Creating Your Perfect Work Week (part 2)

In this guest blog Ashley Eder, LPC offers part 2 of "Creating Your Perfect Work Week." Ashley is a counselor and supervisor who believes we each have the potential to create a more satisfying life. Located in Boulder, CO, she works with clients and therapists through curiosity, self-awareness, and acceptance in order to create lasting change.

In Part I of Creating Your Perfect Work Week, I prompted you to evaluate how well your practice is performing as a non-monetary form of compensation. As a reminder, here are the questions for you to ask yourself to get an idea of how rewarding your private practice work week is for you now:

• Are you excited to go to work?
• Do you enjoy your clients?
• Can you maintain your personal relationships?
• Do you have time for self-care?
• Do you feel satisfied and complete at the end of the day?
• Are you resentment-free?
• Are you intellectually stimulated?
• Have you stopped doing the things you dread?

If you followed through with this exercise, you know that it really is possible to answer “yes” to all of those questions; you are ready to experiment with adding Satisfaction Builders into your week and you have a pretty good idea of where they may need to go.

Below are a handful of suggestions for ways you can re-design your practice to work better for you. Remember, the ideal practice is different for everyone! Use these ideas to get you started, then listen for your own voice to guide you in getting it just right.

Improve Your Work Satisfaction

• Play with the flow of your day. You might sprinkle “mini-breaks” into your day (just 15 minutes to get some fresh air or eat a quick lunch); take a bigger break so you can leave the office to meet a friend or take a nap, or work straight through followed by extended time off. Which schedule leaves you least harried and most refreshed?
• Experiment with separating client hours from administrative hours versus weaving them together. Does it feel more natural and productive to you to chart and return calls between sessions as you get time or all at once in a pre-determined window?
• Fiddle around with work/home boundaries. Are you happier leaving work-based activities like social media and returning emails at the office, or do you prefer integrating them into your home life so that they don’t build up so much and you can maintain a connection to your business?
• Pursue the clients who make your work meaningful and refer along those who do not. Trust that it is best for clients and therapists when we narrow our focus to serving our ideal clients, and allow other clients to seek help from clinicians who would be a more nourishing fit.
• Raise your fees until you feel adequately compensated. Check out these tips on deciding to do that and how to broach it with clients.
• Re-evaluate your mission statement. Why are you in private practice? Why did you become a therapist? Align your practice with your mission.
• Seek professional support. Would it would feel good to treat yourself to expert supervision for a while? Choose a modality or style you would like to explore. Try building your own consultation network, and do not spend time with people you do not want to emulate. Get clear on who feels good to learn from and seek their support.
• Study something new. Remember the intellectual stimulation of grad school? Well now you can have that without all of the homework. Seek continuing education that encourages you to expand your niche and work at your growing edge.
• Do your own work. Take an honest appraisal of your clinical boundaries around time, responsibility for oneself, and money. This may involve a personal inventory and some existential exploration of what you truly believe about the nature of people. Then ask yourself: “Are these beliefs current or outdated? Do I choose to hang onto them or is it time to challenge them and my own habitual limitations?”
• Trust yourself. If something feels “off” about your work experience, it probably is. Hang out with that observation, let it develop, and seek consultation with trusted colleagues. Your private practice is a work in progress. With your time, attention, and care, it will continue to flourish and nourish you back.
• Imagine giving yourself permission to quit doing the things that don’t take care of you. Perhaps start by choosing one thing to let go of and observe the ripples. What happens next? Is it as scary as you thought it might be? Does your practice feel the impact? How do you feel without it? Hint: follow your resentments to find the practices that no longer serve your higher self.
• Drop the dread. If you dread a part of your job, it is not feeding you. Be creative in your efforts to automate it, outsource it, or drop it entirely.
• Question The ‘Busy’ Trap. Make room for self-care, including the necessity to do nothing on a regular basis. Identify what self-care truly means for you and allow it. It might mean making lovely meals or giving yourself a night off from cooking. It could look like an hour at the gym or an hour on the couch. It’s personal, and you get to choose.
• Lighten your load. Examine your beliefs around how many client hours you should fit into a week. Would you be more energized by dropping 2 clinical hours, raising your rate $10, and writing for your professional blog or playing in nature? Do it!

As a business owner and psychotherapist, your practice really is your life. This can be an anchor weighing you down or an opportunity to build a flexible, satisfying life. Which do you choose?

Visit Ashley Eder, LPC’s practice website

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(c) Can Stock Photo

Creating Your Perfect Work Week (part 1)

This guest post is written by Ashley Eder, LPC. Ashley is a counselor and supervisor who believes we each have the potential to create a more satisfying life. Located in Boulder, CO, she works with clients and therapists through curiosity, self-awareness, and acceptance in order to create lasting change.

A successful private practice is not just defined by how many clients you see or how much income you generate. One critical stream of non-monetary compensation is the satisfaction your practice brings you.

That’s right--as a business owner in an inherently flexible field, part of your “payment” is the freedom to create a work week that works for you.

Whether your workload is in its sweet spot or not is a personal measure; what feels nourishing and sustainable for another clinician might be either under-stimulating or exhausting for you given your temperament and the other responsibilities in your life.

Ask yourself the following questions to start creating your own ideal work week:

• Are you excited to go to work?
• Do you enjoy your clients?
• Can you maintain your personal relationships?
• Do you have time for self-care?
• Do you feel satisfied and complete at the end of the day?
• Are you resentment-free?
• Are you intellectually stimulated?
• Have you stopped doing the things you dread?

Yes, you really can expect to have a practice that is that satisfying. If you found yourself shaking your head “no” to some of the questions above, it’s time to re-evaluate how you spend your work week. Take time now to explore these questions in detail. Be honest. Where are you solid in your business satisfaction and where could you use more work? What would your life look like if you were able to answer “yes” to these questions? Can you be specific now, or will it take some soul-searching to figure that out?

Check back for part 2 of Creating Your Perfect Work Week for concrete suggestions on ways to build satisfaction with your business. My suggestions will help you narrow the gap between where you are now and where you would like to be. Expect to revisit these areas throughout your career in private practice, especially as you advance in your career and skills, experience personal life changes in relationships and parenting, and do your own work in personal therapy.

Visit Ashley Eder, LPC's practice website

Get the FREE Private Practice Toolbox mobile app

Photo (c) Can Stock Photo

Private Practice Marketing Made Easy

Last week I spoke to group of local therapists on "Marketing Your Private Practice" and a record number of people attended the presentation. Why? Because therapists in private practice feel ill-equipped and uncomfortable with the business aspects of private practice. It's rare that a marketing course is included in a mental health graduate school curriculum, and few internships and practicums offer marketing mentorship. In my graduate program in social work, just the words "private practice" were treated as "bad words," as if making money while helping people was somehow morally wrong.

For some therapists  the word marketing brings up feelings of anxiety, even dread. "I am not comfortable with self-promoting," I've heard many therapists say.  "I'm not in this for the money so I hate to think that I have to market my services."

Over nearly 10 years in private practice I've learned that marketing isn't as difficult or scary as it sounds. Most therapists already have the relationship skills that make marketing effective. You're already good at building relationships and communicating. You just need to apply your skills differently.

 Build relationships of trust

You already know how to market, because marketing is simply building relationships of trust in a different way. Marketing requires reaching outside of your therapy office, and often beyond your comfort zone. Whatever strategy you use: talking to strangers, talking to friends and colleagues, meeting with physicians or schools, or finally getting a website, it's all about building relationships of trust.

Let 2 simple questions guide all of your marketing

• Who is your ideal client? Identifying your ideal client is  not just getting clear on the demographic and diagnoses that you like to work with, but also the characteristics, values, and traits that you look for in a client.
• What is your basic practice message? This is a simple message that focuses on one aspect of your work and emphasizes the benefits of your services in layman's terms.

Talk to everyone and anyone about what you do

In graduate school you learned how to communicate, build rapport, and put people at ease. Building relationships of trust isn't just limited to talking with your clients. Effective marketing is simply applying all of the skills you know to a broader group of people. Talk about who you want to work with what you do with strangers in the grocery store, neighbors, extended family members, or online communities, media contacts, or other professionals.

Remember you're promoting your passions, not yourself

Effective marketing isn't about pushing yourself on others, but about letting the things that you're passionate about shine through in every conversation, every blog post, every interview, an every page of your website.

It only takes three

According to private practice guru Lynn Grodski, it only takes a few "practice angels" to have a full practice-three people who will consistently refer your ideal clients to you. You probably already have three referral sources ready to refer to you. All you need to do is warm the connections you already have.

How do you feel about marketing your practice? What works and what doesn't? Share your comments below

photo credit: Hen3k Hen3k