Opening a psychology practice is one of the preferred career paths for many psychologists oriented toward intervention in mental health or education. Those who choose to offer their services independently often do so so as not to be subject to the limitations that would come with working in a highly hierarchical structure in which they have little control over decisions.
However, when going it alone you also have to know how to manage other pressures, especially related to the initial scarcity of resources, on the one hand, and the competitiveness of the market, on the other.
In the following lines we will see some basic ideas to know how to open a psychology consultation in the best possible way
How to open a psychology consultation, step by step
We must be clear that any project that has to do with starting a business will require time, effort and a minimum amount of money. However, the risks and costs of starting your own business are lower if you have some basic ideas about what to do, information that allows us to right the situation to avoid the extra problems that may appear if we do not know very well. which are the steps to follow.
Definitely, Knowing how to open a psychology practice does not mean opening it and starting to make money but to lose as little as possible along the way and do everything in our power to not generate unwanted situations with capital, with the laws or with clients.
Furthermore, we must be clear that no matter how well we do it, whether the project prospers or not depends a lot on factors that we cannot directly control, such as the economic and social ups and downs to which any country is subject. Fortunately, it is not common for these to occur abruptly, so if we consolidate the psychology consultation at an appropriate time and do not make the deficit situation become chronic, being attentive to what is happening in the present before making the first moves will eliminate a good part of those risks.
When starting out in psychology, you have to follow the same fundamental rules that should support any entrepreneurial project, and one of them is to have the idea first and make the first moves later. This must be so, among other things, because at a time of vulnerability such as the first stage of creating a business, it is very likely that we will not have the luxury of completely changing the business model a few weeks or months later. having started, when it is still in deficit or has very recently crossed the line of profitability
Therefore, the first thing to do is market research, no matter how modest it may be. Studying the competition is essential, and you must keep in mind that if your services include online therapy, this is not limited to the rest of the psychology consultations in your neighborhood.
With this information, Consider the different types of services you can offer and the way in which you would market them, assessing the advantages and disadvantages of each one. In the case of psychological intervention, try to define as specifically as possible what type of services you will emphasize in each of these options to choose from.
In this way, it is easier for you to be right when choosing which market niche you want to occupy, being aware of whether in that service there is a lot or little competition, a lot or little potential demand, etc. For example, if there is a large elderly population in your area and there is already a center that specializes in child therapy and the like, intervention in childhood and adolescence will surely not be the most important path, so it would be better to focus the work in another service, or change the location where you want to work.
2. Define your work philosophy and business plan
Once the previous stage has been overcome, the next step when opening a psychology consultation is to get down to business and leave established in a more systematic and predefined way how you are going to work and what ideas and values you are going to base yourself on For example: are you going to rely on collaborations with other professionals, or will you rely almost exclusively on your work and your experience? Do you want to offer a very specialized service, or one that gives an image of versatility? Will your communication style be very neutral and institutional, or will you focus on creating a very personal brand image that blends to a certain extent with your way of being in spontaneous conversations?
The drawback of creating a business plan is that, since each professionalization initiative is different, there is no rigid and predefined scheme to continue being clear that with this information ambiguities or unforeseen situations will no longer appear in the future. However, you can rely on the idea that you must develop three fundamental aspects about your project:
His objectives
This is what is usually known as the combination of vision and mission In this section, it is necessary to specify what needs are going to be covered by the psychology consultation, and with what kind of strategies.
Your means
Here you can specify what amount of resources will be available during the first stage of project development.
Your work philosophy
This section includes the most abstract ideas about the properties that the company will have. It is necessary to explain this in advance to have certain margins defined that, if transferred, indicate to us that we are moving far away from the initial approaches that allowed us to shape the project and make it form a coherent unit.
3. Continue defining your target
The target is the “target” audience that you must impact with your strategies to make the initiative advance and prosper. It is very important to be very clear about their profile, since having one or another type of person in mind can lead to enormous variations in the success of your communication and work policies. The economic, social and psychological differences They explain why different people behave in a characteristic way.
For example, if the people you want to reach are defined by having relatively few resources and tend not to have gone through university training, it makes no sense to use a communication style full of technicalities. If they are characterized as older or middle-aged people, it is probably not a good idea to bet on having a large presence on social networks with a very young user base, such as Instagram.
4. Set your prices
With the information that has already been specified so far, you can now set your rates It is important that you spend time on this step, since not paying much attention to it can lead to constantly changing rates, and that is not positive from a marketing point of view; It generates an image of unpredictability and instability that fuels distrust.
Beyond choosing the communication channels through which you are going to publicize your psychology consultation, it is important to specify in a definitive way what the tone of your communication will be, both textually and visually. It is important that you have a graphic style manual, no matter how simple it may be, in which the usual shapes and colors that you are going to use both on your website and in your consultation, as well as in other marketing elements such as business cards. Not maintaining a certain consistency in this aspect gives an image of unprofessionalism.
6. Establish clear information management protocols
When you move into the professional field caring for patients, you will realize that a good part of the work has little to do with dealing directly with patients; There are many things to do between sessions, especially managing information.
That is why it is recommended to avoid forgetting, to save time and to avoid losing relevant information, is to use a centralized information management platform. One of the most used and versatile is Eholo a software designed especially for psychologists and psychology centers.
With this program you will be able to schedule sessions with clients both in person and online, create personalized files for each client in the cloud and allow each of your patients to schedule their visits in a public agenda, automatically transcribe the contents of the sessions by video call, send and store digital informed consents in a very simple way, manage billing, assign personalized medical records and make secure and encrypted video calls when you need it. You will find more information about Eholo on this page.
7. Go through legal advice
At least in Spain, psychology is a sector that suffers a certain deregulation, so it is easy to encounter doubts and ambiguities. Therefore, it is worth going through legal advice. A small investment that will help save us problems in the future.
