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# 5 Things You Need to Consider Before Setting Up a Private Practice

Susan Day
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June 24, 2017

## 5 Things You Need to Consider Before Setting Up a Private Practice

Only 50% of start-ups in the US survive the 5-year mark. You don’t want to be one of them. It is therefore important to understand what it takes to start a private practice before you set the process in motion.

Here are 5 things that you need to know beforehand:

## 1. Develop a Waterproof Marketing Strategy

Once you start practicing, you need to get the word out for clients to come to take advantage of your services. First you need to decide on a niche. Then you should have a solid marketing strategy in place, including offline and online channels. These could include networking channels, a website, and blog posts.

## 2. Keep up With Administrative Work

Let’s be honest - writing reports and putting together documents and bills isn’t that fun. But highly necessary. Once you are your own boss, you will be tempted to let things like billing and record keeping slip down on the list of priorities, simply because you don’t enjoy doing them. However, tedious administrative work will come back around to bite you. Make sure you have allocated time slots for these tasks from the very start.

Things You Need to Consider Before Setting Up a Private Practice

## 3. Smooth out Income over Time

In each business, there are busier and quieter times throughout the year. Fluctuations are completely normal, but need to be considered. You can smooth out your income over time by saving a certain percentage in good times, which you then have access to in bad times.

5 Things All Therapists Need to Consider Before Setting Up a Private Practice

## 4. Loneliness is Real

Being your own boss is great, but it also isolates you from the social interaction you are part of in a group setting. Whilst it might seem enticing at first to work your own hours and manage your time, you soon realise that you miss having people around.

Make sure you build a good peer and support network with other practitioners, or become part of a group practice to counteract loneliness.

## 5. Practice Boundaries

Work-life balance can be difficult to implement when setting up a private practice. You want to be there for your clients at all times. And you want to make sure you take up every opportunity to make an income and expand your reach.

However, that means you will practice 24/7, which will negatively affect your social life. Set boundaries for your clients and yourself to avoid burn out.