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Abundant Practice Podcast
Episode #690: Living In Two Countries As A Therapist
00:08:35
Ever dream of living part of the year abroad and running a thriving in-person practice? 🌍✨ In this Ask Allison, I’m breaking down how to make it work when you’re living a dual-country life—whether you’re gone for a few weeks or...
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Foreign welcome to Ask Allison. Y' all ask the questions about having a fun and thriving practice and I answer them. We have a worksheet for you today so you can bring this answer into your life. You can Access that@AbundancePracticeBuilding.com links where you'll also be able to ask any questions you have for Ask Allison. If you want more support, we've got some free trainings in there too. If you can't get enough Ask Allison, check out our YouTube channel for our entire Ask Allison library. Welcome back to Ask Allison. Here's today's question. How can you sustain an in person practice if you're basically living a dual life nine months in one country and three months in another? This question made me stretch my brain in all the best ways. Before I answer, I'd like to thank TherapyNotes for sponsoring Ask Allison. I've talked about them for years. I know their features by heart. You probably do too. But here's what truly sets them apart. They genuinely care about your experience. It's not just about troubleshooting. They actively implement user suggested features like Therapy search, secure messaging, real time insurance checks and their AI notes feature therapy fuel everyone at TherapyNotes believes in the product and wants you to love it too. Plus, they're independently owned, which means no venture capital, no pressure to prioritize investors over customers. This independence allows them to keep their prices fair, to focus on innovation and and to prioritize customer experience. With over 100,000 therapists already on board, they've proven you don't have to compromise success for quality. If you're ready to see for yourself, go to therapynotes.com and use coupon code abundant for two free months. All right, back to this question. So I'm going to assume the nine months are sequential. The three months are sequential, so it's like a seasonal migration. If instead they're broken into smaller chunks, it'd be a little easier. You can run your practice as usual and just let folks know you're going to be out of town. But if you're gone for three solid months, that's going to take more intention. So I see four potential avenues here. Let's walk through them. The first is to treat it like a sabbatical. This option only works if your practice model supports shorter term therapy. Think solution focused brief therapy, CVT protocols, or even just certain rounds of EMDR that can be wrapped up in a finite amount of time. Here's how it could work during those nine months at home. We'll call that Home one You accept new clients, but you stop taking them after a certain cutoff point, maybe two to three months before your departure. That completely depends on average number of sessions per client. That gives you enough time to bring your current client's treatment to a natural conclusion instead of leaving them hanging. The upside is that clients know what to expect. You can market your work as short term and focused. You can get three uninterrupted months abroad where you don't have to worry about your clinical responsibilities. The challenge, of course, is this is assuming that you are estimating or triaging this client's circumstance appropriately. We don't know everything when they first start with us, so that might be a challenge. Another challenge is income consistency. So you'll likely need to keep marketing while you're away so you can have a pipeline of new clients waiting for you when you return. So think of it like farming nine months, planting and harvesting three months, letting the field mostly rest. Option two would be to go hybrid with virtual work. This is probably the most obvious solution. You're in person for nine months, you're virtual for three. Many clients are used to hybrid models by now, so it wouldn't be as jarring as it might have been pre2020. The big caveat here is legal make sure you are covered by your licensing board and malpractice insurance when you're physically in another country. It's not about where the client is. Like, we know that as long as you're licensed where they are in the United States, that's usually fine. But if you're in another country, just cya see where you are when you're practicing and if that's okay. If you want some inspiration for this, check out episode 628 of the Abundant Practice podcast where I interview Annie Krajewski. She's a therapist who travels internationally while seeing her US based clients online. And she's got some really creative solutions for handling things like time zones and scheduling. If you're in the Abundance party, we have a full training from her too. So if this interests you, do that. If you go this route, be really upfront. The very first client, call that nine months of the year. We're going to meet in person. Three months, I'm going to see you virtually. And that transparency, it builds trust. It gives clients the choice about whether or not that model works for them. Option 3 Adjunctive work. So this one's maybe a little more creative. So let's say you're an EMDR therapist. You could collaborate with local therapists and offer adjunctive services for their clients. So while those clients are in between phases with their primary therapist, or their therapist is addressing other goals, they can come to you for really focused trauma processing. It's a win win. The primary therapist isn't losing their client and you're offering something valuable, but time limited. This model works especially well if you're only in town for part of the year because adjunctive work is naturally more contained. So imagine telling referral sources I'm available for nine months to do this deep targeted work that supports, doesn't replace, but supports your ongoing therapy with clients. And that can position you as a specialist rather than somebody who's like in an option four lean into intensives. And this is honestly my personal favorite suggestion of these. If financial stability is top of mind or sustainability is top of mind, intensives are really perfect for someone living a dual country life because they condense the work. So instead of weekly sessions, you bring clients in for one day, two day, even multi day intensives. They get really powerful immersive experiences. You can schedule them in a way that makes sense for your travel. And here's why it works. Intensive yield higher revenue per hour, so you can potentially make enough in nine months to comfortably live the rest of the year. Plus they set you apart. Not every therapist offers them, which can create a niche for you. So if you're curious about this path, check out episode 565 of the Abundant Practice podcast. Stephanie Feld, who's amazing, does a great kind of overview of intensives. She has a really amazing training inside the Abundant Dance Party that dives into the nuts and bolts of running intensives. And after that training with her, I started getting my stuff together to be able to do them myself. So if you're not already a part of the abundance party, where those deeper trainings are with the two people that I mentioned, both Annie and Stephanie, then hop on in. So let's recap though. Sabbatical model, short term therapy with built in seasonal breaks. Number two is hybrid model, in person nine months, virtual for three. Third is adjunctive work, collaborate with other therapists for targeted services. And then four is intensives. High impact time efficient work that fits a seasonal schedule. Each of these options has pros and cons. The key is aligning your clinical style, your financial needs, your lifestyle values. And the beautiful part is there's no one right way you get to design a practice that supports the life you want, not the other way around. So regardless of your choice, you're going to need to start with the fundamentals the free worksheet this week is Niche versus Ideal Client. This is vital to make marketing as easy as possible because you're working a little bit differently than a typical therapist will. With each of these, you're going to need to have a really targeted niche in order to bring people in who aren't going to be bothered by that at all or are excited about that. So DM the word sheets or click the link in the Show Notes and I will send that your way. All right, have a great day. If you're ready for a much easier practice, Therapy Notes is the way to go. Go to therapynotes.com and use the promo code abundant for two months free. I hope that helped. If you have questions for Ask Allison or you want to get your hands on the worksheet for this episode, go to abundancepracticebuilding.com Links if you're listening, you probably need some support building your practice. If you're a super newbie, grab our free checklist using the link in the Show Notes. I'd love for you to follow rate and review, but I really want you to share this episode with a therapist friend. Let's help all our colleagues build what they want.