(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 really want to go into private practice. My partner is even more risk averse than I am. How do I convince him that it is a worthy risk? I know it is, but he's not convinced. So first I want to thank TherapyNotes for sponsoring Ask Allison.
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You had classmates working towards the same goal. Think of Party Plus like that grad school class you wish you had. You get individual consultation about your specific practice with clear feedback and guidance. You get group calls with other people building their practices who have your back. We cover everything from marketing to mindset, and you have access to everything in the Abundance Party, all the courses and trainings that have filled thousands of therapists' practices.
Thanks to the feedback, the support, and the clear step-by-step, people in Party Plus get full faster. The majority of Party Plus members fill their practice in three months. 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. Okay, so I think our partner's lack of familiarity with the private practice possibilities in tandem with the risk makes for some very fair real concerns.
And I want to make a few assumptions first, and otherwise this is going to be a million minutes long and probably require a couples counselor too. I'm also going to say that today is actually for your partners to listen to. I would encourage you to share this with them. You're welcome to eavesdrop, but I think I'd like to really talk to some partners. So first off, these assumptions I'm making is that your partner values your role as a therapist.
That doesn't mean they have personal experience in therapy or that they even really understand what we do, but there's at least a vague appreciation for the helping of others through counseling. That there's some sort of shared financial situation going on, that's another assumption I'm making.
Even if you have completely different separate bank accounts, you are maybe going halfsies on your rent or mortgage, or you're responsible for some of the bills, and your partner is paying for some of the bills, or that you'd be asking your partner to float you for a bit as you build. The third assumption is that your relationship has some struggles and some imperfections, but it's not riddled with landmines.
So the idea of private practice isn't going to be the nail in the coffin that breaks you up. And the final assumption is that you plan to talk with your partner about venturing into private practice, not just springing it on them. Like, oh, I actually quit my job four months ago, but it's cool because my practice is great. None of that, okay? I'm assuming you're having some basic communication and conversation. All right, so are you with me? Let's get into it.
I'm going to address the top concerns I hear from partners. The first is, is it smart to build a business in this economy? And while I don't know that I would encourage some other forms of entrepreneurship right now, starting a counseling practice can be one of the lowest overhead ventures around. You could really honestly spend more on a jewelry making business than a private practice. So let's do some math. Let's say your partner averages $150 per session.
And I'm using $150 because that seems to be the average of what I hear around the country. I'm in the U.S. With some very affluent areas up in the 500 range for private practice in smaller towns, closer to maybe $100 for insurance reimbursement, okay? So now before you get excited and you start thinking about 150 times 40 hours per week, you need to know that keeping 20 -something hours of face-to-face time with clients is considered full-time in private practice.
So let's go with 24 clients per week at $150 a pop. That's $3,750 a week in income. With an average of 4.2 weeks in a month, we're looking at $15,750 on average per month once you're full. Now I often get some version of like, holy shit, therapists can make that much? Yeah, we or even adjusted for full-time $50 an hour. When my consulting clients do the math, they often find that they're making somewhere in the $12 to $30 per hour range with at least a master's degree.
So let's say your partner is making $30 per hour at a 40-hour a week job. And I'm serious when I tell you that's a high estimate. They're making literally a third of the amount of money that they could be making in private practice working much less. So once your loved one is seeing just 12 people a week, including overhead, the previous income is going to be surpassed. And that's just 12 hours of work a week rather than 40 plus, which is what most therapists are working in agencies.
Okay. So let's go into more of like, why 20-something hours and not 40? And that's a fair question, especially depending on your industry and what you're doing. So for one thing, there's an emotional toll that happens when you really engage with people around their emotional lives. So think about the adrenaline you might feel.
Maybe it's like a rush in your ears or an increased heart rate or a desperate need to get far away when you and your partner have an intense argument or some sort of conflict. While our sessions aren't usually that intense and that dramatic, it's like a fraction of that every single hour of our work day. If we see too many clients, it ends up building up. And plus talking to eight people for an hour each day, five days a week would just be exhausting.
Even if you were just talking about the weather, we have to really, really pay attention for an extended period of time. So you know how like your mind would wander during long lectures at school. We can't let that happen while our clients are talking about the impact of being molested by her brother or the grief, a client feels over his wife's suicide, or just when a kid may be just about to open up about something that we knew was lurking there.
Finally, after weeks of like getting them to this point, we have to be so present. And just paying attention for that long alone is exhausting. And there's also research that says that no more than 26 or 27 clients is the number you want to stay at. If you want to avoid burnout in our field, not clients, but sessions per week. So burnout, like it sucks for everybody.
It doesn't matter your profession, but a lot of people can still barrel on in their jobs and do a good enough job, even if they're less efficient, but it can render some therapists ultimately useless at work. So if your partner is currently working 40 hours at an agency, keep in mind that that's not usually 40 hours of clients. There are meetings, there's outreach, there's paperwork, bureaucratic nonsense. There's all these things filling their schedule that are not typically all clients.
Or if your partner is seeing 30 or more clients in an agency right now, you deserve a medal because you're maintaining a relationship with somebody who is essentially a grouchy zombie. If your partner's wellbeing doesn't sway you, and it should, then keep in mind that as a business owner, your partner is also going to need to market, to network, to manage finances, and to bill if they're using insurance. Okay. Another concern is I barely see my partner in their agency job.
Wouldn't it be worse if they're a business owner? Not if there's a solid plan and good boundaries. If your partner veers towards workaholic, these boundaries are going to be key. This agency job may make it seem like they're a workaholic, but sometimes the productivity expectations at agencies are impossible to reach and lead to like too many clinical hours and burnout.
I find it best to fit all the non-clinical business stuff like marketing and networking in during traditional work hours with very few exceptions. Most of the other stuff can be done while they're at work or at agreed upon non-intrusive times. Most therapists can keep all their work under 30 hours a week and do great. I do also want to put out there, there's some therapists for whom 15 is their max. That is the number of clients that feels best for them to see. Trust them. Trust them.
They'll still be bringing in plenty more money than they were in terms of financial contributions to the household, but trust that they're taking care of themselves so that they can be in this profession longer.
Now, there may be more work in the first few months if your partner is lucky enough to bring a caseload from an agency to their new practice, but for the most part, starting from scratch, the few clients in the beginning allow for a lot more time for your partner to create infrastructure, financial goals, those kinds of things. I will say financial goal-wise, I usually recommend that people take at least six weeks off on the books.
That doesn't mean they're taking six vacations necessarily or extended vacations, but I like to make sure that if somebody in your household gets the flu and they've got to stay home, that it's covered. This way, you guys can take vacations without having to ask permission from both sets of bosses. You're covered if somebody gets sick, if an apocalypse comes barreling through your unprepared town, it's not a big deal. Another question I have is, how long does building a private practice take?
This is the question I really wish I could just give you a formula, but it depends on so many different factors. Taking insurance or not, all marketing being equal, people build faster when they take insurance, but they usually make less per hour. Niche, it's counterintuitive, but the smaller the population the therapist serves, the faster their practice grows. The culture around therapy in your town, if you live in a saturated market for therapists, it's actually a really good thing.
Being tech savvy or paying for it will help get that website up and going, those kinds of things. A willingness to network, whether or not the clinician has support and guidance versus kind of just winging, starting a practice on their own and their commitment to their practice. Obviously, if someone isn't putting in the time or effort, nothing's going to happen. And the fastest I have seen is a student who built a full fee private pay practice in a small city in like two and a half months.
She had a niche that affects 3% of the US population. So don't judge your partner by this. Most of my clients are full within six months, and that's like full. Most of the time they're surpassing their agency jobs significantly sooner. If they're winging it on their own and they don't have step-by-step guidance, it can take, I think the average is two years. Another thing I hear is some income is better than no income. They should just get an agency job.
With this logic, none of us would have gone to college, much less grad school. We would have gotten a job right out of high school. You'd have to put some time in before you can get some money out. The time it's taking to build and the vast majority of people, it's going to take months. It's part of the process. So yeah, they can stay in a crappy agency job that leaves them feeling demoralized every day and makes it consistent $55,000 a year.
But how might that impact your relationship if burnout is a part of their daily experience? And alternatively, what if they could work a fraction of the time and make three times as much? I mean, if it was you, which would you choose? Yeah, you've got bills to pay. I get it. Trust me. When my husband went back to school, we moved to a brand new, expensive city.
And I had the big idea to start my own practice as the only person bringing in income and a yearly tuition that costs more than I was paid in my first job out of grad school. So we were able to live comfortably because I worked my ass off to build my practice. Number six, the next one is some income is better than no income. They should just take more sliding scale clients since $50 is more than $0. But here's where that gets tricky.
Some of our clients are long-term and at some point, hopefully soon, your partner is going to be full. And if 10 of the 24 weekly spots has someone paying $50 instead of $150, it's not the best long-term plan. So if sliding scale is part of the ethics of their practice, that's awesome. But as an act of desperation, it's just shooting yourself in the foot. The next one is refer to client out when they weren't full. That's ridiculous. So I don't know if you know about stink bugs.
I live in North Carolina and they are all over the place in the summers. And they attract one another with an awful stench. So like if you squish one, they all come. So because it stinks. When your partner takes on a client, that's a poor fit, the person who referred the client to them sends more like that. And that client tells their friends who are also likely to be a poor fit.
And all of a sudden your partner is seeing people that they don't do great work with and they get the reputation for being an okay therapist, not very good. Or maybe they do a decent job and become known as the person who treats this population that they don't even like. What if this population likes to call it 3am in crisis? What if this population is a little stalkery? What if they make your partner want to throw things across the room? Think about it like dating instead.
You could have married the first person you had a big crush on better to be married than not. Right? Who cares if you're more compatible with other people? So this is the theme. It's a long game. Good fit is integral to success. The last one is my partner has started a private practice and they are a basket case. Should they just quit and get a job at this point? I'm going to level with you.
Your partner will probably continue to be a basket case for a little while because starting a business of any kind is going to bring up all our stuff. It's going to bring up our fear of failure, our insecurity, our imposter syndrome comparison, and all of this is normal. That's the good news. I haven't worked with a single student who didn't go through a oh god what have I done stage.
Having started practices in three different states myself, I now know that mine happens at the two and a half month mark. That's where mine really freaks out and I'm extremely confident in my practice building skills and I don't have any reason to worry but it still happened. So I'm going to ask you to manage whatever fear or frustration your partner's concerns bring up in you. I know it's really scary to hear the person responsible for part of the bill say I'm never going to be successful.
I suck at this. I'm letting you down but here's the truth. Your partner is entirely capable of building a private practice. It is not rocket science. Arguably the hardest part of building is getting through the slow early stages with your confidence intact. I want you to do whatever you need to do to be able to look at your partner in the eyes, smile at them, and say I trust you. I know you can do this. You have everything it takes.
I know it's hard right now and I'm sorry you're struggling but if you keep working your plan you'll get there. Among the biggest fears I hear from my clients is that their partner won't believe them, won't support them. Don't hold your partner back. This is not rocket science. Again it's starting a business with incredibly low overhead and an extremely high likelihood of turning a profit way before almost any other business. If you haven't started a business don't pretend like you get it.
It is okay that you don't fully get it. You didn't necessarily fully understand how therapy works either but it is really hard to watch what looks like unnecessary suffering when there are all these agency jobs readily available and the struggle makes us stronger. I feel like I really like so therapist used to say but like I feel like I grew into myself. I grew into my most powerful version of myself when I built my first full-time practice.
The things that I worried about years ago aren't even a blip on my radar now. My tolerance for discomfort and risk is much higher than it was before because my practice has helped build me up and I'm a lot more fun to be around as a result. My marriage is better because I'm in private practice. I'm a better mom because I'm in private practice. I'm more relaxed. I'm more creative.
I'm healthier all because I'm not slogging through 45 plus hour work weeks at jobs that didn't really have an investment in me. I don't have to ask permission for days off. If getting my girls out of the house in the morning is stressful and awful for everybody I can change my schedule to start later. I help people build private practices because it made my life so much better than I thought it could and I want that for your partner.
I want you to have the best version of your partner and my husband would tell you that as a business owner I am more energetic. I'm happier. I'm sick less often. I'm fun. I'm less stressed and I have a lot more to give than when we were together and I was in agency work. I used to come home in a crappy mood. I was exhausted and a little bitter and now I come home and I have energy left for my family. It's pretty sweet. I want that for you too.
In the end I am happy to respond to any other questions you or your partners have. You're welcome to comment or message me but please leave room for your loved one to succeed. Support them. I promise you will be so happy you did. Because some of you are parents the free worksheet for today is parenting at agency versus parenting in private practice. You can message me sheets as in worksheets and I will get it to you. All right have a really great 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. If you're a super newbie grab our free checklist using the link in the show notes.
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