(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Welcome to Ask Allison. Y'all ask the questions about having a fun and thriving practice and I answer them. We have a worksheet for you today so you can bring this answer into your life. You can access that at abundancepracticebuilding.com slash links, where you'll also be able to ask any questions you have for Ask Allison. If you want more support, we've got some free trainings in there too.
If you can't get enough Ask Allison, check out our YouTube channel for our entire Ask Allison library. Welcome back to Ask Allison. Here's today's question. I was about to step out into private practice, but just found out I'm expecting. Should I wait until the baby is born or is it okay to start now? So first I'd like to thank TherapyNotes for sponsoring Ask Allison. They are the number one rated electronic health record system available today with live telephone support seven days a week.
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Check out Party Plus in the link in the show notes and join the interest list if you're ready to build what you've been dreaming of. So first, congratulations. This is awesome. I have seen it go both ways. So whether or not to start now versus after birth, there are a lot of factors to it. So is this a low-risk pregnancy? How are you feeling? How is your energy? Is it your first child? How far along are you? Are you relying on your income or can a partner or parent float you for a while?
What's your client population? So I want to go through a few of these to help parse out what makes sense. I'll also say it depends on are you wanting a full practice like quit your job full practice versus slowly grow practice while you're pregnant. So my very first concern is going to be for the well-being of you and your baby.
If you are in a stressful toxic work environment that you need to get out of and pushing a little bit towards something you're excited about feels like an exciting escape plan and not more damn work, then possibly, yeah. If your job is just kind of meh and you're excited about everything that private practice provides, then I might wait until after this baby is born or just let it be kind of like slow and steady and not a sprint towards filling your practice while you're pregnant.
Because the additional stress may not be worth it at this stage of life. You could absolutely start as soon as you feel up to it post-birth or post -maternity leave. If you are not reliant on your income, you can quit your job and start on your practice now, sure. The pace of starting a practice without a full-time job is a lot less punishing. If this is your first child, I'd be more cautious than if you're already a parent. There's just so much life and identity shift.
There are more indifferent anxieties with the first, so you may need more time postpartum to adjust. It takes most people in our Party Plus program between three and six months to really get referrals rolling so that they are full. And that's with a lot of support and feedback. So if you're planning to work a full -time job while building and you're like three months pregnant, that is a lot of extra work for anyone if the goal is to be full. That's a lot of work for anyone.
But especially like somebody who's growing a human being and making changes to their home and processing how their life is about to be drastically different. People do it. You can do it. It's just a matter of whether you want to right now, whether it's worth it for you. I do want to warn you that at some point in the early stages of your practice during which you're going to be pregnant, you're going to be convinced that you are a failure and nothing you do will ever work.
That is a rough combination with pregnancy hormones. Maybe forewarned is forearmed there. And just knowing that that's coming would make that more manageable. We also need to talk about your niche, your client population. If your niche has abandonment issues and they're wanting long-term undisturbed therapy, starting with them for a month or two and then leaving for weeks or months may not be the best thing for them.
You will need to disclose that you're pregnant and the plan is to be on maternity leave from like somewhere around this date to somewhere around best date to new clients who call depending on the average amount of time that you work with people. You don't need to do that early stages of pregnancy, certainly, but later on, probably at least six weeks out, if not sooner, you'll need to be having that conversation with people on the phone that could slow down your growth.
If you do solution-focused brief therapy and you see people for like four to six sessions, then you'll be fine up until six weeks out or so. If you do depth work with people for years and years, they may not want to have a month of sessions with you and then a big gap.
Broadly, if you're wanting this to replace your job as soon as humanly possible, I'd recommend waiting because of the extra workload during a time that your body is working hard and you're likely exhausted or letting it be like a smaller, less pressured kind of a practice pre-baby that you can then ramp up post-birth.
If you don't have to have your job income or you need to get out of a physically or emotionally dangerous workplace, then I would encourage you to join a program like Party Plus that really accelerates your growth and gets you full a lot faster.
If you decide to stay in your job until you give birth, you can spend that extra second trimester energy getting yourself set up, getting clear on your niche, developing and starting to implement your marketing plan, writing your website copy, getting the right images, taking marketing best practice steps towards whatever the other four marketing strategies you choose will be.
So I don't have a very clear answer for you, but I hope that this puts some things to think about out there for you so that you really can make the best choice for yourself. Today's free worksheet is nuts and bolts of how to tell clients about pregnancy and maternity leave. You can message me the word sheets, as in the word worksheets, and I'll send you a link that includes all our free worksheets.
You'll also in there is one that kind of compares parenting when you work at an agency versus parenting in private practice, so that also might be relevant for you. I would really love for anybody who started their practice while pregnant to chime in about their experience in the comments. I was already in private practice for both of my live births, so for me I wasn't in the same timing as you are, but I would love to hear from people who are, and I think that could be helpful for you.
All right, I hope this is helpful and everybody has a really wonderful day. If you're ready for a much easier practice, Therapy Notes is the way to go. Go to therapynotes.com and use the promo code abundant for two months free. I hope that helped. If you have questions for Ask Allison, or you want to get your hands on the worksheet for this episode, go to abundancepracticebuilding.com slash links. If you're listening, you probably need some support building your practice.
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