AI and the future of mental health with Dr Rachael Skews

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'm really excited to be interviewing Dr Rachael Skews, a psychologist, coach, trainer, supervisor, speaker, advisor, researcher, and author. She is an internationally recognized subject matter expert in acceptance and commitment coaching and has a really interesting background working with tech companies, including Headspace, to develop effective and ethical behaviour change initiatives. I saw Rachael giving a webinar for the International Society for Coaching Psychology, and I knew I had to ask her to be a guest on this podcast because I found her insight into how the emerging AI technology could support and enhance our work, so refreshing and so fascinating. I get kind of scared by the unbridled enthusiasm for tech that the tech community often has. But I'm also really uncomfortable with the alarmism and pessimism that the mental health world often defaults to when we're faced with new stuff. So it was really great to hear a balanced view from somebody that really understands the ethical issues and potential pitfalls, but also embraces the excitement of the new technology. 

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links for Rachael:

LinkedIn: Rachael Skews

Website: www.cognuscoach.com

Other Links:

Reading Our Minds: The Rise of Big Data Psychiatry by Daniel Barron

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• Rachael tells us about who she is and her professional background 01:56
• We discuss human interaction and the role of technology in mental health 05:48
• I ask Rachael about working with other people from different backgrounds to psychology 19:23
• Rachael tells us about the opportunities she sees on the horizon for mental health professionals and AI 25:50
• We discuss wearable tech and using technology to get data that we wouldn't be able to get otherwise 30:43
• Rachael talks about managing sensitive data and GDPR 43:16
• We talk about the ethical considerations of using technology and AI 47:17
• Rachael tells us how we can find out more from her 54:12

The Business Growth Pack

Ready to grow your practice beyond one person and a laptop? 

We are here to support you to build a thriving, impactful and profitable business. 

Invest in our growth pack to confidently grow your service with associates, organisational work or passive income.

Our unique package includes strategy and marketing training from Dr Rosie Gilderthorp, Founder of Psychology Business School, and legal contracts from Clare Veal, Commercial Lawyer from Aubergine Legal.

Together, we will ensure that you have the strategy and documents you need for growth so you can expand your impact and income while maintaining your work-life balance.

Sign up now: The Business Growth Pack

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.

Thinking differently about your practice: A tool to put the client first

Welcome to The Business of Psychology Podcast. In this episode I want to share how we can use a value proposition to help us plan service that meets the needs of our clients.

Full show notes for this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links:

The Value Proposition Canvas - Strategyzer Template

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The Business Growth Pack

Ready to grow your practice beyond one person and a laptop? 

We are here to support you to build a thriving, impactful and profitable business. 

Invest in our growth pack to confidently grow your service with associates, organisational work or passive income.

Our unique package includes strategy and marketing training from Dr Rosie Gilderthorp, Founder of Psychology Business School, and legal contracts from Clare Veal, Commercial Lawyer from Aubergine Legal.

Together, we will ensure that you have the strategy and documents you need for growth so you can expand your impact and income while maintaining your work-life balance.

Sign up now: The Business Growth Pack

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.

Shownotes

In this episode I wanted to share how we can use a value proposition to help us plan service that meets the needs of our clients.

This is a great follow on from my episode talking about creating a customer persona and why that is so important. Essentially, once you deeply understand your customer, what their barriers are to engaging with support, and their real priorities then you need to move on to thinking about what your proposed product or service needs to do for them. In other words, how you add value.

There is a tool available from Strategyzer called The Value Proposition Canvas that is designed to help you do exactly that. You complete a canvas for each client group or customer segment that you are working with.

You start with the section on the right that asks you to define the pain the client is experiencing, what is keeping them up at night with worry, what are they doing that they regret, or not doing that they wish they were doing? What are they unhappy about? Then you move on to think about what they want to gain from their time with you. What are they hoping they will be able to do? What do they want to be different? How do they think their life will be enriched? Remember this is all from their perspective not yours! Then you move on to the "jobs to be done", again from the client's perspective, what does your service need to achieve for them? This can include practical things like "easy booking system" and "appointments that fit around work" to bigger things like "get me back to work."

Then we move to the left side of the canvas and start thinking about our product or service. Using the identified client pains we map out what we are putting into our product or service that alleviates those pains. Then using the client gains section we map out what we are including that will get those gains for the client. Finally, we check that the jobs to be done are all covered and give a brief description of the product or service itself. Whenever I work through one of these I always change something about my offer because I realise I'm not quite hitting one of the jobs to be done (or sometimes more). Also completing these has sometimes made me completely rethink a business model. For example, filling out one of these recently for my therapy service made me think an intensive model might actually be what my clients need from me more than a weekly therapy model. Definitely food for thought there!

I've linked to the Strategyzer template in the show notes so you can download a copy and start using it to check what you are offering fully meets the identified needs of the client group or to design something new.

Let me know how you get on with it over on Instagram. I'm @rosiegilderthorp and I'd love to hear from you. Also if you could spare a moment to rate and review the podcast I'd be so grateful, the reviews mean a lot to me and also help this podcast get found.

See you next Friday!

The Immune Mind - Books That Make You Think

Welcome to The Business of Psychology Podcast. Today we're talking about the book ‘The Immune Mind’ by Dr Monty Lyman. He has done really interesting work all around the idea of the mind-body-gut-immune connection, which are all things that I'm really interested in, in my practice, and increasingly I think that we need to incorporate into the way that we work, otherwise we're ignoring a lot of really good science. 

Full show notes for this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links/references:

The Immune Mind by Monty Lyman

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The Business Growth Pack

Ready to grow your practice beyond one person and a laptop? 

We are here to support you to build a thriving, impactful and profitable business. 

Invest in our growth pack to confidently grow your service with associates, organisational work or passive income.

Our unique package includes strategy and marketing training from Dr Rosie Gilderthorp, Founder of Psychology Business School, and legal contracts from Clare Veal, Commercial Lawyer from Aubergine Legal.

Together, we will ensure that you have the strategy and documents you need for growth so you can expand your impact and income while maintaining your work-life balance.

Sign up now: The Business Growth Pack

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.

Shownotes

It has been ages since I've recorded a Books That Make You Think episode, but I absolutely had to revive the format for the book I'm talking about this week because it has completely changed the way that I think about my work fundamentally. Or rather, I would say it's actually given me more confidence to express opinions that I previously held, but didn't fully understand the evidence base for. 

So today we're talking about ‘The Immune Mind’, which is a book by Dr Monty Lyman. Some of you might have seen a documentary that he made previously, he's also written a book about chronic pain. There's a whole heap of really interesting work that he's done, and it's all around the idea of the mind-body-gut-immune connection. And as you know, if you've listened to this podcast for a while, these are all things that I'm really interested in, in my practice, and increasingly I think that we need to incorporate into the way that we work, otherwise we're ignoring a lot of really good science. 

So, I'll give you a quick summary of the book, and then we'll dive into my thoughts and what I think it might mean for my practice, and hopefully it might give you some food for thought for your own work too.

The book's subtitle is ‘The New Science of Health’, and it begins by explaining the link between the immune system and behaviour in a way that I've not come across before. For example, in an extraordinary experiment, the author actually makes himself sick under lab conditions, and monitors the impact on his motivation, his concentration and his mood, in order to land the point that sickness behaviour looks a lot like mental illness, which it really does. There's also an explanation of the mechanisms behind that, which as a non medic, I found particularly helpful. I think many of us have known the distinction between body and mind is a really unhelpful dualism for a long time, and he spends a lot of time talking about that. I think about books like ‘The Body Keeps the Score’ by Bessel van der Kolk, for example, and that's been highly influential in my work, however, if I'm honest, beyond the word ‘psychoneuroimmunology’, I didn't really have the best grasp of how that works. And while I'm still not going to be able to explain it very well to you, Dr Lyman does do a fantastic job of outlining how the body's defence mechanisms of inflammation, microbes and the gut influence the way that we think, feel and behave. So it's given me a little bit more insight into the nuts and bolts of that mechanism, which just gives me more confidence to bring it up with clients. 

The midsection of the book also shows us some quite alarming case studies of situations where the body's defence systems have caused really extreme psychological responses, and often catastrophic psychiatric misdiagnoses. I don't want to give any spoilers away here because I was gripped by this aspect of the book to the point actually where I was exclaiming in public, and I really wouldn't want to take that away from you because it's rare, isn't it, when you're reading a book for professional interest that you can't put it down and you're literally on the edge of your seat. But if you've ever had curiosity about why we're seeing an increase in certain difficulties and diagnoses, or if you've ever experienced a client that just doesn't seem to benefit from any of the usually effective therapies - those people where the drugs certainly didn't work, and the talking therapies aren't really working and even EMDR isn't working - if you've experienced that, I think you'd have to be dead inside not to have curiosity about what could be going on for those people, what might be missing from our formulations, and this provides an additional lens for that formulation. So I'm going to restrain myself and leave it there, but you really do have to read this book if you haven't already. 

The final chapters of the book are the practical ones, suggesting how we can reset our defence systems to protect against unnecessary psychological and physical distress. I found these chapters reassuringly similar to what we would have suggested anyway. Basically reducing the amount of processed stuff we eat, taking exercise, being mindful and practising compassion. So if you're an ACT or a CFT informed therapist, it's really the same stuff that you're already saying to your clients and probably to yourself. The only thing that I don't usually talk to clients about is the processed food. I don't really talk about diet at all with my clients, and I think it does raise an interesting debate for those of us that are trained in mental health, but not physical health, because I wouldn't comment on diet with a client. I talk about activity and movement because I do have some background in those things, but I don't give advice very much, and I certainly wouldn't feel competent or qualified to give advice about nutrition or anything along those lines, because although I used to be a fitness instructor, it wasn't a particularly in depth qualification, and I just don't feel like that's what my clients want to hear from me either. So for me, this book does raise the question of whether the knowledge silos that we've created are helpful, and perhaps the future of mental health care should involve practitioners trained more holistically. Maybe the rise of AI might make that possible, as we're able to augment our own cognitive capacities, and perhaps extend our knowledge in more different directions, and get qualified and competent in different things. So I found that exciting, and also quite daunting and scary. I'd love to know what you think about that? Whether you would embrace the idea of getting some training in the physical side of stuff under your belt, or whether you feel like we should stick to what we're good at already. I think it's a really interesting debate and one that I would really love to have more often. 

Returning to the book, one thing I would like to see more of in the book is attention to how the mind influences the body's defence mechanisms. This is talked about a bit, but the case studies focus much more on the other direction. And I understand this, as I suspect part of the drive behind the book is to provide support for those who have been dismissed as medically unexplained for so long, and I'm really on board with that mission. However, having witnessed a few extraordinary cases of physical recovery following trauma therapy, I would really like to see a deep dive on that with this new layer of understanding, possibly extending the work from The Body Keeps the Score. 

So that is my review of The Immune Mind by Dr Monty Lyman. You should absolutely read it, or you should do what I did and half read it and half listen to it on audible. He's a really engaging speaker, so it's one of those books which is a pleasure to listen to. Not every book works on audible, this one really does. I love to split it so that I've got the physical copy because there are bits I need to reread and go back to, and I think I'll be sharing bits of this book with clients as well. So I like to have the physical copy, but Audible is so much more practical for my life, because I can do that while doing all the other stuff that I do. So I'd really recommend, if you're feeling tight for time, Audible plus physical book; I have found that to be optimal.

Please let me know what you think of this book and this episode by leaving a review. I know it's a bit of a faff, but it really helps more people find this podcast, and to be honest, every review really means the world to me. I'm going to do another book review, maybe a couple in this series, because something that I've noticed is that when I make the time to read, I feel like all of my creativity expands and my work is just so much better. So although I know it's tricky to find the time to read new stuff, I really encourage it, and it's something that's really valuable for me. I don't have tons of other mental health professionals around me to talk about these things with, so it's really lovely to have the opportunity to talk to you guys about these books, and I'd love to get some feedback from you on whether you feel the same way as me, or whether you read it and have some completely different takeaways. So do review this podcast, let me know what you think, and come and find me over on Instagram as well. I'm @rosiegilderthorp over there and let me know what you think of The Immune Mind by Dr Monty Lyman.

I'll see you next week.

Celebrating 150 episodes of Business of Psychology with Dr Claire Plumbly

Dr Claire Plumbly takes over as guest host of the Business of Psychology podcast to interview Rosie on the occasion of celebrating 150 episodes! 

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Episode Links:

Episode 106: A model for truly integrative therapy: SIP with Dr Melanie Lee and Bridger Falkenstein

Episode 120: All That We Are: Best Selling Author Gabriella Braun

Episode 62: Which social media platform works best for psychologists and therapists?

Top 3 Downloaded Episodes:

Episode 1: Business planning to supercharge your psychology private practice

Episode 18: Systematic reviews: How to do a systematic review in independent practice

Episode 41: How to set your fees in your psychology private practice with “pricing queen” Sally Farrant

Marketing an online course mini series:

Episode 84: Creating and marketing an online course for psychologists and therapists part 1: Creating a freebie to grow your online audience

Episode 85: Marketing an online course for psychologists part 2: Landing page essentials for psychologists and therapists with with Vicki Jakes

Episode 86: Marketing an online course for psychologists and therapists part 3: Promoting your freebie with Dr Catherine Hallissey

Episode 87: Marketing an online course for psychologists part 4: Do you have the authority to launch an online course?

Episode 88: Creating and marketing an online course for psychologists and therapists part 5: How to create an engaging online course (that people actually finish)

Episode 89: Marketing an online course for psychologists part 6: Creating inclusive online marketing and education resources. Guidance for psychologists and therapists 

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

Links for Claire:

Website: www.drclaireplumbly.com

Instagram: @drclaireplumbly

TikTok: @drclaireplumbly

YouTube: @drclaireplumbly

Facebook: DrClairePlumbly

LinkedIn: ​​drclaireplumbly

The highlights

• Claire asks Rosie to introduce herself and how it feels to celebrate 150 episodes 00:00
• Rosie tells us how any guests she has interviewed 02:22
• Rosie talks about her solo episodes 04:45
• Claire asks Rosie how long it was from starting the podcast to opening PBS, and how many people have been through that 08:17
• Rosie talks about the importance of pausing to enjoy milestones 16:20
• Rosie tells us about her inspiration for starting the podcast 20:19
• Rosie talks about her most memorable moments from recording the podcast, both positive and negative 29:36
• Claire asks Rosie what the top 3 downloaded episodes are and which episodes she always directs people to 42:10
• Rosie tells us which episode(s) she thinks should have performed better and why she wants us to all go and listen now 44:20
• Rosie talks about her plans for the future 45:59
• Claire ask Rosie for some fun facts about herself 50:56

The Business Growth Pack

Ready to grow your practice beyond one person and a laptop? 

We are here to support you to build a thriving, impactful and profitable business. 

Invest in our growth pack to confidently grow your service with associates, organisational work or passive income.

Our unique package includes strategy and marketing training from Dr Rosie Gilderthorp, Founder of Psychology Business School, and legal contracts from Clare Veal, Commercial Lawyer from Aubergine Legal.

Together, we will ensure that you have the strategy and documents you need for growth so you can expand your impact and income while maintaining your work-life balance.

Sign up now: The Business Growth Pack

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.

Selling mental health services to organisations with Jessica Lorimer

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. In this episode, I'm interviewing Jessica Lorimer, sales expert and the person that taught me how to break into the world of corporates through her program, The C Suite. Jess specialises in consultative selling, in other words, helping clients to make sense of their problems. I can honestly say that following her process and keeping the emphasis on consultation at the forefront of my mind has helped me to feel completely comfortable with the extremely high levels of cold outreach that I’ve had to do to get my foot in the corporate door. This episode is a must listen for you if you're interested in selling your services to corporates or other organisations, but it's also a really great one if you've ever struggled with your mindset around taking money for your services.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links for Jessica:

LinkedIn

sellingtocorporate.com

Selling to Corporate Podcast

Rosie’s affiliate link for The C-Suite: https://rosiegilderthorp--smartleaderssell.thrivecart.com/the-c-suite-self-study-course-2024bnpl/

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• Jess tells us a little bit about who she is, how she helps people and the sorts of services that corporates might be interested in buying from independent psychologists and therapists 01:26
• Jess talks about why it would be worth corporates working with small providers like us 08:53
• Jess tells us how consultative selling is different 14:42
• We discuss the fear of reaching out to corporates and how our skills are relevant to consultative selling 21:06
• Jess talks about the need in public sector and not for profit for external support and guidance, and how if we are from a public sector background, we will still know people who need our skill set 32:32
• Jess gives us a good first move to make if we are thinking about offering services to an organisation 36:18
• Jess tells us where to find her and her podcast, Selling to Corporate 40:32

The Business Growth Pack

Ready to grow your practice beyond one person and a laptop? 

We are here to support you to build a thriving, impactful and profitable business. 

Invest in our growth pack to confidently grow your service with associates, organisational work or passive income.

Our unique package includes strategy and marketing training from Dr Rosie Gilderthorp, Founder of Psychology Business School, and legal contracts from Clare Veal, Commercial Lawyer from Aubergine Legal.

Together, we will ensure that you have the strategy and documents you need for growth so you can expand your impact and income while maintaining your work-life balance.

Sign up now: The Business Growth Pack

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.

Therapeutic knitting with Dr Mia Hobbs and Dr Paula Redmond

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. I am really excited to have Dr Paula Redmond and Dr Mia Hobbs here to talk to me about their new venture in the world of therapeutic knitting. They are both clinical psychologists and avid knitters, and also both alumni of Psychology Business School, so I’m particularly pleased to have them here to talk about their new audio course, which is guiding people in using knitting for self care.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links for Mia and Paula:

creativerestoration.org

www.therapeuticknitting.org

Why I Knit Podcast

@knittingistherapeutic - Instagram

drpaularedmond.com

When Work Hurts Podcast

Dr Paula Redmond - LinkedIn

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• Mia tells us about life as a professional and her background 00:50
• Mia talks about when she first had an inkling that knitting could be helpful 05:00
• Paula tells us about her professional background and what led her to this path 09:00
• Mia and Paula talk about how therapeutic knitting works to support self care 14:08
• Paula and Mia tell us how they got the ball rolling with their therapeutic knitting project 27:24
• Mia and Paula give their advice for people who would like to develop a podcast or a blog 35:24
• Paula and Mia share the more challenging moments from their journey so far 41:24
• I ask Paula and Mia for their one piece of advice they’d give to another psychologist or therapist who would love to do something like this 48:09

The Business Growth Pack

Ready to grow your practice beyond one person and a laptop? 

We are here to support you to build a thriving, impactful and profitable business. 

Invest in our growth pack to confidently grow your service with associates, organisational work or passive income.

Our unique package includes strategy and marketing training from Dr Rosie Gilderthorp, Founder of Psychology Business School, and legal contracts from Clare Veal, Commercial Lawyer from Aubergine Legal.

Together, we will ensure that you have the strategy and documents you need for growth so you can expand your impact and income while maintaining your work-life balance.

Sign up now: The Business Growth Pack

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.

Don't forget to subscribe so you won't miss an episode of the new series, starting tomorrow!

Let me know what you think of the topics we are covering this series @rosiegilderthorp on Instagram

Summer School: Legal contracts and celebration episode

Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology Summer School edition. 

Over the six weeks of the English school holidays, we are doing things a little bit differently around here. If you're looking to start up an independent practice in September, then this is the place to be as each week I'm dropping in with a quick lesson and tasks that can be completed in 30 minutes or less from your sun lounger.

By the end of the six weeks, you will feel ready to step into your practice in September, confident that you can find clients and have a safe and viable business foundation. 

Each week, the lessons will go out on this podcast feed, but if you want the weekly tasks, workbooks, private community, and a live session with me at the end of the summer to hold you accountable and make sure nothing stands in your way, you will need to sign up here: PBS Summer School

I would love to see you in the community.

Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links & References:

PBS Start and Grow

Discount code for Start and Grow: SUMMER200 valid until Wednesday the 11th September at 10pm

Episode 146: Data Protection for Psychologists in 2024 with Clare Veal

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

Legal contracts and celebration episode

We have come to the end of Summer School, and as you might have noticed from the title of this episode, I'm combining two rather odd things here today, because firstly, I really want to say what an amazing summer this has been. Thank you so much for joining along with this journey. I have loved watching your budding businesses develop and hearing how your confidence has grown over the past few weeks.

I know September is going to be the start of so many epic psychology and therapy practices, and that is a fantastic thing. But one thing we haven't got sorted yet is your essential contracts and data protection policies, the legal bits. And these are critically important, but they couldn't really be fit into 30 minutes or less, and I did not consider them to be particularly sun lounger friendly, if I'm honest. But I do have a good solution for you for that one. 

Firstly, listen to the podcast that I recorded with Clare Veal, where we talk about data protection contracts and policies, the ones that you need and what needs to be in them. So do go and listen to that podcast. It's really amazing free advice from a leading lawyer in this space.

Then I have to recommend that you consider using your special summer school discount to join us in Start and Grow and get: 

• All the legal training policies and contracts that you could possibly need. 
• My clear step by step course to build a practice that supports your values and rewards your hard work. 
• Twice a month, group coaching sessions that keep you accountable and help you jump over any practical or mindset barriers. 
• Six months membership of our supportive student community where people will cheerlead you when you need a bit of cheerleading and give you feedback when you need a bit of compassionate feedback too.
• Access to our private student podcast so you can learn in your own time and in your own way. 

That takes the total value of the package to over £3000, but the legal documents on their own are normally £495, and you can get all of that within Start and Grow for just £650 for one week only. It's normally much more than that, but I'm doing a big discount for those of you that spent this time with me over the summer.

But you don't have to take my word for how good Start and Grow is. I've got some really kind words that some of the people that have been through the course recently were happy for me to share with you guys. And I think that's really important because why should you believe me, that Start and Grow is great, when we've had hundreds of psychologists and therapists come through the course. I think it's so much more powerful to hear from them. 

So this is what Dr Lauren Breese, who's a clinical psychologist focusing on neurodiversity in adults, had to say: 

"In a few days of implementing some of the strategies and guidance, I had new inquiries to my private practice. Having the community, resources, and specific supervision around growing a business has been invaluable. It's hard to find all of that anywhere else." 

And as you can hear, this feedback gets me a little bit choked up! 

I also wanted to share what Dr Misha Nixon, another clinical psychologist, had to say:

"I was thinking about joining Start and Grow for months before I actually did. I'm so pleased I decided to go ahead as, even though it's only been a few weeks since I joined, it's helped give me focus, provided a safe place to share my experiences with others and learn from others. And it's reduced the feeling of overwhelm and increased my confidence."

And that is really close to my heart because as you know, if you've listened to this podcast for a while, confidence was my biggest problem when I started out in private practice. And having that community around you, and the knowledge and the skills to avoid some of the pitfalls of business can make such a big difference to your professional confidence, which should be sky high because you are all awesome.

And as I mentioned, there are a ton more testimonials and videos and you can go and find all of those on the sales page for Start and Grow, which I'll link to in the show notes. If you scroll down, there's loads down at the bottom.

I also wanted to mention that there is a special discount for summer schoolers, and I consider you a summer schooler, and you can use the code SUMMER200 until Wednesday the 11th of September at 10pm, at which point the discount will stop working. That will get you £200 off the normal price of Start and Grow. And as I explained, the legal documents alone make that a really good bargain. So I would love to come and see you in the program. 

If you have any questions about Start and Grow or anything that we've covered over this summer, please do ping me an email, or if you are a registered signed up member of the Summer School, then please do come along to our wrap up Q&A session on Wednesday the 4th of September at 10am. That is for signed up summer schoolers only and I will be at your disposal to help you troubleshoot anything that's standing between you and the practice that you want to build. So again, thank you everybody for spending this summer with me. I've really enjoyed myself and I can't wait to see what you all do in September.

Summer School Lesson 6: Third parties and insurance companies

Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology Summer School edition. 

Over the six weeks of the English school holidays, we are doing things a little bit differently around here. If you're looking to start up an independent practice in September, then this is the place to be as each week I'm dropping in with a quick lesson and tasks that can be completed in 30 minutes or less from your sun lounger.

By the end of the six weeks, you will feel ready to step into your practice in September, confident that you can find clients and have a safe and viable business foundation. 

Each week, the lessons will go out on this podcast feed, but if you want the weekly tasks, workbooks, private community, and a live session with me at the end of the summer to hold you accountable and make sure nothing stands in your way, you will need to sign up here: PBS Summer School

I would love to see you in the community.

Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links & References:

PBS Summer School Sign Up

PBS Start and Grow

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

Week 6: Third parties and insurance companies

Welcome to Lesson 6 of Summer School, our final lesson! Today I'm going to be talking to you about third parties and insurance companies, because often when we start out in private practice, it can be helpful to supplement our own referrals with some from third parties, the most common being associate work for a larger, well established practice, referrals directly from insurance companies, or referrals from case managers representing medico legal firms.

Associate work

Associate work can be great to help you get your confidence and practice processes up and running at the beginning of your practice. In fact, many people choose to stay working as an associate rather than creating their own referrals.

The upside is you get the benefit of steady referrals and the best associate practices offer training and supervision opportunities or other benefits like free room rental when you see their clients. They also tend to handle the admin for you, so it can be very welcome in the scary early days.

The downside of associate work is less money, but less costs as well, so that might actually be fine. Just check that you don't go below your minimum fee that we worked out a couple of lessons ago, and also possible limitations on your own business growth. You need to check an associate contract very carefully for non compete clauses. These are clauses that state that you can't poach clients from the associate practice, which is very much fair enough. But, some of them do have some quite drastic terms in them. The chunkiest I've ever read was, 'You can never work with any mental health client within a 50 mile radius of the associate practice for one year after you finish with your last patient with us’. And I won't get into the pros and cons of that type of clause here, but just be aware, and if you see one that you think might limit your potential business growth in the future, then walk away from it.

Finally, make sure that the associate practice aligns with your values. It can be really uncomfortable working for an organisation that has very different values to you. You went into independent practice to avoid those kinds of culture clashes, so don't put up with it, you don't have to. Only work with practices that you feel excited to work for and proud to work for.

Insurance companies

Now, you probably know if you've been in the professional Facebook groups, that insurance companies often don't pay the best rates. When I have a lot of referrals coming in, I do tend to decline insurance referrals because of that. However, when I was starting out, they were a very important referral stream, and they do continue to be useful when referrals are a bit slow. You just have to make sure that they don't take you below that minimum fee.

You can register for insurance companies like AXA, Vitality and Bupa directly, or you can register with lots in one go through the Private Practice Register, or the Health Code System as it's now called.

It's unpredictable, to be honest, whether these will bring you referrals or not. I have students in Start and Grow who consistently get referrals from the main insurance companies, and I also have students who don't get any. For me, it has been really postcode dependent. Where I am now, I am getting referrals directly from some of the insurance companies, but I definitely didn't in the two previous parts of the country that I lived in. It's nothing to do with me, it is everything to do with what they need in the particular location that you're in. However, I do think it's always worth registering because you might get ideal clients coming to you who want to use their insurance to pay you. I find this is happening more and more, and when we look at the economic trends, more and more people are taking out private medical insurance and they expect to be able to use it. So I think that this is going to become a bigger part of our work over time. Some people might say regrettably, but it is a trend that I'm seeing, so I would get registered. But make sure when you register, you're aware of the cap that they have on their fees, read their terms and conditions, save those terms and conditions on your desktop, or put them somewhere safe where you can check them. And make sure that cap is not below your minimum fee. Also make sure that you set your fee at the very top of what they will pay, because the chances of them ever upping what they pay you are very low. They do not increase their cap every year. They haven't done so for a very long time in a lot of cases, so it is worth getting the most you can possibly get from the beginning.

So my top tips for taking on insurance clients are: 

• make sure you have your provider number, their patient number, and their pre authorization code, and the payment conditions and terms of the insurance provider saved into your practice management system and at your fingertips before you start therapy. 
• You need to know and make sure the client knows what the policy is around missed appointments. For some insurance providers, they will not pay for a DNA but they expect the patient to pay for that themselves. If they don't know that before they miss their first appointment with you, they might well refuse to pay it or be very upset and that's just a horrible conversation. So make sure that everybody knows and you've adapted your terms and conditions to reflect those terms from that particular insurance provider. 
• You also really need to know when you can invoice and when you should expect to be paid because that is slightly different for all of the insurance providers too and you don't want to miss out on the money that you're owed simply because you've got that wrong. 

Rehab work or medico legal case managers

When you take on cases from rehab companies, you're effectively working as an associate for them, so the same advice that I've already given for associate work applies. As an additional note of caution, however, and this is based on my own experiences, please do check the reputation of the company that you're dealing with before you accept referrals. I have seen psychologists and therapists treated really badly by these companies because they're quite prone to going under without paying their providers. They also often have completely unreasonable payment terms. You can't wait 90 days after submitting your invoice, or even worse, 90 days after the end of a whole course of therapy, to get paid. Not if you're in the early days of your practice, and not, to be honest, for most small businesses out there. It actually nearly put me out of business in my first year. So, where possible, check with peers if they've had good experiences of getting paid and working with these companies and triple check their payment terms are acceptable to you before proceeding. Some of them will negotiate with you. I did successfully negotiate down from 90 days to 30. It can be done, but just make sure that you do. And if they're not open to negotiating, walk away because it will be more trouble than it's worth. 

Week six task

Your final task of the summer school:

• Firstly, decide if you want to register with insurance companies, and if you do, then make sure that you save all their documentation somewhere and have it all clearly labelled and easy to access. 
• Then if you think associate work would be useful to you, do a Google search for practices local to you and make contact with three to five that you think align with your values to see if they have any associate work available and to set up a coffee or chat with the founder so you can check if their values fit and they run things in a way which works for you.

Okay, that's your 30 minutes for the final time. Go!

Summer School Lesson 5: Directory sites

Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology Summer School edition. 

Over the six weeks of the English school holidays, we are doing things a little bit differently around here. If you're looking to start up an independent practice in September, then this is the place to be as each week I'm dropping in with a quick lesson and tasks that can be completed in 30 minutes or less from your sun lounger.

By the end of the six weeks, you will feel ready to step into your practice in September, confident that you can find clients and have a safe and viable business foundation. 

Each week, the lessons will go out on this podcast feed, but if you want the weekly tasks, workbooks, private community, and a live session with me at the end of the summer to hold you accountable and make sure nothing stands in your way, you will need to sign up here: PBS Summer School

I would love to see you in the community.

Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links & References:

PBS Summer School Sign Up

PBS Start and Grow

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

Week 5: Directory Sites

For lesson five of our summer school, we are thinking about directory sites. It's a good idea to be on a directory site or two if you're in independent practice. They can be a good source of referrals, but on top of that, they give you a home on the internet that you can direct people to before you get your own website up and running. They show up in search engines and they can give you a real boost of credibility. 

There are a myriad of directory sites to choose from, and the good news is that most of them offer a free trial, so you can test which ones work for you. 

What I do, and what I'm going to talk through today, is I create a perfect profile, which I save in a Google Doc, and then I just copy and paste it into different platforms that I want to try out.

At a minimum, I'd recommend trying out Psychology Today, Counseling Directory, and Find My Psychologist, but it's worth doing a search for a 'psychologist or therapist near me' and seeing what directory sites are dominating the search results near you, because it is different postcode to postcode, and you really want to make sure you're on those sites that are coming top for your area. For example, where I am, if I type in ‘psychologist in Tunbridge Wells’, the first results are from Harley Therapy, Psychology Today and Counseling Directory. So if I was starting out, those would be places that I'd really want to consider. 

There are some basic principles for a good directory site profile, that if you follow, you're going to be streets ahead of most people out there, because most profiles on directory sites are really awful. I'm going to talk you through some top tips, and then if you're in summer school, you will be able to use my template, which I've put underneath this lesson, in order to craft your directory site profile. 

Write as though you're speaking to a potential client 

If this is difficult and it doesn't come naturally to you, it's actually worth recording your side of a conversation with a new client and looking at the phrases that you use and what you say and how you explain who you are and what you do when you're really in front of somebody. For me, I can do this as a bit of an imagination exercise. As I'm writing, I just imagine that I'm speaking to a real person that's come to me and is asking ‘how can you help me with X, Y, or Z?’ But I know that that doesn't come naturally for everybody, so sometimes it's about recording those real life interactions, because if you've been a therapist for a while, you're good at this, it's just sometimes difficult to get it out on paper.

Specialise

You can't speak to everybody in your profile, you're just going to blend into the background. So make sure that you pick a particular client group to speak to. This is something we talk about a lot in Start and Grow; deciding on that specialism and who your ideal client is, is really important. But for now just pick your favourite type of client, the people that you've worked with most successfully in the past and go with that.

A few lines about your approach

When it comes to talking about your approach, say a few confident lines about this, let them know about your experience and literally how you will help them, but don't go into reams and reams about how your unique approach to therapy is X, Y, or Z. People can't make sense of that if they've got no prior experience of therapy, it's likely that every single word you use will just come across as jargon to them, even though it isn’t to us. I would know what you mean, but we're thinking about the ideal client, and if they haven't had therapy before, things like 'safe space' even, just sound like rubbish to them. So try and steer clear of that sort of thing and just talk about ‘my 25 years of experience in therapy, experience in the NHS working in this area to help you overcome the problems that you're facing with X, Y, and Z. I offer...,’ and then maybe something like, talking therapies like CBT and trauma focused therapies like EMDR. That would be enough. You really don't need to overwhelm people with more, which is probably most often more written for our peers than it is for the ideal client. So steer clear of that and just a few confident lines.

Don't list every piece of training

Give your core qualification and then maybe one or two other things which really say something about the way that you work. For example, if you are EMDR accredited, that's probably worth mentioning. But if you did a two day course in CFT, that's probably not worth mentioning, but if you've done the CFT Diploma, maybe that is. Keep it to core qualification plus maybe one or two other things if they're really important to the way that you work.

Have an easy booking system

Have an easy booking system and make sure it's really explicit. If the person needs to send an email to book with you, tell them to do that. If they need to phone, tell them to do that. Give one way of doing it. If you've set up something like Calendly or Acuity or you're using the WriteUpp booking system that we talked about in the tools lesson, then tell them about that and tell them exactly how to do it.

Tell them exactly what will happen next

If you offer a free consultation, tell them that's what's going to happen and then afterwards you will follow up with your recommendations. However you do it, just make it really clear what needs to happen next and what will happen immediately afterwards.

Make your fees really clear

None of this kind of sliding scale, none of this inquire and then I'll tell you the fee. No. People get really anxious about fees, understandably. Put yourself in their shoes. When I've been inquiring about therapy, the thing that is on my mind is can I afford this and what am I going to pay over the next three months, six months, 12 months, however long I think I'm going to need therapy for. And it's terrifying. People do not want to have a conversation, get to the end of it and have to tell you that they can't afford you. Horrible for everybody. Don't put anybody through it. Make your fees really explicit. 

Use a professional headshot 

If you don't have one, put that on your list of things to get sorted, because people need to feel that they have a sense of who you are and what your presence is like and the photo really communicates that, and it's very difficult to get right on your own. You need to make sure that there are no weird shadows over your face, and that you just look how you really look. So making sure that you've got a really good quality image will really help. There's lots of evidence that people do use those to make decisions about who they contact. So make sure you've got the best image you can possibly get. I really recommend going to local networking events and finding a local photographer to do that for you. It's not that expensive and it can make a really big difference to your profile success. 

So overall, the key here is to write your profile for an overwhelmed potential client, not for your peers. We talk about this loads in Psychology Business School and especially in the Start and Grow programme, and we spend a lot of time giving each other feedback on profiles because even I struggled to do this. After years and years of helping other people with their own, I still struggle to get mine right because it's very difficult to see your profile through the eyes of a potential client when you've got all your own stuff in your own head going on about it. So sharing what you've got for feedback is my biggest piece of advice. And don't worry if you need to tweak it a few times to get it right, because we all do. 

If you're in summer school, then there's a template below this lesson that you can use to create a great profile. And remember, it doesn't have to be long to be effective.

Week five task

So your task for this week: 

• Pick one photo of yourself that you like, or one that is good enough, and use that for now. If you've got a professional headshot, great. If not, get to local networking and try and get one sorted out as soon as possible. 
• Write your profile in a Google or Word document using the template that I've given you here and share it for feedback in our Summer School community.
• Google 'psychologist near me' or 'therapist near me' and note down what directory sites come up and then sign up to all of them, and track where inquiries come from. If you're on holiday at the moment, which I hope some of you are, then you can save your profile as a draft and set it live when you are ready to come back in September, but make sure that you've got some way of tracking where your inquiries come from, and is this profile worth continuing with? And then you only continue with the ones that bring you something useful. But I would give them three to six months to produce a result because it does take a bit of time, often, to get it right.

Okay, 30 minutes, go!

Summer School Lesson 4: Get your first clients

Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology Summer School edition. 

Over the six weeks of the English school holidays, we are doing things a little bit differently around here. If you're looking to start up an independent practice in September, then this is the place to be as each week I'm dropping in with a quick lesson and tasks that can be completed in 30 minutes or less from your sun lounger.

By the end of the six weeks, you will feel ready to step into your practice in September, confident that you can find clients and have a safe and viable business foundation. 

Each week, the lessons will go out on this podcast feed, but if you want the weekly tasks, workbooks, private community, and a live session with me at the end of the summer to hold you accountable and make sure nothing stands in your way, you will need to sign up here: PBS Summer School

I would love to see you in the community.

Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links & References:

PBS Summer School Sign Up

PBS Start and Grow

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

Week 4: Get your first clients

Week four of summer school is here! And now we finally get to talk about marketing. But probably not the kind of marketing that you're expecting me to talk about if you've spent a lot of time, like I have, in the online marketing space, getting all kinds of ads about Instagram and Google and all of that sent to you all the time.

So the question we need to start with when we're thinking about marketing a private practice is, if you were looking for a therapist, where would you look first? And I'm willing to bet that your answer was not, I would scroll through Instagram looking for a therapist. Most of us would start by asking people that we trust, professionals, friends, family, for recommendations. And the best time investment you can make in the early days of your practice is to make sure that you are top of mind for the people your ideal clients are likely to go to for recommendations. So how to get started with what we call relationship marketing?

Local business networking

You can start with local business networking. These events are full of people who might know your ideal clients. Go with a list of professionals or businesses that you think would be useful to your ideal client group and aim to find out enough about them to decide whether you would refer to them. If you do that you're very likely to find that they want to refer to you too. 

Different networking groups will attract different people. So for example, because I work in perinatal, I'm looking for people that would very often see people either in pregnancy or in the early days of parenthood. So that might be nutritionists, it might be personal trainers, it might be physios, baby yoga teachers, private midwives, massage therapists. So I really only bother with events where I'm likely to come into contact with those sorts of businesses.

If I go to an event and I find out that it's not right, the right people aren't there, then I'm going to choose a different one for the next month. It's not that it won't be interesting, I'll still make a real effort to understand people's businesses and have some really interesting chats, but it's probably not the best time investment to keep going back. 

So have that list in your mind of who you want to meet and make sure you're going to an event where those people are. 

Join local mental health professional groups

Another way of building that referral network is to join local groups of other mental health professionals. Alongside regular networking, it's really important to gather those professionals around you who are in a similar field to you.

I'm a firm believer that there's no such thing as competition in what we do. Sadly, there are more than enough people that need our services. So gathering a network of other local psychologists or therapists around you is really helpful in order to help you provide a good service. It may be that these are people that you refer to if you're overcapacity or somebody comes to you needing a different specialism, and I think it's really good to have strong relationships with those people that you do refer out to.

It may also be that this becomes a peer supervision type group where you can ask for advice. If you have a risk situation for example, having a local network who understand the difficulties and know where to signpost people to is really valuable. And you can also help extend each other's knowledge, so it's a really valuable resource and I really, really recommend it. 

Link up with other health professionals

You also want to make sure that you make some effort to link up with other health professionals, maybe outside of mental health, but who might have contact with your ideal client. You can find those people in the same way that your ideal client would find them, probably through Google, maybe you'll meet some at networking events, but often it's through Google and reaching out to those people. Again, you're approaching them with this idea of, okay, I might need to refer to you, so I want to understand more about if our values align and the services that you offer. 

It can be really difficult to get a response because health professionals are really busy. For example, people often have real trouble getting hold of private GPs. So one way of approaching that is to think about what you might be able to offer them that would be worth them investing their time in. For example, for somebody like me, I might put together a really short 20 minute talk that I can deliver on the mental health impact of severe pregnancy sickness. This is something that very often other health professionals who are not in mental health don't know very much about, and they might really struggle to know what to do if they see a patient that they see is suffering. So I might just put together something really short about how you would identify that somebody was struggling and where you can signpost them to, including charities, the NHS route, and that's why it's good to have a local network so you know what that route would be… and also talking about my services too. So that's a good tip for that. 

Use co-working spaces

It's also a good idea, if you're thinking about using any space outside of your home for working, to use a co-working space and chat to the people there. This can be a really great way of seeing the same people week in, week out, and really getting your name out there in the local community.

Often the people that run these spaces are quite invested in advertising the people that work there and trying to create a real business ecosystem of people that refer to each other. So again, this can be a really nice way of building those long term referral networks. 

My top tips for building your network 

It's all about being reciprocal: Network with people you want to refer to and be explicit about that intention.

Personalised messages 

Only ever send messages to people that are really personal and show you've really thought about them, their clients, and the value that you can add for each other's businesses. Don't copy and paste the same outreach message to people. I find, because I often get a mind blank, because I'm an introvert, I'm quite shy, I do start with a template, but I'll always make sure that I adapt it to the person I'm sending it to. Otherwise, we just get so many, don't we? If you're anything like me, I get around 20 of those messages a day from people that basically just want to talk to my audience and haven't really got very much interest in helping me in any way. And you just delete them. So making sure that there's something different about your message that is thoughtful and personal is really important. 

Making the most out of networking sessions 

I often get asked, how do you make the most of a networking session? So if you make the effort to go networking, how are you going to make sure that you actually get some return on that?

I think something that's really key is preparation. So find out who is going to be at this event before you go. Most of them will have a list of attendees that you can look at before you go, so you can pick out, okay, I want to talk to this person, this person, this person, and this person, because I'm pretty sure that they're going to have contact with my ideal client group. Make sure if you have that information to hand, you know then who you want to speak to at the event. And if it's got their contact details, you could even send them a message in advance, saying ‘Hi, I'm Rosie, I'm really looking forward to meeting you at this event. It would be great to talk about mental health because I think that we have some of the same clients, so let's make sure we make time for a chat’. It's a really great thing to do if you've got access to that attendee list. 

Know what you want to get out of the events

So think about, is there anything in your business that you could do with help on? Is there anything that you want to find out about your ideal client group that people that know them in a different capacity might be able to help you answer? It's a really great idea. If there's something that needs doing in your business, for example you're looking for support with search engine optimization, or you need some photos done, go to local networking events and look for the people who are going to do those things for you because people are inherently reciprocal. If you work with one of the businesses in the networking group and you pay them, it's very likely that both them and other people in the group are going to feel more like they want to refer to you. We're reciprocal creatures. 

Have clear in your mind what topics of conversation you'd really like to get going

Very often, if you work with me in Start and Grow, and we go into more depth setting up your private practice for longevity and really working out how you're going to grow, something that's really key to that is getting a deep understanding of your ideal client. And very often, when we come to fill out a client persona document, which is basically where you really get under the skin of your ideal client, we find there are gaps in our knowledge that we just can't fill because we've only ever known our ideal clients in our capacity as a mental health professional, and people don't talk normally to mental health professionals. So often there are things that I'll go to a networking meeting and try to find out to flesh out that client persona. So if you've got any questions like that in your mind, make sure that they're clear. And if you're like me and you get blank because you're a bit shy, have it written down somewhere. I find that really helpful. 

Take any opportunity you're given to speak

Many events will make you introduce yourself to the group and some will offer opportunities for longer speaking segments as well. So make sure that you've got a two sentence introduction planned where you say who you are and who you help. It's really important and it sounds simple, but again, if you're a bit shy like I am, you might find that you draw a bit of a blank, so practising that is quite helpful. And if they do offer speaker segments, I'm not saying do it on your first go, but when you've gone to that event a couple of times, then do consider putting yourself forward for one, because it really does help people to remember what you do. You don't have to be a brilliant speaker, you just have to communicate who you're trying to help and what your passion is, why you want to help those people. It will stick in people's minds. I still get referrals now from events like that that I did years ago, so definitely worth doing.

Listen and help others

I know that that is probably second nature to you much of the time, but for many of us who would consider ourselves introverts, you go to an event like this and you get so overwhelmed that it can kind of switch off that connection to other people that might be so natural the rest of the time. It's actually really, really important, even if you go to an event and all you do is listen to other people talking about their business problems, empathise and try to offer some sort of perspective. You will probably demonstrate your skills and your expertise because we think slightly differently to many of the other businesses that will be there because we've got different professional backgrounds. I've often found that that's where I make the biggest impression, is just offering what my perspective on that might be, or have you thought about it in this way? Just those simple questions that you ask when you're genuinely curious about somebody else's problem can really demonstrate how good you are in the therapy room and with what you do. So make sure that you're really paying attention and not just constantly thinking about how do I get mention of my business in here? There will be so many people there doing that and it does not work. Go, be a human, have compassion and listen. You're good at that already, so just let yourself shine.

Don't put barriers in your own way

You can start to build a solid professional network simply by searching for people with the same professional title as you on platforms like LinkedIn or Google. Google will also tell you where all your business networking events are. It'll give you a big old list and you can just try them out. Don't worry about things like, ‘I don't have a website’ or ‘I don't have business cards’. You don't need them. So long as you've got somewhere to send people, be that a Psychology Today profile or a LinkedIn profile, fine, that is all you need. 

Get contact details

Make sure you get contact details for the people that you speak to at the events and follow up with them. You have to keep that relationship going. It's like any relationship. It's not one and done. It's nurturing these relationships, even if it's just sending out an email once a month to say, hey, how are you doing? Do you fancy a coffee? Are you going to the next event? Or maybe if it would be relevant to them sending over the blog post that you've just written. If you do a lot of this, you might even start up a newsletter, which is actually just for communicating with other businesses and other professionals. However you do it, it's keeping that human relationship alive afterwards and you can't do that if you don't get contact details, so make sure that you do do that.

Week four task

So your 30 minute task for this week: use Google to find three local networking events and commit to going to one per month from September onwards. Or if you're able to do it now for extra brownie points, go now. But assuming that you can't, make sure that you've got your September, October and November events in the diary.

Reach out to at least two other mental health professionals and set up a chat or a coffee and make a list of professionals or businesses that you would like to be able to refer to. 

And then final thing for this week, create a two sentence introduction that you can use any time someone asks you who you are and what you do and practise it a couple of times.

I promise that if you don't overthink it, all of those things can be done within 30 minutes. So, 30 minutes, go!