A (0:00)

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. All right, welcome back to Ask Allison. Today's question is one that I get all the time, and honestly, I totally get why people ask it. The question is, is private practice actually possible or is it too good to be true? Before I dive into this, I would like to thank Therapy Notes for sponsoring Ask Allison. I've talked about them for years. I know their features by heart. You probably do too by now. But what truly sets them apart is not just what they offer, it is that they genuinely, genuinely care about your experience. It's not just about troubleshooting. They actively implement user suggested features like therapy search, secure messaging, clinical outcome measures, and their AI 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 and no pressure to prioritize investors over customers. This independence allows them to keep prices fair, to focus on innovation, and 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 abundant. You'll get two free months to try it out. All right, is private practice possible? Let's start with the short answer. Yes, private practice absolutely works. It's real. It's possible. Therapists all over the world are doing it and not just surviving, but truly thriving driving. And I get how that can feel. Really unbelievable, especially if you're used to agency life. If you're coming from a place where your burnout, low pay and rigid schedules are the norm, then the idea that you could make more money, work less, and actually like your job more might feel like a scam. Promise. It's not. It's just a different system, essentially. So I'm going to walk you through what this really looks like. There are hundreds of thousands of therapists in private practice across the US Alone. And if you Google therapists in your city, you're going to find pages and pages of Them, that's just the ones with websites and the ones that are ranking. So there are many others who built their practice up and they stay full without needing much of a presence on Google at all. But here is the thing that most people don't realize is that the business side of private practice is not actually hard. Some parts of it are annoying, absolutely. Paperwork, taxes, dealing with systems. But I wouldn't call it hard. Not really. Not when you compare it to the emotional toll that agency work can take. Plus, the work life balance is a completely different ballgame. Most private practice therapists I know see somewhere between 15 and 25 clients a week. And they do it on the days and the times that they choose. They take vacations without asking for approval. They pick their kids up from school. They don't dread Mondays in the same way. Most of my students, once they're up and running, make two to four times what they made at their last full time job. And they do it while working far fewer hours. That's not a fluke, it's just what's possible when the work is set up to serve you, not a bloated, mismanaged system. And that brings me to why this all sounds too good to be true. My theory is the agency model is broken. It's too big, it's too layered. And the people doing the work, the therapists, are the ones holding it up. So let's think about where the money goes. In most agencies, funding comes from a mix of three therapist labor and grants. But those grants are usually tied to clinical needs, meaning they support the work that you're doing, not the admin heavy structure that surrounds you. But still, the same pot of money has to cover everything. Your salary, admin pay, billers, supervisors, directors, executive leadership, rent, insurance, HR 401ks. And you're the one generating all that income. You and your other therapist buddies. So when someone tells you that private practice doesn't make sense or isn't sustainable, what they really mean is, I can't imagine that working because I've only ever seen therapists exploited. Private practice only seems too good to be true because we've normalized something that is so bad, it's kind of like telling a corporate attorney you could make Warren work less if you left the firm and opened your own practice. They're not shocked at all by that. They expect that to be true. But therapists were often the last ones to believe it could be possible for us. I've seen so many therapists say things like I can't even afford A weekly yoga class or it's been years since I took a real vacation. And that's not a personal failing, that's a system issue. And so here's the kicker. The people who insist that private practice doesn't work are often the ones who never actually tried. Or they tried, but they didn't bother to learn how to do it in a sustainable way. They might spend a thousand dollars on a CE training they don't even use, but they won't invest a fraction of that in the business skills they actually need. So yes, private practice is possible. It's not magic, it's not reserved for a lucky few. It's just a different way of working. Will you have to learn some new things? Absolutely. Most of us don't have a business background when we start. But the good news is you don't need an mba, you just need to learn some essentials. Marketing systems, financial basics. Like literally, you can learn these things in just a few hours. You implement what you learned and little by little, you build. The hardest part. It's not the paperwork, it's not the tech, it's not the website. The hardest part is the fear. It's the fear of failing, the fear of putting yourself out there, the fear that you're not cut out for it. And that's what stops most people, not the logistics. But if you can stay with it, if you can keep showing up and keep taking the next step, even when it's uncomfortable, then yes, absolutely, you can have the kind of practice that feels, quote unquote, too good to be true because it's that different from what you're used to. We've helped thousands of therapists do exactly this. We walk you through the steps, we answer your questions, we hold your hand when fear kicks in. The Abundance Party is our program that teaches you how to build a practice that works financially, emotionally and energetically. For $69 a month, for six months, or six month minimum, I should say, you get access to the same tools and support that have helped so many therapists build six figure practices. Most programs like this are in the thousands, but mine isn't, because I've been doing this a long time and I've built it to be affordable and sustainable. It's not only possible, it's inevitable. If you follow best practices, you can have what you want. In fact, today's free worksheet is called just that. And it helps you think through what you want for your practice, what you want it to look like. You can send me a DM on social with the Word Sheets and I'll send you this Works Week sheet, this week's worksheet, and all the previous ones in the series. It's free, so no strings, just something to help you take the next step. If you're listening to the podcast, you can get it in the Show Notes. And if you're ready to start building a practice that actually works for you, I'm here. Let's do it together. 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 family therapist friend. Let's help all our colleagues build what they want.