Are you finding that you have way too 
much down time and not enough client time? If you are networking face to face and networking online, then don’t worry! They’re on their way. But while you have extra hours in the week, here’s other things that you can be doing to get ready for them:
- Decide what days and hours you want to see clients.
- Get all of your paperwork in order.
- Get clear about (and write down) your office policies.
- Develop and put in place your personal plan for self care.
- Join or create a consultation or supervision group.
- Identify someone else to mentor.
- Create a 12 month marketing plan to grow your private practice.
- Get your marketing kit together.
- Develop your 12 month plan for your professional development.
- Find an accountability partner or coach (Pick me! Pick me!) to help you follow through on your plans.
- Create resource lists and handouts for the clients you expect to see.
There you go! Have I left anything out? There’s plenty that you can be doing to make sure that you are 100% ready to see clients once they find you. And, if you’ve got all of this in order and are needing to know “what’s next” just drop me a note below and I’ll be glad to talk with you about that next step.
This is just what I needed today Tamara! Thank you!
Ana! I’m so glad I could nudge you along in the right direction! I hope you’ll either drop in here or back channel to let me know how your practice is faring. It’s always good to hear from you.
Hey Tamara,
Great article for helping healthcare professionals get their marketing stuff on. I wanted you to check out a new site I launched called Salubri.com. The goal is to help health practitioners get an online presence easily. Not only do they get an online profile, but we also handle online bookings, meetings and payments.
Hopefully, we can fill the void for health practitioner downtime like you mentioned in this blog post! Let me know what you think.
Hi, Brett! It’s so nice to meet you. Thanks for dropping in here to chat and share info on your business. How exciting – it appears your services are all online. I just returned from the American Counseling Association‘s annual conference where I attended several workshops that addressed the intersection of counseling and technology.
If I’m reading your website right, you are based out of Montreal? I would be interested to hear about the legal and ethical risks and challenges that are unique to mental health professionals in Canada who want to practice online. Perhaps you can educate us a bit?
Thanks for the reply Tamara.
We are based in Montreal and are marketing locally to start but are accepting health practitioners from anywhere in USA and Canada. We just launched a week ago, but have done some thorough research in the legal areas of telehealth and telecounseling.
Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer to the legalities, Canadian governing boards for professionals are all provincial, and each province varies on their rules for inter-province online counseling. We’re seen the same pattern in the US as well. Telehealth is still a very gray area, sometimes it even depends on who you talk to from the professional board. We’ll be working on getting these laws and rules more transparent to provide clear answers for our practitioners. For the time being, we’ve integrated settings into our platform that can block patients booking sessions from outside the country, province/state that the practitioner resides in. We’ve asked that each practitioner verify independently with their board on their views of inter-province/country counseling and to set their restrictions appropriately.
As for ethical risks, we’ve made it clear that Salubri is not for emergencies and that online therapy and online counseling are not appropriate if there are feeling suicidal or in crisis. There are some studies, you may be aware of, that show telecounseling to be more effective than in-person so we feel like we are really making an impact by empowering our patients (and professionals).
Brett, thank you for taking time to provide such a thoughtful and transparent explanation for mental health professionals. It is an exciting time to be working in this field and I’m sure that’s particularly true for those of you paving the way for online services! Thank you for taking the risks, doing the research, and investing your resources. We’re riding your coat tails and learning as we go!
I am particularly impressed that you / Salubri has taken the cautionary position concerning dealing with crises online. Given the newness of distance counseling, it is a position that I can respect and is exactly why I am happy to pass information along about Salubri as a possible solution for handling some areas of practice management online.
Best wishes on your journey and I hope we have an opportunity to meet in the future!
Sharon, thanks so much for dropping in here and retweeting my post! You are very kind to pass it along. I hope you’ll drop back in often and join our chats.