(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. It made me laugh, just so you know. I mean this very respectfully, but why do 99% of private pay therapists all have the same niche, including myself? High achievers who deal with anxiety and overthinking and people pleasing, or some spin on this.
Is there a niche that's more in demand or something a private pay therapist could go into to help fill a void in our collective services? I love working with these clients also, but I don't feel like I stand out or look different enough from the next provider. Thanks. So before I answer this question, I want 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, it's clear why TherapyNotes is rated 4.9 out of five stars on Trustpilot and has a five star rating on Google. TherapyNotes makes billing, scheduling, note-taking, and telehealth incredibly easy. And for all you prescribers out there, they have ePrescribe. If you're coming from another EHR, TherapyNotes makes the transition incredibly easy and putting your demographic data free of charge so you can get going right away.
Find out what more than a hundred thousand mental health professionals already know. Use promo code ABUNDANT at TherapyNotes.com for two free months. So this isn't everyone's niche, but I've definitely seen a lot more of this niche than any other, especially lately in the last couple of years. And I know exactly why. It's because our niches are almost always a version of ourselves. So who do you think makes up a very large portion of private pay, private practice owners?
High achievers who deal with anxiety, overthinking, and people pleasing. We've worked on it, but those parts of our personality are still present and we have a lot of empathy for people who are struggling with that in the way that we used to. A similar dynamic is therapists specialized in overwhelmed moms or women who look like they have it all together, but don't. It's almost always a previous version of us that we're speaking to.
I started Abundance because I wanted to help therapists like me who didn't know how to start a private practice, but wanted it bad enough to learn how. I didn't have a guide when I was starting out and I wanted to be one for you. In terms of filling a void, I only want you to niche and work with clients that you enjoy and are that you are competent with. There are tons of underserved niches, but this is what you're going to be spending all day doing. I want it to be what you want it to be.
Now you're not standing out or looking different enough if you aren't marketing well. So describe your ideal client's daily lived experiences with absolute precision. You're going to have a different ideal client within this niche than the therapist down the hall. Yours may have underlying trauma from emotionally immature parents and her anxiety and people pleasing may have that flavor.
Your neighbor's ideal client may be pushing so hard to prove her worth to herself because she was bullied mercilessly in middle school. Those two clients are going to have similar but different expressions of their struggle each day. You and that other therapist are going to have different ways that you show up. So maybe you cause secession and your neighbor is more blank slate. Maybe you're an EMDR devotee and she does CBT.
There are so many ways that you view and work with the same exact niche differently from each other. Neither is right or wrong, but better fits for different clients. And luckily, almost every woman I know is anxious and people pleasing. So there are plenty of clients to go around. These niches that sound really specific but actually include a third of the adults in the world are pretty magical.
People feel really seen and known by your marketing, partly because they feel really alone with their struggle. They don't typically share how bad it is with the people in their lives, so they're missing out on the whole me too experience. Not that me too experience, but the me too experience that tends to happen if you open up to other people struggling with the same exact thing.
When you are formed by a culture that asks you to do too much for others, as soon as you're born, you are not alone in your anxiety and overwhelm. We're all in the soup together. So today's free worksheet is the ideal client exercise to help you get deep into the specifics of your ideal client, which is different from your niche. Your niche is broader. Your ideal client is one person within that niche.
DM me the word sheets, and I will send that link to you, along with all the other free worksheets. I hope this helps. If you have a question for Ask Allison, hit the link in my bio. I would be happy to answer them. Take care. 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. I'd love for you to follow, rate, and review, but I really want you to share this episode with a therapist friend. Let's help all our colleagues build what they want.