6 steps to open a psychology practice

To become a professional offering psychology services, you need to know certain keys.

Opening a psychology practice is one of the preferred career paths for many psychologists oriented towards mental health intervention or education. Those who choose to offer their services independently often do so in order not to be subject to the limitations of working in a highly hierarchical structure in which there is little control over decisions.

However, when going freelance, one must also know how to manage other pressures, especially those related to the initial scarcity of resources, on the one hand, and to the competitiveness of the market, on the other.

In the following lines we will look at some basic basic ideas on how to open a psychology practice in the best possible way.

How to open a psychology practice, step by step.

It 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 straighten the situation to avoid the extra problems that may appear if we do not know very well what are the steps to follow.

In short, knowing how to open a psychology practice does not mean to open it and start making money, but to lose as little as possible in the process.It means losing as little as possible along the way and doing everything in our power to avoid generating undesirable situations with the capital, with the laws or with the clients.

In addition, 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 control directly, such as the economic and social ups and downs to which any country is subject. Fortunately, it is not usual for these to occur abruptly, so if we consolidate the psychology practice in a timely manner and do not make the deficient situation become chronic, being aware of what is happening in the present before making the first moves will eliminate a good part of these risks.

1. Define your project

When it comes to psychology entrepreneurship, you must follow the same fundamental rules that must underpin any entrepreneurship 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 setting up a business, it is very likely that we cannot afford to completely change the business model a few weeks or months after having started, when you are still in deficit or have only recently crossed the line of profitability..

So the first thing to do is market research, however 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 offices in your neighborhood.

With this information, consider the different types of services you can offer and the way you would market them.and assessing the advantages and disadvantages of each. 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 choose which market niche you want to occupy, being aware of whether there is a lot or little competition, a lot or little potential demand, etc. for that service. For example, if in your area there is a large aging population and there is already a center that specializes in child therapy and the like, child and adolescent intervention will probably not be the most important path, so it would be better to either focus your work on 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 practice is to go to the concrete and to establish in a more systematic and predefined way how you are going to work and on what ideas and values you are going to base your work. established in a more systematic and predefined way how you are going to work and on which ideas and values you are going to base your work.. For example: are you going to rely on collaborations with other professionals, or will you rely almost exclusively on your own work and 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 some extent with your way of being in spontaneous conversations?

The disadvantage of creating a business plan is that since each professionalization initiative is different, there is no rigid and predefined outline to follow, knowing that with this information there will be no ambiguities or unforeseen situations in the future. However, you can rely on the idea that you should develop three fundamental aspects about your project:

Your objectives.

This is what is usually known as the combination of vision and mission. In this section you should specify what needs are going to be covered by the psychology practice, and with what kind of strategies.

Your means

Here you can specify the amount of resources you will have during the first stage of the project's 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 in order to to have defined certain margins which, in case they are crossed, indicate that we are that, in case they are exceeded, indicate that we are moving away from the initial approaches that allowed us to shape the project and make it form a coherent unit.

3. Keep defining your target

The target is the "target" public on which 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. Economic, social and psychological differences account for 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 education, it does not make sense to use a communicative style full of technicalities. If they are characterized by being older or middle-aged, it's probably not a good idea to bet on having a strong 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 dedicate time to this step, since not paying much attention to it can lead to constantly changing rates, which is not at all positive from a marketing point of view; it generates an image of unpredictability and instability that feeds mistrust.

5. Concretize your communicative tone

Beyond choosing the communication channels through which you are going to publicize your psychology practice, 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, however simple it may be, in which the usual shapes and colors that you are going to use are included. the usual shapes and colors that you are going to use, both on your website both on your website and in your practice, as well as in other marketing elements such as business cards. Not keeping a certain coherence in this aspect gives an image of unprofessionalism.

6. Go through a legal consultancy

At least in Spain, psychology is a sector that suffers a certain deregulation, so it is easy to find doubts and ambiguities. For that reason, it is worthwhile to go through a legal consultancy. A small investment that will save us problems in the future.