Let’s be honest: hardly anyone enjoys networking.

Unfortunately, it’s part of growing your practice.

Networking as a helping professional only adds another, more complicated layer. How do you sell your services while still remaining ethical? Genuine? Confidential?



This is where Relationship Building comes in.

What’s on your mind? Sticking in your craw? Screaming to get out to the world?

Time to get out the cleaning supplies, paint, and bunting and get the old soapbox in tip-top shape – because your Writer’s Choice page is exactly the place to get it all out there.

Don’t forget that your website is like a prism pointing back to the same center: the genuine essence of you, your expertise, your practice, and your ideal clients.

Every facet has a purpose and – like the Home, About, FAQ, and Specialties and Services – a specific job.

The Writer’s Choice page lets you express what’s important, even vital, to your clients but doesn’t quite fit anywhere else!

It’s a chance to see you from a new angle or perspective. So,…what’s the word?

Growing a private practice locates you squarely in the entrepreneurial world.

You go from being a therapist to being an entrepreneur with a specialty in therapy.

This may sound like a small shift. It isn’t. It’s an enormous identity transformation.

Being an entrepreneur puts you in direct contact with reality in a way that’s very different from being an employee or a contractor in someone else’s venture.

One of the big reasons many people never set out on their own to build their own practice is the fear of failure.

Failure is a concept rooted in a non-entrepreneurial perspective on the world.

If entrepreneurs feared failure or beat themselves up after a given failure, they’d never get very far. Because “failure” is part and parcel of the entrepreneurial adventure.

Actually, to go back to the quote that I started with here: failure has nothing to do with it.

Instead of failure, reframe your trips and falls as learning and watch what happens.

You’ve likely heard of the metaphor of a “fish in water.” The fish doesn’t realize water is there because the water is its entire reality. Water is all the fish has ever known.

And so, the fish is unconscious of this phenomenon of “water.”

Now, the next leap your mind probably wants to make is to draw a parallel here.

“Fish is to water” as “A human being is to…” ??

What should go next?

I’ve had this conversation with practice owners probably five hundred times.

They’re down.

They’re frustrated.

Things aren’t working.

Me: “Okay, where were you this time last year?”

Them: “I don’t know.”

Me: “Go check. It’ll be worth it.”

As our clients succeed and their practices take off, we often hear the question: “Now what?”

For many successful solo practice owners, the most obvious next step is to bring in additional practitioners and start building a group practice.

Now, this isn’t the right step for everyone.

The simplicity of having a solo practice that’s full and successful is quite wonderful. Doing well financially while helping a full slate of clients improve their lives can be unbelievably fulfilling for many practitioners.

However, there are some who crave additional growth, more income, more impact. And for them, a group practice is a logical next step.

Before you rush out to start adding practitioners (and all the attendant expenses that come with more staff), make sure you’re ready by confirming that you have completed the following three steps.