Q&A was part of Next Level Practice, the most supportive community for therapists starting a private practice. In this video, Alison answers the question based on networking in private practice.
Question
How do you network in private practice?
Answer
So some of the other mistakes I see people make is not taking the opportunity to go out and network and make connections and develop relationships with people. I know a lot of people say that they’re introverts and that that makes them extremely nervous, and that’s just not something that makes them feel comfortable. So, they try to avoid doing it. But really, for me, that’s been such a huge piece of building my practice, is just building relationships with other people. Sometimes you don’t know necessarily what you’re going to get out of it. You may go to a networking event where there are lots of people from different types of businesses, outside of healthcare. You never know who you’re going to meet who knows somebody else that you may want to get introduced to.
In the beginning stages, especially when you have more time as opposed to money, if you can go to those sort of general business networking events. Even just to get comfortable with the whole idea of networking. That’s what I started out doing. Did it help my business? That’s debatable. But, I got used to the idea of networking and I got more comfortable with it. So then, when I did go to a place where there were doctors or someone like that who was an obvious referral source, then I was a lot more comfortable with that whole process of talking to people. And having to come up with things on the fly to to get to know to know people.
Alison Pidgeon is a licensed professional counselor in the state of Pennsylvania. In 18 months she went from starting a solo private practice to building a insurance-based group practice. She now employs 3 clinicians and a virtual assistant. In her spare time she is often seen running after her two small children and her therapy is cooking.
