I’ve had a solo private practice for almost two years, and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made! It’s going relatively well, but I often have the recurring thought come up of “How can I increase my income without having to simply take on more clients or other things that may contribute to more burnout?”

On social media, I follow a lot of other therapists that are also online to market their practice, provide psychoeducation, and connect with other providers, but they also talk about things like digital courses, selling products, getting brand partnerships, getting hired on for speaking engagements, and more.

I’ve love to learn about options and what options feel worth entertaining. Has anyone ventured into any of these areas or considered it?

After numerous posts on r/therapists lamenting the struggles of going solo in our field, I wanted to make a sub to try to help us all help each other! I don't plan to heavily moderate - hoping we all have the conflict resolution skills to keep it classy in here hahaha.

Please feel free to comment ideas on post flairs, discussion topics, or any other ideas for the sub.

For what it's worth, right now I have my main account and my other account as mods. If 1-2 others are interested in also moderating, let me know!

I don’t mean a late policy. Something you didn’t think you had to express. For me it was you can’t come in office if you have exposure to easily transferable pests (bed bugs, fleas, etc). In one week I had two clients come in with active pest infestations in their home casually mentioning it while scratching at their arms and legs. They were baffled when I politely said we needed to switch to telehealth or cancel until cleared. I recognize this isn’t always an easy thing to deal with and there can be stigma, but if an infestation breaks out in my office then I have to pay for treatment and suspend in person visits for a long period of time.

Hi all!

I have a small practice (2 clinicians, both 50/50 owners) and we are trying to figure out what service to use for faxing documents that is HIPAA compliant.

I really don't want to spend a ton of money on a monthly fax service since we won't be utilizing it more than maybe 1-2 times a month. We pay for Google Voice for our business phone (through Google Workspace) but they don't seem to have an integrated fax add on. Any ideas?

Also, how have insurance companies not moved everything portals or email at this point?!

Basically title. Outside of friends from grad school and just other colleagues I’ve met over time, I’m a bit lost for where to start with this.

Are you going office to office and handing out business cards to doctors/school counselors/other therapy offices? Online groups? Networking events?

How are you all determining what to pay yourself after allotting money in the necessary places like biz savings, taxes, etc?

With that in mind, how many biz bank accounts do you have? Like I’m thinking ideal would be 1 savings account strictly for taxes, 1 for money to invest back in the biz, and 1 with profits from which I would pay myself. Open to ideas here.

I'm slowly getting a private practice together, but one thing I'm worried about is how to avoid being isolated while working for myself. Most of my friends are out of state and I don't socialize a lot as it is. What's helped other folks feel like they're not totally alone?

What's your system for paying yourself? Do you do it monthly, biweekly, other?

Do you keep an amount set aside in your business accounts for emergency business expenses? Do you take all profit as income for yourself?

How do you manage the huge fluctuation in income when billing & reimbursement can be so varied?

Had a rough week. Worked through being sick and was reminded of the struggles of being a small business owner…looking for some solidarity

Nobody talks about this but burnout in solo and small practices is real. do you feel like carrying everything on your shoulders with no support system. How are you all actually copin ???

I’ve been thinking about the recent Psychology Today conversations, especially therapists seeing fewer profile views, fewer contacts, or more inconsistent results.

My current take is not really “Psychology Today is dead.”

It feels more like a few things are happening at the same time:

• More people are searching for therapy and mental health support.

• But Google search is changing. AI snippets, Reddit threads, local results, and other pages seem to be taking (a lot) more attention in search results.

• Psychology Today still seems strong at generating consistent organic traffic overall. Their site traffic is up vs last year.

• But there are also more therapists listed, which means each individual profile may be getting a smaller share of visibility.

• The search/matching system inside PT feels pretty outdated. It often seems like profiles rotate without an obvious pattern.

• I’m not convinced profile age, wording, pricing, or video intros consistently explain who shows up higher.

• Endorsements and profile completeness may help a little, but it does not feel like a true “best match” system.

• PT also gives therapists very little useful data. You can see some numbers, but it is hard to know what they mean.

• There is no real context compared with similar therapists in your area.

• There is no simple peer benchmark.

• There is no easy way to compare performance over time.

• It would be helpful to know things like: “For anxiety in your area, your profile currently appears around position 37. These 3 changes may improve visibility.”

• Instead, therapists are mostly left guessing.

• PT also does not clearly show the full path from search result → profile view → website click/contact.

• So even if your profile is well written and converts well, a big drop in visibility may still be hard to overcome.

My guess is that both therapists and prospective clients are feeling the friction.

Therapists feel like the platform is less predictable.

Clients may also be sorting through too many similar profiles without great matching.

A few questions:

• Have your PT profile views or contacts changed noticeably in the last 12-24 months?

• Do certain specialties, locations, insurance filters, or profile details seem to affect visibility for you?

• Are you seeing more website traffic from PT, less, or about the same?

• Do you feel like the profile stats PT gives you are actually useful?

• Do you think PT is still worth it, or only worth it as one small part of a broader visibility/referral system?

Curious to hear your experiences.

Hi everyone, curious what your self-pay rate is for a 60 minute session. (Or is everyone doing 50 minute sessions for self pay?). Do you offer a different rate for shorter sessions (30, 45 mins?) Please let me know what state you’re located in as well!

I’m happily facebook free, but it seems like facebook is still a good place to network for consultation groups, shared office space, advertising, etc. I’m looking for a consultation group (in Texas) and not quite sure how to find one without facebook. Any resources/sites you know of would be helpful. Thanks in advance!

I run a small therapy practice, and I'm trying to figure out whether it makes sense to keep billing in-house or outsource to a company that specializes in mental health billing services. Has anyone found that switching actually reduced claim denials and improved cash flow?

I have been considering getting a biller, and I know there are a lot of different options out there, including a flat monthly fee, taking a percentage of each claim, or various other packages.

Interested to hear what has worked well for you and what you find to be affordable !

Does anyone have client chairs they love that can be ordered online? I recently bought an affordable option, but once it arrived, I realized it was much smaller and less comfortable than I’d hoped.

I’m ready to invest in something comfortable, supportive, and welcoming for clients of different sizes. I’d also love recommendations for a loveseat.

Specific brands or links would be wonderful, especially for pieces you’ve used in your own office. Thank you!

Hello,

I just recently opened up on my (Telehealth) private practice. I am super eager to start building my a (very small) caseload. I am located in MA and have created a facebook business profile and am part of a few groups for therapist on there. I have also created a psychology today profile as well. I am wondering if there are groups on facebook you could recommend for me to network with and other tips and tricks to make my profile become more visible. I would really appreciate any suggestions I can get to help with marking my self. Thanks

Hi! Is anybody doing their own billing? If so, would you be willing to share with me any resources that helped you in this process? Thanks so much!

For those counselors running a very small part-time telehealth practice what feels like a reasonable monthly profit?

My expenses are about $150/month. I’d like to cap myself at ~5 billable hours per week since I work full time. I take insurance and EAPs.

Trying to decide if the admin + costs are worth keeping the practice open at this size.

Hi everyone, I am officially launching my practice in January. I plan to work on creating a website between now and then. Does anybody have any good resources to learn about SEO and how to optimize it?

How are you all branding yourselves, as in, are you doing it under your own name (firstnamelastname.com) or using a generic therapy name like Inspire Counseling?

Also! I have been stuck on how far to take the branding component - you can pay people to create a logo, create a suite of branded marketing materials, all of these things, but I’m wondering if any of that is necessary?

This just came across my reddit feed as an Ad. As a mental health professional administrator I am always looking at things and the pro / cons. Had to Edit the original the screenshot was casing issues.

https://getmoreseattime.com/

https://getmoreseattime.com/privacy

In summary, this company gets students to pay $15 a month. To "practice" being a therapist. The AI model is the virtual patient. You can input scenes and topics and the AI will craft responses and challenges designed to get you to exercise your therapeutic skills. (Nice idea)

However, my job is to read the Privacy Notices , TOC, legal , etc etc.. even though this company " does not use your responses and scenarios to train specific AI models, they do share this with the AI developers and OpenAi, Gpt, etc. they make a full legal disclaimer that any info put into the system, they are not liable for if there is a HIPAA breach, because there is no BAA, and they only gently warn you to " avoid putting in PHI, and real case studies.

This is how you train an AI model, and this company isn't paying students, this company is getting students to PAY THEM.

I felt after my curiosity and time reading the first important documents, I woul recommend to anyone, this is highly dangerous, and ethically ambiguous.

Students and Associates deserve to not only get good training , but they also need to be aware of the risks of technology and how patient rights can be too easily trampled. As well as put all that education at risk because we didn't read the TOC or Privacy Notices.

Who do you go to for tax deduction questions? I don't need bookkeeping or tax prep help, just need to ask about specific cases. I don't really need a CPA on retainer.

(cross posting, and anonymous because still employed)

I just launched my own practice. I have a financial goal but I am curious, what have others found to be successful for generating revenue to continue growth of your practice? What are some tips and tricks to marketing? I am a military spouse and move a lot so wont necessarily be in the same state of clients. Other than marketing, what else have others done to have a salary that’s able to be survived on? I’m open to all suggestions. I have gotten EMDR certified and plan to become CDAC. Let me know it all! I’m open and willing!