Creating more impact in your independent practice: How do I test if my “more than therapy” idea will work?

This was a great question that came from one of our Do More Than Therapy members, Dr Paula Redmond. Paula has a practice helping health professionals deal with stress and burnout and she is part of our programme for people who have a thriving practice already but who want to find more creative and impactful ways to serve people. She identified what is a big problem for many psychologists and therapists in private/independent practice, we just don’t know whether our idea for an online course, book, workshop series, app or whatever it is will work!

Think like an entrepreneur in your independent/private practice

A few years ago I came across two books that really shaped my thinking on this subject and if you love all things entrepreneurship I would highly recommend them. They make me feel excited just thinking about them! Pat Flynn’s “Will it Fly” and Eric Ries “The Lean Start-Up” come from totally different perspectives and both are very far removed from the way we usually think about psychology and therapy independent practice. But that is why they are so useful to us. We need to change gear slightly when we are coming up with an innovative idea because unlike therapy, which is tried and tested and known to the public, we are talking about creating something the public has never seen before. It is a much bigger risk so needs a different mindset and approach.

If you have time I would certainly recommend that you read the books. But, in case the stack of books on your nightstand is overpowering, I thought I would share with you the process that I developed as a result of my interpretation of them and that I used to develop the Psychology Business School online course. 

12 steps to test your idea for making more impact in your independent/private practice

I’ve included a summary of the 12 steps I talk through here in the show notes so you can either grab a pen and paper to make sure you don’t miss any steps out or head over to the show notes (you can find them in your podcast app or on the psychologybusinessschool.com site) where they are mapped out for you.

1. Know your ideal client/user of the product or service. Check out this podcast episode for more information about how to hone down and get talking to your ideal clients.
2. Find them where they already are and listen to the problems they talk about
3. Note down the solutions they are already accessing. Is there a problem they are already trying to solve but the solutions are inadequate for some reason?
4. Start growing a community and email list of ideal users. Create free content like blogs or podcasts that helps them solve these problems and use social media to promote it. If you have a budget you may use low cost engagement Facebook ads to get more visibility at this stage. Listen to this podcast for more ideas on how to use Facebook to start growing your audience for your new product/service. 
5. Create something small (and ideally free or low cost) that helps to solve the problem. Do people download or use it? Make sure those people that do are added to your email list.
6. Get feedback from the users, what was most useful/least useful?
7. Create something bigger that you can charge for. Do people pay for it? If they are interested in the idea but they won’t pay for it you need to try and find out why. Some markets are not “buying markets.” This may mean that people do not place a monetary value on solving the problem, sadly this is often true around topics relating to mental health. Or you may be trying to reach a market with no disposable income. If all other indicators are good (ie your download was well used) you may wish to approach grant funders if you are a social enterprise or charities with a view to partnering up to create your product and get it out to people without them paying directly. You can use the social proof you gained from steps 1-7 to demonstrate that there is a need and a desire for the product/service and charities may well be able to pay you to create it.
8. If you are selling directly to people the next step is to find out/estimate the size of your potential market - how many people are likely to want/need this product or service - use this to set your expectations and to consider the price point you can offer a product or service at. If you have a big market available then lower cost products can work, if it is a very small market then higher cost products are likely to be necessary in order to be sustainable. 
9. Plan the full version of the product or service - keeping costs to an absolute minimum. Make sure you know exactly what it will cost you to create and how many you need to sell to break even.
10. Create a sales page for the product or service you want to create, allowing people to pre-order it for “beta testing”. This is where you will let a small group of people have access to the product or service at a low price so you can get real life user feedback and make refinements.
11. Create the product/service “as you go” for the beta testers. Start with the absolute minimum. So if you are testing an online course idea create and teach the modules live week by week. This allows you to be responsive to feedback. If you are creating something more tangible like an app or a product release the minimum version and then add features or improvements for your users so they can tell you what really matters to them. So long as they know this is the part of the journey you are on, and that is why they are getting such an awesome price, they will often enjoy helping you. At every stage be willing to scrap the whole idea and do what people tell you they want from you.
12. Practice behavioural resilience! You will definitely create things that don’t work in this process and that really hurts. You will invest time and effort into projects that you end up scrapping but those are the springboards for the ones that work. If you can tolerate and move through that pain and uncertainty, and keep content marketing all the way through, you will hit on the right idea eventually. 

Further reading for psychologists and therapists who want to test a new idea in their independent practice

Will it fly by Pat Flynn

The Lean Start Up by Eric Ries

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Help me plan our summer workshops 

Before you go I need your help with something. Over the summer I am planning to run some free workshops for you guys so that anyone thinking of starting or growing their practice in September can get a jump start on it. At the moment I am thinking of running two sessions. A repeat of our “find your specialism” training and a session called “the 50 minute business plan” where I take you through the key components of a useful business plan and help you start to create/update yours in 50 minutes. I’ve put a poll on the “Do More Than Therapy” page on Facebook, if you could hop over there and just tap which option would suit you best that would be really helpful (or add another option that you would prefer, its not set in stone yet!) Thank you so much in advance!

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Where are you at in your practice?

Are you just starting out and still terrified about not having enough work or not being set up right?

Or are you full to the rafters with clients and looking for a different way to make an impact on mental health without risking burnout?

Either way come over to www.psychologybusinessschool.com we have programmes, tools, free resources, podcasts and blogs to help you take your practice to the next level.