What’s the best way to market your private practice?

You might expect me to have a straightforward answer to that. After all, I’ve been helping counsellors with their marketing for years.

But I don’t.

And actually, I think that matters.

In this episode, I’m looking at why the question we tend to ask about marketing might not be the most useful one — and what to ask instead if you want to spend less time wondering what you ‘should’ be doing.

Find Your Focus

If you’re doing lots of things to market your practice but aren’t sure where your time and energy are most likely to help you get more of the right clients, Find Your Focus is a 90-minute 1:1 session where we’ll work that out together.

Find out more about Find Your Focus

Buy Me a Coffee

If you enjoy the podcast and would like to support it, you can buy me a coffee here:

Buy Me a Coffee

Start Here

Not sure what support you need? You can find my free and paid resources here:

Start Here

I can't tell you the perfect way to market your private practice, and given that I've devoted years to helping counselors to get more clients, that might sound like a strange thing for me to admit. But actually, understanding why I can't tell you might completely change the way you think about marketing your practice.

Welcome to the Grow Your Private Practice Show. I'm Jane Travis, and I'm here to help counselors and therapists get found by the right clients and build a private practice that works for them. So whether your diary has a few too many empty spaces or you're feeling stuck with your marketing, or you simply want to make running your practice easier, you are in the right place.

So let's get started.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back. And if this is your first time here, it's really great that you've found us and I hope that you're having a great day so far. Now then, ask me a question about marketing your private practice and there's a very good chance that my answer's going to be, "Well, it depends."

So it could be that you say, "Jane, should I start a blog?" And I'll say, "Well, it depends." Or, "Would it be worth me starting a podcast?" And I'd be like, "I don't know. It depends." Or, "Should I start a YouTube channel?" it depends." "How do I decide what I want to specialize in?" "Well, tell me more." And yes, I know that's probably one of the most frustrating answers I could ever give when you really want me to say, "Yes, do this," or, "Don't do this," or, "This is the thing that you need to do to help you to get more clients." Because the problem is that before I can tell you what might make sense for you, I need to know a lot more about you.

Because two counselors can ask me exactly the same question, and the right answer for both of them could be completely different. And I think one of the biggest mistakes that we make with marketing is to try and answer, what should I do, before we've answered, what am I trying to achieve and what makes sense for me in the life I have right now? Now, this isn't something I've suddenly decided because I've got something new to sell.

You know, for a lot of us, we need the money. You know, we're not just sitting around having, having a lovely time just picking up clients whenever we feel like it. Most of us need to get the clients. We need to get the money into our, into our lives, into our pockets. And that means that you start looking around for the answer, and there isn't an absolute capital T, capital A, The Answer.

So you'll probably see in Facebook groups and podcasts and, you know, other counselors will tell you this, or there might be courses or, you know, things that people are talking about generally, and you'll notice that you'll get different answers. So if you ask a question to 10 counselors, you'll probably get 10 different answers.

Because somebody's saying blogging is brilliant, and that's me, I will definitely say that. Somebody else might say, "Well, actually YouTube is really doing well at the moment," which is true. It definitely is. And somebody else might recommend a new directory that's come out, or maybe there's a new platform that's appeared, And suddenly you have something else that you think you should be doing. So, you know, you're looking at what everybody else is doing and wondering whether that's the thing that you're missing out on. Now, I remember back in the day when Threads launched. So Threads is like Instagram's kind of version of Twitter. So there'd been all sorts of upheaval around Twitter after Elon Musk took it over, and then Instagram started this new text-based platform. So it wasn't about images like Instagram usually is, it was all about text.

It was text-based, so it was very, very similar to Twitter. And what happened is that suddenly there were all sorts of people all over Facebook, in the Facebook groups, you know, rushing to join. You know, I, I was seeing people say, "Oh, I've joined Threads," or, "I better get on Threads," and everybody was just getting really obsessed with joining Threads.

And some of them had never used Twitter anyway. So for me, watching this play out, it was really interesting 'cause what I was seeing in real time was shiny object syndrome. So people were seeing this new f- new exciting, sexy thing, and they were thinking, "Right, I've got to go on that." And it... They weren't thinking about why, because, well, you know, Threads wasn't necessarily a bad idea, but why did they need to be there?

If they weren't on Twitter, why would they want to be on this? What did they want it to do for their practice? Did it fit in with who they were and the sorts of things they enjoyed? And had they decided that it made sense for them to invest in learning and growing a new social media platform, or were they just doing it because it was the new kid on the block and everybody else seemed to be doing it?

'Cause I think it's more likely to be the fact that everybody's doing it, and there's a feeling that maybe this is the thing that I've been missing, or I'm gonna be missing out because everybody's going on there, and I don't want to miss the boat. The problem isn't Threads, and the problem isn't whether you should choose blogging or YouTube or any of those things. I think the problem is that we sometimes start with, "Should I be doing that?" Rather than the more useful question of, "What am I actually trying to achieve?" Now, we often talk about wanting a full private practice.

So the question really is, what does that actually mean? You know, again, I see this on Facebook groups all the time, often with new counselors, and they're, , looking around, trying to find out some stuff and, you know, get some information on, you know, what they need to do. And they often just say, you know, , "How many people here are full?"

But that's, that's not really, the right question, is it? Because if you ask 10 questions, you'd again probably get 10 different answers, because there might be people that, and there are, people that have five clients alongside doing another job, and that might be perfect for them.

That might be them. That might be a full practice to them. Or you might have some where, you know, they've got 12 clients, and that just fits perfectly for them, or somebody else whose private practice is their sole income, and they want 20 or 25. That would be classed as full. N-none of them are doing private practice better than the other.

They're just building their private practice in a different way to achieve a different thing. So if somebody says, "How do I get a full private practice?" the first question always needs to be, what does full mean to you? And perhaps, what do you actually want this practice to give you? Is it that you want more income?

Is it that you want more freedom? Is it that you want to do work that you enjoy? You know, maybe you're working towards a particular number or a particular type of clients, or maybe you need something that fits alongside another job, or maybe you actually want to get rid of the other job and grow your practice into be something that replaces it.

So, you know, you can't really decide what's going to deserve your time until you know and understand what it is you're trying to build and why. And your answer doesn't have to look like everybody else's. It's gonna be unique and individual just to you. But even if you have two counselors who want exactly the same thing, they aren't starting at the same place. So for example, one counselor might have young, like school-aged children, so they're gonna have to do the school runs. Or they might have elderly parents or caring responsibilities. Or they might have a, you know, a disability in some way, or they might have something that, that hampers their working, so maybe they're neurodivergent, it makes certain things more difficult for them.

Maybe they've got another job, or maybe they're really... maybe money's really tight for them, so they've not got a l- lot of money to invest in anything. Or maybe they're just incredibly busy, and time is just the, the thing they're struggling to invest. Or maybe it's about emotional energy. I mean, I know for me, I, I struggle with anxiety and I struggle with depression.

Thankfully, I've not struggled with depression for a while, but I did used to a lot. And if you're in a spell of depression, then you don't have the emotional energy to put into growing your practice in the same way. That... You know, there's all sorts of other things that might be happening outside of the practice.

Maybe you've fallen out with your partner, and you don't know whether to stay with them or something like that. We just don't know. So early morning networking might be a fantastic option for one counselor, but try telling someone who's got to get their kids to school that they should be at a networking meeting at half past seven in the morning, and that's a completely useless recommendation, isn't it? It doesn't matter how well networking works for somebody else, if it doesn't fit you and the life that you currently have, then it's not for you, is it?

And also things change, you know? Something that was absolutely right for you to do three years ago might not be right for you now. And that's why now matters. You know, what's going on now. So like I say, there could be two people that have exactly the same goal and exactly the same amount of available time, but they're still two very different people.

So I've got a lovely client that I've been talking to recent- all my clients are lovely, to be fair. But I've got a lovely client that I've been speaking to, and they've been talking about how they've been getting out there in the local area, and they've been collaborating with somebody else and doing some workshops.

And they've talked about how much they enjoy it, which is fantastic. You know, they clearly love going out there and meeting people. They're connecting with people locally, and they talk about how that gives them energy, and also about how social media leaves them feeling really cold and just not inspired at all.

But if you compare that with me, you know, I'm a massive introvert. Now, I have done networking, and I still do go networking, but it's not my natural happy place, you know? But give me a cafe and a laptop and something to write about, and preferably a dog-friendly place, so I've got Kim there as well, and I'm a very happy bunny.

I love that. Writing is something I really enjoy, and I've been doing it for years, and I can keep doing it because there's always new things to talk about. So why on earth would me and this other person have the same marketing plan? It doesn't make sense. Just doesn't make sense, does it? So it doesn't really matter what everybody else is doing.

It only really matters about what you're doing. Is it the thing that fits you?

So when somebody asks me, "What should I be doing to get more clients?" I'm gonna need to know what is it that you're actually trying to achieve, and what does your life look like right now, and what sort of time and money and emotional energy do you have to put into it? And who are you? You know, who are you?

What are you like? What, what are your passions? Because that's when we can stop looking for the thing that every counselor is supposedly meant to be doing, and start working out exactly what makes sense for you. And all of this is why I've created Find Your Focus. Now, I say that I've created this, and it's not q- quite the right word, because this is something I've been talking about with people for years.

This is something that's been... You know, I've been banging on about this for years. So what I've actually done is create a way for us to sit down together and apply all of this specifically for you. So Find Your Focus is a 90-minute one-to-one session with me, and I'm not gonna be turning up with a generic list of things that I think every counselor should be doing, because what we do is we start with you.

So where are you now? Where do you actually want to get to? Who do you wanna work with? And what have you already tried? You know, what's working? What isn't? What do you enjoy? What makes your toes curl? What are you avoiding? How much time and energy do you realistically have for this? And what does your practice need to fit around in the rest of your life?

Because I can't tell you the perfect way to market your practice because it doesn't exist. But if I sit with you for 90 minutes and you tell me about you and your practice and the clients you love to work with and the life that your practice needs to fit into, together we're gonna be able to work out what makes sense for you right now.

And the word now matters here because we're not creating marketing plans that you're gonna sign in blood and promise to follow for the next ten years. No, what we're doing is deciding what deserves your attention right now at this point in your life and what doesn't. Because sometimes I think knowing what you can stop worrying about is every bit as valuable as knowing what shou- what it is you should do next.

And after our session, you'll get a recording of it, and you'll get a summary, and you'll get your own personalized focusing document with the priorities and the next steps that we've agreed on. So you're not left trying to remember everything that we've talked about. It's all gonna be right there for you.

So this podcast is gonna come out on the twenty-fourth of September, and Find Your Focus is currently on an introductory price because it's a new service that I'm offering. So it's available on the introductory price of a hundred and twenty-seven pounds until tomorrow, so Friday the twenty-fifth of September.

So after that, it's going to be a hundred and fifty-seven pounds. So look, if you've been listening to this and thinking to yourself, "You know, Jane, , this sounds like me. I've got so many things that I could be doing, and I don't really know what's the best thing to focus on," I'll put the link in the show notes. So come and talk to me, and we'll work out what's gonna make sense for you So whether you decide to book Find Your Focus or not, here's what I really want you to take away from this episode. The next time you find yourself thinking, "Should I be doing this?" Particularly when you've seen somebody else doing something that seems to be working brilliantly for them, don't immediately add it to your list of things to do.

Ask yourself a question first. Ask yourself, "What am I actually trying to achieve?" And then, "Does this make sense for me in the life that I have right now?" Now, it could be that the answer will be yes, which is fantastic, or it could be that the answer is actually no, not really. Or it could even be that the answer is maybe not now, maybe I might do this in the future, and that's okay, too.

Because your job isn't to become brilliant at every possible way of marketing your private practice. No, your job is to make it easy enough for the right people to find you, to understand how you can help them, and decide that you're the person they'd like to get in touch with. And you get to decide what that looks like for you

Okay, so look, thank you so much for listening. And if you'd like to find out more about Find Your Focus, you'll find all the details in the booking link in the show notes. So go and check it. And like I say, if you book it before the end of Friday, the 25th of September, you can get your session at the introductory price.

And look, if you've enjoyed this episode, please make sure that you follow the podcast so you don't miss the next one. So that's it for now. You take care. Have a good rest of the day, and I'll speak to you next week. Bye-bye