Contenders so far include QuickBooks, TherapyPartner, Outright.com, and TurboCash.

Weigh in!

Susan Giurleo of BizSavvyTherapist.com is offering a week-long teleconference series on getting a private practice underway.  Price?  Free if you listen in, cheap if you participate.  The details, from her site:

Innovative Private Practice 101:  Start Up Basics

Who is this for?
The program is for the newly licensed or those desiring to leave their current employment and start an independent private practice.

Who won’t find this helpful?
If you are already running your own practice and have an office, a business presence online, HIPAA compliant intake paperwork and get paid on a regular basis by clients and/or insurance companies, this course is too basic. But stay tuned…there will be classes for you coming up in 2010!

What will I learn?
In 5 classes we will discuss:

1. Why bother starting a practice? What drives your desire to build your own business? And what sets you apart from your competition?
2. Start-up Basics: A Place to Call Your Own and how to Pay for It
3. Legal Stuff: Lots of Insurance, Forms, Files and HIPAA
4. Clients: Attracting and Keeping Them
5. Mini-Marketing Lesson (Marketing is HUGE topic. In this class we’ll touch on the basics you need to get started.)
6. (Optional) Q&A session with Susan.  This will be your chance to ask me any and all of your burning questions about starting a practice.

How will I learn?
All content will be delivered via teleseminar (via a phone bridge line. It’s like a conference call) and email. All calls will be recorded so you can listen to them at your convenience (exceptions noted below). I will send some written articles and workbooks via email. (All material will be delivered digitally [phone, email].  There will be no hard copy book or CDs.)

When does this class take place?
This is a one week, intensive course.  Each call will be 60-70 minutes long.

Sunday, December 13, 2009 @ 8:00 PM EST: Call 1: Why bother?

Monday, December 14 @ 8:00 PM EST: Call 2:  Start-Up Basics

Tuesday, December 15 @ 8:00 PM EST: Call 3:  Legal Stuff

Wednesday, December 16 @ 8:00 PM EST: Call 4:  Clients

Thursday, December 17 @ 8:00 PM EST: Call 5: Mini-Marketing

Friday, December 18 @ 11 AM EST: Call 6: Q & A with Susan (note time change)

How much does it cost?
I know many of you are new to the profession and money is tight. So here is my holiday gift to you: You can listen in  and participate in these calls for FREE! That’s right I will help you get all the practice start up basics for free, but you must be on the calls *live* for the freebie. This means you will not have access to any of the recorded material or workbooks to review after the calls.  (And please don’t email me and tell me you want it for free but the time is inconvenient….please…..it’s free.)

Here is my advice. If you want to save money and want to know how to build a great, enjoyable, profitable mental health practice in 2010, clear your schedule for the evenings on the week of December 13.  Then, get a big notebook to take notes as you listen.

No pressure here, but I will NEVER offer this course for free again. In fact, I will package it up and sell it on my blog starting in January 2010, so this is your only chance to get this offer (and you have to admit, it’s generous).

But I want the recordings and I would love to have a workbook.  OR  I REALLY can’t clear my schedule. How do I get access to the class material?
I know you may not be able to make all the calls live as this is a time intensive course, it happens all in one week and during the holiday season.

If you want the recordings so you can listen at your convenience and a workbook you can use to stay on track, I’m offering the entire course for $72 (BTW, that is $12 per hour).

Yep, 6 hours of content on how to start a mental health practice for $72.  And the content is yours to keep forever so you can review it over and over again. Why so cheap? Because I know you are starting out. I know money can be tight. But like I said above, I will package this up in 2010 and offer it at a higher price, so now is the time to jump on this if you are interested.

I think that about covers it!

If you are ready to learn how to start a successful, innovative, ethical, all around wonderful mental health practice in 2010, click on one of the buttons below to register.

Remember, if you sign up for the free version, you will not get access to the recorded calls or the workbook.

Go to BizSavvyTherapist.com (a WTCI affiliate) to sign up.

Got my cards from vistaprint today.  Look nice.  It was around $30 for 500 cards, 7 days shipping, the better paper, etc.  Though on second glance at the cards, saw a faint blue line on the card…and on the next…and the next.  All of them had the line.

I gave vistaprint a call.  They credited the entire order without a fuss.  Very nice.  So: vistaprint.com?  Thumbs up.

UPDATE: Vista Print now a WTCI sponsor. Click here for a deal–supports WTCI!

There are lots (and lots) of books that will walk you through launching and growing a private psychotherapy practice.  Many are collected at the Where the Client Is Bookstore.  Take a look.  (Your purchases there help support the site.)  Categories there:

Private Practice – Starting
Private Practice – Doing
Therapy Workbooks
Treatment Planners
Law & Ethics
Office Stuff
Self-Care

Are you waiting to start marketing your practice until you know exactly what to do, what to say and where to say it?

Don’t wait. The best thing you can do is get your toe into the water and try some marketing to see what works and what doesn’t.

Here are 10 things you can do TODAY to market your practice:

1. Decide on your specialty. Marketing a generic practice will NEVER work.

2. Start a blog. Easy and free at www.wordpress.com, www.typepad.com, orwww.blogspot.com. Start writing about what you know that is helpful and valuable. [see my practice blog at: www.childdevelopmentpartners.com as an example.]

3. Get a twitter account at www.twitter.com. Tweet away, link to your blog and other information related to your speciality such as newpaper/magazine articles, otehrs blogs, etc.

4. Call a colleague and plan to go out to lunch/coffee and talk marketing. A marketing buddy gives you someone to bounce ideas around with and can hold you accountable when you start to slack off the marketing plan (we all do!).

5. Start collecting your current clients’ email addresses and begin mailing out an e-zine or e-newsletter. You must get permission from people to send them this information (no spamming allowed), but once you do you can keep them up-to-date on the latest research, offer simple coping skills, and inform them of upcoming workshops or programs in your practice.

6. Write an article on a relevant topic and send it to your local community newspaper.

7. Create a quick survey and ask your current clients for ideas on what services and support they would like to see you offer (I did this once and got GREAT feedback that helped me design my Homework Survival Bootcamp, which is very popular).

8. Change your email signature to include some marketing info such as your contact information and a tag line about your practice.

9. Send “thank you for your referral” letters to all your referral sources.

10. Provide top-notch service. “Wow” your current clients with up-to-date clinical interventions and amazing customer service. They will tell their doctors, friends and colleagues. Word of mouth referrals are the most powerful marketing you can get.

Here, a demo I put together to show you what a wordpress.com site can look like:

http://virginiaminuchin.wordpress.com/

No such person.

WordPress.com is intended a blogging platform, but with a few minor tweaks, you end up with a nice ‘n’ regular web site. (Of course, if you want to blog, you can leave those features up.)

Once the site is up, no cost to you.  Not $800 per year; zero.  I’m doing set-up for people–charging very little–let me know if you need help:  wheretheclientis [at] gmail.com.

Next up:  web presence.  I’ve heard from long-time therapists that somewhere between most and all of their referrals come from the web.  Not from clients referring clients, but from the web–strangers clicking to get help.

What I did:  Built a website.  Got a Psychology Today profile up.

What you can do (or I can do for you for cheap):  Build your website.

It’s tricky, but not as tricky as the folks at therapysites.com or fortherapists.com would have you believe.  It’s not hundreds and hundreds of dollars tricky.  ForTherapists wants $449 for a year of website!  TherapySites wants “only” $59 a month ($708 annually)!  “Only”!

Here’s what it should cost:  Nothing or next to nothing.   Doing it through wordpress.com, it’s zero dollars once you’ve done the set-up. Works nice, looks nice.  (This way, your site’s URL will be yourname.wordpress.com).

Another way to go:  spend a little (about $7 a month ($80 annually)) and launch your own .com (yourname.com).  You get an @yourname.com email, some other bells and whistles.  If it gets you one client, it pays for itself right away.

Not hundreds and hundreds of dollars.  Much less.

The initial set up and design take some doing.  I’ll help or do it for you for a very reasonable price.

Write me if interested:  wheretheclientis [at] gmail.com

And, vioila, you’re on the net.  Congratulations.

Today, my cell phone became my work phone.  Meaning, I changed the outgoing message.  Now it’s client-call friendly.  I’ve heard this done different ways.  What I ended up with:

“Hi, you’ve reached the office of [me].  Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you within one business day.  If this is an emergency, please hang up and dial 911.”

I’ve also heard:

“This is the psychotherapy office of…”

Only objection:  If someone *69s your call to a client–say her jealous, DV perp bf–better not to let the DVing bf that his gf’s secretly getting help.

Another thought, if you’re carrier provides it, might add something like this early on:

“To bypass message press [whatever]…”

Your friends (and regular clients) don’t want to hear the walk-through yet again.

Thanks!

Lots of companies want your business card business. I’ve had a couple of them recommended: designyourowncard.com and vistaprint.com.  Google will have still other ideas.  It’s not unfun picking out colors, fonts, etc.  Then they run you through a lot of optional extras (I passed on all).  Then you get your price–next to nothing!  Then you get the shipping add-on (these, for a no-frills 250-pack at vistaprint):

Choose a Delivery Time
Slow: 21 Days – $5.67
Standard: 14 Days – $9.52
Priority: 7 Days – $13.68
Rush+: 3 Business Days – $26.20

So…either plan ahead, plan to spend, or plan to resent and wait.  Or wave good-bye to the time you spend picking out colors, fonts, etc, online and go local.

UPDATE:  I went with vistaprint, made a little bit less expensive (I think) with the help of a RetailMeNot.com coupon.

Beware the “Vista Print Rewards” $10 rebate offer that comes post-order.  Fine print:  they sign you up to some sort of $14.95 subscription–to what, I don’t know.

UPDATE: Vista Print now a WTCI sponsor. Click here for a deal–supports WTCI!

Next stop, the card.  What to include?  How to design?  Where to purchase?

First up, gotta get the rules straight.  Figuring out what your state board allows and forbids takes some poking around.  Here, some potentially helpful links:

APA Practice (probably has PsyD/PhD guidelines–I’m not one, so no access)
ASWB (links to rules and regs by state)
CA Board of Behavioral Sciences (pdf)
CAMFT

For social workers:  If you’re going to advertise “psychotherapy,” looks like you’ve got to write out your license name–e.g., “Licensed Clinical Social Worker,” and not “LCSW.”  At least in California.