Starting a Counseling and Consulting Practice
Greetings! This is the first of many blog posts, so if you are reading this….thank you! I wanted to start out reflecting about my experiencing of starting a consulting and counseling practice. So far this has been an exciting, fear provoking, confusing and fun experience. At the most this may give you something to work with, if you are a practitioner considering going out on your own, and at the very least – some entertainment. So, here are 5 of the pieces that have stood out to me thus far, as I wind through learning how to establish a business.
Website
Writing a website, or at least the content for it, was quite the task. It is not as easy as I thought it may have been to develop explanation for all the little pieces that begin to seem so necessary. It has been interesting to balance between functionality, promotion, flare and professionalism….seems like a bit of an art.
The website is now active and although I feel pretty good about it, I think that it will be in a constant state of development (www.www.arcintegrated.com). I would like to offer a huge thank you to RTS Consulting (www.rtsadvantage.com) and Sean King, who helped me to design and develop the website. Sean was a patient and extremely helpful guide in this process.
I recognized recently that just the exercise of writing content for the website was valuable in and of itself. This exercise forced me to look at what my values are, which parts of my work experience I want to draw from or emphasize, as well as how I am choosing to describe and present myself in a way that is more expansive than a resume or LinkedIn profile.
Expenses, Income and Budgeting
One of the great things about starting this business is that it has pushed me towards being more aware of where all the money is being spent and earned. What I mean to say, is that if I am to be successful, I am now forced to really track my expenses and income. This has actually been more fun than expected. Before going out totally independent as a consultant/subcontracted therapist and therapist in private practice, I did some research on how to track things. For this first year I have decided to track things on my own, rather than buying a program like Quick Books. So far, this method seems to work well. I’ve set up an excel spreadsheet where I can track all incoming money as well as all expenses and other details. My hope is that come tax time, my accountant will approve of this process, I think he will. I imagine as things continue to grow, I will make a move to a more sophisticated method of tracking, but for now, what I have works well. I keep many more receipts and spend more time in a database tracking money than before. Overall, I think tracking things helps me manage money more effectively and gives me a better perspective of my spending habits in general.
Client database management
When I decided I wanted to start seeing clients through my own practice I knew I wanted to have digital record keeping instead of tracking notes on paper. Since I also knew I wanted to do distance counseling, I was able to find a way to integrate them both. I found a service that allows me to see clients in a HIPAA protected platform, but also allows me to keep track of client information, take notes, create invoices, etc. I’m still exploring this service but so far it seems great! The name of the service is Counsol (www.counsol.com). I understand that there are many options out there for client management, notes and record keeping. Although I only have experience with this one, I would definitely recommend it as an option.
Networking and Marketing
So far the networking piece has been the easiest for me. I am naturally inclined to network anyway, and have experienced much success with this in the past. My belief is that our ability to connect with others is a highly under-rated tool that we all have. With social media at the tips of our fingers at every waking moment, it has become much easier to connect with people and let them know what the latest professional or personal news is, whether they like it or not. However, I think that there is much added value from talking with people over coffee/lunch about what we are doing and how we may be able to help each other. I continue to be surprised how simply setting up informational meetings and talking about what I am doing, continues to lead to more and more opportunity.
Social Media
I’m probably on the lower end of the spectrum when it comes to social media user knowledge, but I’m learning! I have not personally used anything else other than Facebook, so there was a definite learning curve here. I realize the importance of utilizing social media, so I am all for it. I highly recommend utilizing tools that can populate multiple social media accounts. I have used a service called Hoot Suite (www.hootsuite.com) which I would recommend. Deciding on what to tweet, post, blog about feels a little intimidating so far, although I’m sure this will pass. It seems that the more I write the easier it may be to decide on material and continue to offer ideas.
This list of five is definitely not a conclusive list, but these parts of setting up this business continue to stand out for me. It seems that with some research, enthusiasm, determination and intention, that starting a practice has been a great process! I look forward to what’s ahead.
Thanks for reading!
Michael
