Building Your Ideal Private Practice: A Guide for Therapists and Other Healing Professionals

Book excerpt: A much-anticipated second edition to this classic practice-building text. Building Your Ideal Private Practice, a best-seller in its genre, is now fully revised after its original publication in 2000. Much has changed for therapists in private practice over the past fifteen years, including the widespread encroachment by insurance and managed care into the marketplace, the density of new therapists as over 600,000 therapists nation-wide try to stay viable, and the role of the Internet in marketing services. The revision of Building Your Ideal Private Practice is a comprehensive guide, updated with six new chapters and targeted for therapists at all stages of private practice development. It covers the essential how-to questions for those starting out in practice and explains the common pitfalls to avoid. For those already in practice, worried about profitability in an age of increasing competition, the author offers informed strategies such as the best way to create websites and other online marketing to find clients, and then goes further to explain how to retain the new breed of fickle clients who shop for therapists online, but are hard to satisfy. Other new chapters support veteran therapists edging towards retirement, including how to sell a therapy business for a profit or whether to stay working solo or expand into a more lucrative group business model. The revision comprises a complete, easy to use and fascinating business plan that shows therapists not just what to do, but also who to be in order to succeed. It adds depth, up-to-date information and a wealth of strategies to the original book, often referred to as the “bible” for therapists in private practice. Like the original, the revision conveys the author’s experience, optimism and warmth as she presents case examples, checklists and exercises to make the business advice come alive. Whether you have insurance-based or a fee-for-service practice, this book will help you thrive.