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Can You Start a Private Practice While Pre-Licensed?
Can You Start a Private Practice While Pre-Licensed?
The short answer to this question is yes, IF you meet these requirements:
When you're in graduate school, private practice is rarely, if ever, discussed.
Nonetheless, if you have any interest in a career in private practice, it is important to know when you could possibly start in private practice, and what the process might look like.
Before we Start
Having a private practice means that you are the sole owner of a business that offers therapy to clients. You choose your own rate, which clients to work with, and generally are in charge of all the important aspects of your business.
Being “pre-licensed” means that you have already graduated with an advanced degree (usually a master’s or doctorate) and that you are waiting to be licensed, either because you must acquire several thousand supervised clinical hours in order to qualify to take the exam, or for other reasons. So, can you acquire those hours and prepare for your licensing exam while in private practice?
Let’s get started.
What Does it Take to Start a Private Practice While-Pre Licensed?
In addition to meeting the requirements above, there are a number of things you should strongly consider doing in order to start a private practice while still pre-licensed:
1. Get Legally Protected
There are two reasons why you need to place a high value on getting legally protected.
First, you should always make sure to conduct business legally, and in accord with your state’s board of psychology.
Second, unexpected, extreme events can happen in private practice (as in every other business), and before they do, you want to be protected.
Note: If you have any questions, make sure to consult with a legal professional. Here are three things that are important:
Business Formation and Business License - This often means setting up a Limited Liability Company (LLC) which essentially makes your business a distinct entity (as opposed to being intertwined with you personally). This allows for a number of benefits, but most importantly it can protect you personally in the case of a lawsuit against your business. Some states may also require a business license in order to get started in private practice. When in doubt, consult with a legal professional!
2. Set Up a Phone Line/Website
You should get a spare number for your business that allows clients to call you without using your personal number, and this can be easy to do through G-Suite.
G-Suite is Google’s business product that allows you to set up a new phone line in addition to an email address linked to your website (if you have one).
Having a business phone can be crucial to helping keep business communication separate and confidential. G-Suite is HIPPA compliant!
Setting up a website is not 100% necessary in the first baby steps of private practice, but going forward it will become crucial to your business and can easily be your greatest source of clients.
When you are ready, you will want to set one up, and learn how to implement analytics so that you can understand how well your website is performing.
3. Sublease a Space
(Obviously, this isn’t necessary if your practice is virtual and you are working from home.)
Subleasing a space, as opposed to fully leasing, is especially important when you’re pre-licensed and just starting out with private practice.
Before you have a moderately full caseload, you do not want to be spending a ton of money on rent. This is one of the most common pitfalls of therapists starting out, and it is one of the biggest reasons clinicians give for why they failed in private practice.
As a general rule of business you should always have more money coming into the business than going out. Because rent has the potential to be your biggest expense when starting out in private practice, you want to be careful to not make that expense become too high to handle.
Figure out how to run an effective business, and you can always move into a space of your own later!
If you want to figure out how to sublease a space as a pre-licensed counselor in private practice, you can do so by reaching out to local clinicians in your area.
You can usually find a nice office that you can rent only for the days you need it.
When starting out, you might try subleasing a space just one day a week (like on a Saturday or Sunday) and then expanding the number of days you sublet for as your caseload fills up.
4. Define Your Niche
Now, you are ready to start thinking about your clients.
The first step you should always start with is Defining Your Niche.
Essentially, you are deciding who it is that you want to be working with.There are a couple of key questions that can help you define your niche:
- What was your specialization in graduate school?
- Which group of your clients is most excited to do the work?
- What is your greatest area of competence?
- Who are you least excited to work with?
- If you had to just choose just one group of people to work with, who would they be?
If you take the time to answer all of these questions and discover the patterns within your answers, you will have a great start to defining your niche.
Important: Don’t overthink it! Your niche is not a prison, and you can always expand into working with new groups as your practice evolves. However, there are huge advantages to starting small!
5. Set Your Rate
Once you have defined the population you want to work with in your practice, it’s time to decide how much you will charge for your services.
When you are not yet licensed, and have not achieved the same level of experience as other clinicians in your area, there can be advantages to charging a lower rate to differentiate yourself from others.
Many pre-licensed counselors in private practice charge between $50-80 for a session when they are starting out. However, some pre-licensed clinicians in private practice charge over $150 per session! (though this is rare)
Ultimately, setting your rate is up to you, your confidence level, and what your market is willing to pay more than anything else.
Be willing to experiment and know, like defining your niche, your rate is something you can change with time.
6. Get Your First Client
Besides getting your practice legally protected, this is by far the most important step to starting your practice.
You need to find a way to attract new clients into your business in order to fill it up. Here are some best practices.
Whatever combination of methods you try, know that, while possible, it can definitely take a while to build a full private practice.However, if you are able to learn quickly, you can usually scale some of the strategies that have worked and slowly build to a full caseload (and potentially raise your rate) all before you’re licensed.
7. Practice Self-Care
If you are taking on the challenge of private practice while pre-licensed, self-care is critical to your success.
Though it seems counterintuitive, making sure to get proper sleep, take a break every once in a while, and connect with close friends (and yourself) will add much more to your business than it will take away.
Finding success in private practice takes hard work, but that work is only sustainable if you can take care of yourself first.
One great analogy is that of the oxygen mask. If you want to best serve others, remember to always put on your own oxygen mask first!
This is critical in balancing starting a new business with the rest of what might be going on in your life (graduation requirements, licensure requirements, balancing family, having another job).
What to Do Next
Now that you have a feel for what it’s like to start a private practice while pre-licensed, the next question becomes: how do you give yourself the best chance of success?
Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered!
Our proven, 8-step method has allowed plenty of Build Your Practice students to go full-in on the private practice while still pre-licensed.
If you have any interest in learning the best practices for creating a career on your own terms, this is the program for you! Click below to see what we’re about.
