Starting a Private Practice? Time to Take Action | Today I received two professional publications, one focuses on issues for the mental heatlh profession and the other addresses building information marketing businesses. I read each this evening one after the other and noticed some stark contrasts.
Mental health professionals write a lot about thinking and talking. I suppose that is what most of us do well, considering we have many years of school under our belts and psychotherapy requrires a significant amount of talking. In fact, we develop our expertise by thinking and share it by talking (and writing). I can tell we do a lot of thinking and talking when I read phrases like,
"...gathering information,"
"...committees will meet to discuss,"
"...in the planning phases,"
"...more consideration will be given."
"...more research is needed."
In comparison the information marketers write about doing things to improve their businesses. They write in absolute terms regarding their work. A favorite phrase of info marketers is "implementation." They are all about implementing tasks to meet goals or create results. The phrases in the info marketers' newsletter go like this:
"...Start a new program."
"Creating a product that focuses on..."
"Today [Ron] is setting up a business.."
"[John] achieved 5 goals.."
Do you see a pattern here?
I'm a psychologist, I like thinking and talking, reading and researching as much as the next human behavior geek. It's cool to think big thoughts and talk about it. But when that is ALL we do, our businesses suffer. There is no creation of tangible products when we just think and talk about ideas. I get so frustrated when I hear that my colleagues are forming another committee to discuss the possibility of maybe doing something at some undefined future date. Why all the over-analysis? (Yes, that is a real question. I'm not making a joke.).
OK, professors get paid for thinking and talking, and if you want to be a professor, not a private practitioner, that business model will work for you. But if you want to be a successful clinician you have to TAKE ACTION to generate income. And you can't be doing the same old things that generated income 5 years ago. Our culture and society has changed so much that we need to shift our focus,learn new ways of sharing our knowledge (and get paid for it).
So please go ahead and think about the practice you want to have, talk to those who can support your plan, educate you on how to get there and then take that information and DO IT. Take action, any action, because the alternative of doing nothing will result in no change, no growth and no more income in your pocket.
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