Author: admin

The stresses and extra pressure of Covid-19 are certainly a big part of it, but I’m seeing a huge underswell of people facing up to their existing issues in life too. The treadmill of the over-busy life has come to a stop. People can’t just distract into overworking, training all the time, volunteer committee roles and all the rest, as easily. All those people who feel uncomfortable with quiet time are now much more aware of the issue. That inability to watch a movie without reaching for the phone too, the need to move about and having difficulty simply sitting still. These sort of signs of stress are now unavoidable for many more people. It’s a painful awakening for many people, but with the awareness comes a chance for change…

Recently, a Play therapist asked me a few questions on LinkedIn, starting with that line. I know a lot of people are in a similar place so here are some answers. She was looking at different places to offer her service. Schools, private clients, workshops for parents, group offerings to schools etc. We do this a lot. When something isn’t working, we usually try to offer it to a different group or try to come up with a different service entirely. It’s nearly always a total waste of time. However, there is a solution. Here are two examples to help grasp what’s going wrong and how to fix it. Tom (not his real name) had a regional newspaper column. He was a therapist and was never busy. Each week 150k…

Particularly in the Northern Hemisphere, in September, kids go back to school and parents have more time to think about themselves. People start thinking about what they will do over the winter. Courses and evening classes all start up. It’s when people make decisions. In the southern hemisphere it’s the same story, just at a different time of year. September is an upswing month for therapists in general. But a lot of us wait until September to start putting the word out about what we do. It’s too late at that point. A lot of people have already decided. You see, most people only take action after they have been made aware of us several times. Few people act the 1st time they see something from us. If we are…

Most of the people I’ve seen, who have paid for a Professional ‘Rebranding’, have closed down. Having said that I don’t think that’s much to do with the actual rebranding, but more to do with therapists using it as a last resort roll of the dice when they are really struggling. Therapists who are close to giving up usually don’t know what they should and should not be doing. Then they find a branding specialist who, for thousands, spices up their image online and in print and they expect it to work. The problem isn’t our look, it isn’t the name of our business, it’s not how nice our cards are, or how sharp and beautiful our website is. They are all nice things to have, but they are less…

I remember going in to the clinic, week after week, seeing clients but still not being able to pay the bills. It was soul destroying. Every day felt like a ‘work-day’ even if I had just one client, so it felt like I was always working, yet there was never any money to pay the last bills of the month. I was constantly thinking about what I needed to do to get clients, but in those days I didn’t know what worked, so I usually wasted my time and didn’t fully implement anything useful most weeks. Of course, I wasn’t seeing enough clients so I wasn’t making the difference I could either. This wasn’t what I’d signed up for when I started my journey as a therapist. Rather than get…

For clients in January, start planning Now! For a busy July, plan in May! There are times in a year when we can safely predict that we will be more likely to be busy: In the Northern hemisphere two examples are March and September. In March, kids are in school so people have more time, without huge expensive holidays like Christmas on the horizon. In September people again have kids in school, are over the summer holiday expenses, and often will start thinking ‘what will I do this winter’? Equally there are quiet times. And there are reasons for that. In my area December is very slow for most people. Everyone seems to be in a state of near hysteria about Christmas. Time and money are harder to come by.…

To be blunt, we’re often lying to ourselves. It can be convincing, but there are a lot of lies and self- delusions in most therapists minds. I don’t have the money to advertise, People don’t want my type of help, I don’t have the time to write posts and advertise, I’ll post when I finish it, It needs to be perfect, I’ll get to it later, I’m a professional therapist (even though I have next to no clients and no money), etc…   The worry goes on: Can I pay the bills? Can I support my family? Can I find clients? They turn to self-doubt and self-judgement swiftly. I’m not good enough, I need a different therapy or coaching type to be busy, It’s not possible to be successful, etc.…

That sums up my first years in practice. The constant worry about the rent, CPD, supervision costs, and more, was grinding me down and that was before we got to money to live on. The bills always seemed to be paid late, paying for heating oil was a dread, and the idea of a holiday was a fantasy. That was the most soul-crushing part of building my practice. I wanted to help people and of course I needed to earn an income to support my family too. Being a therapist should have been the perfect way to do both. It wasn’t. Not at the start. Now that I am booked out, it is a completely different situation, but too often we ignore the harsh realities of setting up as a…

In so many ways I had the wrong expectations when I started.  Had anybody told me a few very simple things, it would have saved alot of heartache.  So here's 10 things I wish I'd been told. 1. You’re not in business just by having a skill or qualification, you’re only in business when you have clients to use those skills with! I thought I was ready on day one. I so wasn’t! I had no idea how to find enough clients to be able to afford to continue. 90% of the work at the start, is finding clients. That changes as we go, and done well, once the business takes off, it only takes 5-10% of the job to stay busy, but I was not prepared for how much…