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:
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Welcome back summer schoolers! Welcome to week two. Today we're going to be talking about one of the things I get asked about most frequently by my students in Start and Grow and by my coachees, and that's all about the tools of private practice. Most importantly, what we need to spend money on and what we probably don't.
So here I'm going to be taking you through the tools that I think are really essential to running a professional private practice and also some tools which aren't essential but are pretty nice to have and can make your experience and your client's experience just that bit better. So every tool that I mention here is linked to within our lesson in your Kajabi portal.
So I hope you're going to find it a really useful reference guide if you're just setting up in private practice.
We'll start with the essential tools:
GDPR compliant cloud storage: The first thing that's really important to have is some kind of GDPR compliant cloud storage. And that means somewhere that you can keep your notes and everything relating to client information that complies with UK data protection laws. You need to consider getting something secure in place before you see anybody. This is a place where you can store all of your documents relating to your private practice and to your clients.
The one that I have tried and tested myself is Google Drive, and that comes as part of Google Workspace. It's very cheap, it's affordable, and it's very good in my experience. And if you use it correctly, it is GDPR compliant. You'll need to check their most up to date help documentation to make sure that you're using it in a GDPR compliant way - the reason I can't walk you through that step by step is that they do update their documentation regularly, and it's important that you see the most recent version of that, so do go and have a look for yourself. You can also use Microsoft System OneDrive and that's also very good. I don't use it personally, I have done for a bit of contract work, I have done with other organisations, and I found it to be really good. But again, you will need to check their documentation to make sure that you're using it in a GDPR compliant way.
Practice management software: The next thing to consider is practice management software. This is the stuff that allows you to keep track of all your appointments, invoice your clients, store your notes, your reports, and track any communication that you have with clients.
It makes the day to day running of your practice much smoother, and helps you come across as professional to clients and prospective clients, which ultimately allows you to make more money. It also takes all the worry out of things like freedom of information requests and any legal requests you might get for your notes, because everything's there under your client record, whenever you need it, at the click of a button. I really wouldn't be without mine. In fact, I believe in this so much that this is the only time I've ever got an affiliate link for a tool, and that's for WriteUpp, which is the practice management software that I use. I've never been an affiliate before, I've got no interest in affiliate marketing in general, but for WriteUpp I hopped on board quite early because it transformed my practice and I really wish that everybody got practice management software early on in their practice. So go and check out WriteUpp.
The other thing that you can do through practice management software like WriteUpp is get your clients to sign things like consent forms, terms and conditions, therapy contracts, all of that stuff within one piece of software. It also allows you to send them forms, which are then directly filled into their client portal. So you don't have to go backwards and forwards and worry about, you know, how are they sending that back to me? Do I need to send it with passwords and all of that stuff? WriteUpp manages all of that for you. So I really recommend having a look at them. There are other packages out there like Power Diary and Clinico, and you're welcome to have a look at those as well, I just haven't used them myself, so I can't vouch for them.
Now you might be thinking, do I need something like Google Drive if I'm using WriteUpp? And the answer is, if you are using a really simple, streamlined private practice, then no, you probably don't need both. You could use WriteUpp for everything. I've always found that it's useful to have something like Google Drive as well, so that I can store stuff that doesn't directly relate to clients, but does relate to my practice and the way that I run it, like my policies, things for me and my associates that I want to be able to share with other members of my team. But no, it's probably not essential if you are using something like WriteUpp, but probably worth having in the background as well for most of us.
Secure email: Another thing you need to get set up early doors is a secure email system.
Something like ProtonMail that encrypts our messages end to end is really useful if you're going to be having conversations with clients that contain any confidential information. This will also integrate with your practice management system so that messages you send through that are also secure, so I really recommend it. ProtonMail is brilliant, that's the only one I've ever used, but there are others out there too, so feel free to check those out and just get yourself sorted with something secure.
In addition to that, if it's your intention to have your own website at some...