Five Things I’ve Learned In My Fifth Month Of Private Practice

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Lessons learned in private practice

Happy summer!!! Hope all your private practices are doing well… though this is the time of the year when, for most, it slows down a bit. For me, still no clients… so that’s been two months now. Trying not to freak out and remind myself that it’s a process and you just gotta keep marketing, blogging, and speaking. Some practices take time to grow… right? This month I’ve been focusing on things I can control like building a social media plan, getting new photos taken, and taking some time off to relax! Check out below the five things I learned!

1. Get Genuine Photos Taken

When I started private practice I got some beautiful profile photos done indoors. I had my hair and make-up done and wore a gorgeous necklace. The only thing… it didn’t really look like me. I don’t wear a lot of make-up, and I rarely curl my hair. Therefore, I felt like I was cat fishing clients and that I had to apologize when they actually saw the “real” me in person. I wanted my photos to be like Joe’s and other private practitioners. I loved the idea of outdoor photos (a green background works with my website colours, and natural light is calming). So, I waited, and waited, until finally the trees fully bloomed here in Halifax (beginning of June). So happy I did! Finally, a photo that looks like me!  What do you think?

2. Learn Meet Edgar

I don’t know about you but I HATE social media, lol. I spend so much time on a computer and on my phone that the last thing I want to do is add more time each day posting quotes, articles, and pictures on multiple sites (it’s recommend that you post five times on twitter and twice on Facebook, per day). Social media is time consuming and takes me away from what I love doing… connecting with people face-to-face. Soooooo… I decided to dig deep into my budget and become a Meet Edgar member! This tool allows you to schedule your posts on up to 25 social media accounts. It also SAVES the post so you can use them again, and/or keep them in rotation. #worthit

You can check out my Twitter and Facebook group to see how it’s working.

3. Develop a Schedule For Creating Content

Everyone does this differently. For me, I can’t take a whole weekend off to write and create everything for the month, since I get burnt out after writing one blog or creating 5+ Canva quotes. So, I’ve created a weekly schedule. Each Tuesday, I write a blog and create a video, and every Wednesday I create five quotes and link five other article posts that relate to my niche. I then add everything to Meet Edgar and then I’m done for the week! My goal is that by September (when I will HOPEFULLY have clients) I’ll have ten new blog posts (making it a total of 30 posts) and 50+ quotes/articles (making a total of 75), tailored to Instagram/Twitter/Facebook.

Check out my Instagram to see how I post all the content 🙂

4. Don’t Get Burnt Out!

For the past couple of months, I’ve been pushing myself to get things done because I knew I was going on vacation for a week in June. From completing my intro video, networking, learning Twitter, Instagram, Meet Edgar, and soooooo much more…. I needed that break! What I didn’t expect was that when I came back, I was still not raring to go. I thought one week would be enough, but it wasn’t. It’s like my creative brain has gone to sleep and I just can’t wake it up! It’s become hard to do simple business tasks and all I want to do is have some fun and relax. I can’t think about next steps with creating a workshop and looking for speaking engagements… I… just… need… a… longer…break. So, instead of pushing myself… I’m taking the summer off! Well, from starting new big projects at least – lol.

5. Get Peer Support

Consulting can be really expensive! If you cannot afford it, find a peer to chat with each week about your private practice. If you’re on online private practice groups send a message to the group to see if anyone would be willing to be your accountability/support partner. That’s what someone did in a group that I’m apart of and now we speak once a week. Just talking to someone that’s going through the same process as me has helped me to talk things out and distress. We may not be experts (yet), but having this person to bounce ideas off and listen to me vent is AWESOME!

Well, that’s it for this month! I’d love to hear from you all! Are you finding my posts helpful? (Feel free to reply in the comments below!)

 

 

About Julia

Julia Smith, BA, MEd, CCC, is the owner of Insight Mental Health Counselling in downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia. She specializes in helping teenagers stop depression from affecting their lives.

Click here to learn more about her downtown Halifax counselling practice!