The Road to a Successful Private Counselling Practice

Many mental health professionals choose to establish private clinics instead of relying on agency counselling. 

However, when they actually set out to shift to private practice, they often discover that the process is more challenging than they had expected.

Securing investment is the first challenge. But even if they manage to do that, there are tons of other considerations that they had never even thought of before beginning their journey. 

As a result, a lot of private practitioners end up closing their clinics in the first five years of their opening.

What does that mean for private clinicians? Should they give up on their dreams of an independent practice?

We firmly believe otherwise.

In this article, we will explore the challenges that private practitioners might face when transitioning to their own clinics and provide a clear roadmap to facilitate a smoother transition.

After all, if 43% of the UK’s psychologists are self-employed, there must be a way to do this right.

Why Start a Private Practice in the First Place?

All clinicians typically begin their career in agency counselling. That means they work in organisations, take orders from a supervisor, and follow established policies and procedures.

Agency counselling provides a structured work environment, which is good for beginners. Instead of focusing on running their own business, clinicians can focus on honing their therapy skills.

However, with experience comes a desire for autonomy and greater freedom. As clinicians become more skilled, they want to have more control over how they handle their clients and the kinds of therapy practices they employ.

clinicians may also shift to a private practice for the simple reason of making more money. It is true that private counselling requires a level of investment, but once you break even, you get to keep all the profits for yourself.

It’s a tempting offer—once you have the resources to pursue it. Yet even with the right kind of money, sustaining your practice might be challenging.

Let’s take a quick look at all the challenges faced by private clinicians.

Challenge #1: Investment

Investment is the biggest obstacle for most clinicians on their road to opening a successful private clinic.

Any new business requires substantial upfront investment; you have to invest in things like office space, furniture, equipment, marketing, insurance, and so on.

The difficulty of covering such huge costs varies from country to country. In the UK, the cost of living is particularly high, making it tough for clinicians to rent out a space.

Furthermore, there is no governmental funding or support available for private clinicians—meaning that clinicians have to rely on their own income and savings to kick start their business.

But that doesn’t mean that there is no way out for clinicians with limited investments.

Later in this article, we will discuss various strategies to secure the funding needed for the transition.

Challenge #2: Insurance Limitations

Securing insurance can be quite a hassle for private clinicians.

Firstly, the process is time-consuming and laborious. You have to wait weeks and months for your application to be approved.

Secondly, finding the right contractor is hard. Some insurance companies place too many restrictions on the practitioners, which defeats the whole point of having a private clinic.

You can take the easy way out and start your practice without insurance—but that means sacrificing client protection, as well as your own.

Similarly, as a counsellor, you may also struggle with accepting insurance.

Once again, you can choose not to accept insurance, but that means you’ll be dealing with a smaller client pool.

To counter that, you can charge lower fees, which might not be the best move if you want to earn higher profits. 

What’s the right path to pursue, then? 

We discuss this later in Step 2 of our roadmap. 

Challenge #3: Client Engagement and Marketing

If you are working in an organisation, other people do all the heavy weightlifting of searching for clients.

In private practices, you have to do everything yourself.

You might have a solid client base back at your old job, but that probably won’t be able to sustain you for long, especially if you are charging a higher rate at your own clinic to cover fixed costs.

As in all businesses, then, the trick lies in marketing. Of course, marketing isn’t as easy as it sounds—you have to make an effort to attend events, manage social media, and engage the clients you already have, all within a very limited budget.

But with the right tricks and techniques hidden under your sleeve, gathering a solid client base isn’t impossible.

Below, we discuss what marketing strategies you can use to expand your client base. 

Challenge #4: Professional Isolation

In organisations, clinicians sit together and discuss their cases with each other, giving and taking advice. This is crucial for professional development.

But how do you grow professionally if you do not have the privilege of talking to your colleagues? That’s one of the major concerns of private clinicians. 

And it’s not just about professional development.

If you are working within an agency, you can transfer a particularly difficult client to another counsellor, especially if transference or countertransference issues are involved.

When you are professionally isolated, it’s much harder to recognize that the transference is happening, and once you do recognize it, it might be difficult to arrange a new counsellor for your client.

The key, of course, is to stay connected with other professionals. 

Step 5 in this article reveals how you can endeavour to do that.

Challenge #5: Work-Life Balance

Work-life balance is one of the reasons why clinicians shift to private clinics—only to find that the scenario is even worse on the other side.

The one big struggle for private practitioners after opening their clinic is to keep their business afloat. To do that, they often find themselves accommodating clients at the expense of their own mental health.

However, such an approach is not always sustainable.

Later in the article, we will talk about the importance of setting boundaries and knowing when to set them.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Overcoming Private Counselling Challenges

Now that we know what the challenges are, let’s look at this roadmap to success. 

Step One: Draft a Business Plan

This might seem obvious, but many people end up skipping this part or doing it half-heartedly.

Your business plan needs to include every single detail, down to how you plan to ‘market’ your clinic and how you plan to gather clients.

We suggest that you start by doing market research. It might be helpful to look at sample business plans for clinicians—not just because you want to model them, but also because you want to set yourself apart.

Once you know what message you want to impart through your business plan and what your goals are for your clinic, you can begin writing your executive summary.

An executive summary is a brief description of your business—kind of like an elevator pitch. Your summary will most likely include the kinds of therapies you employ, your specialisations, your qualifications, and so on.

After you are done summarising your business, you need to set goals accordingly. It is best to divide your business goals into three sections: finance, marketing, and sales.

Within finance, you should include every little expense, as well as projections for the remaining year.

Within marketing, you should include your unique selling point, your main platform, and any tactics that you want to employ.

Within sales, you should include how you plan to gather clients and whether you have a willing client base already. 

One of the best things that you can do when planning is to be as specific as possible. So, instead of saying, “I plan to gather clients by going to community events”, you can say, “I plan to go to XYZ event and aim to distribute at least fifty business cards there”.

Such an approach will help you actually bring your plans to fruition.

It is also recommended that you make a section for all logistical tasks that you need to get through to get the business up and running. You can keep adding on to the list as time passes.

For example, what documents are required to register your company or to rent a space? Where will you buy your furniture from? Who will take care of the transportation?

Once you have all this on paper, you won’t be overwhelmed when you begin working on opening your practice.

Step 2: Gather Investment

After drafting your plan and carrying out some heavy calculations, you’ll know exactly how much investment you need.

But in some cases—you might find that the investment you have right now is certainly not enough to create the clinic of your dreams.

One way to tackle that is to cut back on your expenses.

You can start modestly, rent a small space, and keep a very tight budget. Don’t try to go big on your first day—you can always reinvest your earnings later on.

Remember: Your first goal as a private practitioner is to keep your business afloat.

If you don’t want to give up on your initial dream plans, you can always look at other options. Here are a few that have worked out for clinicians previously:

• Angel investors

• Crowdfunding

• Grants and loans

• Nonprofit organisations

Angel investors are those people who support the business at their onset. They are literally angels for budding entrepreneurs but they can be really hard to find. The trick is to keep networking and building a good reputation for yourself.

Crowdfunding is a bit different—instead of depending on one person’s investment, you put up your cause on a website and ask several people to raise funds for you. This works best in cases when you have a ‘story’ to tell that people can foster an emotional connection with.

The grants and loans option is self-explanatory, though we would advise you to go easy and only take out loans that you can take back. As already discussed, don’t be too generous with your budget and borrow only as much as you need.

As a counsellor, you can also take the help of nonprofit organisations like Allia. This is because your practice has an overall impact on wellbeing and is viable for social finance.

Step 3: Devise a Viable Marketing Strategy

It is no secret that marketing is the key to business growth.

However, ‘marketing’ in itself is a vague term. Strategic marketing is what truly allows businesses to multiply their profits.

There are three parts to strategic marketing:

• Identifying the target market

• Developing a value proposition

• Creating targeted marketing campaigns

The first step is to know who your audience is. What are their demographics? What are their general likes and dislikes? Marketing experts have developed many models to analyse target audiences including the 5W avatar and buyer persona model.

The second step is to create a ‘value proposition’ which explains why customers should opt for your product. This involves creating a unique selling point. As a counsellor, you might want to focus on certain kinds of therapy techniques. You can also zoom into factors like flexible timings, online/telephone therapy, scaling slide fees, and so on.

The third step is to create marketing campaigns that resonate. Identify the pain points of your target audience. For example, if you specialise in adolescent counselling, use age-specific emotional hooks in your ads to attract potential clients.

Catering your angles according to your target audience is not enough–you also need to make sure your ads and blog posts are reaching the right people. One way you can do that is by using the best search engine optimization practices and boosting your website’s Google rankings. 

Another way you can reach your target audience is by trying and testing different marketing platforms. Don’t just stick to one social media application. Similarly, do not limit yourself to digital marketing; you can spread the word about your practice through networking or by choosing a strategic location where demand for clinicians is particularly high.

Step 4: Secure Insurance

Insurance is not a requirement for private clinicians in the UK but it’s still recommended for your own protection.

If you want to secure insurance, you first need to understand the different kinds of policies and procedures specific to your country and profession.

clinicians in the UK usually opt for the following insurance policies:

• Public liability insurance: This policy covers cases of injuries on counsellor premises.

• Professional indemnity insurance: This policy covers cases of counsellor negligence and malpractice.

• Cyber insurance: This policy covers cases of cyber-attacks.

Insurance companies will typically have certain ‘requirements’ such as clinical supervision and continuing professional development.

Some companies might go a step further and limit their insurance to certain kinds of therapies.

When you are comparing company quotes, do not just focus on the price—take a look at the requirements as well. If they do not suit you, search for different contractors. 

This process might get overwhelming but make sure you don’t gloss over it. If it feels like too much, you can always work with an insurance broker, who will be more well-versed in your country-specific policies. 

If you are on the other end and are figuring out how to accept insurance, then you have two options:

• Join a provider panel

• Be an out-of-network provider

You can talk about the first option with your preferred insurance company—though it is fairly time-consuming. However, once you have the approval, the company will refer clients to you.

The second option involves giving clients ‘superbills’ which they will then show to their insurance providers. This basically means that the clients will pay you out of their own pockets, but will get reimbursed by their insurance companies later.

While the second option is more tempting, clients usually prefer therapists who offer the first, since the procedure is easier.

In the end, the decision you make depends on what is important to you as a private practitioner.

If your freedom is more important, you might want to go for the second option. If securing a larger client base is more important, then the first option is for you.

Step 5: Stay Connected 

At some point, running a private practice can get lonely, which is why it’s important to stay connected with your colleagues.

This might be easy for you if you previously worked at an agency and were good friends with your coworkers. But if you’ve lost contact with them, you can always find newer colleagues in annual conferences, workshops, and classes.

On the 22nd of June every year, the UK celebrates National clinicians’ Day and there is typically a conference, where esteemed clinicians and psychotherapists are invited to share their wisdom. Such events are a good opportunity to connect with the larger counselling community.

You might also want to figure out what conferences/workshops/peer support groups other private clinicians are attending.

You can attend the same kinds and perhaps, even strike up conversations with people like yourself. This might help particularly when you want to transfer clients in case of any complexities. 

Step 6: Ensure a healthy work-life balance

You don’t want to get exhausted in your first month.

Yes, it is important to accommodate clients and be flexible, especially when you are starting out, but it is just as essential to set boundaries.

As a counsellor, you must already be aware of your own limitations—make sure your work does not exceed those. Give yourself enough time to engage in self-care, so that you can avoid burnout.

In case you’ve miscalculated and find yourself working ridiculous hours, then keep an eye out for signs of burnout.

If you feel apathetic and are suffering from chronic fatigue, that might be a sign that you need a break.

Once you’ve recognized that you need to take a step back, don’t be ashamed to do it. Your practice cannot be sustainable unless you give yourself the space to take care of yourself.

So, when you feel like a vacation is due—take it. You are your own boss, after all.

Conclusion

Starting your private counselling practice is not easy but it’s not impossible either. With the right tools, techniques, and goals, you can develop an expanding client base while enjoying the personal freedom that comes with self-employment.