and sensible approach 20:54
• I ask how Amy and Adele decided to grow and add things in, and they discuss funding 26:06
• Amy and Adele share their major highlights of running The Koala Tree 38:59
• Amy and Adele give us their top tips for budding social entrepreneurs 45:44

Free Client Checklist

Are you just starting out in private practice? Feeling overwhelmed by all the stuff there is to do by any chance? Paralysed by perfectionism or procrastination? Never fear! Psychology Business School has got your back. And the good news is, there's actually not that much you need to do to run your practice safely and effectively. Download a free checklist today to find out exactly what really matters. Tick off every box and you can see your first clients with confidence that you've done everything important. Get your free copy at psychologybusinessschool.com/client-checklist 

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.

Using Youtube to reach more people with Dr Clare Roberts

Dr Clare Roberts has gone from being a clinical psychologist in Birmingham, to a YouTube sensation in Florida, using her Generation Calm channel to post videos for people looking for stress management techniques, anxiety relief and relaxation methods. She is here today to tell us about how she made that transition, and also to give some specific tips on how we can start and grow a YouTube channel.

The highlights

• I introduce Clare and she tells us about how she went from being a clinical psychologist in Birmingham, to finding herself in Florida 00:17
• Clare tells us how she went about turning her vision into reality, and how hard posting the first video was 10:14
• Clare discusses the difficulties of coming up with a name 14:25
• Clare talks about why we should consider YouTube as a good platform for us, and takes us through how to make it a reality 17:02
• We discuss the importance of keywords for Google and YouTube, and talk about the importance of getting good quality content out there 22:32
• Clare talks about growing her confidence 30:22
• We discuss building a community on YouTube 33:33 
• Clare talks about how YouTube is evergreen and doesn’t have to take as much time as other social media platforms 41:36
• Clare tells us where we can find her 44:51

Links:

Where to find Clare:

www.generationcalm.com

Youtube: www.youtube.com/generationcalm

Instagram: www.instagram.com/generationcalm

Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/generationcalm1

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Do you sometimes wake up at 2 am worried that you’ve made a terrible error that will bring professional ruin upon you and disgrace your family?

I’m laughing now but when I first set up in private practice I was completely terrified that I had “missed” something big when setting up insurance or data protection.

Even now, three years in, I sometimes catch myself wondering if I have really covered all the bases.

It is hard, no impossible, to think creatively and have the impact you should be having in your practice if you aren’t confident that you have a secure business. BUT it can be overwhelming to figure out exactly what you need to prioritise before those clients start coming in.

I’ve created a free checklist (plus resources list) to take the thinking out of it. Tick off every box and you can see your clients confident in the knowledge that you have everything in place for your security and theirs.

Download it now from the new link:

https://psychologybusinessschool.com/client-checklist

How to create a great directory site profile

Links for this episode: 

Instagram: @rosiegilderthorp

The Business of Psychology: Episode 32: How to get your blog post seen with Vicki Jakes: SEO for psychologists and therapists

The Business of Psychology: Episode 19: How psychologists and therapists can use an ideal client avatar to co create and market their services 

The Business of Psychology: Episode 54: How to write for your website: Copywriting for Psychologists and Therapists with Allie Linn

The Business of Psychology: Episode 20: How to find the people you want to help online. Online marketing for psychologists and therapists

The Business of Psychology: Episode 76: Marketing strategies for psychologists and therapists: Three styles of marketing to get more therapy clients or grow your practice

Full show notes for this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Welcome to today's episode of the Business of Psychology podcast. Today I want to talk to you about directory site profiles, because the state of play is changing in private practice, and while I'm very confident that it will all be okay and the marketing will continue to work (it always has, private practice has always been here and I am absolutely sure it will continue to be here), one change that I've started to notice in the marketing landscape is that it is slightly more difficult for our own websites to rank on Google. If you don't know what I'm on about when I'm talking about ranking on Google, don't worry, we've got an episode on search engine optimization, which will explain that for you, but basically, it's getting a little bit more difficult to get our websites seen. That does not mean that you should not be trying, I still think it can be done, but it is getting a bit trickier, especially for our generic therapy services pages. For that reason, I think it's extra important to have a good presence on some of the key directory sites, because they have the kind of budget that means that they will usually be at the top of search engine results, whether they're paying for that, or whether they've got content writers that mean they're able to stay there organically. I'm talking about sites like Psychology Today, Counselling Directory, Find a Therapist, Find a Psychologist; these are sites which are 100% dedicated to search engine optimization, and they've got marketing budgets that support that. Yes, it...

Creating and marketing an online course for psychologists and therapists part 5: How to create an engaging online course (that people actually finish)

Teaching online is a skill you have to learn if you want to have a successful online course. To be honest studying at University means we have often encountered a lot of very very bad teaching in our careers. I’m doing an MBA at the moment and most of the teaching is literally a white, middle aged man talking at me in a droning voice for two hours while I try desperately to stop thinking about what I’m having for tea. That just won’t cut it in the world of online courses. Research suggests that up to 88% of people don’t finish an online course they have started. That is completely unacceptable to me. I do not want to take money from people for something they don’t even finish. If we want to make sure people get good results from our courses we need to make sure that they are taught skillfully.

In this episode I am going to talk you through the four pillars of creating engaging online lessons that I recommend you consider when you are creating anything educational from social media videos and podcast episodes through to the lessons of your online course.  

Every time I plan a lesson, social media video or podcast episode I always start by selecting 3-5 key learning points that I want the audience to take away. I then think about how I can hit that learning point from different angles to make sure it really sinks in for people. 

• Imagination - stories, personal stories, composite stories, illustrating everything you teach with a story of some sort will bring it to life for your students. You can hear/read more about how I recommend using stories in our episode on writing for your marketing here.
• Visual - graphics, mind maps, illustrations. This is the stuff I suck at so I usually need help to take my verbally expressed ideas and put them into graphic form but charts, mind maps, graphs, infographics all of these things can really help make an idea more solid for people. It is also helpful to provide a workbook so that visual learners can be scribbling their own doodles that help them to understand what you are talking about.  
• Auditory - talking it through and making time for small group discussion of the learning point. It is important to provide time for people to ask you questions as some people will need to hear things put in different ways to apply the learning to their own lives.
• Practical - exercises that make people apply the learning to a real life situation they are in or expect to be in soon. Breakout rooms on zoom are great for giving people time and space to do this without putting them on the spot but role plays and hot seat style questions also work well.

If you cover off each of these pillars for each learning point you will find the engagement in your lessons goes up hugely. They don’t really allow people to just sit back and glaze over!

It is also really important to make sure your resources are inclusive and engaging for everyone you are serving and we will talk more about that on an upcoming episode. 

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Links

Episode 71: Writing for your psychology or therapy website: How to get started and key principles

Do you have a specialism? Many psychologists and therapists in private practice don't. Read why you need one if you are serious about doing more than therapy and how to find one.

Why every psychologist and therapist needs a specialism

This week in the DMTT membership we are looking at business planning and specifically planning out what projects we are all going to be working on in 2021. In writing the materials for the course I realised how crucial it is to be clear on your specialism, the projects you want to work on and the ideal clients for each project before you start to even consider creating products or services or marketing. 

In this episode I’m going to talk to you about:

Why you need a specialism and why you might not know what it is yet.

How a specialism is different from your ICA but how it helps you find them

Why thinking in “projects” will help you to plan a private practice that feels more professionally fulfilling.

PP makes it easy NOT to have a specialism as insurance referrals can be broad and we often want to take EVERYONE because we are scared of not having enough work. There is also the imposter syndrome… In the early stage so of my practice my imposter syndrome was so huge that I literally told people that I had no specialist skills and actually refused to see anyone who might require any kind of specialist. Even now when I get an email from a prospective client who says they have chosen me because I am “an expert” in birth trauma I feel like replying saying “oh no you got it wrong, here are the contact details for a REAL specialist”  

BUT I have learned that, even if it feels uncomfortable, a specialism is vital because it:

• Helps you to avoid burnout/overwhelm because you can focus all of your activity on one subject. All your CPD, all your marketing, all of your resources are all on one topic. Doesn’t that sound less overwhelming?
• Provides the reassurance our clients need (wouldn’t you rather see a specialist when you are struggling?)
• Helps you build authority, credibility and an audience who trust you enough to buy products and services.
• Helps you identify your ideal clients (ICAs) for your services. 

Your specialism is the problem clients are most likely to want your help to solve.

Examples of specialisms versus client groups

Think about some very successful psychologists and therapists that you have heard of. Bessel Van der Kolk - the trauma and the body guy. You know what his specialist subject is but when you look across his career he has applied that specialism to a whole host of different client groups/ICAs. 

A specialism can be quite a broad thing as it is about the struggle that people are facing. Through your career, you might help lots of different client groups that all share a similar struggle. For example, if your specialism is trauma and the body you might start your career helping veterans, move on to helping people who have been through birth trauma and further down the line help healthcare professionals who worked on acute wards during COVID-19. The time and energy you have put into the CPD and research associated with your specialism can be applied in many different ways to different people through your career.

BUT each project you work on through your career will be targeted towards specific ICAs. This helps hugely with marketing and making your message clear for the people who need to hear it and also reduces the overwhelm for you.

Why your specialism might...

How to get started on Instagram as a psychologist or therapist with Helen Perry

If you are listening to this podcast it is most likely because you want to make a big impact in your psychology or therapy practice. Most people who listen are members of my Do More Than Therapy community where our explicit aim is to reach more people with positive messages about mental health. I have felt for a long time that Instagram is a platform bursting with potential for us to reach our goals but I will be honest I just haven’t managed to crack it yet.

Today I am here with Helen Perry, an Instagram influencer and expert who now teaches small business owners how to grow awesome Instagram accounts. Instagram is a MASSIVE topic so Helen will be coming into the DMTT membership to teach a more in-depth class. Today we are just going to get an overview of the way we could be using Instagram to help more people and grow audiences for our products and services to inspire your content planning.

The highlights:

●     Helen tells us how she got involved in Instagram, and how using it as a marketing platform for her blog turned into ‘how to do Instagram’ becoming her business 00:21

●     We discuss how using social media to listen is really important to learn about your clients 05:04

●     Helen talks about thinking of Instagram as a conversation rather than somewhere to advertise or broadcast 06:54

●     We discuss whether Instagram can be a good platform for mental health professionals, and why it’s seen as the most unhappy or damaging of the social media platforms 07:16

●     I talk about how I came to Instagram after initially thinking it wasn’t for me 09:21

●     We discuss how Instagram can seem really intimidating at the start and and Helen gives her priorities for the beginner 11:02

●     We talk about how people use Instagram to research products and services before buying/using 13:28

●     We look at how to use social media to show why someone should choose you and trust your advice, whilst also setting your boundaries and knowing what you want to share 14:41

●     Helen talks about knowing your audience and the community you want to reach, rather than worrying about your peers 16:56

●     Helen advises us to look at what we love and engage with on Instagram, and how we can replicate that for our audience 19:06

●     Helen explains how hashtags work and why we need them 19:40

●     Helen tells us about Instagram starting to introduce searchable terms in captions 24:01

●     We discuss the myth that ‘everything you post needs to be beautiful’ 26:05

●     Helen talks about Matt Haig as an example of who’s doing well in the mental health space 28:40

●     Helen talks about the power of bite-size chunks of content (such as short videos from Dr Julie Smith), and why we don’t have to provide the whole solution in every post 30:11

●     Helen explains that Instagram is the gateway, and we need to make sure we are taking people somewhere else because there is a limit to what you can achieve on Instagram 34:31

●     Helen tells us how we can use links in Instagram, and how to drive people to content outside 35:23

●     We discuss reducing overwhelm by choosing one social media platform to focus on, being realistic, and seeing it as a long game 37:17

●     We talk about whether social media managers can help us...

Books That Make You Think - Stolen Focus - Does social media make us angry?

Welcome to our first regular Books That Make You Think slot. In these special segments of the week, we are going to be talking about a book that I've come across that, in my mind, sits on the threshold between psychology, business and marketing. 

One thing that I'm really passionate about is helping psychologists and therapists to learn how to build effective businesses and market ourselves, while feeling like we're still serving our clients really well, and like we're doing some good in the world. And one thing that strikes me is that often when I read books, whether that's a psychology book, or a business book, or a marketing book, I'm kind of merging all of those worlds together in my head, and trying to figure out where I sit as a clinical psychologist with the stuff that I'm learning. 

One book that has really made me think this week is Stolen Focus by Johann Hari, and I talked about it a little bit last week, and people were really interested in some of the learning from it. So I thought that I'd do regular slots, where we can talk about books like Johann Hari's book, which raised some really interesting issues for us, as professionals, and as marketers, as well. So I hope you're gonna find this helpful as people who are in business, but who are also very interested in mental health and promoting good mental health in the world. 

Okay, so the point that I wanted to pick up on this week from Johann Hari's book was the fact that I found quite shocking that on social media, posts that have hate speech in them, words that generate an angry response in us, are the most engaged with and shared posts. So a post that has the words obliterate slam, hate, all of these kind of aggressive words will do much better than a post that is positive. And Johann Hari goes into some of the research behind that and it indicates that this is because it speaks to our negativity bias as humans. And it makes sense, right? We're kind of trained to look out for aggression and violence and pay lots of attention to it as a survival mechanism. It certainly fits with my understanding of how human psychology works. So I don't know why I was that surprised, but I guess I'd never really thought about it before, and it strikes me that there are some clinical implications that need thinking through if this is true on social media, and if the algorithms are going to continue to promote posts like this, that are filled with really hateful language, I think we need to think about that on behalf of our clients and think about how we might need to adapt what we do in the therapy room and in the services that we create for our client groups, in order to take that into consideration. Because it's going to have a major psychological effect on people. Of course it does. So that's the first thing I want to think about today. And the second thing I want to think about is how we take that knowledge and structure our marketing around it. Because there's a bit of a debate here about do we do what works? And we know that what works is all of this negative language and hate speech. Or do we try and do something different, go against the grain of the social media algorithms, and possibly face getting more expensive results or less good results with our social media campaigns? So those are the two things and I'll start with the clinical stuff. Because that's what struck me first when I read this chapter of the book, and I'm really interested to get your thoughts on it. I really want this to be a conversation. So please do let me know what you're thinking as I'm talking about this, especially if you...

Unlocking your Inner Entrepreneur with Kathy Adcock

Kathy Adcock is a clinical psychologist, a boxer, and the founder of social enterprise In Your Corner. She's also a passionate social entrepreneur. She's here today to talk a bit about her journey, and how we can develop that entrepreneurial spirit.

The highlights

• Kathy tells us what she does with In Your Corner, and how it all began 02:52
• Kathy explains how she turned In Your Corner into a reality 04:14
• Kathy talks about finding people who believe in the idea and being a sole director 08:21
• We discuss trusting others with your idea 09:24
• We talk about the speed of decision making when it’s your own business 11:07
• We discuss the benefits of doing different jobs in the NHS in order to learn key skills, and how NHS experiences give us the impetus to create a social enterprise 12:00
• We talk about the importance of having qualified and experienced people working on social enterprises, and the impact on costs 15:20
• Kathy speaks about the need to be assertive and not undersell yourself 18:39
• We discuss income, and charging the right amount 20:15
• Kathy explains how entrepreneurship is not just having the idea, but doing it 21:27
• We discuss how marketing is listening, and the importance of listening to feedback and objections 23:42
• We talk about the identity of being a psychologist and an entrepreneur 30:40
• We explore the ownership of expertise, and collaborative versus leadership skills 38:15
• Kathy discusses how the autonomy of the psychology profession is a good fit for entrepreneurship 43:19
• Kathy tells the things she recommends would-be entrepreneurs work on 44:19
• We discuss getting help for, and giving away the bits you don’t want, like finance 46:41
• Kathy tells us where we can find out more, and how to get in touch if you’re interested in becoming a partner 49:12

Links to find Kathy:

In Your Corner: www.inyourcorner.uk

Facebook, Instagram and Twitter: @iycboxing

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iycboxing

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iycboxing/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/IYCboxing

********************** 

Do you sometimes wake up at 2 am worried that you’ve

made a terrible error that will bring professional ruin upon you and disgrace

your family?

I’m laughing now but when I first set up in private practice I

was completely terrified that I had “missed” something big when setting up

insurance or data protection.

Even now, three years in, I sometimes catch myself wondering if

I have really covered all the bases.

It is hard, no impossible, to think creatively and have the

impact you should be having in your practice if you aren’t confident that you

have a secure business. BUT it can be overwhelming to figure out exactly what

you need to prioritise before those clients start coming in.

I’ve created a free checklist (plus resources list) to take the

thinking out of it. Tick off every box and you can see your clients confident

in the knowledge that you have everything in place for your security and theirs.

Download it now from

Starting an Enneagram coaching business with Clinical Psychologist Dr Rebekah Tennyson

Today, I'm really excited to be joined by Dr. Rebecca Tennyson. Rebecca is a clinical psychologist and an Enneagram coach, working both in private practice and in the NHS, who is passionate about helping people to see and love their unique strengths, and to work towards being the best version of themselves.

The highlights

• Rebekah explains what the Enneagram actually is 00:59
• Rebekah talks about how she incorporated Enneagram into her practice 10:40
• We discuss the question of what the difference is between therapy and coaching 18:10
• Rebekah tells us about her typical client for Enneagram work, and the impact of that work on her life 26:02
• Rebakah tells us how she’s found people for her coaching practice, and about learning as she builds her business 37:02
• Rebakah tells us where we can find out more about her the the Enneagram 52:30

Links for Rebekah

Website: www.enneagrampsychology.co.uk

Instagram: @enneagrampsych

Facebook: Enneagram Psychology

LinkedIn: Dr Rebekah Tennyson

Further Information:

The Enneagram Institute

Mentioned in this episode:

Course Creation Guide

Do you dream of creating an online course? Are you desperate to reach more people but sceptical that you can ACTUALLY make it work? The truth is a lot of online courses do fail but that isn't because the content is bad. It is because the marketing strategy sucks. The truth is your marketing isn't a separate thing. Talking to the community you want to serve should be part of the development of the course. Getting to know them, giving them free resources and building relationships WHILE you build your course in the background is the key to success that most psychologists and therapists launching courses miss. Well not you! Because you can download my free course creation guide and get yourself on the right track to creating a course people actually want and need. The guide talks you through the first, essential steps you must take when planning your course so you can avoid the expensive mistakes I see so many well-intentioned people making. Get yours at PsychologyBusinessSchool.com now - the link is in the show notes.

Course Creation Guide

Free consultations? Should you offer them in your psychology/therapy practice

Welcome to this week's episode of the Business of Psychology podcast. This week, I'm considering one of the questions that I get asked most frequently from my students in Psychology Business School, and that is should we be offering free consultations for therapy work? Now, as you might expect from me, if you've been listening to this for a little while, I don't really think that there is a clear cut answer and there's certainly not a one size fits all answer. If you'd asked me this a couple of years ago, I would have advised you against doing free consultations in your practice. The reason for that is that I did not do these very well. When I had a really busy clinic, I was spending hours every week offering free consultations to people who then ghosted me, and I blamed the free consultation model because when I stopped doing those free consultations, those problems went away, I started to get much better quality referrals, clients who came for their first session stuck around, and I didn't get ghosted very often. Initially, I thought that was because free consultations led to client ghostings, mainly because of some of the stuff we talked about in last week's episode around ghosting and the beliefs that clients can sometimes hold about the value of our time. But we'll talk about that a bit later in the episode, because what I have come to realise is, it wasn't the free consultation that was the problem, it was the way that I did them, and specifically the lack of boundaries that I had around them. I do think they can be very valuable if you do them correctly and for the right reasons, in the right way. So today I want to talk a little bit about the advantages of free consultations, the disadvantages of free consultations, and some factors I think you need to bear in mind if you're going to offer them and do them well, and that is based from my own experience, but also from things I've learned from my students in Psychology Business School. So a big thank you to all my students who have talked about this many times in Office Hour; I am bringing a lot of your expertise to this episode and I hope it's going to help a lot of people. 

The advantages: why you would want to offer a free consultation

1. It's a really great opportunity to assess the goodness of fit for you and for the client. We're not the right therapist for everybody, are we? You could be amazing for the right person and rubbish for somebody else. For example, there's a lot of humour in my therapy sessions, I just can't get that bit of my personality out of therapy and frankly I wouldn't want to. But there are some clients who don't share that and that's not what they're looking for in a therapist. They will know that quite quickly in a free consultation with me because it tends to come out quite quickly in a free consultation. So it's a great idea for people to have that conversation with you so that you can show how you like to work, and they can decide whether that is a good fit for them, and equally, we often get that feeling don't we, that we're not the right fit for somebody. Maybe they're looking for a type of therapy that we don't offer, maybe you know that there is a model that would suit them better, and you've got a colleague that you could refer them on to. So assessing for goodness of fit is a great advantage to doing a free consultation.
2. You can use it to iron out any accessibility issues. When I did offer free consultations, I didn't do it as a phone call, because I don't offer phone therapy, so I don't really think it's that useful to do it on the phone. I used to get people to come in to my physical therapy room because I used to work in person, or I used to get people to log on to zoom and have an online session with me if that's what they wanted, so that way we could work out if we have technical problems, or do you find it...

Ever wondered why some websites seem to have thousands of views, and some blogs get hundreds of comments while your amazing content gets crickets? In this episode Vicki Jakes, website and SEO expert tells us what every psychologist and therapists needs to know about getting visible online and getting their blog READ.

You can check out Vicky at https://heyvickijakes.com/

and listen to her podcast at: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4vggaOj2oDo3oe715pUnNj?si=gBe6ZV4GSqqUY4ZnhQn5Eg

Join the FREE DMTT 5-Day Blogging Challenge

Are you spending hours on a psychology blog that no one reads? 😿

Do you want to use blogging to find clients who:

 ⭐️ Like your approach and value your specialism?

 ⭐️ Are happy to pay your full fees?

It is easy to give up on blogging because it feels like just another thing on your already overwhelming to-do list.

BUT, done the right way, blogging can get you fully booked with clients who value your specialism. 

Over 5 days I will show you how to plan, write and promote the perfect post so you can be confident every minute you spend on your blog is worth it 🔥

Sign up to join the 5-day FREE challenge NOW

Podcasting for Psychologists and Therapists: Why we should podcast and how to get started with Charlotte Foster

In this episode, I talk to Charlotte Foster, voice of the Turn Up the Volume on Your Voice podcast, journalist, and expert at getting podcasts published and into the earbuds of the people who need them. Charlotte is also a Do More Than Therapy expert speaker who's delivering our July podcasting masterclass. We're going to talk about why psychologists and therapists should be podcasting, and troubleshoot some of the common issues that come up for people when they venture into the world of podcasting.

The highlights

• I welcome you to the podcast 00:06
• Charlotte tells us how she got into podcasting, after her career in radio journalism 02:09
• We discuss how podcasts are about conversations and community 10:48
• We talk about how podcasts are a great platform for psychologists and therapists, and how they are like one-to-one conversations 12:55
• Charlotte talks about how easy it is to get started with podcasting, and what holds people back 20:14
• Charlotte talks about podcast length and series 30:21
• Charlotte tells us what kit she recommends, and how to make the most of your microphone 39:29
• We discuss how much editing we need to do for our podcasts 46:31
• We talk about not using scripts 53:17
• Charlotte talks about what we can do to make sure people listen to our podcasts, and why transcripts are useful 56:31
• Charlotte tells us where we can find her and connect with her 1:03:19
• I remind you about the Do More Than Therapy membership 1:05:01

Charlotte's Links:

Podcast: Turn Up The Volume on Your Voice 

Website: https://www.charlotte-foster.co.uk

Instagram: CharlotteFosterPodcasts

Facebook: CharlotteFosterPodcasts

LinkedIn: Charlotte Foster Podcast Queen

Twitter: @CFPodcasts

**********

If this episode has stoked your enthusiasm for "doing more than therapy" then come over to https://psychologybusinessschool.com/the-do-more-than-therapy-membership/ and check out the do more than therapy membership. This is our monthly membership that helps you to confidently step out of the therapy room and help more people in creative ways. We have masterclasses with experts to help you get that book written, to launch that online course, podcast or community project. On top of that we also have a supportive community with weekly coaching calls, monthly peer supervision and a thriving Facebook group. Come join us at: https://psychologybusinessschool.com/the-do-more-than-therapy-membership/

Creating more impact in your independent practice: How do I test if my “more than therapy” idea will work?

This was a great question that came from one of our Do More Than Therapy members, Dr Paula Redmond. Paula has a practice helping health professionals deal with stress and burnout and she is part of our programme for people who have a thriving practice already but who want to find more creative and impactful ways to serve people. She identified what is a big problem for many psychologists and therapists in private/independent practice, we just don’t know whether our idea for an online course, book, workshop series, app or whatever it is will work!

Think like an entrepreneur in your independent/private practice

A few years ago I came across two books that really shaped my thinking on this subject and if you love all things entrepreneurship I would highly recommend them. They make me feel excited just thinking about them! Pat Flynn’s “Will it Fly” and Eric Ries “The Lean Start-Up” come from totally different perspectives and both are very far removed from the way we usually think about psychology and therapy independent practice. But that is why they are so useful to us. We need to change gear slightly when we are coming up with an innovative idea because unlike therapy, which is tried and tested and known to the public, we are talking about creating something the public has never seen before. It is a much bigger risk so needs a different mindset and approach.

If you have time I would certainly recommend that you read the books. But, in case the stack of books on your nightstand is overpowering, I thought I would share with you the process that I developed as a result of my interpretation of them and that I used to develop the Psychology Business School online course. 

12 steps to test your idea for making more impact in your independent/private practice

I’ve included a summary of the 12 steps I talk through here in the show notes so you can either grab a pen and paper to make sure you don’t miss any steps out or head over to the show notes (you can find them in your podcast app or on the psychologybusinessschool.com site) where they are mapped out for you.

1. Know your ideal client/user of the product or service. Check out this podcast episode for more information about how to hone down and get talking to your ideal clients.
2. Find them where they already are and listen to the problems they talk about
3. Note down the solutions they are already accessing. Is there a problem they are already trying to solve but the solutions are inadequate for some reason?
4. Start growing a community and email list of ideal users. Create free content like blogs or podcasts that helps them solve these problems and use social media to promote it. If you have a budget you may use low cost engagement Facebook ads to get more visibility at this stage. Listen to this podcast for more ideas on how to use Facebook to start growing your audience for your new product/service. 
5. Create something small (and ideally free or low cost) that helps to solve the problem. Do people download or use it? Make sure those people that do are added to your email list.
6. Get feedback from the users, what was...

Data Protection for Psychologists in 2024 with Clare Veal

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. Today we're joined by Clare Veal, a commercial lawyer from Aubergine Legal. Lots of you listening will already be familiar with Clare, as she is the legal eagle behind our legal templates, which are bringing peace of mind to hundreds of mental health professionals right this second. She also teaches in my Start and Grow course, giving our students a really solid understanding of what we need to do and why we need to do it, to protect ourselves and our clients in our independent work. But today we have Clare on this podcast because I think it's really important that everyone that's seeing clients independently has a good grasp of data protection and specifically how it applies to us. I find that once you understand that, then things like contracts and policies that we need to create, or that we've created for you in the legal pack if you have that, they just don't seem so scary anymore.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links:

Data Protection Workshop: Sign up for the June 17th data protection workshop (recording available)

Clare:

Website: www.auberginelegal.co.uk

LinkedIn: ​​Clare Veal

Facebook: Aubergine Legal

The legal pack of contracts and policies for psychologists and therapists

Try out WriteUpp (practice management software)

Psychology Practice - Data Retention Period Guide | Aubergine Legal Limi

Clinical Psychologist Legal Services | Aubergine Legal

Checklist for launching a website (auberginelegal.co.uk)

Psychology Practice - Data Retention Period Guide | Aubergine Legal Limited

BizCoach + Legal Toolkit for Business Coaches

What UK Businesses Need To Know About The UK Data Protection And Digital Information Bill (DPDI) (auberginelegal.co.uk)

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• Clare tells us about the main areas of law that we need to consider when we start to work...

Links

Join the Psychology Business School membership here.

The Do More Than Therapy FREE Facebook group

Russ Harris' ACT Made Simple

More info and useful resources at https://psychologybusinessschool.com/

Blog Post

Do more than therapy in your psychology private practice

If you are setting up a psychology private practice you need a business plan. And it needs to have more than therapy in it… Many of us stumble into private practice as an add on to an already busy NHS (or other public health) role. It is too easy for us to just assume that all we do is rent a room and use our existing skills. Many talented clinical psychologists, therapists and counsellors are shocked to discover that they don’t make much money from their private practice.

I was in that position a year ago. I had gone full time in my practice and was busy with clients. But I wasn’t making much money, didn’t have the flexibility I needed to fit around solo parenting my two children and most annoyingly I found myself with NO time to do the community psychology interventions I was passionate about.

I noticed I was heading for financial, creative and emotional burnout and invested in business coaching to figure out how on earth to make it right. It was the best decision I ever made and I have put the key learning points into this blog and the psychology private practice business plan workbook (available when the Crowdfunder goes live on March 2nd!) to help make sure you don’t make the same mistakes as me. If you are just starting out you might find yourself feeling resistant or “a bit icky” about some of this stuff. Don’t worry that is part of the journey. You will feel better when you are up, running and helping lots of people.

The Foundation of a Psychology Business Plan

Mission: What do you want from your private psychology practice or project?

All too often we set off into a venture without being intentional about what we are trying to create. However you run your practice, whether full time or part time I guarantee it is going to have you working more hours than you ever did in the NHS. The good news is many of those hours won’t feel like “work” at all if you are passionate about the purpose of your practice. So don’t skip this bit if you want to feel fulfilled rather than drained by your work!

The following questions should help you figure out your personal and professional mission:

What is the change you want to create in the world?

What is the change you want to make in your life?

Write out one or two clear mission statements that sum up the impact you want to have for other people. Then write one that puts into words what your work needs to provide for you and your family.

I want to help X (insert group of people you want to help) to do X. I will use my X skills to do this.

I want to create a life that allows me to live my values. The things I value most in life are x, y and z. My business will help me to have more of these in my life by x, y ,...

Writing for your psychology or therapy website: How to get started and key principles.

I've been getting lots of questions lately from people who are getting really stuck with writing for their website. And I see why; it can seem like a really intimidating job. And we've done some really awesome deep dive episodes here on the Business of Psychology with Allie Linn, who's a copywriter, with Vicki Jakes, who's a keyword expert, and with Melissa, who did an amazing episode with us on website design. But I know that it can all feel a little bit overwhelming, and people can get really stuck with just the simple stuff of how to write the basic copy for a homepage and about page on their websites. Today we will talk through the following:

1. Key principles of good writing for psychologists and therapists.
2. Keywords. How you can scatter those through your homepage in order to make sure that the right people can find your website on Google. 
3. Homepage. What to include on a good homepage.
4. About page. What you need to say and what you don’t. 

Key principles of good writing for psychologists and therapists.

There are a few key principles that you must remember when you're writing anything that's for your ideal client. So whether that's your website, whether that's your blog, whether it's emails, or social media posts. 

1. Write for your potential clients, not for your peers. This is such a problem for psychologists and therapists, we all do this, we all worry loads about what the people we trained with will think, what old supervisors will think, what other people in our professional groups will think. But the fact is, that doesn't matter. If your mission is to help a certain client group who need your support, then think about them when you're writing and try to cut out all that noise that your mind might generate about what other people in your life might think.
2. Speak their language. You've got to meet your ideal client where they're at right now, rather than where you want them to be. So it may be that the way that they talk about their problems is really different from the way that you would frame them. I think that's very often true, especially if we're in the perinatal, parenting or child development space. It might be that people are saying things online and asking questions online, and you found your ideal clients and you've been talking to them, but you feel a bit uncomfortable with the way that they phrase things. You need to find a way to use that phrasing, their words, in your content and in your website, so that they can see that you understand them and that you don't judge them. People feel really judged if they land on a page and it's not using any of the terminology they would use. And it's very clear that the psychologist or therapist or other professional thinks that there is a better way of talking about it. We would never do that in the first therapy session with someone would we? In our first therapy sessions with people we mirror their language and then we gradually modulate it, do some psychoeducation, maybe change the way that they see the issue...

Ever wanted to know how to bring psychological thinking to the government? Susie Ballentyne is an applied psychologist who currently offers research and consultation, cognitive behavioural coaching and psychologically informed leadership development. Susie has held influential positions bringing psychological theory and practice to government decision making. The impact she has had in her career is truly inspiring. This was a fantastic podcast to record and I am sure many of you will want to contact Susie to find out more so all of her contact details are at the bottom of the page.

If you want to join a community where you are inspired and supported to have a bigger impact then check out the Do More Than Therapy Membership.

Here is how Susie describes herself:

From my early years as a psychologist, I have worked with individuals and groups from Europe, to West Africa and the Middle East, as well as many in the UK, exploring the issues of leadership, identity and resilience. Initially, working with the military in high-stress environments.

I went on to focus my post-graduate research at LSE in the Middle East, exploring the stories and experiences of local people in the aftermath of war. Understanding the human response to conflict fuelled my fascination in psychological resilience: how do people manage the challenges of life, why is it sometimes so hard, and other times we seem to ‘survive and thrive’?

My current doctoral research at Sussex University asks a similar question, exploring stories of migration from refugees fleeing war in Syria. How do we find meaning and purpose in difficult times, how do we adapt and cope day to day?

Over the years I have worked with a fascinating variety of people such as small-business owners, new parents, military personnel, managers and Ambassadors. Together we’ve explored identity, resilience and leadership across a range of contexts.

Now, working with the latest empirically-based research and assessment tools, I offer support to individuals and teams, centred around psychological coaching, research, training and leadership development.

You can find Susie in the following places:

https://www.susieballentyne.com

info@susieballentyne.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/susie-ballentyne-mbpss-7483b132/

Links

Your Guide To Launching In 14 Simple Steps

https://psychologists.drrosie.co.uk/launch-in-14-simple-steps

Join The Do More Than Therapy Membership

https://psychologists.drrosie.co.uk/the-do-more-than-therapy-membership/

Fear of failure/public humiliation is the number one reason psychologists and therapists put off that big project they have been wanting to do. The good news is we can use the same skills we apply to clients to overcome this and do great things. This is the first in a series of mindset coaching episodes to get you off the starting blocks.

Links

To join the waiting list for the Do More Than Therapy membership visit https://psychologists.drrosie.co.uk/membership-waiting-list

To take my quiz to find out what is holding YOU back from being creative in your work visit

https://www.drrosie.co.uk/quiz

Russ Harris' FREE COVID 19 resources and meditation tracks

https://www.actmindfully.com.au/free-stuff/free-audio/?fbclid=IwAR3xexTBkUaVFECL2mTcskh_ghuSvfRcaAQW3wn3A0B0fcmCWodAEKNSuB8

Blog: How the fear of failure is killing your creativity as a psychologist or therapist and how to deal with it

My quiz is designed to help you figure out what is getting in the way of your creativity as a psychologist or therapist. A theme that has come out over and over again is the fear of failure. We often get stuck in our practice, knowing we want to do more but paralysed. Sometimes this is because we don't know WHAT to do, which is why the Do More Than Therapy membership, and this podcast, have practical topics like "how to publish a book" with Tim Lewis. But often, we do know what to do, we just can't seem to make ourselves do it. This is usually because we are paralysed by fear.

Most of us feel this fear when we are stepping outside of our comfort zones and doing something new to us. I certainly get it when I'm recording this podcast!

What is so scary about failure for psychologists and therapists?

I use a lot of ACT in my work and I find it helpful to think of the fear of failure as "fusion with the outcome" of our venture. By that I mean we have started to act as though several things are true:

1. That our thoughts are reality
2. We can predict the future
3. Whether the project succeeds or fails is entirely down to us
4. That success or failure of the project means something about us as a person.

People who have been successful in life often get away with this style of thinking as it makes us work very hard. The problem comes when we apply it to innovative projects because failure is an essential part of the process of creating something great and in order to be resilient enough to keep going we need to see the venture as separate to our self worth.

Why we need to fight the fear to be the best psychologists and therapists we can be

If we don't separate from the outcome of our venture we will be operating from a place of fear. This means our body and mind will switch off the capacities for creative problem solving, social connection, resolving conflict and resting and digesting. Basically we will be unable to do our best work.

Also, if we don't get instant success (which we probably won't) we will think it is because "I am a failure". The logical behaviour if we believe this is to give up and hide from others. This is the most harmful thing that could happen to your ability to make an impact on the mental heath landscape.

What needs to happen for your project to be a Success?

It may be helpful to consider all of the factors that must align for your project to succeed.

• Your intervention (book, course, podcast etc.) has to be what someone else needs at that moment.
• They need to understand how it helps them.
• They...

Is it harder to be in private practice now than it was in 2018? The question every psychologist or therapist stepping into private practice wants to ask

Today I'm answering a question which is at the forefront of newbies into private practice’ minds, and I think it's a really important question for all of us to reflect upon, especially those of us that have been in private practice for a while and might find ourselves in the position of giving advice to people who are new into private practice. And that question is, is it harder to be in private practice in 2023 than it was in 2018?

This is a really important question because I do see that a lot of the advice that's given does seem to be reflective of the time that many of us started our businesses, which makes sense because the way that we learnt to get our first clients and to market ourselves is based on that experience, and that's what we want to pass on. But often for people who are starting out now, either they don't trust that advice because they've noticed that the economy has changed, that the industry around mental health and wellbeing has changed, or they do trust the advice and they try and follow it and find that things don't quite work out in the way that they were hoping.

So I thought what would be useful today is to think about what has changed in the economy, what has changed in the wellbeing industry, and then to think about what that might mean for us in terms of practical marketing strategies.

Race in Therapy Workshop

We have a workshop coming up on 13th July. It is hosted by Kaemotherapy and is all about Race in Therapy, how we can support clients of colour and make sure our practices are part of the changes that need to happen in mental health in the UK. There are only ten spaces available so visit Race in Therapy Workshop to secure your place on the live training.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links & References:

Grow Your Practice For Stability and Security in 2023 (Private Podcast)

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1258580/wellness-product-spending-uk/

Episode 123: Using social proof ethically and effectively for psychologists and therapists

Episode 87: Marketing an online course for psychologists part 4: Do you have the authority to launch an online course?

Episode 114: How to network as a mental health professional

Episode 119: How to know if any marketing activity is working for your private practice

How a Psychologist Uses Heavy Metal to Build Community and Change Lives

In this interview with Dr Kate Quinn I learn how, alongside a hectic NHS role, Kate built a community of "metal heads" who use heavy metal music to process and deal with their emotions. As a self confessed mainstream kind of girl I was fascinated by the science behind using metal music in this way. It makes total sense that music that speaks to your emotions would be more effective than generic music that is SUPPOSED to be relaxing (but just makes many of us want to visit the bathroom).

Kate also tells us the HOW. How she managed to take this from an awesome idea to a movement that is helping thousands of people. It is inspiring stuff but also worth grabbing a note pad (or your phone) to take a note of some of the practical steps Kate talks us through.

I hope you'll enjoy this podcast episode as much as I enjoyed recording it.

Are you a psychologist or therapist who wants to make a bigger impact by getting out of the therapy room? If so come and join the Do More Than Therapy community at www.drrosie.co.uk

If you enjoyed this episode please leave a 5* review wherever you get your podcasts and share the episode on social media. You can tag me on facebook @DrRosieGilderthorp and instagram @rosiegilderthorp

I make this podcast for you so your feedback shapes future episodes and keeps me going too!

Links

You can find Kate on Facebook @heavymetaltherapy

Instagram @heavymetaltherapy

Twitter @HeavyTherapy

I also hugely recommend checking out the blog and resources at www.heavymetaltherapy.co.uk

Does Fear Of Anxiety Hold You Back As A Psychologist/Therapist?

Do you ever wonder why some people seem to find opportunities at every turn? Are they born lucky? Or can they see things you can't? I have noticed that anxiety is holding lots of us back as psychologists and therapists without us even realising it. Here is how ACT can help with that.

Join the waiting list for the Do More Than Therapy membership at https://psychologists.drrosie.co.uk/membership-waiting-list

Blog Post

As psychologists and therapists we are well used to helping people whose anxiety gets in the way of them living the lives they want to live. 

You probably also recognise that anxiety has held you back at some moments in your life too. Whether you’ve had your own therapy or just reflected on it personally most of us have key moments in life when it has become especially clear to us that we have a lot in common with our clients. There have been lots of those for me, like when my son was poorly as a newborn and I found myself experiencing panic anytime I went into the hospital for an appointment for over a year afterwards. I could barely think when talking to his consultant, let alone ask the questions I wanted to ask. At these times we know that we share the human condition with our clients.

But I have noticed that many of us don’t recognise the impact our completely natural anxiety is having on our ability to help people in new ways. 

I’ve talked on this podcast before about how ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy) and CFT (compassion focussed therapy) are my “go to” models in the therapy room and how they also help me personally too. One of the ways I have found using ACT helpful is to help me notice when I am avoiding unpleasant feelings of anxiety by staying in my comfort zone when my values are actually telling me I need to do something different. 

What worries me slightly is that I think I was avoiding scary things in some really subtle ways without having any idea that I was doing it. We don’t often talk about this unconscious avoidance when doing ACT with clients as there is usually a lot of conscious avoidance to deal with first but it strikes me that this is likely to be a big issue for many people who are generally doing OK in life but feel something is holding them back. 

Here are some of the ways I was unconsciously avoiding my natural anxiety:

Never having the idea/not entertaining it – I never used to see opportunities for press coverage

Forgetting to follow up – I would get really exciting emails or calls from people, even the BBC once, and totally forget to respond.

Procrastinating – it may surprise people who know me that this is on my list as I am not much of a procrastinator. I tend to rush things when I am scared rather than putting them off but certain things, like legally forming my CIC, I knew I wanted to do for AGES but just kept putting them to the bottom of my list because I was SCARED. 

Studying – Maybe this is controversial but I think many of us do extra courses on top of our core training, not because we genuinely think we need them, but because it buys us more time before we have to start offering the scary new therapy or because it alleviates our anxiety slightly to have an extra certificate. I’ve done this so many times but I recently decided it had to stop, that is one of the reasons I added the CPD planner to the psychologists business plan, as I realised I needed to be more intentional. For example, I seriously contemplated whether I needed to get a £4000 coaching qualification before I even recorded this episode for you. So great was my imposter syndrome. But when I sat down with a few books and a big note pad and mapped out which ACT principles

Links

Your guide to launching in 14 simple steps

https://psychologists.drrosie.co.uk/launch-in-14-simple-steps

The Ideal Client Avatar explained

https://psychologists.drrosie.co.uk/the-business-of-psychology/ideal-client-avatar-psychologists-therapists-marketing

Join the Do More Than Therapy Membership

https://psychologists.drrosie.co.uk/the-do-more-than-therapy-membership/

What is a funnel and why do psychologists and therapists need one in their marketing?

If you have decided that you want to do more than therapy in your business, and if you have ever visited a website that talks about “online marketing” it is HIGHLY likely that Facebook now targets you with lots of ads from Californian online marketing tycoons telling you how to create the perfect “funnel”.

It would be very easy to switch off and ignore that messaging because we don’t naturally enjoy the idea of funnelling people. I know I never clicked on anything with that word in it until recently. However, now I understand it, I actually think, a little like the ideal client avatar that we looked at a few episodes back, that we need to know about funnels and how to use them.

Essentially a "funnel" is just another way of talking about the journey someone takes from knowing nothing about you to working with you. It constitutes steps 3 through to 14 of the “14 steps to a simple launch” guide you can download. In my mind I break it down into four stages.

1.Making people aware of you

2. Building know, like and trust or showing them you are an expert

3. Letting them know what you offer and how it could help them

4. Making sure they know exactly how to get it (if they want it).

The idea is to move people through the four stages so they feel confident to buy what you are offering if it lines up with what they need. In this episode I am going to break these down a little to give you an overview of what you are trying to achieve at each stage.

Stage one: Making people aware of you

You may have 7 PhDs and be an absolute professional authority in helping people diagnosed with bi-polar to lead full and rich lives. You may be the best at it and your peers may be really excited that you are making an online course. But if no one who is struggling with bi-polar knows that you are the best at it you are still not going to have anyone to sell your online course to. This is where most of us are when we start out on our journey as we often don’t have much of a public profile and we often don’t really like shouting about our expertise.

Activities for this stage: Blog posts, valuable social media posts, podcasts, videos on social media, in person networking events, press coverage, good search engine optimisation, publishing research, writing a book or a book chapter. You can amplify all of these things using paid advertising once you know what works well. The aim is always to build your credibility and authority so that when people are struggling in a particular area your name comes up.

Stage two: Showing the people that are now aware of you that you are an expert

People need a lot of reassurance before they are willing to consider investing precious time or money in our products or services. This is especially true when it relates to mental health, people who are suffering feel vulnerable and are not going to want to risk taking a course that might make them feel worse. This stage is all about proving that you can help. Depending on the group you are talking to you might also want to emphasise...

How to network as a mental health professional

Links for this episode: 

Instagram: 

@rosiegilderthorp

@ThePregnancyPsychologist

Full show notes for this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Free Client Checklist

Are you just starting out in private practice? Feeling overwhelmed by all the stuff there is to do by any chance? Paralysed by perfectionism or procrastination? Never fear! Psychology Business School has got your back. And the good news is, there's actually not that much you need to do to run your practice safely and effectively. Download a free checklist today to find out exactly what really matters. Tick off every box and you can see your first clients with confidence that you've done everything important. Get your free copy at psychologybusinessschool.com/client-checklist

Hello and welcome to The Business of Psychology. I can't believe it, but this is actually the final episode of season three, which has completely taken me by surprise! But don't worry, you don't have very long to wait until season four; season four is launching at the end of December just in time for the new year. It's not a big long gap this time, just long enough for me to get some juicy interviews recorded for you. 

Today we're talking about networking, and how to network effectively as a mental health professional, because I know that this is something that causes a huge amount of anxiety for a lot of you. It's something I used to really hate and I now really love, and I think the difference for me is that when I go to networking now, I'm not going like the first day of school, trying to impress people, trying to make new friends (I often do make friends), but actually I always go to networking with a strategy. There are always some key things that I'm looking to get done while I'm there and that helps me in two ways; it helps me deal with my anxiety, because it reminds me of my values and how going to this networking session, which might initially seem quite scary, is taking committed action towards my values, so that really helps. But also, it helps me because it helps me to make the time to prioritise it, because we all have massively long to do lists and if you're listening to this when it goes live in November and you're anything like me, you are probably finding that your calendar is getting fuller and fuller and fuller as Christmas approaches. Which is terrifying, isn't it? But it's the reality; we're all really busy people and so making the time for networking is difficult to do if you might end up just going, drinking a lukewarm cup of tea and having some biscuits. That's not really worth your time. But if you do it strategically, then networking can be one of the most valuable ways of bringing new work into your business, collaborating on bigger projects, and basically reaching more people. I think it's a great way to get referrals but it's also just a brilliant way to accelerate any other projects that you're trying to work on at the moment. If I'd never been networking, for example, I wouldn't be collaborating with Pregnancy Sickness Support, which I'm really proud to be doing at the moment. I also never would have established my practice in the way that it was in Plymouth. When I got down there, it was the first networking event that I went to where I met my friend Nicky, who is an antenatal teacher, and we put on a huge event for all of the pregnant...

6 key policies/contracts you need in a psychology private practice

Policies might seem like a boring subject but trust me, the first time something unexpected happens in your practice you will be grateful that you did all your thinking in advance. In the past year I have faced situations where people haven’t paid me for my time and where I have been very worried about the wellbeing of a client. These were horrible, painful, moments but having policies laid out for me to follow meant I could feel confident that I handled them in the best way I could. 

Some of these policies and contracts are legal documents that need input from a lawyer. Others are more essential from an ethical and practical standpoint and juts require you to sit down and think about how you want to handle situations that come up in your business.

Therapy contract

This can be one or two documents depending on how you work but it needs to include at least three main areas:

1. What you expect from your clients
2. What they can expect from you
3. How they let you know if something goes wrong and how you will let them know if something goes wrong

It is worth having a lawyer draw up a contract for you that meets your specific requirements. I don’t want to be the prophet of doom but sadly, in private practice, you will most likely at some point experience people who ghost you without paying or expect you to work outside of your office hours or who claim you have not provided the services you were paid for. Thankfully this hasn’t happened to me frequently but I did once have a client who refused to pay a large sum of money. I was incredibly grateful that my contract was watertight and the matter was resolved quickly. A horrible experience and I will make another podcast about that at some stage, but at least there wasn’t the added anxiety of an ambiguous contract. A good lawyer who understands the nature of your work will make sure your contract has explanations of what will happen in all kinds of situations, including a global pandemic, for example, so you and your clients have a safety net of certainty to fall back on. Clare Veal, our resident lawyer in Psychology Business School has created a template that students can adapt for their practices based on knowledge of how we work 

In my opinion, you also need a plain English section that explains, human to human, the process of working with you, how they should pay you and how to contact you. This needs to spell out what happens if they are paying by insurance, who is liable for any excess on an insurance policy, what happens if they miss a session (including who pays for it) and how much notice you need of session cancellations. You may need different contracts for different insurance companies. I now only work with two so I just have clauses for them in the main contract but if you have several that have different DNA policies of their own you may need individual contracts. All of that stuff falls into the category of what you expect from your clients. 

You also need to set out clearly what your clients can expect from you (and what they can’t) state your working times, how long they should expect to wait for an email response. How they can contact you and whether you are willing/able to provide short notice phone calls or sessions. My life means my clients need to be very clear that when I am not at work I am NOT available so my contract spells this out and gives them other services they can access if they need help and I’m not available. 

You can also state here how you intend to let them know if you need to cancel and what happens to their booking if you cancel as well as how much notice you will give for planned holiday.

Personally, I have combined my plain speaking and legal contract into one document so I...

How to publish a children's book with Counsellor Sue Steer

Welcome to today's episode of the Business of Psychology. I'm joined by Sue Steer, who is a counsellor, but also a children's author. I'm really excited to talk to Sue about her journey into private practice and the process of adding a children's book to her already successful business.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links & References:

Start & Grow: The Complete Course for Psychologists and Therapists - Psychology Business School

Links for Sue:

Website: www.steerintocounselling.co.uk

Instagram: @steer_into_counselling

Facebook: Steer into Counselling

Bea's Busy Brain (amazon.co.uk)

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• I introduce Sue and she tells us about who she is and what she does 00:00
• Sue tells us how long it took her to go from being a solo practitioner to bringing associates on board? 05:35
• I ask Sue what she found tricky in setting up her private practice process 08:43
• Sue tells us what prompted her to start thinking about adding a children's book to her business 11:23
• Sue tells us about the main character, Bea 17:12
• Sue explains the process of writing and publishing a book 22:52
• I ask Sue about marketing strategy and what her thoughts were about how to get her book out into the world 32:41
• Sue tells her where we can find her 38:00

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.

Mentioned in this episode:

Start and Grow

Before you go, did you know that I have a course for professionals just like you who are starting out in independent practice? In fact, my Start and Grow course has already supported hundreds of psychologists and therapists to build impactful, financially rewarding, and professionally fulfilling practices. When you sign up to the course, you get clear step-by-step support to build a practice that supports your values and rewards your hard work through our comprehensive online learning modules. You get peace of mind, thanks to our complete suite of legal documents from Clare Veal at Aubergine Legal, you get 12 months of membership to our supportive student community, access to our private students' podcast, so you can learn in your own time and in your own way. You, yes, I see you learning while you're doing the washing up! And you get access to regular group coaching sessions with me and the rest of our...

Summary

In this episode I coach Do More Than Therapy Founding member Alice Fiorica in how best to launch her first ever webinar. We talk mindset, marketing and why getting uncomfortable by talking to family, friends and colleagues about your project is more important than Facebook ads.

We examine the reality of online marketing and how reaching out to your connections is FAR more likely to fill your webinar than putting out a Facebook advert to people who don't know, like or trust you yet. We discuss how to ask your contacts to help you promote your new online services without annoying them and how to make the most of the feedback that is all around you to create something people will know they want.

Do you like what you hear?

Join the Do More Than Therapy membership to learn how to live your values, help more people and avoid burnout.

Find out how to join and sign up for our FREE online summit at:

https://psychologists.drrosie.co.uk/

Direct link to sign up for the June 22nd online summit:

https://psychologists.drrosie.co.uk/event/

Fancy some coaching?

If you are looking for 1:1 support with your project then contact me on rosie@drrosie.co.uk

If you are a Do More Than Therapy member you could access some "on air" coaching for free!

Links

If you have been thinking of integrating mindfulness into your practice but want to experience the benefits yourself first Alice's webinar is a great place to start.

You can find Alice at Cross Roads Psychology

www.crossroadspsychology.co.uk

You can find Alice's helpful blog at:

https://training.crossroadspsychology.co.uk/stress-blog

And her webinar landing page at:

https://training.crossroadspsychology.co.uk/stress-uncertainty-course

In this episode I share some of the knowledge I have learned from my marketing coach, Janet Murray. I could not recommend her Build Your Online Audience programme more highly. If you want more of your business to involve helping people through social media and email it is well worth the investment.

http://www.janetmurray.co.uk/?partner=45

The unexpected costs of running a private practice

I know nobody likes talking about money. I don't like talking about money. But I am motivated to make an episode about money today, because I see so many people being completely blindsided by the costs of running a private practice, and setting their fees badly at the beginning of their private work, because they just don't anticipate some of the stuff that they're going to end up spending money on. This is a mistake that I made, and it's only from learning the very hard way, by not making enough money in my practice to even pay for my childcare, that I came to this realisation, and I don't want anybody else getting started in private practice now to be going through that. So I thought I would run through some of the unexpected costs of running a private practice, so that you can make an empowered pricing decision from the beginning. 

Supervision 

The first unexpected cost is supervision. Now, you probably know that you need supervision, and you probably have already factored that into your equation, but what you might not realise is that you might need a lot more than you think you do when you're starting out in private practice, because you might feel a little bit less confident than you do when you're surrounded by a team in an NHS setting. You also might find that you want specialist supervision on particular topics. I often talk in private practice about how beneficial it can be to have more than one supervisor. For a long time I had a supervisor who is a specialist in trauma, because I was doing a lot of trauma therapy, and I also had a supervisor who is a specialist in online therapy, because online therapy was quite a new thing for me, but also a new thing in general when I started it, and I felt like I needed somebody who had expertise in dealing with risk issues in particular, in the online context. So I actually ended up paying for two lots of supervision every month, though when I started out in practice I thought if I look at the hours I'm doing versus what I was doing in the NHS, probably once a month is enough. Well, it wasn't, so my supervision hours were always double what I had initially thought they were going to be.

CPD 

The other thing that I hadn't really considered when I set out in private practice was how much I would want to spend on CPD. Again, you might have already thought about this, maybe wanting to engage more in continuing professional development is a reason that you left the NHS or a reason that you're deciding to strike out in private practice. So it may be that this has been at the top of your mind, but for me, I hadn't really considered how much CPD I would want to do in order to feel like I was serving my clients to the best of my ability. We don't actually tend to do that much of it in the NHS, or I didn't; there wasn't as much opportunity for it. But when I got out into the private space, I became aware of all of these amazing courses that I could do, and while I would say that you need to watch your imposter syndrome sometimes, it may be that your imposter syndrome is telling you you need to do course after course after course, when in reality you'd be fine just reading a book and using your existing knowledge and supervision, there actually are times when it's really beneficial to your private practice to get an extra accreditation under your belt, or to spend a bit of time on some additional workshops that are going to give you that confidence that you need to push forward with your marketing. So making sure that you've got a healthy budget in your mind for CPD is really important from the beginning, in my opinion. 

Insurance

Obviously insurance costs money, and you need to think from the beginning about what that premium is likely to be for you, make some calls and get a realistic quote. In my experience it's been going up year on year, and also because...

Celebrating 150 episodes of Business of Psychology with Dr Claire Plumbly

Dr Claire Plumbly takes over as guest host of the Business of Psychology podcast to interview Rosie on the occasion of celebrating 150 episodes! 

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Episode Links:

Episode 106: A model for truly integrative therapy: SIP with Dr Melanie Lee and Bridger Falkenstein

Episode 120: All That We Are: Best Selling Author Gabriella Braun

Episode 62: Which social media platform works best for psychologists and therapists?

Top 3 Downloaded Episodes:

Episode 1: Business planning to supercharge your psychology private practice

Episode 18: Systematic reviews: How to do a systematic review in independent practice

Episode 41: How to set your fees in your psychology private practice with “pricing queen” Sally Farrant

Marketing an online course mini series:

Episode 84: Creating and marketing an online course for psychologists and therapists part 1: Creating a freebie to grow your online audience

Episode 85: Marketing an online course for psychologists part 2: Landing page essentials for psychologists and therapists with with Vicki Jakes

Episode 86: Marketing an online course for psychologists and therapists part 3: Promoting your freebie with Dr Catherine Hallissey

Episode 87: Marketing an online course for psychologists part 4: Do you have the authority to launch an online course?

Episode 88:

A model for truly integrative therapy: SIP with Dr Melanie Lee and Bridger Falkenstein

I'm here today with Dr Mel Lee from Trust Psychology, and Bridger Falkenstein from the Beyond Healing Centre in the US, and notably also from the Notice That podcast. I'm really excited to have Mel and Bridger here today to talk to us about Somatic Integration Processing, which is a new model which aims to help us to synthesise the other approaches that we might have in our arsenal as therapists. SIP has a really deep focus on the mind and body connection, and also on the multiplicity of selves. For me, these are two things that have always been a really big part of my work, but I have often struggled to see how they all come together and fit into a treatment plan.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links for Mel:

Website: www.trustpsychology.co.uk

Email: 

info@trustpsychology.co.uk

melanie.lee@trustpsychology.co.uk

LinkedIn: 

Dr Melanie Lee 

Trust Psychology 

The Business of Psychology Episode 61: Turning a practice into a service with Dr Melanie Lee

Links for Bridger:

Website: www.beyondhealingcenter.com

Facebook: Beyond Healing Center

Instagram: @beyondhealingcenter417

Notice That Podcast

Beyond Trauma Podcast

Evidence Based Therapist Podcast

The highlights 

• I welcome and introduce Mel and Bridger 00:01
• Bridger tells us about why he created SIP and why it needed to exist 03:09
• Mel tells us what drew her to SIP, and we talk more about the model 06:53
• Bridger explains his background and what brought the elements of SIP to the forefront of his mind at the right moment 16:27
• Mel talks about how SIP helps her feel like a ‘therapy ninja’ in the therapy room 20:04
• Bridger and Mel take up through the core aspects of an SIP case conceptualization 34:22
• Mel gives us an example of a common thing that she would talk about now that she might not have named before 40:42
• Bridger tells us about the plan for getting SIP out to more therapists 47:36
• I ask about the business side of SIP 49:42
• Mel tells us how people can get involved 53:27

Membership Changes - Join Now!

Before you go, I just wanted to remind you that we are making some big changes at the moment to

Season Intro: Resilience and Adaptability: How to thrive in 2025

Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology. It feels like it has been a long time since I've been here behind the mic and it's lovely to be back. I'm really looking forward to settling into this season but I felt like I needed to talk a bit about why it has taken me a while to get going with this season and to think about what I'm going to bring you, because I'm very excited about what we've got up ahead, but it does feel a little bit different to what we've done before. 

Full show notes for this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links/references:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

This week’s question: 

• What trends have you noticed coming down the track in mental health care? Is there anything that's giving you anxiety about the future of independent practice or anything you've noticed that you're really excited about and you think could really change the way that we work?

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

Shownotes 

Why has it taken me so long to bring this season to you? 

As you know, if you've been following this podcast for a while, I've been working in seasons or series for the past few years because I felt like that's the best way of curating the content and making sure that what I'm putting out there is always the quality and well researched content that I want to create for you. I just don't feel like I want to be on a hamster wheel of having to churn out content on a weekly cadence, which might not feel like my best work. So I've been dedicating time to the curation of this season, really thinking about the questions I get asked and what people need at this moment. I’ve also been spending a bit longer trying to pursue the guests I really wanted to talk to, which takes time. This season is all about resilience and adaptability, and I think these are two things which we really need to consider for our independent practices moving forward. 

We've talked on this podcast before about some of the lessons that I've learnt from my MBA. The thing that I have taken away from that, which I just don't think I would have gained the perspective anywhere else, is that we always need to be thinking about the problem that we solve for people, and we have to be accepting of the fact that how we do it, the mediums we use, the methods that we use, will have to change as our customers change and their expectations and the climate that they're living in changes. 

The AI Revolution

When I look at the history of independent practice, It has been incredibly static. The way that we do independent practice now… yes, we're using things like video conferencing software to talk to clients that are in a different geographical space to us, but actually, the fundamental, what we are doing day in, day out, and how we do that, hasn't really changed for a very long time, since the beginning of independent practice for mental health professionals. And now I'm not sure that that's going to continue in exactly the way that it has. What I am sure about is that there will always be a space for us and that we will always be needed. But I think we have to open our minds to moving with the next industrial revolution, the AI revolution, and working out what our useful place within quite a different work and social...

5 marketing trends private practice owners should know about

Key Points

1. Relationships are key to all business goals
2. Authority is more important than social media (affiliations, media, public speaking, guesting on podcasts or blogs, books, longer form content that shows your expertise brings the right kind of audience, helps your SEO) Don't bend yourself out of shape to fit with social media trends create stuff you are proud of and use social media to get more eyes on it. 3-4 times a week is fine unless you are inspired to create more AND it is OK to take breaks. It is far more important to have a well thought through strategy that builds your authority and reach than to show up relentlessly on social media.
3. People need longer to consider their purchases, give them the time and space (free consultations, free trials, open days)
4. Email lists are essential create freebies that you can offer to people when you are doing the authority-building activities I just talked about. That way if someone has seen you speak for example they can then download your freebie and join your mailing list to keep in touch.
5. Specialising has never been more crucial there is so much noise on social media it is unbearable. In order to stand out and build that authority you really need a specialism.

Useful Links

Client Checklist 2021

Psychology Business School

Episode on specialising: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/e30ee22c-128a-4343-adce-d0063b0e8512

Episode on authority building: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/27c69a61-a513-4e5d-9991-64bc6962f778

Epsiode on blogging: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/2e15439d-31c8-49da-b5cd-20f6c6bd721a

If you have ever had the feeling that your current job isn't allowing you to live your values but you don't feel sure what you can/should do about it this episode will help you get unstuck. Dr Sarah Swan shares how she navigated the practical and emotional challenges of giving up a senior NHS role to strike out into the world of private practice, business consultancy and the ACP.

Join the FREE Do More Than Therapy community on Facebook and leave your email address to get the details for the online summit on 24th June!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/domorethantherapygroup

Join the Do More Than Therapy Membership waiting list at:

https://psychologists.drrosie.co.uk/membership-waiting-list

You can find out more about Sarah and her work here:

http://swanconsultancy.co.uk/organisations/businesses/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-sarah-swan-91a84112a/

https://www.facebook.com/swanconsultancy/

Find out more about becoming a member of the ACP and the COVID-19 response to help members and non members at: https://acpuk.org.uk/

Marketing an online course for psychologists and therapists part 3: Promoting your freebie with Dr Catherine Hallissey

In this episode I talk to Dr Catherine Hallisey, who is a child psychologist, owner of the Reclaim Parenthood online membership, and creator of the Raising Well Behaved Kids workshop. I'm really excited to have Catherine here to inspire us as we hear about her workshops, because they've been wildly successful, and I'd really like to dive into the secrets of how she’s created that success.

The highlights

• I welcome Catherine to the podcast and she tells us who she is and who she helps 00:22
• Catherine tells us what inspired her to create her first workshop 02:03
• Catherine talks about how she promoted her in person workshops 05:15
• We discuss Catherine’s experience of setting up a Facebook page 08:16
• Catherine talks about the membership, which was sparked by the Facebook page 12:04
• Catherine tells us how she came to offering workshops, and the importance of the title 15:13
• Catherine talks about the free checklist she offers to promote her evergreen workshops, and how she uses her online community to test ideas 23:31
• We talk about the importance of building an community and building relationships on social media 28:23
• We discuss designing your ideal work/life balance 34:49
• I thank Catherine and she tells us where we can find her online 41:15
• Catherine encourages us, as psychologists, to bring our expertise and abilities to these spaces 43:17

Catherine’s Links:

Websites: 

https://catherinehallissey.com

https://raisingwellbehavedkids.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CatherineHallisseyPsychologist/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/catherine.hallissey/

**********

Do you dream of creating an online course? Are you desperate to reach more people but sceptical that you can ACTUALLY make it work? 

The truth is a lot of online courses do fail but that isn't because the content is bad. It is because the marketing strategy sucks. The truth is your marketing isn't a separate thing. Talking to the community you want to serve should be part of the development of the course. 

Getting to know them, giving them free resources and building relationships WHILE you build your course in the background is the key to success that most psychologists and therapists launching courses miss. 

Well not you! Because you can download my free course creation guide and get yourself on the right track to creating a course people actually want and need.

The guide talks you through the first, essential steps you must take when planning your course so you can avoid the expensive mistakes I see so many well-intentioned people making.

Get yours at PsychologyBusinessSchool.com (link in the show notes) now. 

https://psychologybusinessschool.com/creating-a-valuable-freebie-psychologist-course-creation

**********

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Business of Psychology podcast. If you share my passion for doing more than therapy, then make sure you come over and join my...

How much can I earn as a psychologist or therapist in private practice?

Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology. Today I'm talking about a subject which will probably make you feel uncomfortable. None of us really like talking about money or the fact that we want it or need it. Those things typically give us the ick, and I'm no exception to that, so expect me to sound awkward today. But the fact is that when you are starting out in any business venture, very often there is a financial gap that you need to fill and there should be a financial aspiration, something that you want to aim for, for yourself, for your family, for whatever your reasons are, for wanting a decent income, and it is nothing to be ashamed of. The fact is, earning money in your independent practice does a lot of good both for you and your personal life, but also for the world in general. But many people going into independent practice, or considering growing their practice, will be asking themselves the question, how much should I expect to earn from this business? And today I'm going to talk a bit about how we might start to answer that question.

Full show notes for this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Episode Links:

Episode 41: How to set your fees in your psychology private practice with “pricing queen” Sally Farrant

Episode 98: The unexpected costs of running a private practice

Episode 19: How Psychologists And Therapists Can Use An Ideal Client Avatar To Co Create And Market Their Services

Episode 158: How to find your ideal clients in 2025: SEO for psychologists and therapists with Chris Morin

Episode 134: Leadership in your Psychology Practice

Episode 61: Turning a practice into a service with Dr Melanie Lee

Episode 152: Thinking differently about your practice: A tool to put the client first

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

Evolve and Thrive Mastermind

Are you a psychologist or therapist with a thriving practice, but you're feeling stuck?

Do you dream of more predictable income or more time for your family and maybe the ability to make a wider impact in mental health?

I get it. You are...

Cyber security: What mental health professionals need to know to protect their practice

I'm joined by Eric Alter, Senior Vice President of Risk, and Cyber Engagement Leader for Marsh Commercial, who provide Oxygen insurance for therapists.

We're talking about cyber insurance and why we might want to consider getting some protection from the threat that we face as practitioners working in an increasingly cyber-heavy environment.

At the end of the episode, I also give a little note about what I did following this; the practical steps that, as a micro business, I took to protect the data of the people that I work with. 

About Eric

Eric joined Marsh in January 2007 as a Business Risk Consultant, helping clients to get a better understanding of their risk landscape and how to prioritise risk mitigation to optimise the return on any investment made. 

Over the years he has taken responsibility for risk engagement across the UK wide Corporate Business and now leads both Risk & Cyber engagement.  In addition to this Eric runs internal training sessions and arranges client facing events focussing on key risk areas.

Eric has in excess of 25 years risk management experience across both the Public & Private Sectors and works with clients of all sizes across a wide range of businesses. Eric also acts as Senior Relationship Officer on a number of complex accounts.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links

Cyber incident response guide: https://psychologybusinessschool.com/cyber-guide

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• I give an introduction to the episode, anticipating the anxiety it may cause 00:00
• I introduce Eric and he tells us about his role 02:00
• Eric talks us through the main cyber threats that we are likely to face in our independent practices 03:42
• We discuss the possible impacts of a cyber attack 10:38
• I ask Eric what the main things are that we need to be doing to prevent a cyber attack 17:11
• Eric tells us what to do if we think our practice has had a cyber attack 36:05
• I tell you the practical steps I have taken since the interview 41:21

Leadership in your Psychology Practice

Hello and welcome to the new series of the Business of Psychology! Each series we are taking a theme that matters to us in independent practice and going deep on that topic. This time we are focusing on fulfilment in independent practice. We've got some amazing interviews lined up for this series of psychologists and therapists finding fulfilment in inspiring ways. But before we get started with interviews I wanted to bring you a short solo episode about a topic that often comes up when I'm talking to people thinking about growing their practice in the pursuit of finding more fulfilment.

And that is leadership.

Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Psychology Business School: Start & Grow and Coaching

Is this the year that you take your private practice seriously? Maybe you are just starting out or perhaps you want to grow your practice with a team or passive income. Whatever stage you are at, I would love to support you. For new practices, I have our group coaching programme, Start and Grow where you will find all the support, resources and knowledge you need to create an impactful and rewarding practice. 

https://psychologybusinessschool.com/psychology-business-school/

For more established practices come and take a look at my coaching for growth packages. I have a couple of spots left for individual coaching so let me help you get 2024 off to the best start possible.

https://psychologybusinessschool.com/1-to-1-coaching-for-mental-health-professionals/

Links & References:

Episode 53: Case Management: A creative and flexible way to work for psychologists with Dr Shabnam Berry-Khan

Episode 61: Turning a practice into a service with Dr Melanie Lee

Episode 129: How to make sure your marketing actually works: How to use authority for psychologists and therapists

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

Ways in which we need to lead

Growing your practice with associates or another model can allow you to do bigger, more impactful things like research, writing, training, working with organisations, the list goes on. But one thing I have realised is that if you are thinking of growing your practice beyond just you in a room then you are stepping into a leadership role, that might involve management of a team but it might not. As management doesn't come naturally to me at all I have done a lot of reflecting about what is really required to lead a successful practice to growth. I've also had the privilege of coaching many very successful psychologists who have grown very large practices...

Therapeutic knitting with Dr Mia Hobbs and Dr Paula Redmond

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. I am really excited to have Dr Paula Redmond and Dr Mia Hobbs here to talk to me about their new venture in the world of therapeutic knitting. They are both clinical psychologists and avid knitters, and also both alumni of Psychology Business School, so I’m particularly pleased to have them here to talk about their new audio course, which is guiding people in using knitting for self care.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links for Mia and Paula:

creativerestoration.org

www.therapeuticknitting.org

Why I Knit Podcast

@knittingistherapeutic - Instagram

drpaularedmond.com

When Work Hurts Podcast

Dr Paula Redmond - LinkedIn

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• Mia tells us about life as a professional and her background 00:50
• Mia talks about when she first had an inkling that knitting could be helpful 05:00
• Paula tells us about her professional background and what led her to this path 09:00
• Mia and Paula talk about how therapeutic knitting works to support self care 14:08
• Paula and Mia tell us how they got the ball rolling with their therapeutic knitting project 27:24
• Mia and Paula give their advice for people who would like to develop a podcast or a blog 35:24
• Paula and Mia share the more challenging moments from their journey so far 41:24
• I ask Paula and Mia for their one piece of advice they’d give to another psychologist or therapist who would love to do something like this 48:09

The Business Growth Pack

Ready to grow your practice beyond one person and a laptop? 

We are here to support you to build a thriving, impactful and profitable business. 

Invest in our growth pack to confidently grow your service with associates, organisational work or passive income.

Our unique package includes strategy and marketing training from Dr Rosie Gilderthorp, Founder of Psychology Business School, and legal contracts from Clare Veal, Commercial Lawyer from Aubergine Legal.

Together, we will ensure that you have the strategy and documents you need for growth so you can expand your impact and income while maintaining your work-life balance.

Sign up now: The Business Growth Pack

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health...

PBS Summer School Trailer

Hello! Just a quick note from me today to let you know about something really cool that we're doing in Psychology Business School over the summer. And this is something you're going to want to be part of if you are planning to start your independent practice in September. 

Maybe you're thinking, new academic year, new me, new pencil case, and a new practice! And if that is you then PBS Summer School is here to make sure that you use the time over the summer to start laying those foundations for the practice that you deserve and want to work in, in September. So we're not going to stagnate over the summer, we're going to use the summer to do something really productive that's going to improve your quality of life in September.

If you join the PBS Summer School You're going to get the foundations of your practice in place so you hit that ground running in September. We're going to cover the legal essentials. We're going to cover the tools that are helpful and what is not so helpful in independent practice, so you don't waste any money. We're going to get your fees right. We're going to get your marketing strategy right to get your first clients. We're going to talk a bit about directory site profiles and navigating work as an associate or working through insurance companies. 

You'll also get an email and a podcast episode each week, giving you a simple and digestible action to take in just 30 minutes.

I've designed this to be sun lounger friendly. So, don't worry if you're like me and you're juggling kids and holidays and all kinds of responsibilities over the summer, this is not going to be a big time sucking thing. We're just going to take incremental action each week that gets you closer to that practice that you want to be running, so you're ready to take big action when you have more time in September. 

You'll also get a downloadable workbook to help you implement all of this, so you can see your progress as you work through. There'll be a wrap up live Q& A session with me at the end of the summer, so that anything that's holding you back at all, we've got a chance to address in person, but also throughout the summer you'll have access to a private pop up community where you've got help from each other and from me to address any roadblocks that might come up. So I think this is a really great opportunity for you if you're just starting out in independent practice, come and join us in PBS Summer School to create the practice that you want to work in for September: PBS Summer School

And I can't wait to see you there. Sun lounges at the ready!

Links:

PBS Summer School Sign Up

PBS Start and Grow

Rosie on instagram: @rosiegilderthorp

Systems for success - streamlining your processes so you can achieve more with Amy Mitchell

Today’s episode is part of the audio from a class I recorded on efficient processes for our Psychology Business School students. Systems expert Amy Mitchell shares why and how to create processes for everything that create so much space and so much less overwhelm in your day. Working with Amy has really changed my life and business so I knew after we recorded the class that I needed to share it with all of you.

Before we get started I just wanted to let you know that, if you’d like more help taking the overwhelm out of your practice the doors are now open for Psychology Business School. PBS is our complete course covering everything you need to get your practice up and running and bringing you the fulfilment you deserve. We’ve got live classes covering everything from mindset, pricing, business planning to advanced marketing strategies. Plus you get a bundle of legal templates created by a specialist GDPR lawyer just for us so you don’t have to worry whether your privacy policy and terms and conditions are compliant any more.

If you want to: 

• Make enough money to support yourself in your practice
• Break free from the fear of not having enough clients by developing a marketing strategy that works on repeat
• Create REAL work/life balance that doesn’t involve doing your reports at 2am

Then our 12 week programme is perfect for you. Doors will only be open for a week so come over and check out the details at:

https://psychologybusinessschool.com/the-psychology-business-school/

The Highlights

• I introduce Amy and tell you how working with her has changed my life 00:17
• I let you know that the doors are now open for Psychology Business School 00:41
• Amy talks about her love for making things as simple as possible, and using tools to do that 02:04
• We look at the key processes that people need to have in place, beginning with client onboarding 04:53
• Amy tells us the key components a good client onboarding and monitoring system should have 12:59
• Amy takes us through systems we can use for responding to, and monitoring enquiries 17:00
• We discuss putting processes into action, and how to map out your processes without making it into a massive job 22.10
• We talk about processes for invoicing and collecting CPD resources 27.01
• Amy takes us through the tech we can use to help us 33:57
• Amy tells us about the Asana mini training she has 43:53
• I remind you about Psychology Business School 47:02

Links to find Amy

https://www.amymitchell.ca

Asana mini training: https://www.amymitchell.ca/get-asana-mini-training

If this makes you want to try WriteUpp please use my referral link to sign up. It doesn't cost you anything and means they give me a small bonus, thank you!***********

I just wanted to let you know that the doors are now open for Psychology Business School. PBS is our complete course covering everything you need to get your practice up and running and bringing you the fulfilment you deserve. We’ve got live classes covering everything from mindset, pricing, business planning to advanced marketing strategies. Plus you get a bundle of legal templates created by a specialist GDPR lawyer...

Does perfectionism stand in your way? Do you struggle to own your expertise (and charge for your time) because of it? Hear how psychologists and therapists can overcome perfectionism and use a book to accelerate their practice with Michaela Thomas.

Michaela is an experienced Clinical Psychologist, Couples Therapist and founder of The Thomas Connection, as well as a speaker and author of The Lasting Connection, about developing compassion for yourself and your partner. Michaela has a special interest in perfectionism and parental mental health, especially for working mothers trying to balance work with motherhood. Michaela teaches busy ambitious people how to let go of the pressure of perfection and give themselves the permission to pause and unwind, so they can find their passion and purpose, and then move towards joy, vitality and playfulness. Michaela's mantra is 'balance over burnout'. 

The highlights

• Hear how Michaela got to where she is today and how she partitions her time 00:54
• Michaela explains how she came to focusing on perfectionism as her specialism 02:20 
• How Michaela balances her practice and her passion projects 04:03
• Michaela explains how she structures her time to create a sustainable business whilst incorporating boundaries 08:04
• Michaela touches on the fact that Psychologists have to take their own advise 10:30
• How writing a book has opened doors for Michaela 11:58
• Michaela believes that most psychologists are self doubting and self critical 14:57
• The truth about how much research Micheala did for her new book 15:24 Michaela’s laser focus on her couples gave her the freedom to write her book 18:36
• Here Michaela explains how she surrounded herself with others who supported her through the book writing process 21:00
• Discussing outsourcing in order to scale your business and safeguard your wellbeing 23:48
• Michaela shines a light on how the current pandemic is going to affect our industry 28:37
• Michaela’s tips on making small changes for those perfectionists amongst us 31:06
• I share an example of modeling taking time to look after myself 35:57
• Pause Purpose Play - listen to Michaela’s driving thoughts when setting up her podcast and facebook community 36:51
• How Michaela plans her next passion project and what’s on the plan 39:55
• Hear who Michaela would like to hear on my podcast 42:00

Michaela’s Socials:

www.thethomasconnection.co.uk

Insta: www.instagram.com/the_thomas_connection

Facebook: www.facebook.com/thethomasconnection 

Twitter: www.twitter.com/thomasconnect 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/michaela-thomas

Facebook group: Pause Purpose Play

Podcast: Pause Purpose Play

Book: The Lasting Connection

Your Free, 14 Step Guide To Launching A New Product Or Service As A Psychologist Or Therapist:

Are you planning on launching something new and innovative?

Are you hoping to reach more people and build a business that lets you live your values while avoiding burnout?

Then you need to download our cheat sheet - 14 Steps to a simple launch.

We are sharing a foolproof process to make sure you develop your project WITH the people you want to help and then get it in front of as many of them as possible.

Sign up to get it in...

Setting the goals for your psychology or therapy practice in 2022. Painless goal setting.

Get clear on your vision, values and mission FIRST.

Why don’t we all have a clear vision in our business?

The secret to remaining motivated and happy running a business is congruence. If your business gives you the life you want to live and it fulfils your professionally you will not burn out. We need to be very clear on why we are in business (vision), what our values are (the person we want to be in our business) and how we are going to achieve it (mission). The problem is most of us feel vulnerable when we think about designing a business this way and that leads us to jump into goal setting to avoid those feelings.

What goes wrong when we don’t have a clear vision?

In private practice that can mean taking on any sort of work that you can get and charging whatever “seems reasonable” without really thinking about what you want from your practice. In an employed role that can look like taking any job that comes along, or staying in the same job for a long time without ever really thinking about whether it brings you true fulfilment. I have been guilty of doing both of those in the past. The most obvious example was when I set up my private practice. I had a clear vision of how I wanted to help people (trauma work) but did not consider how I wanted my life to look so I built a busy clinic with no consideration of my family life. 

Definitions of vision, values and mission

Vision - what is the change in the world you want to create? Be grand! How do you want your personal life to look? If your business is a massive success how will your life be different and how will the world change?

Values - how are you going to be in your business? What personal qualities are important to you? Values determine how you will behave in your business (and life in general). Everything from who you work with/for, who you hire etc.

May relate to key areas such as:

Health, family, work, creativity, social life, social change, a cause you care deeply about.

Examples: I want to be as fit and healthy as I can be. I want to be creative. I want to be generous and compassionate in my work. I want to be calm and kind as a parent. I want to be an innovator. 

Mission - how are you going to take action towards creating that vision. Your mission is the vehicle that takes you towards your vision and lets you live your values. 

Goals - The specific and measurable actions you take. Only when you have vision, values and mission that make sense can you even start to think about goal setting.

Notice your barriers!

Notice that barriers that make it hard for you to think about your business vision. Are there thoughts that are hard to see past? Feelings that are difficult to tolerate? I know I didn’t really think about my business vision until a year ago because I just felt like such an imposter whenever I let myself dream big that I shut it down and went and busied myself in a spreadsheet instead. It is SO worth powering through those difficult feelings in order to build a business or shape a career that fulfils you

Reach out

It can feel vulnerable to admit to a grand vision. If you are a student on Psychology Business School we will work through those barriers together in sessions and members of PBS or the Do More Than Therapy membership can bring them to peer supervision or office hours. If not then reach out to people who you trust and let them help you think your ideas through. No one lands on a perfect vision or mission...

Summer School Lesson 3: Your business model

Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology Summer School edition. 

Over the six weeks of the English school holidays, we are doing things a little bit differently around here. If you're looking to start up an independent practice in September, then this is the place to be as each week I'm dropping in with a quick lesson and tasks that can be completed in 30 minutes or less from your sun lounger.

By the end of the six weeks, you will feel ready to step into your practice in September, confident that you can find clients and have a safe and viable business foundation. 

Each week, the lessons will go out on this podcast feed, but if you want the weekly tasks, workbooks, private community, and a live session with me at the end of the summer to hold you accountable and make sure nothing stands in your way, you will need to sign up here: PBS Summer School

I would love to see you in the community.

Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links & References:

PBS Summer School Sign Up

PBS Start and Grow

Episode 41: How to set your fees in your psychology private practice with “pricing queen” Sally Farrant

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

Week 3: Your business model

In this lesson, we focus on making some key decisions that you need to feel comfortable with in order to start seeing clients. And these questions are basically about how you want to work and what boundaries you want to create around your practice. So, a great thing to be thinking about while you're on your sun lounger this summer!

In order to do this properly, you're going to need some way of documenting your decisions and doing a few calculations. Whether you're a spreadsheet person like me or a notebook person, just make sure you've got something to hand so that you can write down your answers as we go and work a few things out.

How much do you want to earn?

First question, the uncomfortable but essential one. How much do you want to earn from your private practice? What income makes all of this effort worthwhile for you? Forget any comparisons or what you think you should expect. Just think about what is going to make this truly rewarding for you, and write down the annual and monthly figure.

How much time will you spend working?

Then think about how many weeks of the year you will actually work. So consider holidays, sick time, unexpected work interruptions due to caring responsibilities. For many parents, you can only realistically expect to work 40 weeks of the year. Sometimes less, for me it is less because of the needs of my children.

If you're the one that is responsible for taking school holidays and sick days off, or you've got any other caring responsibility that means you're going to have to be the person that drops everything if something changes, you need to factor that in. Write down now how many weeks you...

How to set up as a social enterprise with Traci Lewis

Traci is a social entrepreneur, trainer, facilitator and catalyst. She is co-founder and director of Catalyse Change CIC and also leads the Women in Sustainability Bristol hub. I'm lucky enough to know Traci through the School for Social Entrepreneurs, and I knew as soon as I met her that I wanted her to be a guest on this podcast to talk to us about getting started in social entrepreneurship.

The highlights

• I give an update on what's going to happen with this podcast over my maternity leave 00:22
• I introduce Traci and she tells us about who she is and who she helps 03:06
• Traci tells us about how her journey to becoming a social entrepreneur 06:17
• Traci talks about Catalyse Change 15:18
• We discuss funding a social enterprise 20:58
• Traci tells us where she got support when she was setting up 26:32
• Traci tells us the first few things we need to start thinking about to get set up as a social enterprise 27:52
• We discuss the legal side of running a social enterprise 33:49
• I ask Traci how somebody would know if social enterprise is the right route for them 39:07
• Traci tells us the first steps she would recommend 40:48
• Traci tells us where we can find her 44:03

Traci’s Links:

Websites: 

www.tracilewis.co.uk

https://catalysechange.com

LinkedIn: Traci Lewis

Twitter: @tracilewis79

Other Links:

The School for Social Entrepreneurs https://www.the-sse.org

How to Successfully Set Up and Grow a Social Enterprise Heidi L Fisher

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Social-Enterprise-successfully-social-enterprise/dp/0995748616

Start With Why Simon Sinek

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Start-Why-Leaders-Inspire-Everyone-ebook/dp/B005JZD3B4/

**********

I just wanted to give you a little update on what's going to happen with this podcast over my maternity leave, because if you've been listening for a while then you'll know that from October 14th I'm going to be on maternity leave, probably coming back at some point in January, but no specified dates yet. But fear not! This podcast is one of my favourite things to do and I really value you guys, as listeners. I don't think I tell you enough. I'm often told by people in my life that I'm not very good at giving compliments and I think that has translated into my podcasting, and I don't tell you guys how much I appreciate you as much as other podcasters do, and I really do though. And as I said, I love recording this podcast, I love writing the content for the podcast, and I love doing interviews. So the podcast shall continue. We've already recorded, in fact, most of the episodes that are going to go out across my maternity leave. However, there will be some breaks. So in order to make sure we're giving you content consistently, we've planned to take a few breaks of just a week or two weeks here and there, where we're going to have a little pause in the content, just so that we can keep up with ourselves and make sure it keeps going through the whole maternity leave period. So...

Who are you helping? Three ways to specialise your psychology or therapy practice

Hello and welcome to today's episode of The Business of Psychology Podcast. We are continuing today with our special theme around specialisation and how you can find the people that you really want to help in your practice. 

Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links & References:

Episode 103: Why you should specialise – old gold that is still important

Episode 61: Turning a practice into a service with Dr Melanie Lee

Start & Grow: The Complete Course for Psychologists and Therapists - Psychology Business School

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The first thing we need to talk about today are the reasons to specialise.

Then I'm going to talk you through a few different ways specialisation can look in your practice, because I've been teaching about specialising for over three years now, and what I've come to realise is that like with everything in business and marketing, there is no one size fits all approach to specialisation.

Then finally, I've got something for you if you're not quite sure of your specialism yet, or if all of this makes your head feel a bit fuzzy. So stay tuned to hear about that. 

Why do I think it's important for you to specialise in your practice now? 

If you've listened to this podcast for a while, you'll know that I'm really passionate about specialisation, and that is not just because it makes life easier, but it really does. It is also because it makes it easier to provide what our clients really need. We're in a fairly unique industry in mental health, in that we're in an industry where people are not only trusting us with their money, they're also making a huge emotional investment and taking a huge emotional risk when they come to work with us.

My belief is that we need to respect that and pay attention to what is going to reassure people that we can really help them. To do that, we need to build our authority in the best way that we can, and all that really means is proving to people that we care about them, that we invest lots of time in learning how to help people like them, and that we're staying on top of the evidence base. 

In order to do that, I just do not believe we can do that properly as generalists. Now that might be controversial. I know that people disagree with me, and I think that it may be less true if you're working in the NHS because there you have access to CPD and colleagues and perhaps a wide range of supervision. But in private practice, let's be real, you are busy. There's only so many papers you can read, there's only so many projects you can be working on at once, only so many evidence bases you can keep on top of.

I think that patients that come to see us in private practice deserve to feel special, and they deserve to feel that the clinician that is talking to them cares deeply about the struggles that they're coming to them with. And I think the best...

Links

As this episode goes live this is your final opportunity to support the crowdfunder for this podcast and the Do More Than Therapy community. If you know we need to step out of the therapy room and start making bigger impact you belong in this community. Become a founding member and start to make the change you want to see.

Feel like you've got a book in you? The Crowdfunder has you covered bag yourself an amazing self publishing workshop for just £25 here.

Missed the deadline? Don't worry head to drrosie.co.uk and you can still get a place.

You can buy "Brighter Futures", Lucy's amazing book here.

www.theyarethefuture.co.uk.

Facebook @tatfwellbeing.

Instagram @tatf_drlucy

Twitter @DrLucyRussell.

https://learndobecome.com/

Transcript of Episode:

Rosie (00:00):

Today I'm talking to Dr. Lucy Russell. Lucy is the clinical lead for a successful child psychology group practice in Buckinghamshire called Everlief. If you follow her online, her passion for reaching parents of school-aged children is clear, and she's done an amazing job of reaching more families with the book she co-wrote with her colleagues, Brighter Futures. Brighter Futures is a book that I'm really happy to have my hands on before my kids hit school age, and Lucy is here to tell us how she made it all happen. So Lucy, hi and welcome to the podcast.

Lucy (00:31):

Hi.

Inspiration: What motivated Lucy to Write Her Book

Rosie (00:32):

Can you start by telling us a little bit about what inspired you to write the book and who it's intended to help?

Lucy (00:40):

Well, okay, what inspired me, like you, wanting to do something more. I do face-to-face therapy, and I enjoy it, but I wanted to do something more that reached a wider audience of parents and also something a bit more preventative because parents come to me when they've hit crisis point pretty much. So I was looking to do something that helped them before they got to that stage. And also the families that come to our clinic have suggested writing a book over the years, and so finally a few of us got round to it and wrote that book.

Rosie (

Today I am talking with Danielle Bodicoat, an independent medical statistics and writing consultant. With 12 years experience as a researcher and lecturer and over 80 published papers to her name Danielle set up a business called simplified data and now specialises in helping health professionals and researchers with bio statistics and medical writing. She is a statistician and writer in one and loves to help people with systematic reviews and meta analysis. What a useful woman to know!

I fully recommend that if you are thinking about doing your own evidence review do go and sign up to Danielle’s free e-course. It has some great practical tips to help you avoid common mistakes and feel more confident in the process. https://www.simplifieddata.co.uk/avoid-common-systematic-review-mistakes/

Find Danielle on LinkedIn (@daniellebodicoat) and on Twitter (@danibodicoat).

Her website is www.simplifieddata.co.uk

If you are interested in finding out more about the Do More Than Therapy membership or joining the FREE Facebook community come over to: https://psychologists.drrosie.co.uk/home

You can follow me on facebook @DoMoreThanTherapy and instagram @rosiegilderthorp and Linked In: Rosanna Gilderthorp

Planning extended leave from your practice: What psychologists and therapists need to know before going on maternity leave or other extended leave with Dr Rosie Gilderthorp and Dr Michaela Thomas

Summary and Key Learning points

It is my hope that this podcast episode will be useful to any psychologist or therapist who needs to take a longer break from their practice. For me, and for Michaela, our guest today and long time friend of the podcast, we are taking breaks from our practices because of maternity leave but you could also need to take a break for other life events, maybe even something fun like travel! This episode is not intended to give you a one size fits all plan for extended leave/maternity leave. Every practice and person is different and one of the things I love most about independent practice is that you can flexibly adapt everything to suit your values and needs. Instead Michaela and I will talk you through some key points that you need to consider and we will let you in on our thinking and our plans. 

So before we jump into our maternity plans I think it is important that we both introduce our businesses and say a bit about what our normal working weeks involve as that obviously has a big impact on planning a break!

Michaelas’s business: The Thomas Connection

Tuesday- Friday: 3 days clinical sessions (9 clients)

CEO day on Friday 

Afternoons focus on passive income streams and visibility including - podcasts, speaking, online course, writing, managing her team.

My business: The Innovation in Mental Health Project 

IMHP actually has three projects within it that all contribute to the overall social enterprise. 

Psychology Business School

• Psychology Business School Online Course (building thriving & fulfilling) practices
• Do More Than Therapy Membership (growing and developing passive income streams to make more impact in your practice)
• 1: 1 coaching for psychologists and therapists in independent practice

In Mind Consulting

• A separate company with three other incredible psychologists, Kat, Boo and Kendelle!
• We offer bespoke training and consultancy packages to organisations that want to improve the mental wellbeing of their teams, particularly in the wake of COVID 19 induced change, uncertainty and conflict.

Dr Rosie Psychology Services

• Therapy
• Perinatal online courses
• Hypnobirthing
• Associates

Michaela’s maternity leave plan:

Psychological flexibility is key!

Saved money as a buffer of £12,000

 Plan to take dividends of £1000 a month (limited company) 

My maternity leave plan:

3 months off (while writing a book as I can’t ever stop writing)

3 months teaching PBS and DMTT only 

3 months teaching + consultancy

Clinical work and 1:1 coaching to...

Essential communication skills for psychologists and therapists with Jase Taylor

Today I’m here with Jase Taylor from Oxford Communication Skills. Jase is a communication skills expert and is also married to a Clinical psychologist so he has a lot of insight into what we do and has some really useful insights to help us amplify our messages around mental health. 

The highlights

• Jase tells us the interesting story behind his career, and how he became a communication skills expert 00:48 
• Jase talks about how we can train ourselves to be better communicators 10:51
• Jase defines for us what he means by communication skills 13:06
• Jase talks about when it is most important to get our communication right 16:38
• We discuss being authentic, and how it has to be your message to be comfortable  18:19
• Jase tells us what communication strengths he sees in mental health professionals 31:51
• We talk about bringing out individual style and strengths, and the importance of this for diversity and inclusivity  36:04
• Jase tells us what tips he would give if I was invited to do a TED talk tomorrow 42:21
• Jase tells us how people can find him if they want to work with him 46:17

Links to find Jase

https://www.oxfordcommunicationskills.com

jase@oxfordcommunicationskills.com

Twitter & Instagram: @oxcommskills

https://www.instagram.com/oxcommskills/

https://twitter.com/OxCommSkills

Do you sometimes wake up at 2 am worried that you’ve made a terrible error that will bring professional ruin upon you and disgrace your family?

I’m laughing now but when I first set up in private practice I was completely terrified that I had “missed” something big when setting up insurance or data protection.

Even now, three years in, I sometimes catch myself wondering if I have really covered all the bases.

It is hard, no impossible, to think creatively and have the impact you should be having in your practice if you aren’t confident that you have a secure business. BUT it can be overwhelming to figure out exactly what you need to prioritise before those clients start coming in.

I’ve created a free checklist (plus resources list) to take the thinking out of it. Tick off every box and you can see your clients confident in the knowledge that you have everything in place for your security and theirs.

Download it now from

https://psychologists.drrosie.co.uk/client-checklist

TRANSCRIPT

SPEAKERS

Rosie Gilderthorp, Jase Taylor

Rosie Gilderthorp  00:01

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast, the show that helps you to reach more people, help more people and build the life you want to live by doing more than therapy. Today, I'm here with Jase Taylor from Oxford Communication Skills. Jase is a communication skills expert, and is also married to a clinical psychologist. So he's got a lot of insight into what we do and has some really useful ideas to help us amplify our messages around mental health. So welcome to the podcast, Jase. Before we...

Do you ever feel you are just “therapizing” your clients to try and “be OK” with a bad system? Often when caseloads are high we can get stuck in a role of treating the individual when the mental health professional within us knows that the individual is not the real problem. We are talking systems of oppression like patriarchy, racism, anti LGBTQ+ prejudice. In this episode Dr Rebekah Shallcross tells us how her work with the Feminist Therapy Centre aims to create social change through psychology. Listen in for inspiration and a call to action!

Full show notes and links available at psychologists.drrosie.co.uk

Interview Highlights

Bekah's Passion for Feminist Psychology

Personally, as a relatively new mother, the systems I was working in no longer were working for me – I was stuck on a band, no permanent contracts – working more than my hours for the benefit of others – not really making the difference that I wanted to see in the world. So I left and I am now knee deep in birthing the Feminist Therapy Centre which aims to be an alternative the mainstream psychology which centres white, male, heteronormative standpoint.

It aims to take account of systems of oppression and how this is really fucking up peoples mental health. And it aims to bring that into the consciousness of people I work with who often times have so internalised patriarchal narratives that they are now oppressing themselves.

If you don’t mind talking personally, I think it would really help to illustrate the point, how did patriarchy show up in your life?

o At points my weight has been unhealthy low

o I had a nose job at the age 25

o I got married because that’s what you do at 27 – and the feeling of stuckness without know what was ‘wrong’ left me with very poor mental health - divorced by the time I was 32

o I have used alcohol as very unhelpful ways of coping o I’m queer, I’m bisexual and I never let myself be that because for me, being brought up in a religious household, heteronormative ideals were presented as the only way to have a normal life

o I haven’t followed my dreams and desires because I just thought they were for other people, I thought they might upset other or I didn’t think I was good enough

Really starting this business is also a way of liberating myself from limiting beliefs about what is and isn’t possible for me

The people that have supported the feminist therapy centre

Business coaching! The wonderful Lucy Sheridan and Tessa Clarke The powerhouse who is Emma Svanberg @mumologist whom I work with as part of the psychology collective along with other amazing psychologists Having a partner who is like – yep! Go for it! Who trusts in my ability to make this work

Two action steps for psychologists and therapists

Read about feminist therapy – it is intersectional in its nature and lots of things we already do – such as fully informed consent originates from the feminist therapy its just not acknowledge as its now just so much part of mainstream psychology.

Make sure you are reading widely – look at your bookshelf – are all you books by white men? If so – why? Make sure you are ready women authors, trans authors, black authors, brown authors, queer authors, differently abled authors both psychologists and not! People who aren’t academic (again so white and male) also have important things to say – so think about who are listening to and who you assume has knowledge worth listening to – and then question those assumptions Then put it into practice – ask your clients about the systems that oppress them – how has it affected them

Socials

Insta: @dr_rebekah_shallcross

Website:

Occupational and coaching psychology in independent practice with Christine Hamilton

Christine is a highly experienced occupational psychologist and leadership development consultant. Her career to date has spanned across the public and private sector and she has held several positions in the British Psychological Society. 

The highlights

• I introduce Christine and she tells us about her career path and the road she took to independent practice 00:17
• We discuss the importance of talking to people about our careers and asking for help 04:23
• I ask Christine what it was like to be in a management role and introduce psychological thinking 07:20
• Christine tells us where her career went next, after developing her competence as an occupational psychologist in a management role 09:58
• Christine talks about her move into self employment and how she knew what she could do independently 13:56
• Christine talks about the growth of her independent practice 19:25
• Christine tells us about the coaching side of her work 27:26
• We discuss the difference between therapy and coaching 30:00
• I ask Christine how people can skill themselves up to work in this area 36:32
• Christine tells us the first steps for occupational psychologists who are thinking about starting a private practice 40:22
• I thank Christine and she tells us how to find her on LinkedIn 45:32

Links:

Linked In - Christine’s profile 

ILM - coaching qualification accrediting body

EMCC - coaching qualification accrediting body

ICF - coaching qualification accrediting body

**********

Do you sometimes wake up at 2 am worried that you’ve made a terrible error that will bring professional ruin upon you and disgrace your family?

I’m laughing now but when I first set up in private practice I was completely terrified that I had “missed” something big when setting up insurance or data protection.

Even now, three years in, I sometimes catch myself wondering if I have really covered all the bases.

It is hard, no impossible, to think creatively and have the impact you should be having in your practice if you aren’t confident that you have a secure business. BUT it can be overwhelming to figure out exactly what you need to prioritise before those clients start coming in.

I’ve created a free checklist (plus resources list) to take the thinking out of it. Tick off every box and you can see your clients confident in the knowledge that you have everything in place for your security and theirs.

Download it now from the new link:

https://psychologybusinessschool.com/client-checklist

**************

TRANSCRIPT

SPEAKERS

Rosie Gilderthorp, Christine Hamilton

Rosie Gilderthorp  00:01

Welcome to the business of psychology podcast, the show that helps you to reach more people, help more people and build the life you want to live by doing more than...

How psychologists and therapists can use an ideal client avatar to co create and market their services

Links

If you would like more support with getting your business or project off the ground do come and check out the Do More Than Therapy membership for expert masterclass, our core mindset course, downloadable resources and an amazingly supportive community of likeminded people. https://psychologists.drrosie.co.uk/home

You can follow me on facebook @DoMoreThanTherapy and instagram @rosiegilderthorp and Linked In: Rosanna Gilderthorp

What is an ideal client avatar?

Today I am going to talk about the concept of an ideal client avatar (or ICA), how it can work for you, including some adaptations I have made to the concept, how to create one and how your imposter syndrome can be a superpower when it comes to getting to know your ICAs.

The Ideal client avatar (ICA) is something you will hear talked about A LOT in the marketing world. The principle is that marketing is way more effective if you create all of your content, your blog posts, podcasts, social media content, advertising, as if you are speaking to an individual. So in order to create marketing that really speaks to people you need to get to know that individual really really well. You need to know what they like, dislike, what they do with their time and crucially what they need and what barriers they face in getting what they need.

This concept makes a huge amount of sense. When we imagine we are speaking to a real person we write more empathically, we are more likely to create products and services that meet their actual needs (rather than making stuff that we like) and we are more likely to put our content and our adverts in the right places for them to actually come across us.

Why don't psychologists and therapists like iCAs?

BUT many mental health professionals, myself included, resist the idea of the ICA for a few good reasons.

1. We often don’t WANT people to need us (so ideal sounds a little wrong)
2. The people we help can be extremely diverse (and we want to respect and welcome that)
3. We want to sound “professional” in our content

How to adapt the ICA method for psychologists and therapists

For all of those reasons the idea of the ICA can seem a little unsuitable for psychologists and therapists and that is certainly where I was at when I first launched my hypnobirthing workshops two years ago and I came across this idea for the first time. 

However, I found that it really is much easier to create content, write the text for your website and create offers that people actually want when you know your ICA and just talk to one person. So I decided to try and find a way of adapting it so I felt I was still serving people ethically and in the way I wanted to.

These are the adaptations to the ICA method that I made. 

1. I have at least 5 ICAs reflecting diversity as much as possible
2. I have different ICAs for each of my products and services. For example the ICAs that I have created for my self pay therapy services are different to my ICAs for my low cost therapy programme. This is essential as they are likely to respond to different messages and I am likely to find them in different places (Psychology Today vs GP referrals)
3. I create content for only one ICA at a time but make sure I spread my time between the ICAs. This works because my ICAs for one product and service will likely have a lot in common so it can be as simple as keeping the same text but having images that reflect all five of them. Sometimes different ICAs will require different messaging all together but not always and once you know them well you can adapt things quite naturally.
4. I use my skills as a psychologist to gain a deeper understanding of my ICA and in my

One of the hardest things to deal with in private/independent practice is late payment (or failure to pay at all). I’m not recording this episode because I think I am an expert on it. I am recording this episode because I think it is something that gives us all lots of anxiety, makes us doubt ourselves a lot and generally feel gross. 

When I started out I had a fantasy that all the other psychologists and therapists in independent practice out there were managing to be 100% ethical, 100% compassionate and 100% successful in business all at the same time. In my head you were all literally 300% people. It is only from experience, and forcing people to have uncomfortable conversations with me over wine and coffee that I have realised that the reality is we all feel like we are failing on one of these metrics when certain thorny business issues come up.

I hope sharing my experience and thoughts in this episode will help some of you to come up with a procedure that you are happy with for dealing with late payments. Having a system that you simply repeat, even when emotions are running high, has made a big difference to me and, much to my suprise, I think it is actually better for clients too. 

In the first 12 months of my practice I got “ghosted” all the time. Someone would sign up for therapy, turn up to a couple of appointments and then disappear off the face of the earth, usually leaving an invoice outstanding. It was painful, made me feel like an awful therapist, made me worry for their welfare and meant that even when I was “fully booked” I could actually lose money. I’ve talked in a previous podcast about how financial insecurity can impact on the quality of your work and I noticed that whenever this happened the emotional and financial worry would have a huge impact on my ability to offer good therapy. 

So I decided to do something about this and consulted with a mastermind group that I was part of at the time. This was a very useful group which included people from a range of professions from retail, social media managers, website designers to accountants and writers. 

Have a clear DNA policy

Write a clear DNA policy including who you are going to contact and when (for more on this check out my episode on key policies for your practice) 

Ask for upfront payment 

Get payment at the time of booking as often as you can - WriteUpp is practice management software that allows you to add on a booking system that gets people to pay upfront for therapy sessions, Calendly can also do this. Organisations are also used to paying for consultancy in advance and will negotiate with you if they need to change their terms so don’t be afraid to ask for upfront payment. 

Outsource late payment/financial follow up

Create a seperate email account (or hire a VA) called admin@yourdomainname.co.uk and make sure all emails relating to invoicing come from someone else (even if they don’t really). This helps preserve the therapeutic relationship and helps take some of the emotional heat out of the situation for both of you. Anecdotally I have also found insurance companies are more responsive to...

Reflections on 2024 and intentions for 2025

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. This is the last episode in this series which means that it must be very nearly Christmas. So Merry Christmas everybody! I hope that you're easing your way into the festive period this year. 

This is an episode that I actually planned for last year and I chickened out of posting. When it got to January, and it was too late to post it, I did a bit of reflection on why I hadn't aired the episode that I recorded this time last year, and I realised that I wasn't living my values in the best possible way. The reason that I hadn't posted it was that I was worried that some of the stuff in the episode wouldn't be liked by everybody, that it might be controversial to some people in some ways. and ultimately, I just wasn't in a place to be particularly courageous about that. Actually, when I look back on what a year I'd had in 2023, I can completely see why I didn't want to open the door for any hostility, potentially, or any controversy at all. It makes sense. I'd had a really tough year, and although this year has also been challenging, it hasn't been as emotionally demanding as last year, and I do feel in a position now where I actually really want to engage in debates, especially professional debate around the stuff that matters to me. So what I thought we'd do in this episode is think a bit about the stuff that's going on in mental health, particularly in the UK, but globally as well, and what that might mean for us, and questions that it's planted in my mind about where we might go as a group of professionals. I'm sure you won't agree with everything that I think, and that isn't the point, the point here is just that I think we need to engage with this stuff more, and I think that we need to be less concerned about agreement, and more concerned with professional and intellectual curiosity.

I've been really enjoying this year; doing a lot more collaboration with colleagues, getting into research again. And I think it's ignited in me this desire to really interrogate some of the assumptions that we make in our work, so I wanted to talk about that. And I thought I'd also reflect a little bit on what's been going on in my life and my business over the past year and how those two things might interweave with each other and maybe set some intentions going forward for 2025 because I think that's really important for all of us to be doing right now.

Full show notes for this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links/references:

Episode 151: The Immune Mind - Books that make you think

Episode 153: AI and the future of mental health with Dr Rachael Skews

Episode 149: Selling mental health services to organisations with Jessica Lorimer

Episode 133: An invitation to pause and reflect before 2024

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

Race in Therapy with Kimberly-Anne Evans

Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. Today I'm really excited to be joined by Kimberley-Anne Evans from Kaemotherapy. Kimberley is a psychotherapist, public speaker, coach, and founder of Kaemotherapy, which specialises in helping mental health professionals in private practice, organisations and educational settings to develop practical skills to work with a racially diverse range of clients and grow their businesses.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links & References:

Start & Grow: The Complete Course for Psychologists and Therapists - Psychology Business School

Links for Kim:

Website: www.kaemotherapy.com

Email: admin@kaemotherapy.com

Instagram: @Kaemotherapy

LinkedIn: Kimberly-Anne Evans

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• Kim tells us who she is and what she does through Kaemotherapy 00:25
• Kim talks about the drivers behind the racial inequality that we're still seeing in mental health and mental health care in this country 02:10
• We discuss the Race Workshops that Kaemotherapy run 08:31
• I ask Kim for her perspective on initiatives that are put in place to try and better serve users of colour and to bring more diversity into the staff teams 12:07
• Kim talks about what catalysed her to start doing something herself, with Kaemotherapy 18:42
• Kim tells us why, as a clinician, she wasn’t always confident to bring race into the room with her clients 21:54
• I ask Kim if she always had a bit of an entrepreneurial activist spirit 26:42
• Kim talks about her plans for Kaemotherapy 29:15
• Kim tells us how we can get support from her if we want to bring race into therapy more 34:57

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.

Mentioned in this episode:

Start and Grow

Before you go, did you know that I have a course for professionals just like you who are starting out in independent practice? In fact, my Start and Grow course has already supported hundreds of psychologists and therapists to build impactful, financially rewarding, and professionally fulfilling practices. When you sign up to the course, you get clear step-by-step support to build a practice that supports your values and rewards your hard work through our comprehensive online learning modules. You get peace of mind, thanks to our complete suite of legal documents from Clare

Marketing an online course for psychologists part 6: Creating inclusive online marketing and education resources. Guidance for psychologists and therapists 

Psychologists and therapists usually care a great deal about inclusivity and we spend time in training and service planning thinking about how we can make sure our work is accessible to those who need it. However, in my experience we often don’t put as much thought into our marketing and teaching. Many mental health accounts on social media fail to fully represent the people following that account and most haven’t yet learned how to make their content accessible to those with visual or hearing impairments. Similarly, online courses are often totally inaccessible to people with learning difficulties like dyslexia or colour blindness. This is completely unnecessarily exclusionary as there is awesome guidance available all over the web to let us know how we can make our content accessible. Since much of our marketing and teaching is now being done online it is well worth spending some time thinking about how we can make sure anything we put out there that is intended to provide psychoeducation is inclusive and accessible to all that could benefit from it. In this episode I am going to outline some basic principles and link to the best resources I have found to support you in making your marketing and educational materials as inclusive as possible.

It was actually while researching for my new online course for our membership “The roadmap to a successful online course” that I came across the resources I am going to link to today. I am always looking to try and make sure that the materials I create are as inclusive and accessible as possible and I wanted to make sure that we had a module dedicated to that in the course.  So if you are planning to add an online course into your psychology or therapy practice then do come and check out the roadmap. It sits at the centre of our monthly membership and will take you from your very first idea for a course right the way through to getting it in front of all the people who need it.

Create inclusive marketing and educational resources that your audience can relate to 

Images that reflect the range of people you are serving and stories that allow people to see themselves in what you are teaching. I’ve talked in previous episodes about the idea of having a representative group of ideal clients in mind when you are creating your marketing and educational resources. If you haven’t listened to the Ideal Client Avatar episode then it is worth going back to that one. I try to have different members of this group in mind as I create my resources and try to make sure that there are images and stories that help each of those people to see themselves in what I am teaching or talking about. If you are training professionals this could include sharing relevant stories from the different groups you have in the room (for example mental health nurses, psychotherapists and psychologists) as well as the characteristics you would usually think about when talking about inclusivity like race, gender identity and socio economic background. In this episode I talk about a test that I use before I include stories in my resources and that includes an inclusivity check.

I like this blog from Sprout social...

Links

Come and join the movement at:

https://psychologists.drrosie.co.uk/

Check out Heavy Metal Therapy here.

Social Media: A Force for Good In Psychology and Essential for your private practice

Why do we think social media and psychology don’t mix? Social media and psychology can seem to be adversaries at first glance. Many of us did not grow up with social media. We were introduced to it as adults and have probably fallen foul of its temptations to blur boundaries and cause offence as we struggled to manage the disinhibition effect and to cope with the fact we couldn’t very easily switch it off. It is therefore understandable that we imagine it is a very risky thing for our clients, especially the young ones. It is important that this does not blind us to the positive impact of social media for our clients. Over the past two years in my private practice I have changed my view on social media dramatically from one of deep suspicion to one of appreciation. Yes there are definitely pit falls associated with it. There are times when I personally find it completely draining and the data, privacy and catfishing scandals seem never ending. But it does also seem to have an almost exponential potential for good. Today I will focus on the positives rather than the risks of social media. I think the risks deserve a whole episode of their own.

Unpacking the positive impact of social media: Building the community for community psychology

• See the episode with Dr Kate Quinn from Heavy Metal Therapy – HMT brings people together around a shared passion or interest, we can facilitate that interest becoming a positive and productive sense of identity. • Within supportive communities we can find the strength we need to dare greatly. People who have been through hard times can often stay small in their hobbies, careers and families because of shame. Sharing experiences and gaining support from others can unlock that. I think the Mums in Business networking groups I am a member of are a good example of this. Lost of people share stories of mum guilt

• If you then want to introduce something aimed at people having a hard time you have built genuine relationships and the community can build it with you. Creating what people need Building a social community helps you form genuine relationships. You then have the platform to make an impact.

• You can develop the online course or book or workshop that people actually want and need. This means you don’t take as much risk, financial and work wise and you are more likely to be profitable. Online sales conversion rates are only 1-2% so in real terms if you have an email list of 100 you will most likely only sell one course or place on a workshop. Of course if you genuinely build your offer with the community you may well have a higher conversion rate. • Without a community to talk to you won’t stand a chance of making a big impact.

• I learned these lessons and managed to make my hypnobirthing workshops successful in Plymouth because I spent time getting to know mums to be in groups on FB and at local events. I made an offer they wanted/could afford.

Reaching more people

Psychologists and therapists in private practice often don’t NEED social media to market their services effectively. I have an “overbooked” practice and not many of my clients come from social media. I could very easily earn good money without it. But I still care about it and this is why:

• It helps you win your own clients. If you are using directory sites to win referrals you often end up paying them a huge chunk of your fee. If you rely on insurance companies or word of mouth your referral streams can dry up quickly if someone else’s situation changes. That feels precarious. • You can speak to the kind of clients...

Ethical marketing in private practice. Scarcity, should we use it?

Links for this episode: 

Instagram: @rosiegilderthorp

The Business of Psychology: Episode 59: Using Youtube to reach more people with Dr Clare Roberts

The Business of Psychology: Episode 45: How to make social media videos that people want to watch with Allison Puryear 

The Business of Psychology: Episode 68: How to launch an online course as a psychologist with Dr Marianne Trent

Full show notes for this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Welcome to today's episode of the Business of Psychology. Today is a bit of a different episode because I wanted to dive into an ethical issue which I hear talked about in the online marketing space all the time. It's become fashionable to talk about ethical marketing and having integrity and authenticity in your marketing, but this is something which has concerned us from the minute we set up our businesses; I don't know any psychologist, therapist or counsellor that wasn't worried about the ethics of their marketing before they started in private practice. It's the thing which tends to hold us back, in fact, from actually making any progress in our businesses, because we're so, so concerned about it. So it's been interesting to me to watch the rest of the online business space having a bit of an awakening about some of the tactics which are commonly used in digital marketing in particular, and for a lot of my friends who work in other industries to be coming to me and saying, you know, ‘Is this okay?’ ‘What's the psychology behind this, and should I be using it?’ I've been having those conversations a lot over the past year with colleagues in other industries, and I decided that I wanted to hear other people's opinions, so I took some of these concepts had a look at the behavioural science behind them, the psychology of why they work, and took that to the Psychology Business School membership. Every eight weeks or so we have what I call an ethical marketing clinic, where we talk about one of these concepts in a bit of depth and think about possible use cases, when it could be a good thing, when it could go a bit wrong if psychologists and therapists started using it, and then finally, we examine it against some of our professional bodies standards. I typically use the British Psychological Society ethical framework, because that's the one that I know the best, but we will, in the future, be looking at some other professional bodies guidance as well.  

The first topic that I brought to one of those clinics was scarcity marketing, and that's because this is something that I see really, really frequently in the digital marketing space and that I know, if you've done any business or marketing course outside of Psychology Business School, you're very likely to be quite strongly encouraged to use. I know, particularly when I did some training in business (this is going back a little while now) but I was actually made to feel quite stupid when I said I'm not sure that I feel...

Using AI in therapy and other legal questions with Clare Veal from Aubergine Legal

Welcome to The Business of Psychology podcast. Today I'm here with friend of the podcast, and the lawyer who is behind all of our amazing legal documents and legal training that we have in Psychology Business School, Clare Veal from Aubergine Legal. This episode is really a bit of an update following on from our previous podcast episode on Data Protection, and we're going to be talking a bit about AI and covering off some of those common questions that we still get asked.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Episode Links:

Episode 146: Data Protection for Psychologists in 2024 with Clare Veal

Packs:

Legal Essentials: Contracts, Policies and Processes

Legal essentials for working with children and young people in independent practice

The Business Growth Pack

Links for Clare:

Website: www.auberginelegal.co.uk

LinkedIn: ​​Clare Veal

Facebook: Aubergine Legal

Aubergine Legal: AI Compliance Checklist for Healthcare Professionals

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• I introduce Clare and explain that this podcast will answer some of the questions that get asked of us covering AI and other legal questions 00:00
• We discuss the legal aspects of using AI in our practices 02:54
• Clare talks about whether we should trademark, and how to got about it if we do 23:18
• We look at what we need to do if we're using another author's work in our own online course or book or live training 31:18
• Clare talks us through the additional information we need to provide for working with children 41:03

Evolve and Thrive Mastermind

Are you a psychologist or therapist with a thriving practice, but you're feeling stuck?

Do you dream of more predictable income or more time for your family and maybe the ability to make a wider impact in mental health?

I get it. You are passionate about helping people, but the business side can often feel really overwhelming.

You've probably tried it all; podcasts, books, maybe even some short term coaching.

But maybe you're still struggling with procrastination, indecision, or just not knowing...

Can You See Me? By Libby Scott and Rebecca Westcott: Books That Make You Think

Welcome to The Business of Psychology Podcast. I'm back with another episode of Books That Make You Think, where I'm sharing with you a book that I found really inspirational; ‘Can You See Me?' By Libby Scott and Rebecca Westcott. 

Full show notes for this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links/references:

‘Can You See Me?' By Libby Scott and Rebecca Westcott

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The Business Growth Pack

Ready to grow your practice beyond one person and a laptop? 

We are here to support you to build a thriving, impactful and profitable business. 

Invest in our growth pack to confidently grow your service with associates, organisational work or passive income.

Our unique package includes strategy and marketing training from Dr Rosie Gilderthorp, Founder of Psychology Business School, and legal contracts from Clare Veal, Commercial Lawyer from Aubergine Legal.

Together, we will ensure that you have the strategy and documents you need for growth so you can expand your impact and income while maintaining your work-life balance.

Sign up now: The Business Growth Pack

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.

Shownotes

I was attracted to this book because one of the authors, Libby, is an autistic 11 year old and that felt like a voice I needed to listen to. The book tells the story of Tally, an 11 year old autistic girl as she navigates the transition to secondary school. Interspersed with the narrative are short autsim fact sheets from Tally explaining concepts like "pathological demand avoidance" and the reasons autistic people might engage in certain behaviours from her point of view.

I was thrilled to read a realistic depiction of autism in a girl with a pathological demand avoidance profile. I find this is a term that is not generally well understood, even amongst psychologists and the warm, engaging and, at times, heart-shaking writing encouraged the kind of empathy that autistic people do not always receive. I particularly valued the insight into what it feels like for a child who looks like they are being defiant or furious but is actually feeling terrified.

As a mum and as a professional I know this is a book that has helped me to connect more deeply and engage more fully with the autistic experience. I'd recommend it to any of you regardless of specialty. Check it out here.

PS. If you want to know more about PDA I very highly...

My brain and my business: What setting up a psychology private practice taught me about my brain

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast, the show that helps you to reach more people, help more people and build the life you want to live by doing more than therapy. 

Hello. And before we get into today's episode, I just wanted to give you a little update on what's going to happen with this podcast over my maternity leave, because if you've been listening for a while, then you'll know that from October 14 I'm going to be on maternity leave, probably coming back at some point in January, but no specified date yet. 

But fear not! This podcast is one of my favourite things to do, and I really value you guys as listeners, I don't think I tell you enough. I'm often told by people in my life that I'm not very good at giving compliments, and I think that has translated into my podcasting. And I don't tell you guys how much I appreciate you as much as other podcasters do, and I really do though. And as I said, I love recording this podcast, I love writing the content for the podcast, and I love doing the interviews. So the podcast shall continue. We've already recorded, in fact, most of the episodes that are going to go out across my maternity leave. However, there will be some breaks. So in order to make sure we're giving you content consistently, we've planned to take a few breaks of just a week or two weeks here and there, where we're going to have a little pause in the content, just so that we can keep up with ourselves and make sure it keeps going through the whole maternity leave period. So the best thing you can do to make sure that that doesn't disrupt you and that you don't miss any of the episodes we put out there is to make sure that you subscribe to this podcast. So whatever podcast app you use, whether it's Apple, Spotify, Google podcasts, or we're on Amazon now as well, you can click the subscribe button, and this podcast will be delivered to you every week, every week that we put one out. So please do make sure that you're subscribed so that you don't miss any of the episodes that we do put out there. 

Another thing that I'd like to encourage you to do, if you haven't done it already, is please, please, please leave us a review. So you might have seen the podcast is starting to do quite well in some of the charts, and we're picking up a bit of traction, which is amazing, but the way that Apple decides how many people get to see this podcast is by how many reviews it's got. So please, if you haven't done so yet, leaving us a review on Apple or wherever you listen to your podcasts, it really makes a big difference to how many people can find us. So I'd really appreciate it if you could put the word out there for me just by leaving us a quick review. All right on with the episode.

**********

Hello, and welcome to a slightly different episode of the Business of Psychology podcast.

So this episode is a bit different, it's a little bit more personal. And that is because I'm recording this in September, but it's going to be going out at the beginning of October, and October is ADHD Awareness Month. 

Now a lot of you won't know this about me, but a couple of years ago, I realised that I'm probably not the most neurotypical person. And although I don't really relate to the label ADHD, mostly because I don't consider myself to have deficit and I don't consider myself to be disordered, and I don't like giving other people that label either, I have found it really, really helpful to think about the ways in which I might be neurodiverse. And maybe some strategies that I've been taught that should work for me, in business particularly, don't work for me, and that that's okay. And letting go of some of the shame I've always felt around certain things that I'm not very good at has been very, very powerful for me. 

So, I've been approached...

Case Management: A creative and flexible way to work for psychologists with Dr Shabnam Berry-Khan

Today I am talking to Dr Shabnam Berry Khan about her business, Psych Works. Shabnam is a Clinical Psychologist and member of the Do More Than Therapy membership so I have been wanting her to come on the podcast since I met her on a coaching call last year because she works in an area of psychology that I didn’t know much about and it sounds really exciting.

The highlights

• Shabnam tells us how she got into the niche area of psychology led case management 01:02
• Shabnam explains what case management is, and who it is there to help 04:42
• Shabnam talks about what elements the work involves, and how that’s related to costings 08:61
• We discuss how psychologists are well placed to carry out case management 11:00
• Shabnam tells us how her business evolved after starting this type of work in an employed role 14:53
• We talk about imposter syndrome and holding your own as a psychologist with other professions that seem more self assured 18:58
• Shabnam tells us how she’s looking for more case management associates, and also those interested in broad range private practice within the medico-legal field, and what you need and don’t need for that 24:51
• Shabnam tells us where people can find her if they want to connect 31:08

Links to find Shabnam

www.psychworks.org.uk

https://www.instagram.com/adminpsychworks.org.uk/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-shabnam-berry-khan-135a6753/

*******

Do you sometimes wake up at 2 am worried that you’ve made a terrible error that will bring professional ruin upon you and disgrace your family?

I’m laughing now but when I first set up in private practice I was completely terrified that I had “missed” something big when setting up insurance or data protection.

Even now, three years in, I sometimes catch myself wondering if I have really covered all the bases.

It is hard, no impossible, to think creatively and have the impact you should be having in your practice if you aren’t confident that you have a secure business. BUT it can be overwhelming to figure out exactly what you need to prioritise before those clients start coming in.

I’ve created a free checklist (plus resources list) to take the thinking out of it. Tick off every box and you can see your clients confident in the knowledge that you have everything in place for your security and theirs.

Download it now from

https://psychologists.drrosie.co.uk/client-checklist

*******

TRANSCRIPT

SPEAKERS

Shabnam Berry-Khan, Rosie Gilderthorp

Rosie Gilderthorp  00:01

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast, the show that helps you to reach more people, help more people and build the life you want to live by doing more than therapy. 

Rosie Gilderthorp  00:16

Today I'm talking to Dr. Shabnam Berry-Khan about her business, Psych Works. Shabnam is a clinical psychologist and a member of Do More Than Therapy, who I've been wanting to come on the podcast since I met...

Specialising in Sleep: What psychologists and therapists need to know with Dr Dave Lee

In this episode, I talk to Dr Dave Lee about his fascinating specialism, sleep. Every one of us knows from experience that mental health difficulties of any kind affect sleep. In this episode, we talk about Dave's career and the personal and professional benefits of developing a specialism early but we also talk about the clinical knowledge we all need in this important area. This is a longer episode than normal but Dave's passion for the subject makes for a fascinating listen/read. 

The highlights

• I welcome you to the podcast and ask you to vote in the summer workshop poll on the Do More Than Therapy Facebook page.
• I introduce Dave and he tells us about who he is and who he helps 02:27
• Dave tells us where his passion for helping people with sleep came from 04:18
• Dave talks about the rise in sleep difficulties over the past few years 09:04
• Dave talks about specialising in such a tight area, quite early on 13:00
• We discuss finding new people to help with your expertise as your career progresses 16:33
• Dave talks about the link between EMDR and sleep 19:35
• I ask Dave why he thinks we spend so little time training and learning about how to intervene with sleep directly 23:01
• Dave talks about the range of sleep disorders 38:24
• Dave explains how CBTI is used, and how it should be used 49:20
• I ask Dave what the signs are that we should be intervening with sleep first, before we get all the other stuff 56:51
• Dave tells us about the training process he runs 59:12
• We discuss sleep apnea, and how to recognise the risk 1:01:14
• Dave tells us the best ways to get skilled up in sleep 1:12:31
• I remind you about the summer workshop poll and psychologybusinessschool.com 1:17:39

For me there were two key takeaways from this fascinating interview.

1. Specialising leads to the kind of clarity of mission and expertise Dave demonstrates so well in this interview.
2. Whatever our specialism, we all need to know more about sleep. I'm getting started by reading Dave's book and hope to attend some training later this year.

Links:

www.sleepunlimited.co.uk

Twitter @SleepUnLtd  

Facebook: SleepUnlimited

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/17982681/

Link to Dave's book: Teaching the World to Sleep: Psychological and Behavioural Assessment and Treatment Strategies for People with Sleeping Problems and Insomnia

**********

Where are you at in your practice?

Are you just starting out and still terrified about not having enough work or not being set up right?

Or are you full to the rafters with clients and looking for a different way to make an impact on mental health without risking burnout?

Either way come over to

Today I’m talking to Liz Stanford the owner of the Calm Birth School about how she has made and managed the transition from teaching hypnobirthing to running an international business that promotes empowering, calm births, around the world.

Liz has made a leap that many of us just write off as "not possible" and listening to her talk about her journey makes it seem a little bit more doable. Liz shares both practical and psychological tips that are relevant to anyone looking to grow and expand into new areas in their business.

Please do connect with Liz if you are interested in training as a hypnobirthing teacher. Training with the Calm Birth School was one of the best decisions I have made. I'm also very happy to talk to you about it if you want to hear a personal story!

Connect with Liz at:

Web: https://www.thecalmbirthschool.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecalmbirthschool

Twitter: https://twitter.com/calmbirthschool

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecalmbirthschool/

Links

Your Free, 14 Step Guide To Launching A New Product Or Service As A Psychologist Or Therapist:

Are you planning on launching something new and innovative?

Are you hoping to reach more people and build a business that lets you live your values while avoiding burnout?

Then you need to download our cheat sheet - 14 Steps to a simple launch.

We are sharing a foolproof process to make sure you develop your project WITH the people you want to help and then get it in front of as many of them as possible.

Sign up to get it in your inbox now

https://psychologists.drrosie.co.uk/launch-in-14-simple-steps

Launch In 14 Steps Podcast:

https://psychologists.drrosie.co.uk/episode/simple-launch-for-psychologists-and-therapists

Launch In 14 Steps Download:

https://psychologists.drrosie.co.uk/launch-in-14-simple-steps

Join The DMTT Membership :

https://psychologists.drrosie.co.uk/the-do-more-than-therapy-membership/

Please do rate, review and subscribe to the podcast and as ever, DM me @rosiegilderthorp on instagram to let me know your main takeaways from this episode and what you would like to see in the next series!

Links

Join the Do More Than Therapy community and find out more about the membership and upcoming masterclasses at https://drrosie.co.uk/

What Needs to be in a psychology private practice business plan? Getting Money In to your Psychology Private Practice

Build it and they will come… Sadly this is not true. You do need to market your private practice in order to get clients. Thankfully the therapy side of business is not too difficult to market if you know where to look. Interventions other than therapy (books, workshops, events etc) require more “audience building” and therefore more marketing knowledge BUT it is sooooo worth it! It is likely however, that at the start of your private practice journey most of your income will come from therapy so let’s start with how to get therapy referrals…

Marketing your private practice: Referral Sources for Psychology Practices

Google search – SEO and paid ads. This basically means doing things that help get your website seen by the people that need your help. It is an art and one worth mastering in my opinion as referrals coming through your website tend to be the best fit for your work and they cost the least. Google actually provide pretty good advice on how to rank well in Google. It is almost like they want good content to be found! Here are the big hitters:

·     Get other people to link to your website (this is why getting press coverage is worth it). It gives your website more “domain authority” which is a trustworthiness score Google uses to decide where to put you in search results.

·     Use the phrases potential clients would be searching for in your headings and blog posts (in this post I am trying to rank for “psychology private practice” so it is in most of the headings. You can use tools like “Keyword Finder” and “Answer the Public” to see what people search for but common sense is pretty helpful here.

·     Publish regular content like a blog

·     Keep it simple! Google can’t make sense of complicated navigations so keep client experience at the forefront of your mind when creating your website and that will help it get found. I find it helps to imagine a very anxious person landing on my home page. In a hyper aroused state we aren’t good at concentrating and need things to be very clear. Build your site with that person in mind and Google rewards you.

·     All the other stuff is too technical for me!

Referrals from people you have worked with in the past – colleagues and previous clients (this is a great source if you are setting up in a place you have built a decent network)

Social media (There is so much to say on this but in brief, I find social media is a great place for promoting messages about mental health and promoting low cost workshops and events but I don’t think it is a great place for therapy referrals. Think about where you would look for the kind of thing you are offering. I think I would google search for a therapist so I put my marketing effort for therapy clients into Google and SEO but I use FB to promote low cost items like e-books and hypnobirthing workshops.

Directory sites. There are loads of options if you are promoting your therapy services. I find I get the best quality referrals from Psychology Today. Findatherapist.com also provides lots of referrals but they take 20% of every session fee. Counselling directory works for some people but I look expensive on there so don’t get much. Timewith is a platform to watch, especially if you are an online therapist as they are innovating a new search algorithm which should help those of us who work online to get found more...

Dr Jo Mueller, The Guilty Parent Club

Hello, and welcome to the Business of Psychology. In this season of the podcast, we are talking about fulfilment in our work and what we can do in independent practice to bring ourselves more fulfilment. So I'm really excited today to be here with Dr Jo Mueller, who has recently launched the Guilty Parent Club as a project that brings her more fulfilment in her work.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links for Jo:

Website: www.drjothepsychologist.com

Instagram: @drjothepsychologist

Facebook: @drjothepsychologist

LinkedIn: Dr Jo Mueller

Refs:

Episode 112: CBT for menopause: How Simona Stokes is using her expertise to change lives

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• I ask Jo to tell us about her background and how she started as a psychologist 00:39
• Jo talks about her move into private practice 03:28
• Jo takes us through the challenges she faced starting an online practice 07:55
• I ask Jo what drew her to creating groups and online products and the first steps she took 10:14
• Jo explains how she found parents for the first cohort 19:30
• Jo tells us the most rewarding thing about running The Guilty Parent Club 24:34
• Jo talks about unexpected challenges she’s faced 26:02
• Jo tells us where she found support for her work 33:48

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.

Psychology Business School: Start & Grow and Coaching

Is this the year that you take your private practice seriously? Maybe you are just starting out or perhaps you want to grow your practice with a team or passive income. Whatever stage you are at, I would love to support you. For new practices, I have our group coaching programme, Start and Grow where you will find all the support, resources and knowledge you need to create an impactful and rewarding practice. 

https://psychologybusinessschool.com/psychology-business-school/

For more established practices come and take a look at my coaching for growth packages. I have a couple of spots left for individual coaching so let me help you get 2024 off to the best start possible.

When should I leave the NHS: Reflections for psychologists and therapists thinking about taking the plunge into independent practice

Today I am not writing about strategy, it's not about a process, it's not about tips. That's because I really can't give you any when it comes to this question. Today we're talking about something really personal, we're talking about the decision that many of us grapple with, here in the UK, about when to leave the NHS. For our international readers, the NHS is the institution that provides free health care at the point of need, something that most of us are really committed to and very fully believe in, in the mental health space. However, the NHS is not an easy employer. There have been a lot of difficulties over the past decade, and probably before that, in providing the kind of mental health services that we want people to recieve. So this blog will be relevant for anybody considering leaving employment, considering reducing their hours, or who just feels a bit paralysed by that question. 

I'm not going to give you a tick sheet, or a process that you can follow to help you make that choice. Of course I can't do that. But what I am going to do is share some of my personal experiences. I'll share the reasoning behind my decision to leave the NHS. And then I'm also going to share with you the wisdom of 47 other psychologists who answered this question for me, in one of our private practice groups, which is called UK Psychologists in Private Practice (UK3P), if you're not in it, you should be in it. It's a brilliant group.  I asked in there how people knew it was the right time to leave the NHS because I know this is something that so many of us struggle with. So many people that are considering jumping into Psychology Business School, or joining the Do More Than Therapy Membership talk to me about this dilemma. So I thought I'd really like to create a podcast, which doesn't give you the answers, but lets you in on the reasoning of people who have made that decision so that it can maybe help you to feel a little bit more supported, a little bit less alone with that big decision that you're grappling with. 

Why did I start thinking about my decision to leave the NHS and start an independent practice 4 years ago?

But before we get started, I also want to share with you some more personal stuff from me, that actually prompted me to start thinking about this. So those of you who have eagle eyes, or who are involved in Psychology Business School, or the Do More Than Therapy Membership, might have noticed that my camera has been moving slowly further up, so you can see less and less of my body recently in social media videos, or in zoom trainings that I do in Psychology Business School. And the reason for that is that I am expecting my third child. I'm very pleased to announce that I'm currently 22 weeks and feeling OK. And as it's my third child, I do have quite a sizable baby bump. I never find pregnancy very easy. And that's a whole topic for another podcast that I certainly will be making, and might even be writing a book on, but I have not felt well and there's been real challenges, but I'm now feeling pretty good and I want to use this time to help other people that might be in a position of going...

How to find your ideal clients in 2025: SEO for psychologists and therapists with Chris Morin

Welcome to The Business of Psychology podcast. The first episode of this brand new season of The Business of Psychology is a recording of the free webinar that I held with Chris Morin from Moonraker. Chris is an online marketing expert with tons of experience and a particular passion for helping psychologists and therapists get found by the right clients. I chose this to be our first episode because the trends I see as most threatening to independent practice in the short term are changes to the way that search engines work. This workshop with Chris is all about the simple strategies and steps that we can take now to make sure that we are the people that get found by the people that need us, rather than the generic platforms.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Episode Links:

Episode 103: Why you should specialise – old gold that is still important

Episode 128: Who are you helping? Three ways to specialise your psychology or therapy practice

Links for Chris:

LinkedIn: moonraker-ai

Website: moonraker.ai

Tools mentioned by Chris:

Google Search Console

Google Analytics

Superhuman

Website Optimizer

Pathmonk

Acuity

Therasaas

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

This week’s questions: 

1. If you have a website how many enquiries do you get through it each month?
2. If you don't have a website what stops you from creating one?
3. Have you noticed a drop in referrals recently?
4. If so what do you think is behind it?

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• I introduce the episode 00:00
• Chris introduces the Webinar 03:13
• Chris talks about common marketing challenges that therapists face 04:09
• Chris tells us a little bit about him 07:58
• Chris talks about traffic generation: turning strangers into people that know that we exist 11:36
• Chris looks at SEO, starting with the technical aspects of a website 15:34
• Chris talks about page optimisation 17:15
• Chris talks about...

Making Changes in Your Practice: How to Make Sure Your Independent Practice Meets Your Needs

Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. Today for our final episode of the current series we're going to be talking about how to adapt your practice when your needs as a business owner change, or you realise that your practice isn't meeting your needs anymore.

Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Psychology Business School: Start & Grow and Coaching

Is this the year that you take your private practice seriously? Maybe you are just starting out or perhaps you want to grow your practice with a team or passive income. Whatever stage you are at, I would love to support you. For new practices, I have our group coaching programme, Start and Grow where you will find all the support, resources and knowledge you need to create an impactful and rewarding practice. 

https://psychologybusinessschool.com/psychology-business-school/

For more established practices come and take a look at my coaching for growth packages. I have a couple of spots left for individual coaching so let me help you get 2024 off to the best start possible.

https://psychologybusinessschool.com/1-to-1-coaching-for-mental-health-professionals/

Links & References:

'But What Can I Do? Why Politics Has Gone So Wrong, and How You Can Help Fix It' by Alastair Campbell

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

Getting What You Need From Your Practice

One of the joys of private practice is being able to adapt your work to suit your life and the challenges that you might be facing. Many of us go into private practice because we really need that flexibility, maybe because of caring responsibilities or something else. Certainly for me, that has always been the driving force behind my practice.

And recently, I've had to become more flexible than I ever thought was possible in my work. I've thought really long and hard about what I want to share about that, and why I want to share anything about it at all, and I've debated this back and forth a lot in my mind. But I've decided that I do want to share some of that particular struggle with you, because, frankly, I know a lot of us go through similar struggles, and it can feel so isolating.

I know that I found myself looking at other people's content on social media and just feeling really sad and a bit lonely because I can't help but assume that their lives are so different to mine. I get that comparisonitis, and I want to make sure that I'm not contributing to that problem, because I'm sure if you look at my social media, or you read my emails, or you look at my website, it might seem like everything's rosy in my life, and like my business is always flourishing. And I don't think that's helpful, and I don't think it's healthy, and it's not a culture that I particularly want to contribute to.

So I'm hoping that by honestly sharing with you some of the struggles that I've been going through in my personal life, and how that's impacted on the business, that I can give you a bit of hope if  you're going through a