Running a Successful Psychology Private Practice

With the introduction of Medicare items in Australia in 2006, there has been a substantial increase in the number of Psychologists setting up their own practice (including myself). There are even companies out there now that are selling franchises to psychologists to set up their own private practice at a price of course ($$$$).

What shocked me, when I set up my business in 2008, was the lack of training that university provided me with to set up practice. I reckon university provided me with maybe 20% of the relevant knowledge, skills etc needed. For me, running my own private business/ practice come down to 3 things

(1) Technical Knowledge
(2) Sales/ Marketing
(3) Management

N.B., the book - the e-myth talks about these 3 things in a lot more detail.

TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE

All that university focuses on is technical knowledge. So this is what to do in sessions with your clients. But not really. It is all about writing essays, doing research etc. But guess what...clients don't really care what works for a bunch of research participants, they care what works for them and everyone is different. The real skill that I needed to develop was explaining complicated psychological concepts/ jargon in everyday language. Its harder than you think.

SALES/MARKETING

Before you can even contemplate what you are going to do with clients in sessions, you need to get them there first. This is something that I had never done before and didn't know where to begin. Sitting behind you computer, diligently typing out documents or hand-outs is not going to get you clients. You need to sell yourself or to introduce yourself to others. What did I do? I went around to every GP in my local area, to introduce myself. This was a very powerful marketing technique and literally created a business for myself overnight. Recently getting my web-page on the front-page of Google has also helped. I reckon I spoke with over 100GPs but it was well worth the effort.

MANAGEMENT

Running a small business/ private practice is about good organisation and planning. This means having very clear structures in place or standard operating procedures and writing the down. Boring but very important and effective. Also, investing in a good practice management software makes a huge difference and allows your business to grow as needed.

While there are many more components needed to succeed in small business, having a good understanding of these 3 is a very good start and will help you to build the foundations needed for a successful business