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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 is today's question I stayed plateaued through most of last year, just a few sessions per week away from full. What can I do this year to finally get and stay full as a private pay therapist with a virtual practice? Great question. Okay, before I answer it, I want to thank our sponsor, TherapyNotes. I've talked about them for years, know their features by heart, 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, clinical outcome tracking, and their AI notes feature. Therapy fuel Everyone at TherapyNotes believe in the product and they want 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, focus on innovation, and prioritize customers 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, try TherapyNotes free for two months with the code abundant@theapynotes.com okay, I feel this in my bones. So few things are more frustrating than being almost full, almost stable. Like almost where you want to be, except staying in that almost zone for months on end. You are not doing anything wrong. You are stuck in what I lovingly call the plateau of almost there. So let's talk about why it happens and what will actually get you full and keep you full as a virtual private pay therapist. So first, I want you to know that plateaus aren't mysterious. They're just math plus marketing. So if your caseload is hovering just below full for months or a year, it's almost always one or both of the following Number one one you're not getting enough consistent new inquiries. Number two the inquiries you are getting aren't converting into like hell yes. Clients therapists love to make this feel existential. It is not. It's numbers and strategy. So your marketing Needs to be consistent, not heroic. Most therapists do a giant push, so they'll blog, they'll network, they're still do a psych today, they'll do all these things and then they'll disappear for months. Virtual practices especially need consistency because you don't get the built in visibility of an in person community of colleagues that you run into at the grocery store or at the coffee shop. So I want you to ask yourself honestly, have I been consistently showing up somewhere every single week, marketing wise. So start with whatever's brought you in. The majority of your current clients. Maybe it's SEO and a blog, maybe it's Instagram, maybe it's networking coffee chats, maybe it's an email newsletter. I don't care what it is. If it's worked for you and brought in clients, I care that you pick a lane and you stay in it long enough to let it work. So if your answer is like, kinda like, I've kind of done some of that, that's your gap. Your messaging may also be too therapisty. That's another thing to consider. Private pay online clients have a million choices. What makes someone choose you is clarity. Most therapists write like they're trying to impress their licensing board. But clients hire you because they see themselves in your words. So try this. Pick your very specific ideal client. Write your website and profile directly to them. Cut every sentence that sounds like it belongs at a dissertation committee. And when your messaging is deeply resonant, people convert more easily, which often gives them fewer inquiries, but way more full fee clients. So I'm guessing you have some sort of niche because you're nearly full. My question is, is your messaging as clear as it could be? Does it really like pierce that person in the heart in a way that has them choose you because you get it more than anybody else. Next is to get your referral ecosystem humming. Virtual therapists need strong referral partners because you don't have geography working for you. So that means maybe three to five clinicians who regularly send you clients. That doesn't necessarily mean therapists that could be a doctor, that could be a prescriber, like a psych prescrib, it could be a yoga instructor. It depends on your niche, right? So a simple, hey, I have opening for, you know, my niche clients email every few months can keep you on their radar without being super annoying. It's, I mean, I wouldn't just send that like, hey, I have openings. Bye Allison. But making sure you're on their radar enough that you're having Conversations every few months where you have the opportunity to say that in an email. Hey, and let's also grab coffee. I'd love to hear how things are going, that kind of thing. Offering them clarity on who exactly you see, because sometimes it gets a little muddled. They've, you know, we're all busy. I don't remember everybody's niche perfectly right. This alone, just reaching out to your typical referral sources and consistently maintaining that relationship that can fill a practice. Next, I want you to audit your conversion process. If you're getting plenty of inquiries but they're not turning into clients, you gotta fix this part. So here are things to process. Are you responding quickly enough? Is your consultation call clear and confident, concise and about them? Such a a thing to work on for therapists is if you feel like you have to sell yourself. And so you get on the phone and you're like, this is how I work. This is how long I've been in business or how long I've been a therapist. And it's like, you, you, you, you, you. That's not helpful. I want you to ask them, tell me a little bit about what's bringing you into therapy and then shut up. Let them talk. Let them explain what their life has been like and hold space the way that you hold space. Ask a question the way that you might in therapy without therapizing, and then talk about how, like, yeah, I've seen this pattern in my clients who struggle with this exact thing, blah, blah, blah. Show that you know your way around what they're struggling with. People also over explain their modality. People don't usually want that in an initial phone call. They want to call, they want to talk to you and get a feel for you, and they want to make an appointment. Are you accidentally rescuing people instead of inviting them to work with you? This is not therapy. Like, you're not doing phone therapy in this phone call. And additionally, assume everybody wants to make an appointment from the call. Sometimes you'll be like, okay, well, think about it and give me a call back. If you want to schedule, that's the last thing I want you to do. I want you to say, this feels like a really good fit for me from a clinical perspective. I'm wondering how this conversation has felt for you. And when they're like, yeah, it feels good, then you can be like, awesome. Let's look at our schedules and give them the options. So also, don't forget the really boring but powerful stuff, which is whatever has gotten all the clients in that you already have, like we say do more of that. A clear niche, a fees page that doesn't hide your rate. This is not a shameful secret, your rate. So that's another thing where people aren't converting because you haven't been very clear about the fact that your private pay or what your fee is. If somebody's like, oh, I can't do that, you've kind of wasted both your time now. Sometimes it's on your website and people don't read. You can't really control that. Unless something I've done on my website is have the contact form has a checkbox they have to check that says what my fee is making sure your contact form actually works. If you have one, you would be shocked at how many times they're just not working. Like it's not getting to your email or it's not processing through and then staying visible when you're almost full instead of waiting until you're kind of desperate and dry. This stuff is not sexy and fun, but it's very effective. So the bigger truth is that you don't have a skill problem if you've gotten to nearly full. You have a structure problem. So every therapist who plateaus is missing one piece of a repeatable system. So they're missing predictable marketing, or their messaging is not clear, or they don't have a reliable referral flow, or they don't have steady conversions. When I say conversions, sometimes therapists get their hackles up. I'm not talking about converting them to your religion. It means when they call, do you convert them into clients? When all four things work together, you are full and you stay full. So the final takeaway here is that you're not broken. You're not bad at this. You just haven't built the system that private pay virtual practices rely on to hit full and stay full. Start with the consistent marketing. That one lane that's got you the most clients go hard on that. For now, update your messaging so that it actually reflects the clients you want. Tighten your conversion process. If you do those things even imperfectly, you're not going to be plateaued this time next year. Today's free worksheet is things you don't need for private pay practice so you don't go down a rabbit hole wasting time or money on something that's not going to help you grow. You can get that by dming me the word sheets. Or if you're listening to this on the podcast, you can check it out in the shorts. All right, take care. 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. 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.