The Business of Psychology

The highlights

Naomi tells us about her unusual route into clinical psychology, doing her PhD first 01:57
I ask Naomi about the central question of her PhD 06:38
Naomi talks about what drew her into clinical work 08:45
We discuss the breadth of experience our clinical training gave us 12:07
Naomi describes what she typically does in her practice at the moment 15:54
Naomi talks about her drive get good information out there and the backlash she’s received 20:21
I ask Naomi how she deals with being recognised 26:48
Naomi tells us about her podcast, Let’s Talk Neurosense 37:33
Naomi tells us where we can find her 51:48

Start Up Your Psychology Practice

Are you tired of just talking about starting your practice but never quite committing?

If you’re ready to stop dancing with burnout and finally go 'all in', my 90-day program, 'Start Up Your Psychology Practice,' was made for you. This is a group coaching experience designed to help you ethically replace your full-time salary in part-time hours. We handle everything: from legal compliance and GDPR to attracting your first consistent stream of self-funding clients. No more piecing it together alone.

And here is the best part: sign up before the end of May to get £200 off your investment. Let’s build a practice that gives you the freedom you deserve.

Apply today: https://psychologybusinessschool.com/lp/start-up-private-practice-bundle/

Consultancy and systemic change in private practice with Dr Laura Bennet

Fri, 08 May 2026 06:00:00 +0100

Consultancy and systemic change in private practice with Dr Laura Bennet

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. Today I'm joined by Dr Laura Bennett, a clinical psychologist with over 20 years of experience supporting children, young people, and their families through some of life's most complex challenges.

Since qualifying in 2009, Laura has worked across a range of NHS services, before founding Oasis Psychology in Dorset in 2022. Her practice is a really good example of a specialist service, as Laura specialises in supporting children who are in care, those who have been adopted, and families on the edge of care, focusing deeply on developmental trauma and attachment, and most importantly, supporting the system around the child.

Today we are looking at Laura's work beyond the therapy room. Many psychologists and therapists worry that moving into private practice means narrowing their scope to just one-to-one clinical hours. Laura is proving the opposite. She's currently spearheading the Parenting with Trauma Project in collaboration with Dorset Action for Children and Bournemouth University. It's clear from Laura's journey that she's never really stopped at the therapy room and has been working with systems and research and data. So I know that you're going to find her story really interesting, and hopefully inspirational if you are somebody who wants to do a little bit more, or different from therapy in your work.

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

Links for Laura:

LinkedIn: Dr Laura Bennet

Oasis Psychology

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

Smartphone Free Childhood

The highlights

Laura tells us about her transition into private practice after 13 years in the NHS 01:57
Laura talks about what she provides through her private practice, Oasis Psychology 5:21
Laura discusses how she transitioned into a service that’s less focused on one-to-one work, and more about indirect support. 7:04
I ask Laura about her work with Action for Children 21:42
Laura gives us her advice for psychologists and therapists who have an idea for a different type of project, but feel a bit stuck 36:37
Laura tells us the best place to connect with her 47:34

Start Up Your Psychology Practice

Are you tired of just talking about starting your practice but never quite committing?

And here is the best part: sign up before the end of May to get £200 off your investment. Let’s build a practice that gives you the freedom you deserve.

Apply today: https://psychologybusinessschool.com/lp/start-up-private-practice-bundle/

Smartphone activism as a psychologist in private practice with Dr Erin Carroll

Fri, 01 May 2026 06:00:00 +0100

Smartphone activism as a psychologist in private practice with Dr Erin Carroll

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. One of the biggest fears I hear from psychologists and therapists leaving the NHS for independent practice is that they'll lose their connection to the bigger picture, to public health, and that they'll spend all their time working in a silo, working one-to-one, and lose their impact on wider society. But today's guest is proof that being in private practice can actually be the perfect springboard for grassroots activism and community leadership. I'm joined by Dr Erin Carroll, a clinical psychologist who has taken her expertise in emotional development out of the consulting room and into the heart of her community. Erin's been a driving force in the Smartphone Free Childhood movement in our combined hometown of Tunbridge Wells, and she's helped to achieve something really remarkable; getting all of the local secondary head teachers to sign a joint letter supporting brick only phone policies for younger students, something that Erin really believes in. So today we're talking about how we as psychologists can use our training to lead cultural change, and why finding a cause that really lights a fire in your belly is the best antidote to that isolation that we can often feel in private practice.

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

Links:

Erin: www.erincarrollpsychologist.co.uk

Health Professionals for Safer Screens

The Amazing Generation by Jonathan Haidt & Catherine Price, illustrated by Cynthia Yuan Cheng

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

The Directory Profile Template

The highlights

Erin tells us about her professional life up to the point that she became involved in Smartphone Free Childhood, and what led you down that path 01:45
Erin talks about the role of screens and emotional regulation 11:56
We discuss online harms and safeguarding concerns 18:49
We look at the addictive aspect of smartphones 27:05
Erin talks about the Smartphone Free Childhood parent Pact, and schools taking action 32:44
I ask Erin about her plans going forward, in her activist role 48:56
Erin tells us how to get in touch with her and connect with the Smartphone Free Childhood community 54:14

Start Up Your Psychology Practice

Are you tired of just talking about starting your practice but never quite committing?

And here is the best part: sign up before the end of May to get £200 off your investment. Let’s build a practice that gives you the freedom you deserve.

Apply today: https://psychologybusinessschool.com/lp/start-up-private-practice-bundle/

Why every therapist needs to use social media to improve their SEO

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 06:00:00 +0100

Why every therapist needs to use social media to improve their SEO

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. Today I am changing my tune! I have decided to go back on some of the advice that I have given over the years about social media and the importance of it to the average private practice. I hope that this will be a really helpful episode for you if you are somebody who is feeling the social media fatigue, doesn't feel naturally like it's a good home for you, and it doesn't form a cornerstone of your marketing strategy, and you've listened to my previous podcast episode and come to the conclusion that this is not the way that you need to be winning clients. I hope this will be a useful episode for you because it still isn't, it still doesn't need to be something that takes up a lot of time in your week, and it shouldn't do if your ideal client personas are not people who are going to search for a therapist on social media, and therapy is the main thing that you are selling in your practice. If that’s the case, then I absolutely stand by my previous advice that social media is not something that should take up lots of your time, week in and week out. But I am going to caveat it slightly, and that's because I have been on some training recently about how social media is an important part of optimizing our websites and our digital presence so that we will continue to be found by people on search engines and through AI recommendations. These things are becoming really important, and it just wouldn't be right of me to not bring this to your attention if it's not something that you've been thinking about yet.

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

Links:

Business of Psychology Episode 111: How to create a great directory site profile

Summer School Lesson 5: Directory sites

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

Start Up Your Psychology Practice

Are you tired of just talking about starting your practice but never quite committing?

And here is the best part: sign up before the end of May to get £200 off your investment. Let’s build a practice that gives you the freedom you deserve.

Apply today: Start Up Your Psychology Practice

Why every therapist needs to use social media to improve their SEO

There have been big changes already, and there are more coming, to the way that search engines like Google and Yahoo and all of them really, recommend websites to people searching. They are now using AI in the way that they search our websites to try and work out who we are and to generate AI advice for people who type in questions to their search bars. You'll have seen this if you are using your smartphone to look for help. You will get a load of normal looking search results, but you'll also get an AI generated answer to your question at the top, which will cite various expert sources to give you an answer to your question. I'm sure you'll have noticed like I have, that most people are not going beyond that AI answer because it is generally quite helpful and now, certainly on mine through Google, it's telling me where it's getting its advice from, and I find it much easier to trust than I used to. I think that's the direction of travel and eventually I think we're going to end up in a world where people just ask a question verbally to their AI, whether it’s Gemini, Chat GPT, Claude, whatever they're using, and they'll just take the answer that it gives rather than bothering to look through a page of search results. So we really need to understand how we make sure that we are the expert source that these AI models are using, because if we're not, then we're going to find that traffic to our websites from search starts to decline, if it hasn't already.

The good news, because I know that probably sounds a bit scary, is I actually think it's a good thing for us because now AI is so much cleverer than the previous technology that the search engines were using, it's able to piece together our digital presence from wherever we are to understand who we are and the services we offer in a much deeper and better way. We just need to do a few things to make that really easy for the AI to do, and social media is an important piece of that puzzle, because social media can give you a digital footprint which gives AI a really clear indication of who you are, who you help, and what you stand for, so that it understands better, in combination with your website, who to recommend you to when they're searching for help. So I'll talk you through a little bit about how that works and a few really simple things you can do to start helping the AI bots to understand who you are a little bit better so that you're future proofing your search engine optimization.

EEAT: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness

The first thing we need to understand is that search engines already look for EEAT when they're deciding who to serve up as a recommendation to somebody who's searching. That acronym stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. These are the four things that an AI is assessing on your digital footprint before it decides whether to serve you up or to serve someone else up as an answer to a question that somebody's asking. AI search tools like Perplexity, Chat GPT, Gemini, Claude, are crawling the web to find answers to questions. And if your social media or your website has a clear niche specific keyword like 'birth trauma psychologist in Plymouth', and you've got high levels of experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, then the AI is more likely to recommend you than somebody generic when a user asks for a therapist for birth trauma in Plymouth, for example.

The five things we can do to improve our digital discoverability to AI and demonstrate that we have the EEAT it's looking for:

The first thing is to have one bio that you use everywhere that contains a primary keyword that you want to be discoverable for. If you think of your bio as a bit like a sticky label that you might put on the front of an old fashioned filing cabinet; it needs to really clearly tell AI what it is that you have inside your cabinet, and it's really important to get that key word right. That key word might be 'birth trauma psychologist in Plymouth' (it doesn't need to be a single word, it can be a phrase), it could be 'neurodiversity specialist', it could be 'CBT therapist specialising in OCD', but it just needs to be really clear and contain the key words that you would like people searching for to get your name associated with.
The second thing you need to do is make sure that the bio you've created is everywhere that you are mentioned. You'll have to create a few versions of it, but they should be as similar to each other as possible. You can have a long version of it for the about page on your website - use that same copy exactly for LinkedIn and Psychology Today. Then you'll need to create a much shorter version of it for social media, but it should have the same keywords in it and be as similar as humanly possible, so that bio that follows you around gives you a really clear digital footprint that the AI can understand. Within that bio you want to show off your experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. And if you are following my framework for crafting a good Psychology Today profile (I'll link to the freebie that I have that's going to support you to do that in the show notes of this episode, as well as the podcast episode on the Business of Psychology) you will be demonstrating the experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness that AI is looking for. So make sure that your bio covers those areas and use my framework, because I think that will help you to do that.
The next thing that you need to make sure that you're discoverable in this new world is captions that are easy to understand on your social media posts for those bots that are crawling, looking to try and make sense of who you are. We need to think of captions as a bit similar to how we used to think about blogs. We want a title that has your keywords in it that people would be searching for. Then we want to use bullet points, clear headings, everything we can to make it easy for an AI tool to understand 'this is who this caption is for', so naming the client group, and 'this is the question that it is answering', so rewording your captions to make that super clear, and using headings within the captions is now super helpful.
The fourth thing that we need to be thinking about, that we might not have considered before, is making sure that we are properly filling out the alternative text or alt text on our images, and using those as spaces to describe what's in the image, using our keywords where applicable and possible. That really helps visually impaired users to have a good experience of interacting with our social media and our websites, but it also helps search engines to see our content better. So really helpful to do that. There are business mentors out there that would advise you to shoehorn in your personal keywords to every image, but I think we have to balance it with the fact that visually impaired people are using these to try and understand what's on your webpage. So do be mindful of that and make sure that you are only using the appropriate keywords, without disrupting the experience for somebody using a screen reader. But in most cases it is possible to do that without making it a difficult experience for somebody using screen readers.
The final thing that you need to be doing if you're not doing it already, is using video transcription, having captions on any video that you create, because tools like TikTok and reels on Instagram, they now pass the spoken words in your videos. So when you say your keywords out loud, that actually helps you to get seen by these AI bots crawling to try and index you for search engines. Everything you say now counts, which is wonderful for people like me that say a lot more than I write, and I think is overall really useful to all of us, because I think a lot of you put out a lot of content that previously has been really useful thought leadership content, but hasn't necessarily helped your website to get more visible. And now all of that hard work that you've been putting in, guesting on podcasts, creating social media content, all of that will now go towards getting the right people onto your website.

I think overall this is really positive, but at this point it probably sounds like a lot of work, and I am not suggesting that just because of these things, you now need to be posting every week on social media. If that is not part of your strategy, it doesn't need to be. What I would suggest instead is creating a shop front on social media where you have a few clear posts that follow this guidance and you have an optimized bio (if you follow my framework for creating a good Psychology Today profile, you will not go far wrong). If you have an optimized bio and just a few posts that have your keywords in, really good images that also have a good reason to link to your keywords, then that will be enough for AI to understand who you are and for you to get this benefit without you necessarily needing to post all the time. Of course, if you do have a reason to be posting on social media anyway, that is going to be nothing but helpful so long as you follow these principles.

I hope that that has given you some food for thought and potentially some optimism that we might be able to use the changes that are happening in search to be found more than we have been before, to show off our expertise in different ways and in ways that I think feel quite exciting and will hopefully help us to rise above some of the AI generated junk that is out there, that will not be able to demonstrate that experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, because it's not real. It also fits well with another trend that we've been talking about on social media, which is this trend towards authenticity. If you are thinking about putting out some talking head videos, for example, to really demonstrate your EEAT and to make use of the fact that will now be transcribed and used to help you rank, then you can take heart in the fact that those videos do not need to look good. They don't need to be super well edited or polished because actually people are getting the best results with videos that look like you've taken them in your front room and just kind of gone for it without a script, because that's the thing that AI can't do. AI can't do the human touch, the real talk, the unscripted bits, that we can do really well. So this doesn't need to be a big and arduous thing in your life. It's something you could spend an afternoon on and then forget about for a while and maybe revisit once every three months, once every six months to keep those posts up to date. But it's something that I really think could help us to be more visible in this slightly scary digital world that we're entering.

I'd love to know what you think about this. You can reach out to me. I'll be posting about this stuff over on @rosiegilderthorp on Instagram, or if you want to keep in touch with what I'm doing on the SEND Parenting Side of life, then you can find me @drrosiegilderthorp on Instagram.

The four financial numbers you need to understand in your practice to do your best work

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 06:00:00 +0100

The four financial numbers you need to understand in your practice to do your best work

I want to talk about the 4 financial pillars that you need to be familiar with in your practice, because as this tax year comes to an end and the new one begins, you might be looking at your numbers and thinking how did that happen? Maybe you got a tax bill that's bigger than you were expecting. Maybe you are getting to the end of the year and realising that you didn't make as much money as you wanted to, or maybe it's more positive than that and you've got a bigger tax bill than you were expecting because you made more money than you wanted to.

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

Links:

Sally Farrant: www.businessgrowthbynumbers.com

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

Set Up Your Practice For Success

Is a financially rewarding private practice actually possible?

My recent survey of former coaching clients found they were taking home between £3k and £8k a month while seeing only 5 to 20 clients a week. That is a full-time wage in far less than full-time NHS hours. I want to show you the roadmap to get there.

Join my free masterclass, 'Set Up Your Practice For Success,' on Wednesday, 22nd April. We’ll tackle common mistakes and show you how to avoid the 'admin mountain' so you can focus on the work you love. Secure your spot at the link below. If the time doesn’t work for you, sign up anyway to receive the recording.

Set Up Your Practice For Success Masterclass - Wednesday 22nd April - Book your place here.

Shownotes

Revenue

Revenue is the simplest metric in your business. It’s gross income, the money that is coming in with nothing deducted. On its own it’s a vanity metric. I see lots of people sharing their revenue without being honest about the other numbers, and it troubles me, because the revenue in your business can be very high, but the other numbers in the business will change as a reaction to that revenue. It's the other numbers that give us much more crucial information about the health of the business and the lifestyle that it's actually going to give you, and the good that you're able to do for your clients.

Revenue is important to know because it gives an estimate of growth and impact. If you are making a lot of revenue, it's likely you’re helping a lot of people and you can track the trajectory of that. Tracking your revenue should include tracking the specific sources of that revenue. Go into a bit of detail, looking at how many therapy sessions, online courses, and supervision sessions you are selling, and breaking it down into individual services that you offer so that you can see how much money you are making for those activities each month. This is helpful because it allows you to predict what might happen in the future if you put effort into increasing revenue in one of those areas. It’s important to know exactly where that income is coming from. If you're very busy, you might not realise that you are doing more supervision than you were last year, and that a bigger proportion of your income is now coming from that. Even if that overall revenue figure hasn't changed much, the place it's coming from might have changed, and for tax reasons it can be significant to understand that.

It's up to you how many categories for different types of revenue you want to create. Go with what's useful for you to have a good understanding of your revenue. For associate practices, you might want to break it down by associate so that you know how much money each associate is making you each month. If you have a really large associate practice, that might be cumbersome and you might break it down into your therapy income and associate therapy income. What I would say is that if a service has specific expenses attached to it, then have that as its own line so that when you do your expenses, you can do some spreadsheet wizardry and make those things dependent on each other.

For example, if you've got an associate practice and you know that for every £140 an associate makes you, you are going to pay out £90 to them, you can create a formula in your spreadsheet that calculates an expense line to take £90 for every £140 that is listed in the income for an associate. It’s definitely worth separating out your services, at least in that much detail. Revenue tracking and getting granular with it can help you to see which aspects of your business are really healthy and which ones might be declining or struggling.

Expenses

You need to consider this alongside revenue. You need to know how much money you are spending every month in order to keep your business running in the way that it needs to support your lifestyle, and you have to be honest with yourself about it. People always ask me for an estimate of how much the expenses should be for an independent practice, and I can't give one because it depends on your values, the services you are providing, what that client group needs in terms of support, and what you need in terms of support. This is why I would never share my revenue figures with you because if you saw them, you'd get a false impression, because in order to keep my business going with all the stuff that I have going on in my personal life, I have to pay for a lot of support. You can't look at somebody's revenue figure and have any idea about what their overall take home pay is going to be, because you aren't going to have a realistic impression of their expenses. Don't be impressed by those online gurus who share their revenue figures with you. I think that's irresponsible unless they're also willing to share the expenses and profit.

When looking at your expenses, I recommend getting your banking app out and dumping this into a spreadsheet. If you are in Startup or Evolve and Thrive or the network, you'll have access to our Cashflow Forecast spreadsheet. You go through your banking app and literally note down all the expenses over 3 months, accurately transposing them into the spreadsheet. Then go back through the year and see if there are any big expenditures which don't go out every month that you make on an annual basis and pop those in. This is really boring, and if you have a bookkeeper, it may be that they can do this for you, but it's worth doing because once you've got that, you can categorize your expenses and have a look at what expenses are investments in either the quality of your service or in the growth of your service.

I invest in stuff like practice management software because that creates a better quality service for me and for my clients, and I invest in advertising spend, and that's because I expect that will enable the business to grow. Those are both investments in quality and growth, so they go in the investment side.

You may find that there are some expenses which don't easily fit into a quality or growth category. When we have those expenses we need to consider whether they are adding another kind of value or are they draining the business? Often I'll find that I've got software packages that double up. I could be using one tool to do lots of things, and actually I'm using lots of tools and paying lots of subscriptions. I would highlight that and think about reducing those. It's a really useful exercise because not only are you getting to know this number, which is really important for planning your business going forward, but you're also getting an idea of what you could cut.

Things that fall into the investment category are clinical supervision, business coaching, high quality legal templates, practice management software, CPD, training that you're going to be able to use to support your clients better. You're looking for anything that sits on the periphery that you don't use often or you don't use very well, and thinking about whether it might be time to cut that.

Once you've done both those exercises and you've put them into your cashflow forecast spreadsheets or a spreadsheet to track your income and expenses, then you see what the gap is between the two.

Tax

Tax is something which can be confusing. I was told a lot when I started in business that it wasn't confusing, but I think it is confusing, especially considering it's not something that we are taught in school. So, I'll give you a really brief overview of the taxes you need to keep an eye on. You should consult an accountant to get proper advice on your tax situation. If you are in Startup or Evolve and Thrive or the network, we have a class with Mahmood Reza from I Hate Numbers, and we've got one with Sally Farrant where we talk about VAT. If you are not in any of my programs, and you're not in the network, I'd recommend having a consultation with an accountant, so that you can get a clear read on what tax you should be expecting to pay for your specific circumstances.

Self-Assessment Tax on your income. If you're a sole trader, this is the only one that you need to worry about, but you will be taxed on all of your revenue. It's not done on profit, it's not done on revenue minus expenses, it's done on your revenue. That is how your tax is going to be calculated. It's sensible if you're a sole trader to be putting away a third of your revenue and saving that for your tax bill. When it comes to the end of the tax year, you'll be able to list all the business expenses that you've had, and that should be deducted from your overall tax bill. That's difficult to work out as you are going along, so to be on the safe side, saving a third of your revenue is the advice I've always heard being given to sole traders. Double check with an accountant because that can differ if you have other sources of income, or if there are any changes in tax rules. You'll also have to deal with self-employed national insurance contributions.

Corporation Tax If you form a limited company you’ll have to keep an eye on what corporation tax rates are. Corporation tax is worked out on the profit of the company, and it's usually at about 20%. This one can be tricky because every month you'll probably make a slightly different amount of profit. The way that I do it is every month I look at what the profit is, and I put 20% of that into my corporation tax savings account. Have a look at the rules around corporation tax, talk to your accountant about what they think the best savings strategy is for you, but be aware that you will have to pay it. You will also have to do your self assessment and pay tax on the money that you pay to yourself from your company. You may be paying yourself as an employee of the company, and then the company will pay PAYE, and NI contributions for you through that. But if you're a limited company, I would strongly advise you to talk to an accountant about tax advice.

VAT We ran a class on this in PBS with Sally Farrant because the VAT threshold is something which has been tripping up a lot of my clients, and that’s because we have a slightly bonkers VAT system in this country. VAT is a tax that you collect on behalf of HMRC. You collect (usually) 20% of the price that you are charging to the customer, and you have to give that to HMRC about every three months. The thing that makes this difficult for people in our professions is that there are strange rules about what is VAT exempt and what isn't. The first thing is you don't have to start charging VAT until you hit a threshold, which at the moment is £90,000 in any rolling 12 month period. If you're safely under that, then you don't need to worry about VAT yet. But if there's a chance that you could tip over it in any rolling 12 month period, you need to be keeping an eye on it. The second reason it's confusing is that health services delivered by certain qualified professionals are VAT exempt. Therapy that is delivered by a HCPC registered clinical psychologist, for example, is exempt, but that same therapy delivered by a fully qualified psychotherapist or CBT therapist is not exempt. The reason this trips people up is quite often psychotherapists who take on associates won't realise that they're going to go over the threshold and then they get caught out. Psychologists like me tend to get caught out when our revenue from things that are not direct therapy start to go up quicker than expected. If you’re offering supervision, training, consultancy, coaching, none of those are VAT exempt. So you can go from one year having the majority of your income come through therapy so you're safely under the threshold, and then the next year you get a few big consultancy contracts and you've tipped over. You need your own tax advice around this to help you plan for the threshold. For VAT planning, I really recommend Sally Farrant, I'll drop her details in the show notes.

Profit

Profit is really simple; it's what's left when you've taken out your expenses and your taxes. Profit often gets a bad rap. People will talk about people being profit hungry or obsessed with profit, profiting from other people's misery. It's something we hear a lot in the mental health space because it's got these associations with greed, but actually a business can't survive without profit. Profit is the bit that makes a business sustainable.

There are lots of things that you can do with profit. You can pay yourself a bonus, which is a really good idea, you should be rewarding yourself for being the excellent employee that you are, and it’s no bad thing to feel well compensated for your hard work. There’s no shame in that, and you should absolutely be using some of your profit to make sure that you feel well looked after by your business.

But there are other things that you need to use profit for. Your profit is the emergency fund in your business. None of us know what might happen. We might be faced with another pandemic, there could be a global crisis that means that our businesses don't operate as usual for a period of time. If you have profit in the business, you are likely to be able to sustain through that, and the bigger your business gets, the more important that is. If I couldn't make any money tomorrow, then I want to know that I can still pay the payments that I make to my team for a couple of months, because otherwise I could be in a position where not only can I not pay my mortgage, but my VA, my social media person, my operations manager, none of them can pay their rent or their mortgage, and that doesn't feel ethical. Having some profit is responsible in your business to make sure that you're not going to be letting people down, defaulting on payments. Profit is really important as an emergency fund, and you should have some set aside to cover those key expenses for a couple of months.

Profit is also your ability to innovate. When you've got profit to play with, you can look at things like developing a new piece of software, setting up an online course, or seeing whether you can make that community group work, without the pressure of it needing to make money immediately. Often people want to start groups in their communities, but they're not sure whether people will pay for them to start with. If you've got a bit of profit, you could decide to run that group for free for a few weeks, and then people start paying once they've seen the value of it. You can't do that if you're operating on no profit.

I want to share with you a concept which I came across in my MBA. It’s the triple bottom line; the idea that a business can be a force for good without sacrificing its financial health. It's a term that was originally coined by John Elkington, he suggested that business success should be measured by three Ps: people, planet, and profit. I think that’s a really helpful way of thinking about business, but I’ve made slight adaptations for working with mental health and thinking about my own business. The way that I think about it is sustainability, impact and profit.

Sustainability If you are not making good money, you are not going to provide a sustainable service for our client groups, and you're going to have to make choices which are worse for the planet. If you are up against it financially, you can't afford to pay for the AI models that are more environmentally friendly. If you've got a bit of profit, you get to choose the more ethical company to work with. There's loads of examples where a bit of profit allows you to be more environmentally friendly in the choices that you make.

Impact When you've got money in the business, it's easier to accelerate whatever it is that you're trying to do. With some of my profit, I pay for some Meta ads. It's a tiny amount, but they show my posts about SEND parenting to more people than I would be able to reach organically. I'm consciously using the profit from PBS to do that. I'm not selling anything, but I want that message to reach more people, and I've got a little bit of profit that I can use to make that a reality.

Thinking about these three things together, profit fueling the sustainability and the impact of your business, you get to choose how that looks. It's worth acknowledging that profit gives you the freedom to run your business according to those values that you set at the beginning. When you are operating on no profits, you will often find yourself having to compromise on sustainability, impact, or your values.

I hope I've made it clear why you need a good grip of the numbers in your business. If you can track where you are at the moment, if you know your revenue, your expenses, your expected tax bill, and your profit, then you can start to model out going forward. What would happen if I spent a bit more money on A, B, C? What impact would that have on my overall profit on that triple bottom line? Is it going to increase my impact, is it going to be sustainable, is it going to increase the profit in the business that enables both of those things? You can track that like a story going forward and make a plan around whatever your goals are.

How to be a psychologist in the media (amongst other things) with Dr Carolyne Keenan

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 06:00:00 +0100

How to be a psychologist in the media (amongst other things) with Dr Carolyne Keenan

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'm really pleased to be bringing you an interview with Dr Carolyne Keenan. You might have heard Carolyne's name if you listen to BBC Radio 1. She makes a big impact with her media work. But the reason I'm really interested to talk to Carolyne is that she shows how it's possible to build a portfolio of different activities, all of which use your skills in different and exciting ways, and to find professional fulfillment through that autonomy that we can have in independent practice. I know how many psychologists and therapists tell me that they feel a bit stuck. Like they're stuck in the therapy room and they don't know how, in their independent work, to step outside of that. I think Carolyne and her journey in independent practice is a really great example of how when we have the courage to step outside, we can make a really big impact.

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

Links for Carolyne:

Instagram: @drcarolynekeenan

LinkedIn: @drcarolynekeenan

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

The highlights

Carolyne tells us about how her career in psychology began 01:30
I ask Carolyne how she went from a quite unpleasant experience to finding a passion that let her do a doctorate 10:55
Carolyne talks about how she started stepping out into private psychology 13:14
We discuss the difference of opinions around charging for services and cancellation policies 16:14
Carolyne talk to us about what her private practice looks like today 26:06
We look at the pros and cons of media work 29:15
I ask Carolyne about how she plans her social media content 36:34
Carolyne tells us where to find her online 42:55

Set Up Your Practice For Success

You have incredible clinical expertise, but is the 'shame' of the business side holding you back? Staying stuck in a role that’s edging you toward burnout or running a side-hustle that eats your weekends isn't the only way.

I’m hosting a free masterclass on Wednesday, 22nd April called 'Set Up Your Practice For Success.'

I’ll be sharing my proven 3-part framework: Values, Voice, and Impact. You’ll learn how to design a practice aligned with your life, create systems for an exceptional client experience, and implement a marketing strategy that doesn’t feel 'sleazy.'

Join me live for a chance to win a 1:1 strategy session!

Set Up Your Practice For Success Masterclass - Wednesday 22nd April - Book your place here.

Practice Reboot: The new series of Business of Psychology!

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 06:00:00 +0100

Practice Reboot: The new series of Business of Psychology!

Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology.

I am Dr Rosie Gilderthorp, a clinical psychologist and business coach, and we are back for another series where we're going to be diving into all the different ways that private practice can look for psychologists and therapists in 2026.

I've got some fascinating interviews from psychologists that are using their skills in different ways, and therapists that are reaching people in all kinds of unique and innovative formats.

We are going to be talking about engaging with the media, grassroots activism in our local communities, working with charities, and we're going to be talking about tackling the big questions of neurodiversity movement and neurodivergence in 2026. I have got some really interesting conversations ahead for you, and I really can't wait to get started with the series.

This is going to be a brilliant series for you, if you are somebody that has been contemplating stepping into private practice, or if you're somebody who's been in practice for a while and is feeling like things are a little bit stale. It is a brilliant series to help you reconsider your business model and think about the exciting ways that we can bring our knowledge to help more people.

So, I'm really chuffed to be bringing you this series and some of the amazing guests that I've got.

But there was one thing I wanted to let you know about before the series officially kicks off next week, and that is a free masterclass that I'm running on April the 22nd. It's my Setup for Success Masterclass, where I talk you through my three part framework; values, voice, and impact, for creating a practice that allows you to replace your income ethically in fewer hours. And to create a practice that allows you to live your values. So, I just wanted to flag that up to you. The link is below, and I really hope that some of you will be able to join me there live. But if you can't come live, you can catch up on the recording.

So, next week we're kicking off with two episodes. Firstly, there is a fascinating episode with Caroline Keenan on her journey as a media psychologist, amongst all kinds of other things. And there's also a slightly boring episode, but I think you're going to find it helpful, from me about tax and other financial numbers that are particularly important to understand at this time of the year when you might be closing off your tax year, maybe getting some bills that you did or didn't expect. That episode is going to be really valuable for helping you lay the foundation for the exciting work that you're going to do.

I will see you next week for the next series of the Business of Psychology.

Set Up Your Practice For Success

I’m hosting a free masterclass on Wednesday, 22nd April called 'Set Up Your Practice For Success.'

Join me live for a chance to win a 1:1 strategy session!

Set Up Your Practice For Success Masterclass - Book your place.

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

What happened when I stopped seeing clients for therapy? How to evolve a business in adversity

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 06:00:00 +0100

What happened when I stopped seeing clients for therapy? How to evolve a business in adversity

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. Today is a bit of a different episode for me because I wanted to be honest with you about some decisions that I've made recently that are really personal, but that resonate a lot with decisions that I help some of my coaching clients to make, because it's rare that we go into private practice without some complicating factors happening in our lives.

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

Episode Links:

Episode 19: How psychologists and therapists can use an ideal client avatar to co create and market their services

Episode 103: Why you should specialise – old gold that is still important

Episode 128: Who are you helping? Three ways to specialise your psychology or therapy practice

Episode 152: Thinking differently about your practice: A tool to put the client first

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

Evolve and Thrive Mastermind

Have you been listening to this and feeling like the time has come for you to make a change in your practice? Maybe you are ready to grow with passive or semi passive income. Maybe you are ready to gain more time freedom, have that flexibility you always dreamed of, or expand your impact. If any of that sounds like you, you might be a really good fit for my Evolve and Thrive Mastermind.

Our next cohort is starting in January 2026, and it's a small group, six-month coaching experience. The early bird rate finishes mid-December, so if any of that sounds good to you, make sure you check out the details over at psychologybusinessschool.com and book your free call with me now to secure the best price.

Shownotes

What happened when I stopped seeing clients for therapy? How to evolve a business in adversity

I've spoken a bit here, and a lot more on my substack, about how I originally went into independent practice really because my children have additional needs. I wasn't aware of that at the time; all I knew was that nursery didn't work and that we didn't have other childcare options available to us. But looking back, nursery didn't work for the same reasons that school is very challenging now. And that was the beginning of me having to learn to evolve and adapt and be a clinical psychologist in a different way, and that's been very much the purpose of my business and what I love to help other people do too. So it felt only right that I should share with you about some of the recent evolutions that have had to be made in my business, my thinking behind it and the kind of strategy that I use every time I have to make a big change in my business. Because it has happened so often that I have developed a bit of a framework for thinking about it and helping my clients through it when it happens to them too. So, I thought it might be useful to share what's happened, but also my framework for thinking through and strategizing my way through those difficult moments that often lead to a change or an evolution in the business.

Firstly, I want to acknowledge that there's a lot that I love about independent practice, and I am so grateful that I have this profession that enabled me to set up independently when the NHS wasn't going to work anymore. But it's a paradox because I also felt extremely sad about leaving the NHS. It was 2018, I was very young, I didn't feel anywhere near experienced enough to go into independent practice at that time. So, to an extent, my first journey into independent practice involved a big evolution of identity in and of itself, and I guess that's a context for many of us. Many of us feel a big wrench when we leave the NHS or when we even start to think about potentially leaving our public sector roles. So, I guess independent practice starts from that place for me, and for me it's always held this kind of paradox of opportunity and excitement alongside sadness and loss. I know that that's the case for very many of us in independent practice, and I suppose what I hope is that what I'm going to share today helps me and you, if you find yourself in this kind of situation, to use an actionable framework to find the opportunities and the excitement, even when maybe you wouldn't have chosen the situation that you find yourself in.

What's been going on in my business

I'll let you behind the curtain a little bit in what's been going on over the past few years in my business, the harder bits perhaps. As I mentioned, I have children with additional needs and sometimes it's difficult to get those needs met by anybody other than me. I think if you've navigated the SEND system in the UK, then you'll know exactly what I mean by that. A few years ago, my children really couldn't cope with school, so suddenly I found myself needing to go back into the role of being the primary carer all of the time, and there was no space for my independent practice. It was very sudden, I hadn't anticipated that my children would struggle to that extent, that they couldn't be in the school environment. I'd never in my life met anybody that had a child that didn't go to school. I knew it happened for teenagers, I did not know that it could happen for five- and six-year-olds, but it really did. And in fact, it was a problem that lasted for more than a year as we tried to find flexibility and find ways of making school accessible and suitable for them. I should say that compared to a lot of families, we were very lucky. We’re in a lovely school with an amazing SENCO and a really compassionate and strong head teacher who have been flexible in ways that I do not think are normal in mainstream primary schools. They've bent over backwards to support us and that is not the story that I hear from a great many families that I work with. So, just to check my privilege on that one, I know how lucky we've been. But it still took a really long time to help the children recover and to find the adaptations that we could make to make some sort of school more accessible to them. We did get there, but it took all of me to do it. And so in a real hurry, and I'm not proud of how I handled it, because I don't think that I handled it in an optimal way whatsoever, I had to close down my clinical practice. It wasn't the first time it had happened, it happened to many of us in COVID as well, but it felt much more rushed, much more traumatic than that, because I went from expecting that I would be seeing my clients for years to come. I was really excited about the premises that I had, really excited about establishing a service in my local area, and all of that just ended really abruptly when I had this realisation that I'd had to cancel more clients than I'd seen in a week. And I can't overstate how painful it is to know that you're not being the psychologist or therapist that your clients need. As soon as I had that realisation, I knew the only ethical thing to do was complete closure and to hand people over in the best way that I could to other professionals in the area. But it was brutally painful and I still feel waves of trauma thinking about it and talking about it, so that's all I'm going to say about that. It was forced, it was hurried, it was crisis driven, it was not what anyone would hope for.

So the practice stayed closed for probably at least 18 months, if not two years, while I just focused on recovering my children. I kept Psychology Business School going, because although there were parts of me that thought let's just retreat from professional life entirely, financially I didn't really have that option, or it would've been extremely difficult for us if I had chosen to do that. But I think more for me, I needed to feel that connection to my profession and to my colleagues and hopefully as anyone who's done coaching with me will know, I really enjoy immersing myself in somebody else's practice and somebody else's struggles, and solving the problems that come up in other people's businesses was the kind of relief from the rest of my life that I needed, and it also meant that I didn't lose contact with the mission that we have as mental health professionals and my professional values. So it was important for me to keep that going during that really difficult period, even though it was also extremely difficult, and I would find myself snatching hours of work at ungodly times to try and keep things going. I don't regret it, I feel like that sustained me during that period. Including this podcast - getting feedback from this podcast, talking to the amazing people that I've interviewed for this podcast during those dark times was extremely restorative for me in what was a really difficult moment. So, I'm so grateful that I did have that to fall back on during that time.

And then things started to get a bit easier. We found those accommodations in education that allowed my kids to feel safe outside of the house and learn outside of the house, maybe not for whole days, but for long enough to give me a bit of professional time back. And we made the decision to hire somebody to help my son in the afternoons when he isn't at school, to give him and me that sense of security, that he could be safe with someone else while I could focus on some client work. For me, that meant the building blocks were back in place; I could open up the clinic again and start taking on a caseload of therapy clients. And I was really excited to do that. I love working with people who are struggling in pregnancy, I love my hyperemesis work. And I don’t know how this happens, but I often talk to people who are worried about their marketing, about this kind of mystical way in which people who have similar experiences to you will kind of gravitate towards you. If you are out in the world at networking events and you are talking about personal experiences that you have, don't be surprised if you suddenly start to get clients who have some of those experiences too. And so another type of work that started coming to me were parents adjusting to diagnoses that their children had been given. Often that would happen as the result of a difficult birth, which is something I already did a lot of work with, but I was also starting to see people who had children who'd newly been diagnosed with neurodevelopmental conditions and wanted some space to reflect on how that might impact them and family life moving forward. I found that work deeply fulfilling. I hadn't really anticipated it, but it fit really well with the model that I use in therapy most, the acceptance and commitment therapy model, and often would logically follow on from EMDR trauma work that I'd been doing with them anyway, so it felt like a really good and fulfilling fit. And I just attracted dream clients during that period. I would like to say I took a bit of my own advice, I went back to my marketing frameworks, back to basics, looked at the customer journey, and I did intentionally market to get the kind of clients I like to work with. And it worked beautifully; I really enjoyed the clinical work that started to come my way. And it only lasted about 10 months, and you can probably hear the sadness in my voice about that. I really enjoyed the work that I was doing, but I guess there were signs from fairly early on that the situation maybe wasn't as sustainable as I had thought that it was at the beginning. The help that we had for my son, she was the most wonderful young woman, but she had health problems and actually it became obvious that perhaps this wasn't going to be a long-term arrangement and perhaps it wasn't going to be as reliable as I needed to have a full caseload. At about six months in, she handed in her notice. As any parent of an autistic child will know, it is not easy for children like mine to make attachments, to have somebody new in the house, to adjust to different routines, so when she handed in her notice, and because she's a wonderful human being who I have nothing but warmth and admiration for, she gave us just over three months of notice. So I had time to think; what do I want to do with this situation? Am I going to hire somebody else, try and keep this status quo going, or am I going to take this as an opportunity to change and pivot and maybe accept that things aren't going to follow the pattern of independent practice that I have previously enjoyed? As you can probably tell, I decided to go for the latter option. I just couldn't face the thought of bringing somebody new into our house and making that work again. I don't think it would've been the right thing for my son either. He already has to adjust to one-to-ones changing in the school setting, there’s nothing I can do about that, and there's going to be a lot of it in his life. I just didn't want to keep doing that to him at home as well. I know that it's a real privilege to even have a choice about that. I reflect all the time on the fact that if I had a normal job where I was employed by someone else, there would've been no choice. It would've been a mad scrabble to try and replace this person as quickly as possible so that I didn't have to miss a day in the office. I am so lucky to have work that means that I can still make an income even if I'm not able to see lots of therapy clients. So I took that privilege decision and said, you know, we're not going to replace this person, I'm going to go back to providing that care in the afternoons. But that meant that once again, I don't have those building blocks in place that creates the security that you need to work with people in their most vulnerable moments. And so this time slowly, ethically, with supervision and support from my peers and a proper plan, I decided to close the practice again. And this time probably for a lot longer, because this time I have intentionally decided that for the time being, I'm going to use my skills in a different way.

The strategy and framework I use to make a pivot into an evolution

I wanted to let you in a bit on the strategy behind that and the framework that I use to think about how to make a pivot in the business into an evolution rather than just a loss. Because there is loss here and I wouldn't want you to think that I'm not acknowledging that. I feel sad about it, of course I do. But I have also found things to be excited about and projects that I'm really excited about and feel professionally fulfilled by moving forward. And that's the joy of independent practice that we get to do that. So I want to share with you how I started to think about doing that so that if you are in this situation, you can do that too.

Go back to the basics

The first thing that I did was really go back to the basics, pull out my customer personas that you will know all about if you've been following this podcast. For anybody that hasn't, a customer persona is basically a deep dive that we do on the kind of person that we really want to help, our ideal client, if you like. We usually have between three or five of these to represent the diversity of the client group that we work with, and they're really useful documents because if we do them properly (I’ve linked to the podcast episode where you can learn how to do them properly) they should answer questions like; what are the real priorities of this customer? What is it that's keeping them awake at one o'clock in the morning? What other solutions have they tried to try and solve their problems? Where do they go when they're looking for help? Who do they ask for support? All of those deep questions that we need to really understand why our clients come to us and how we can best support them. So the first thing I did was go back to those customer personas and to revisit the core values of my business, like why do I do the things that I do? And think about how I could design the stuff I do in the business to best align with those values in the new constraints that I found myself in. The thing that came up from that work was that I really enjoy going deep with people. I don't enjoy, and I've tried it before and I've done it successfully, but it didn't feel great for me having things like courses with loads of people going through them but not very much interaction from me - that's not really professionally fulfilling for me. So I knew that. I know that I really love going under the hood of people's businesses in Psychology Business School, I like to know my coaching clients' businesses inside out. I like to have time to really understand where people are at and do that deep work with my coaching clients, and I feel the same about my clinical work. I don't really get much fulfilment out of putting lots of short videos on Instagram. I like creating long form content for people and I like doing deep work with people where I really get to know them well and help them solve the problems in their lives. That's a challenge when you've got limited capacity, but it's a good thing to know about myself as a professional.

So I started to think, how can I do this without doing tons of one-to-one work? Because while I've made the decision to close my clinic, I also realised that I couldn't see one-to-one coaching clients anymore either, because although coaching clients are not usually vulnerable, they still require you to show up when you say that you're going to show up. It's really not right to mess people around. And while I can be pretty reliable for a few hours in my week, across the whole week, it's not enough for as many coaching clients as I have been seeing over the last few years. There just wasn't enough protected time that I could be sure I could offer everybody a slot that would be safe from the slings and arrows of life as a SEND Parent. So again, I made that ethical decision that I wasn't going to be able to do too much of that either.

What meets the needs of these customer personas and meets your needs?

So I started thinking, what could I do? What would meet the needs in these customer personas and meet my needs? And the tool that I use to do that is called the Value Proposition. This is where we think about our customers' pains,, the things that they want to get rid of when they come to us, the things they want to gain when...

What's going wrong with social media?

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 06:00:00 +0100

What's going wrong with social media?

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. I have been wanting to make a podcast for a while about the reasons that I've stepped back a little bit in my use of social media and the changes that I've made and that I've encouraged my clients in my coaching programs to make in the way that we view it and the way that we use it. Because I'm aware that for a lot of us at the moment, social media feels like a very heavy place. There's a lot of pressure, there's a lot of negativity, and if we're not mindful about how we are using it, it can take a really big emotional toll. I feel like because we talk on this podcast about the advantages of using social media to market, to reach your people who need you in your practice, it's also important to talk about how to manage our wellbeing as we do that, and also how to make sure we're putting content out there that feels aligned with our values and that feels professionally fulfilling, because in some ways I feel the platforms drag us away from those values.

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

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

Evolve and Thrive Mastermind

Shownotes

Is there a helpful way for psychologists and therapists to use social media in 2026?

The thing that I'm going to talk about the most in this episode is being mindful of the priorities of social media companies and developing an awareness that they're not neutral tools. They have business models that are designed to sell attention by amplifying the things which people can't resist, which are usually negativity and anger. That can be really detrimental to our own wellbeing, and if we're not careful, it can be detrimental to our client groups too. I’m also going to talk about the positivity and the nuance in that; it is not all bad, there's a lot of good that we can still do with social media, but only if we are mindful of its inherent design flaws and the pitfalls that I see a lot of us falling into.

What we’re seeing on social media

Let's start by talking about what a lot of us are seeing on social media. When I go to networking events and I meet up with my coaching clients, a lot of us are witnessing stuff on social media that's really upsetting. And I don't mean the stuff from unregulated people giving bad advice and misinformation. That's been going on as long as there has been social media and it's bad, but I'm not seeing more of it than I saw five years ago. I'm seeing about the same number of unqualified people telling me things that they have no business to tell me. But what I am seeing more of, maybe just because I'm spending more time looking than I was previously, but I feel like it is an upwards trend, are discussions or debates on social media, particularly LinkedIn and Facebook, between professionals who are properly qualified that turn into like skirmishes. Often these are on topics which are highly emotive for many of us. The ones which get served up to me all the time, because my children have additional needs, are usually around topics like neurodiversity, neuro affirmative practice, and causes and cures for autism, in particular. Those are all topics which I do know a fair amount about. Since my children started to struggle and I went through the diagnostic process, I think I've probably read more on those topics than I have on anything else in my entire life. I keep really up to date with the evidence base, and I have read most of the seminal texts that I've been able to get my hands on in those areas. And the thing that I have taken away from all of that reading and research is that it is really nuanced and complicated and nobody is really right. There's a lot that I like and that I think has a good grounding in evidence in neuro affirmative practice. Certainly, the positive impact on identity formation and the value of neuro affirmative therapy and coaching for people, I see that and I like it, and I recognise it, and I think it can't be ignored, and it shouldn't be ignored. But it's also true that a lot of the people putting out their views about neuro affirmation and the principles of neurodiversity, are spreading misinformation about the way that the brain works and about how solid the evidence base is for brain-based differences between particularly autistic and ADHD brains and neurotypical brains. And I don't like that. I don't like the kind of division that's created between neurotypicals and neurodivergence, because I don't think that is evidence-based, and I don't think that will help people in the end. But having said that, it's also not true to say that the evidence shows no brain-based differences. I've seen some really invalidating stuff on there where people who, like me, are a little bit sceptical about building identity around one particular label, have then taken it to the point where they're saying that people shouldn't be using these labels at all, that we are massively over diagnosed and that these labels are not helpful. And that's not true either. I mean, my children would not be okay without their labels. People need them to get what they need in a society that we have built around labelling people. And so the idea that people are wrong for finding those useful, or that clinicians are wrong for using labels in the system that we operate in is also bizarre.

I suppose the reason that I've gone on this sidebar slightly is that this is a difficult and nuanced point. Nobody is really wrong, nobody is really right, and yet what I see on social media is really vitriolic, a lot of sound bites to grab attention, and no space given for this kind of both/and position, which is a painful one to hold. It isn't much fun being a parent of children that need a lot of additional support to be sitting here, bum on the fence, a spiky fence, being like, okay, I see the good, I see the bad, on balance we’re going to go with the labels because they're going to do more good than harm, but I can't fully commit myself to the idea of building a whole identity around any label. It feels uncomfortable. It feels like I don't have a home. But the reality is, when I talk to people in person, and I meet a lot of people that I've seen online in person, most people are falling where I am. Most people are really nuanced about it, a bit torn apart by it. They've read the same evidence that I have, and come to the same conclusion that actually we're in this really tricky grey space, but nobody is representing that online, even if it's what they think really. I think that's because the platforms encourage us to speak in a way that we wouldn't speak professionally if we were in a room together. Complex topics get reduced to these short, extreme, and often un-evidenced claims, like no brain-based differences, or CBT is harmful to people with autism. Those are the kind of statements which work really well on social media because they get an argument going and they get rewarded, and so we post more of them. But I actually think they're really doing a lot of harm, not just between professionals. I often really cringe when I see it happening on social media. I might start to feel a bit disillusioned with clinical psychology as a profession, or I might feel a bit shamed or upset if somebody's having a go at something that I've said. It can be difficult for us as professionals, but imagine what it is like if you’re a family going through the most difficult thing you've ever experienced, and then you go onto LinkedIn and you see a load of people who are supposed to be the people giving you advice and guidance, fighting each other. I can't stand it. I can't stand to think about what that experience must be like for people in their most vulnerable moments.

And it's not just happening around neurodiversity, that's just the one I know more about. But I also see it happening a lot around gender identity, for example. I think sometimes when we're posting, we need to be mindful of the vulnerable people who might see it. Maybe they're not the person the post is intended for, maybe it's intended for a professional audience, but it's got your name, it's got your professional title. You are representing a clinical psychologist, or a CBT therapist, or a counsellor to the people that read it. So, if you are getting into a skirmish and having cross words with other professionals on there, that is really confusing to the person that's looking to us as mental health professionals to guide them through the darkness of a new diagnosis or a struggle that their family is facing.

I think we have to start changing the way that we use social media and probably the only way that we can do that is understanding that it is not your fault that you are compelled into these arguments. There are billionaires out there who are incredibly good at manipulating us into engaging in this way on their platforms. It is what they want. They want us to be angry, they want us to fight with each other, and they want it all done in a public arena because that's where they're going to get their eyeballs, which is how they pay their salaries. I'm sure most of you are aware of this, but just in case you're not, the thing which makes money for social media platforms is advertising. And the reason that advertising space is valuable is all to do with how many eyeballs there are on that platform and how long they stay on that platform. I advertise on Facebook, but I would not give them my money if they were only getting a thousand people a month on their platform. It's because they're getting millions, probably billions, and they're keeping them there for a long time, that I think it's worth spending money advertising on that platform. Because they don't charge us, they charge the advertisers, we as users of the platform are the commodity. We are the thing being sold. Our attention is the thing being sold to advertisers. So, the only motivation a social media platform that doesn't charge you will ever have is keeping you on there for longer, and people stay longer when they're angry. So, knowing that this platform is going to try to make me angry, I think is a really helpful mindset to have when we are going in and thinking about what we're going to post, and how we're going to comment on other people's posts. I try to really keep that in the forefront of my mind before I let any of these posts or comments get to me.

That's the mindset piece I think we have to have in place when we are devising our strategy for engaging with social media. I guess the best advice I can give you is to have a strategy for social media. Don't just engage with it off the cuff, because that's when we are most susceptible to what the algorithms and the people building these platforms want us to do. If we go in with real intention, with real strategy behind us, then it is much more difficult to be blown off course. It's a bit like anything you do with your business; if you know your values and you know why you are doing this and where you want to get to, then whatever kind of bad weather and storms get in the way, it is much, much easier to continuously set your compass for the right bearing and keep going through them. Whereas if you were never sure where you wanted to go in the first place, you are much more likely to be buffeted around according to the weather.

1. Limit your social media use to what is strategically useful

The first thing that I would recommend is limit your social media use to what is strategically useful, especially if you've already noticed that it is having a negative impact on your nervous system or your wellbeing. I know it's not negative for everybody, but the clients that I've worked with, my coaching clients who have positive experiences of social media, it is because they have taken the time to curate what they're seeing and they are intentional about what they're doing. For example, one of my ex-clients who I think I'm most proud of and love to see her social media out there, is Dr Frankie Harrison from Miracle Moon. Frankie is really intentional about what she posts. She posts stuff which is going to be really useful for people going through the experience of parenting in NICU. Her content is really collaborative, it's really community focused, and it's exactly what those people need to see at the time they need to see it. I know that she gets a lot out of her community and really enjoys engaging there, but the reason that it's enjoyable is that it's really intentional. She knows exactly why she's there, it's hitting her values, it's really good quality content and it feels good to create it.

2. Spend time curating what you see

I've also noticed that people that do well on social media spend time curating what they see. We can do that on all of the platforms; we can choose to hide things that we don't want to see and we can like things that we do want to see. Gradually over time, that means that we will get more of the stuff that we want and less of the stuff that we don't want, which is really, really important. So, I'd encourage you to just spend a couple of weeks doing that so that you are not served up the stuff which is an assault on your nervous system.

3. Focus on what you want your social media to do for you

The third thing, which comes into the point of intentionality, is really focus on what you want your social media to do for you. I'd encourage you to think of it as building a body of work that builds your authority and that you feel proud of. You should feel proud of everything that you are doing on social media because all of it reflects on your profession and on your business. It's all building your reputation. If you're putting out there content that you feel lukewarm about, that you're a bit like, ‘Hmm, it's a bit boring’, then you're not going to feel proud of it, there's no point. Equally, if you're allowing your emotions to take the driving seat and you are responding in a spiky way, or you're talking in a way that you wouldn't talk in front of a client, that's not serving you or your business either. Have a really clear idea of ‘what do I want to get out of this?’ It's usually about building authority and giving people the confidence to work with you, or if you're not in business, giving them the confidence to engage with your profession. I think we can all agree that seeing those vitriolic debates on social media is not going to do any of those things for people.

There's a tool that I use in my Evolve and Thrive programme and in my Startup programme (my two group coaching programmes), where I help people to think through what it is that they should be talking about on social media. What are the things that your client group need to hear from you about? I then help them think about what stories they might use to make those ideas relatable. We build a little bank together of stories that you are comfortable with sharing around those topics that clients are interested in, because we know that storytelling makes learning points come to life, makes everything sink in, and are much more compelling than how-tos or your straightforward psychoeducation posts. We always come up with a little bank of stories that we can draw on to create content, only then do we go onto platforms and look at what type of content is working well and think about how we can fit the ideas that we already have, that are on topics that we want to be known for and we've got tons of expertise in, and we're building our authority in that area, and our stories that we want to share, how can we fit those two things to the formats that are working well on that platform at the moment? And if you follow that process, starting with what your customer wants to hear from you and working through, and the last thing you do is figuring out what that should look like on a particular platform, then you'll find that you are showing up and you are posting in a way that builds your authority, that serves up high quality content, that actually does some good for your client group, and should also build the authority and reputation for your independent business if that's what you want to do. That's a process that I really recommend. We have tools to help us do it in Evolve and Thrive and the Startup programme, but if you bear those principles in mind, you are not going to go far wrong.

I hope this hasn't just been a rant. I wanted to spend a bit of time today talking about how the business models of social media are making us all behave badly as professionals online, and you know that we should have compassion for that, that it is not our fault. There are people paid a lot of money to try and make us behave like this, and it's happening to everybody - it's not just happening to mental health professionals. But we can do something about it, we can do better, and we can use social media in a way that is going to be better for us, better for our wellbeing, better for our clients, and ultimately bring us to the place that we want to be in our businesses as well. It's different advice to the advice that I would've given when this podcast started back in 2020, the landscape has changed, but I hope that this has given you an idea of how you can use social media in a positive way. We don't need to run away from it, we just don't want to let it take the driving seat either.

I hope that's been helpful. Please do let me know your thoughts. You can send me a DM. I'm @rosiegilderthorp on Instagram, and I'd really love to hear how you’re using social media and if you've noticed the same trends as me and what you are doing about it, if you have.

Is it time for you to evolve and thrive?

Fri, 05 Dec 2025 06:00:00 +0100

Is it time for you to evolve and thrive?

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. This episode is all about that stuck on the fence feeling that I think is so familiar to so many of us. That feeling when you know that something needs to change, but you are not sure whether now is the right time to make that change.

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

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

Evolve and Thrive Mastermind

Shownotes

Is it time for you to evolve and thrive?

Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. This episode is all about that stuck on the fence feeling that I think is so familiar to so many of us. That feeling when you know that something needs to change, but you are not sure whether now is the right time to make that change.

I just want to acknowledge that often this happens when my clients are really successful; when they've built exactly what they set out to build, but now something about it just isn't feeling fulfilling or they're struggling with the day-to-day running of their practice, feeling burned out, maybe feeling like they're doing fine, but sort of spinning their wheels in time, and that's how it was for me. On the surface, I had built a really successful private practice. From the outside looking in, people would've seen fully booked, always busy attracting people to my specialism, tick, tick, tick, it all looks great. But in reality, I was really struggling to keep going with that pace of clients because it wasn't giving me the flexibility that I needed in my life, but also it wasn't really allowing me to use my skills as a psychologist in the diverse and interesting ways that I had been able to in my public sector roles. So for a number of reasons, I arrived at this point of feeling like I needed to make a change, but I sat on that fence for quite a while, and it can be quite an uncomfortable place. I've noticed that as I've been doing the calls for our next Evolve and Thrive cohort, which is really exciting, that a lot of people are sitting on that fence. And because the economy is in a challenging place, and I don't think that we're in a really optimistic frame of mind as a generation at the moment, often we might be sitting in that place for a bit longer, really agonising over when's the right time to jump off and do something a bit differently. So I wanted to record an episode to help you think that through. And it's not going to be, “you should always go for it, now is definitely the right time to make a change in your practice”, because actually one of the things that's really important to me as a business coach is that you are respectful of the season of life that you are in, and that you make decisions based on wherever possible, data, good information about the return on the investment that you're going to get. And I don't just mean investment in terms of money, I mean investment in terms of time, your creativity and your emotional wellbeing as well. So, I hope this episode is going to help you. If you are thinking that now might be a good time for you to step into something new, maybe create a new project, something outside the therapy room, or maybe expand and bring on associates, my aim with this episode is to help you think through whether now is the right moment to jump in with both feet and really go for it, or if actually you might be in a season that means that those things are all here for you, they're all going to happen, but they need to happen a little bit later. So I hope you're going to find this useful.

I also hope that this episode will demonstrate to you that that evolution is possible, even if it's not the thing for you right now, I think there's a bit of pessimism out there sometimes that maybe we will miss the boat, that they are one to many offers, online courses, that kind of thing are only really available to people that built their audiences back when it was easier, like in 2016 for example, but actually that's not true. I am supporting day in, day out, I'm supporting psychologists and therapists who are doing it right now in this tricky climate and making it work. So I also hope that this episode is going to give you a little bit of that hopeful optimism that I have the privilege of sitting alongside in my coaching practice regularly.

Signs that you might be ready to evolve your practice

There are some signs that you might be ready to evolve your practice that are worth paying attention to. I got these from my existing participants in Evolve and Thrive.

The first sign is that you start craving one to many. You start craving more scale and more variety in your work. Maybe you are fully booked or well established, but you really miss using the other parts of your brain that one-to-one therapy doesn't always utilise. And this is how Dr Grace Lee-Brindle, who is currently in Evolve and Thrive described it to me. She noted that after leaving the NHS, she missed other parts of her work. She was well established with one-to-one clients, she's got a brilliant specialism, but she felt like she was ready to branch out and use other skills. So I think that's really important. Dr Kelly Young also shared something on this theme. She said that she wanted to move from a one-to-one, to a one-to-many model to increase the revenue in her practice, but also to make more impact for more people while working fewer hours. So, I guess the takeaway from that is if you resonate with those things, if you feel itchy to use your skills in a different way and you're wanting to make more impact with more people, then that could be a sign that you are ready for that recurring income strategy, and to develop a business model that takes you outside the therapy room.

Another theme that came up as a sign that you might be ready to make that change in your practice was a feeling that Dr Melita Ash, another one of our evolve and thrivers, put really well, I thought it was a really nice analogy. She said she felt like she was running fast, but standing still. I guess this is about the issue of sustainability, it's that feeling like I have, that you are working incredibly hard, but the business isn't really growing in a way that gives you any more time, flexibility or financial security. So it can feel a bit like you are running on a treadmill. Melita described it as like running fast, not getting anywhere, constantly working hard and feeling really stuck. And she felt like she needed to come on a program that would give her a structure towards getting unstuck because it can be such a difficult place to be when you are running that fast, that you're exhausted and sometimes unable to think outside of that fast pace of work that you're doing every day. That's something that Dr Victoria Wallace talked about too. She really prioritised sustainability and looking to avoid those boom and bust cycles we can often get into when we are relying on just one-to-one therapy and that referral rollercoaster in private practice.

I guess what this tells us is that if taking regular time off or flexibility for family is really important to you, and the business model you have at the moment isn't delivering that, then you really need a plan. Putting more effort into the model you already have is not going to take you somewhere different or more sustainable than where you are right now. So if where you are right now doesn't feel sustainable, if you feel like you're heading for burnout, you have to make a change. Sometimes what I hear from people is that they're sort of waiting to feel better before they make a change. But actually, if we formulate for ourselves in the exact same way that we would for a client, that's like waiting to stop feeling depressed before you go out for a walk. Sometimes we have to put the cart before the horse and get out, make the change that's going to allow us to feel better. So I think that's a really important point. If you're already on the road to burnout, hop off now. Do something different now before you get fully in the pit of it.

So sign number three that the current Evolve and Thrivers talked about was feeling like you kind of get stuck in contemplation mode. So maybe you have ideas, but procrastination, peer fear, or imposter syndrome stop you actually executing them. A lot of people talk about this as like shiny object syndrome, like the magpies or butterflies flitting from one idea to the next and never really committing. And then what makes me really sad is people also often talk about feeling a lot of shame when they see other people doing really well, or perceive other people to be doing really well on Instagram or at networking events, and then they start to think that those people have something magical that they're lacking. Whereas actually the reality is that you can't tell from Instagram or a website or even somebody's podcast what's actually happening in their business. You don't get to see the stuff that we put out there that flops. And one of the biggest things that I try and put across to all of my Evolve and Thrivers and really anyone that will listen to me is that a lot of our ideas don't work out the way we want them to. But it's only by putting things out there and testing them with your client group, that you really get a sense of what's useful, what do they actually want and what works for them, but also what is the market ready for and what language do we need to use to show people that we have something valuable that they're going to need. It just takes trial and error. And often it's the fear of flopping that keeps people stuck in this contemplation, shiny object syndrome flitting from one idea to the next. And what I try and provide in Evolve and thrive is a community that makes it safe to have those flops, because we all have them. I literally could not count, I wouldn't be able to estimate even a number of the things I've put out there that haven't worked. But you’re all probably much more aware of the ones that I put out there that do work because they're the ones that are much more visible and that I keep and talk about for a lot longer. But if you went back, you'd probably find loads of stuff that I'm not offering anymore, and the reason I'm not offering it is that it didn't work. So it happens to us all, and it's a really normal and important part of the journey of doing something entrepreneurial that has not been done before.

One of the comments that Dr Naomi Gibson made about her decision to take that leap, move out of contemplation and try and move through that peer fear was that she felt she needed guidance and community to finally step into that action. And I think that is so normal. Every time that I've made a big decision in my business, it has been because I've been either seeing a business coach that I had a great relationship with, or I've been part of a mastermind where I've been able to go somewhere with those fears and have people to bounce ideas off and know that there's at least one person cheerleading me through that difficult process. I do think that can be really, really important.

Some other interesting things that came out of the discussion that I had with my Evolve and Thrivers was that actually for nearly everybody, we're a group of 12, and nearly everybody was proud of the practice that they built already. So it wasn't the case that they hated their work. Actually, a lot of people, pretty much everyone, talked about finding their therapy work extremely rewarding. It was more that there was another reason that they needed to move away from it. So it could be that there were family responsibilities, caring responsibilities that meant that working those long hours, seeing people one-to-one, doing very intense work was making them basically fray at the seams. Or it could have been that they just felt like they weren't using all of their skills and they wanted to do more as a psychologist than they felt that they were doing. Or for a couple of my current participants, it was really about the client group and feeling that there was this big unserved portion of an audience that they'd already built online who needed something that wasn't therapy, but that also wasn't already out there on the market, and they felt the push coming from that direction.

I think that's really important to highlight that wanting to evolve your practice doesn't mean that you're not grateful for the business that you have right now, or that you did the wrong thing by building the business that you've built right now, or even that you don't enjoy your one-to-one work with clients. It's just about examining your values and thinking about what the next chapter of your career needs to look like in order to live life according to those values. And for me, certainly one of those core values has to be flexibility. I just need a lot of that in order to meet my kids as the parent that I want to be right now. And for most Evolve and Thrivers and certainly for me, there's a driving value behind wanting to change what you're doing. And I think it's best if that can come from a positive place. So rather than just thinking about what you want to get away from, it's thinking about what you want to be able to do, what you want to move towards. I think that's a really good way of thinking about it, if you are contemplating is this the right time to evolve or not.

Another thing that people mentioned a lot in our discussions about what helped them make that decision to make the change this time was that sense of stepping into a program that has a structure and a community behind it. People talked a lot about words like scaffolding, and I feel like any structured program, it does help you keep moving one foot in front of the other so that even on the difficult days, you have a really clear map to follow, where even if I can only do 10 minutes, there's 10 minute video or a 10 minute worksheet that you can do that is going to move you one step further towards your goal. I think that's something that I've really tried hard to do in Evolve and Thrive, to give you that forward motion, even on the tough days. Because I know that there will be, there's always tough days. I was really pleased to hear that people had found that really useful and that that was a big reason that people felt safe to make the leap now. But also the community, having that group, knowing that you've got people to talk about those ethical decisions that always come up with a new business model, that you've got people to test out your ideas with and then to collaborate, pool audiences and cheerlead each other through it; that seemed like something that was really valuable to the current evolving thrivers as well. So, I just wanted to highlight those positive things that people talked about.

Are you in a season of life where you are able to make the most of the opportunity to evolve your practice?

I also think it is important to ask yourself whether you are in a season of life right now, where you are going to be able to make the most of the opportunity that you have to evolve your practice.

One way of thinking about this is to think, if I invest this much money in a coaching program, do I believe that I'm going to commit enough time and effort to doing the work to make that investment back, either by the end of the program or setting yourself an arbitrary date that feels comfortable to you in the future? When people have calls with me, often, I'm trying to suss that out. Because there are times in life where realistically you are not able to put enough work in to get a return on the investment that you put into a program like Evolve and Thrive. And if that's where you are at, at this moment, like I had one person for a discovery call who had just given birth to twins, and my advice was, I would love you on this program, everything we've talked about today she had in spades; she had such a positive mission, she knew exactly why she wanted to evolve her practice, all the values were there, they were all aligning with what we do in Psychology Business School, she's going to be great, and I can't wait to support her. But I had to say, I don't think that this is the right time because actually investing in a program like this is for when you are ready to make the change because it is a big investment, I'm not shy of that, but I'm confident that it's an investment worth making because I know that you can quite quickly make that money back so long as you are in a position to put the work in, do the marketing, do the thinking, create an offer, and put it out there. So if you are ready to do that and you know that you are going to commit to it, then that's the right time to commit to a program like Evolve and Thrive. Or even if you are doing it with a different program, this advice applies to any kind of coaching program or mastermind that you might be thinking of, don't invest in a program or a coach thinking that it'll be the magic bullet that transports you where you want to go, because actually the, the program and the coach is there to support you while you do the creative work to get where you want to be. So you do need to be in a place where you are able to not only show up for the program, but do that thinking, be that creative person, and commit to it enough that you can get your return on your investment. And like I said, I'm really confident that if you go in with that mindset, knowing I'm going to make my money back, I'm going to put the work in and make sure I've made the money back by the end of this program, then you will do it, because it is all about have you really moved out of that contemplation stage? And if you have, if you've decided something has to change, something has to be different, I'm not living my values and I want to be, and say 2026 is the year that I'm going to do it, then you will do it. And we've got everything in Evolve and Thrive to help you get there.

So if you have made that decision and you are ready for the change, then I would really love to support you in Evolve and Thrive. I've still got a few slots left for free discovery calls so that we can have a chat and see if Evolve and Thrive is the right fit for you. I'll put the link in the show notes so that you can book one of those last few slots to have a chat with...

Carving out an unknown specialism: Sports and Exercise Psychology with Paula Watson

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 06:00:00 +0100

Carving out an unknown specialism: Sports and Exercise Psychology with Paula Watson

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'm really pleased to be welcoming my guest today, Dr Paula Watson, who is an applied sports and exercise psychologist specialising in health behavior change relating to eating, exercise, and weight. Paula spent 18 years in academia including working at Liverpool John Moores University as a reader in exercise and health psychology, before dedicating herself fully to her private practice, Made Up To Move. The concept of an exercise psychologist in private practice is one that might feel quite new, and I know that exercise psychologists qualifying now often feel unsure about how to introduce a less known about psychological service to the market. Paula's story is one that's all about forging a new path, embracing the unknown, and defining her own value when the public didn't even know that she existed. We're going to explore today how she built her practice when the public wasn't even aware of what exercise psychology was, and there's so much that we can all learn about really solid business and marketing skills from Paula's journey.

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

Links:

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

Links for Paula:

Website: madeuptomove.co.uk

YouTube: www.youtube.com/@DrPaulaWatson

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/paula-watson-weight-loss-therapy

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

2026 Psychologists Business Retreat

The highlights

Paula tells us what drew her to sports and exercise psychology 01:34
Paula talks about her academic career 06:59
We discuss imposter syndrome 14:30
Paula tells us about her decision to move from academia to the applied space 20:10
I ask Paula about choosing private practice versus a job 24:35
Paula tells us what a week in her practice looks like 36:14
I ask Paula about her YouTube channel 45:20
Paula speaks about the learning curves and mindset shifts required when setting up in private practice 51:06
Paula tells us how we can connect with her 56:38

Evolve Your Practice: The map to more income, impact and flexibility

Are you craving more flexibility in your practice?

Maybe you've built something amazing and you're proud of your business, but it's also bringing you to the brink of burnout.

Maybe you want to use your skills differently and create recurring revenue outside the therapy room.

Whether your priority is financial stability or flexibility, or both, adding recurring revenue streams into your business is essential.

If you want time, freedom, more income, and to make a bigger impact for your client group, join me for a free masterclass on Monday, the 17th of November at 11:00 AM and I'll show you how I use my values, voice and impact framework to create income, impact, and flexibility in my own business, and for the hundreds of psychologists and therapists I've supported over the last five years.

I'd love to see you there. You can sign up here: https://psychologybusinessschool.mykajabi.com/offers/fnr6d7si/checkout

The most critical feedback from our retreat and what we've learned about running events with Dr Claire Plumbly

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 06:00:00 +0100

The most critical feedback from our retreat and what we've learned about running events with Dr Claire Plumbly

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'm really pleased to be here today with friend of the podcast, Dr Claire Plumley. Claire's been on the podcast a few times now, sometimes talking about her experience of working in burnout and writing an amazing book about it. Sometimes we've been talking about the cool and exciting stuff that Claire does in her practice, like EMDR intensives and working with people online. But today we are getting together to talk about our joint venture, a retreat that we ran for the first time last year and we're running again in 2026, because so many of you tell me that you've got a real craving for in-person connection. Getting people together in a room feels like something amazing that we can do to enhance wellbeing, but in-person events feel really different, especially when we've been working predominantly in the online space since 2020. Claire and I thought it might be helpful for us to let you in behind the scenes of what it was like running a retreat and the learnings that we've taken from a super successful one last year, and how are we going to make this year even better based on those.

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

Links:

Get in touch here.

Links for Claire:

LinkedIn: Dr Claire Plumbly

Facebook: @drclaireplumbly

Instagram: @drclaireplumbly

TikTok: @drclaireplumbly

Website: www.plum-psychology.com

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

Subscribe to Sparkle on Substack - Listener 30% Discount Link

The highlights

We talk about our reasons for wanting to run a retreat 01:26
We discuss the different skills we brought together, and liaising with the right venue 06:56
We look at how we got the right mix of people 13:08
We discuss costing an event 16:35
We talk about marketing something with this much logistical planning 19:55
We look at what will be different for 2026 25:22
Claire gives her advice to anyone thinking about planning their own event 35:10
I tell you how to find out about the 2026 retreat 37:11

Evolve and Thrive Mastermind

Fulfilment through writing together on Substack with Clare Venus

Fri, 14 Nov 2025 06:00:00 +0100

Fulfilment through writing together on Substack with Clare Venus

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. This week I'm joined by Clare Venus, who is a wonderful creator over on Substack, and who also teaches other people how to Substack well. I'm really excited to bring you this chat, because in it we talk about why you might want to choose Substack, and why it might be a good home for psychologists and therapists who are looking to bring a bit more nuance than social media platforms generally allow. We also dive into Clare's personal journey with Substack, what attracted her to it, and how it allows her to use her creativity in a way that she might have been struggling to do in other places, which I think a lot of us can relate to. Finally, we also talk about the business side, and how Substack can fit into the business and the practice that you’re running, which I think is a really important consideration when we're thinking about embarking on any new social media platform or marketing strategy.

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

Substack Links for Clare:

@clairevenus

Creatively Conscious

Sparkle on Substack

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

The highlights

Clare tells us a little bit about how she ended up on Substack and why she chose it 01:50
I ask Clare about the ways that she’s seen psychologists and therapists using the platform 09:12
Clare walks us through the various bits of Substack and also how their like payment system works 16:07
We talk about the different opportunities Substack provides us with 23:31
We discuss membership models and structures 30:17
I summarise the models you can have on Substack 33:50
Clare talks about SEO with Substack and other tips for setting up 36:03
I ask Clare what is the first best step to take for a psychologist or therapist who thinks Substack could be a good place for them 39:24
Claire give us her Substack links 42:14

Evolve Your Practice: The map to more income, impact and flexibility

Are you craving more flexibility in your practice?

Maybe you've built something amazing and you're proud of your business, but it's also bringing you to the brink of burnout.

Maybe you want to use your skills differently and create recurring revenue outside the therapy room.

Whether your priority is financial stability or flexibility, or both, adding recurring revenue streams into your business is essential.

I'd love to see you there. You can sign up here: https://psychologybusinessschool.mykajabi.com/offers/fnr6d7si/checkout

The most valuable lesson from Evolve and Thrive: The real reason psychologists and therapists burnout and procrastinate

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 06:00:00 +0100

The most valuable lesson from Evolve and Thrive: The real reason psychologists and therapists burnout and procrastinate

Hello and welcome to another episode of The Business of Psychology podcast. Today you've just got me, it's a solo show and it's going to be a short and sweet one.

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

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

Episode 103: Why you should specialise – old gold that is still important

Evolve Your Practice: The map to more income, impact and flexibility

Are you craving more flexibility in your practice?

Maybe you've built something amazing and you're proud of your business, but it's also bringing you to the brink of burnout.

Maybe you want to use your skills differently and create recurring revenue outside the therapy room.

Whether your priority is financial stability or flexibility, or both, adding recurring revenue streams into your business is essential.

I'd love to see you there. You can sign up here: https://psychologybusinessschool.mykajabi.com/offers/fnr6d7si/checkout

Shownotes

The most valuable lesson from Evolve and Thrive: The real reason psychologists and therapists burnout and procrastinate

I wanted to talk about something which has been really troubling me for the past few months, maybe even longer. It's the most valuable lesson that I've learned from my group coaching program, Evolve and Thrive, which is a coaching program designed for people ready to take the next step in their practice. Maybe they've already built something successful and they're ready to move beyond the therapy room or start bringing in different income sources. These are all people that I respect hugely. There is not a single person in Evolve and Thrive that I'm not slightly intimidated by because of their amazing careers and the expertise that they're bringing for their clients. But there has been something really striking that is holding most of the people in Evolve and Thrive back, and what we've spent most of our time on together as a group. I wanted to bring it into the light because I've noticed that almost everybody thinks that they're alone with this, and if you're struggling, you are absolutely not alone with this.

I want to start by saying that all the knowledge that we need to be successful in business is already out there. This was not the case when I started this podcast back in 2020, but it very much is the case now. You've got AI at your fingertips to search the web for you. You've got YouTube, podcasts, good old-fashioned books, any question you have, you can find the answer to all of them. And psychologists and therapists are always intelligent people who can find the things that they need if they're looking for them. Despite this, I keep hearing the same things over and over again, the things which are getting people stuck are burnout and a tendency to overwork even when they can feel that that burnout is close, and paralysis or procrastination, often both. I've been coaching other mental health professionals for over five years now, and I've realised that although it kicks in at different moments, for different people, there are two things that hold people back in growing their practices, there are two things that lead to that procrastination pattern and that continuous dance on the edge of burnout, and neither of those is being bad at tech.

Sometimes it's that their bodies and minds have acclimatised to a punishing and relentless workload, so a more relaxed working week, the thing they often tell me that they want more than anything, actually it doesn't feel safe, so they avoid it by breaking boundaries, saying yes when they know it should be a no, or never making the time to think about changing their practice.

Or maybe they've absorbed stories and identities that they'd have to give up if they created a more comfortable working life for themselves. That ‘suffering public servant’ narrative, the ‘selfless helping professional’, even the ‘on the brink of burnout professional’, they're all identities that we worked hard to wear and giving them up can feel like a rejection of the more positive aspects of those identities. You know, I remember thinking to myself, if I'm not burning out in the NHS, maybe I don't get to feel like the selfless helping professional anymore. Maybe that makes me a selfish helping professional and that doesn't feel comfortable and it's something I wrestled with a lot and continue to; you know, this is not something that you work through once and get to the other side of, and for many of us, that leads to paralysis that looks a lot like procrastination. Because you're torn in two different directions, so staying uncomfortably on the fence instead is safer than pulling yourself apart.

For others, it leads to undercharging and often that very real financial fear. When you are riding that rollercoaster of never quite feeling secure financially in your practice, maybe on a good month, it's great, but then the next month is a bit slower and suddenly you are panicking again. That fear then leads to the breaking boundaries, saying yes to everything, ironically, avoiding and never looking at the numbers in the business, or you know, never allowing yourself the luxury of looking for new ways of doing things, or reviewing your financial plan. And so instead, you're maintaining this constant state of near burnout, which is kind of what you got used to.

There are other stories too that stop people from building the lives that they want to live. Things like, ‘I'm too old’, or ‘I'm not the kind of person who…’, ‘I'm not confident enough’, ‘I'm not good enough with tech’, ‘I hate marketing’. All of these stories just shut down the things that we think are possible for ourselves. And what I love about coaching is that once these patterns and stories are brought to light, my clients are all really well equipped to tackle them and to support each other as they move through the discomfort of making those changes. It is such a pleasure to work with psychologists and therapists because as a group, we are just as susceptible as anyone else to blind spots and avoidance, but it is absolutely awesome to get to work with people who already have amazing skills and full up toolkits to make that change once they've recognised it and decided to make it.

Something I have noticed though, which again is maybe a bit unique to mental health professionals, is that the stories that stick with us, the trickiest ones to move past, are the ones that we've absorbed from our professional culture. The ones that lead to that dreaded peer fear that comes up in at least 80% of my coaching conversations. What are other people, other professionals, usually going to think if we try something new? Am I going to be labelled as money grabbing or a sellout? And the fact is, I can't reassure people that they're never going to face judgment from other psychologists and therapists. Instead, we have to get into our compassionate selves and think about what that judgment and our reaction to it does and does not mean.

Together we think about whether the feelings we have about it might be useful because sometimes they are, they can encourage us to seek peer debate over some ethical concerns we have. And you know, I think that peer debate is the only way to resolve ethical concerns when we're working at the frontier and we're trying out new things where there's not an obvious precedent for us to follow. But we also think about what that judgment is most likely to mean in the context it was given. And often when we do that, we recognise that there are many factors well outside of our new product or our new service, or even ourselves, that might have led somebody to make those judgemental comments that they've made. It's so much easier to accept and move through the anxiety that inevitably comes up around judgment from our peers when we can look at it in its full context and think about its true meaning.

I hope that gives you some food for thought. If you feel like it's time to make a change in your business, but something keeps holding you back, maybe you've been blaming yourself for continuously burning out, or maybe you've had advice before and are beating yourself up all the time because you haven't felt able to take it. Maybe you've called yourself names like procrastinator, or got frustrated over your paralysis. I just want you to know that it's not unusual, it's not about your knowledge, it's not about your skills, it's not about who you are as a person. It's that you are working through something that is really difficult and that many of us have to work through, over and over and over again, and it's part of the vulnerability of being in business and you deserve support with that. And actually that recognition is why I don't sell standalone online courses anymore, because at the beginning everyone, including me, thought that knowledge was the problem. But I've learned from my work over the last five years of my one-to-one coaching clients that it so rarely was a knowledge gap. So now I offer group coaching with a learning portal attached, because once you've got the mindset sorted, you are in a great position to absorb and do creative things with the knowledge that's available to you. But you can't skip that coaching around the mindset piece.

I'd really love to hear if any of this resonated with you, and if it did, you might want to come along to my free masterclass on November the 17th. The link will be in the show notes, and I'd really love to see you there.

Stop spending money on social media: The biggest mistake private practice owners are making in digital marketing

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 06:00:00 +0100

Stop spending money on social media: The biggest mistake private practice owners are making in digital marketing

Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology Podcast. This series is all about what we can do when we have that tugging feeling that our practice needs to change, but we're not quite sure what to do about it.

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

Links/references:

Episode 127: What matters to our clients in private practice?

Episode 128: Who are you helping? Three ways to specialise your psychology or therapy practice

Episode 129: How to make sure your marketing actually works: How to use authority for psychologists and therapists

Episode 152: Thinking differently about your practice: A tool to put the client first

Episode 158: How to find your ideal clients in 2025: SEO for psychologists and therapists with Chris Morin

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

Evolve Your Practice: The map to more income, impact and flexibility

Are you craving more flexibility in your practice?

Maybe you've built something amazing and you're proud of your business, but it's also bringing you to the brink of burnout.

Maybe you want to use your skills differently and create recurring revenue outside the therapy room.

Whether your priority is financial stability or flexibility, or both, adding recurring revenue streams into your business is essential.

I'd love to see you there. You can sign up here: https://psychologybusinessschool.mykajabi.com/offers/fnr6d7si/checkout

Shownotes

Stop spending money on social media: The biggest mistake private practice owners are making in digital marketing

Today we're focusing on social media, because one thing I have noticed about people that come into my Evolve and Thrive program is they've often already been spending money or time trying to build a social media audience because they think it's a prerequisite for adding additional income streams into their practice.

Firstly, it is not true that you always have to do social media to add new revenue streams. Even passive income doesn't always have to involve social media. But what we're focusing on today is the danger of spending loads of time or loads of money on social media before you've done the work on your marketing strategy, because I see so much waste when that happens.

First, I'm going to talk a bit about the perils, and then I'm going to give you some practical strategy advice using my Values, Voice and Impact framework that I use with all my coaching clients so that you can invest in social media safely and effectively and actually make your investment back from it.

The Mistakes

Let's get started by thinking about the mistakes, because honestly, my heart hurts when I meet a new client who has already outsourced their marketing or hired a new social media manager or one of those fancy, all-inclusive marketing agencies. And it's not because those are bad things to do, but they are usually bad if we do them too soon.

Social media is just a way of reaching people. It's a marketing channel, just in the same way that a poster on a lamppost is a marketing channel. Except in 2025, every lamppost you pass has a thousand posters, blue-tacked over the top of each other competing for your eyeballs. You wouldn't expect the fact you had a poster on a lamppost to do anything for your marketing, would you? You'd probably think that the content of that poster was quite important. You'd probably also consider the position of the poster; whether it was on a lamppost outside a busy coffee shop or in a country lane, whether you were at the top or three sheets deep at the bottom, you'd instinctively know that all of those things were really crucial.

Social media managers tend to have no idea how to tackle good quality content or positioning for mental health professionals, so they mostly post content that is so bland and uninspiring, you might as well be sticking up a blank sheet of paper in a country lane. I am afraid that you have to be fully in charge of the marketing strategy for your business. Strategy cannot be delegated. Graphic design can be delegated, copywriting can be delegated, but the strategy is all yours.

I'm going to use my values, voice and impact framework that underpins the coaching in my group programs like Startup and Evolve and Thrive to show you what you need to have in place before you go hiring help.

Values

We start with the values. To put together a strategy, you first need to understand what you want from your business and what your clients needs from you. Here is where we do all the work on personal and professional values, picking a specialism, narrowing to a client group and really understanding what matters to that group.

I've recorded episodes before on the tools that we can use here, like the customer persona and the value proposition that can help us get that really deep understanding of the priorities of our client group. And that work can only be done by you because it's psychological work, and actually the majority of people who work in marketing are used to marketing products, which don't involve anything like the emotional investment that we are asking our clients to make, even if we're selling them a book or an online course. And so we need to be using our skills as mental health professionals to really get under the skin and understand our clients in the way that most marketing professionals aren't used to doing.

I do find peer discussions very helpful here though, so do use your colleagues, but more importantly, as I talk about in all the episodes around customer personas and value propositions, get out and talk to your actual client group and test ideas out with them.

Voice

The second stage is about voice, because what content you should post is also determined by your expertise. Everything you produce should be aiming to build your authority with your client group. You should be proud of the body of work that you put out there into the world on social media. It needs to carry your authentic voice, and most importantly, you need to be spreading the messages that your client group need to hear from you, specifically.

If you've done your values work well, you'll have a good idea of the things that your ideal client group desperately want to hear about, and you'll know the language that they use too. Pick three to five of those things that align with your expertise and make those your content pillars - the things that you always talk about online. I always suggest writing out about five to ten stories that illustrate that you really understand those things, that you understand the struggles that your clients face related to those topics, and you can link them directly to the things that they want to hear you talking about. For example, if you think that they want advice from you about burnout, write out some compelling stories that show you really understand burnout; either stories from your personal life, anonymised client stories, it could be anything, but stories are so much more compelling than how-tos or advice lists. So making sure you've got some of those in your back pocket that you can repurpose over and over again for various posts on social media is really helpful.

Impact

The final stage is impact. In order to make your marketing strategy effective, you have to know the journey you want potential clients to take. What do they need to know about you to make a decision to take the next step, and buy your course, buy your book, become a client.

Some of the content you create will be designed to raise awareness of your existence. Some will be designed to encourage trust, show your authority, and some will be designed to directly sell your services. We need to fully understand the purpose of our content and what we want it to do for our clients and the business before we can even think about what social media platforms or posts make sense.

At this stage, you also need to think about where your content will have the most impact. You use your understanding of the client group to decide:

where they're most likely to see and be receptive to your awareness content
where they'd like to get to know you better
and how it makes sense for them to book with you or buy your product.

You can't let a marketing professional tell you those things because it's really likely that you are the person that knows that client group best, whereas a marketing professional is very likely to make assumptions, which are probably a bit too broad brush for the kind of client groups that we are dealing with.

Finally, you need to know what good looks like. Know the metrics that tell you your marketing is working. If your business priority is referrals, then volume of referrals is the key metric. If your priority is book sales, that's the key metric. You might also measure one or two things that might show progress before the sales come in, like website traffic, but never get caught up in vanity metrics. Lots of followers, but no sales, still means a business that's going to go under. Really good engagement, but no sales still leads to a business that's going to go under. A lot of marketing professionals out there, especially those who've kind of set up freelance, maybe haven't been connected to the wider business goals of a bigger business, they're just not going to make that link. A lot of social media managers out there don't necessarily look beyond the social media content. It is your job to understand how the social media content ultimately leads to profit in your business and impact for your clients. They won't necessarily take an interest in that or really think beyond the things that they're creating in Canva or scheduling for you.

If you try and delegate marketing before you have all of this strategy mapped out, you are most likely going to lose money and you're going to get annoyed with your social media manager. And that's not fair on anybody. And I say this, having done it many times. I've delegated to social media managers, and it has not worked out lots of times, and it's taken me a long time to realise that that's because I was just giving them too much control over the strategy and expecting them to have skills that they just don't have. And that really isn't meant to sound judgemental or to diminish the expertise that they do have in any way, because their skillset is really defined and really good and I don't have it, and I need it. I do have a social media manager, and it makes my life much better, but they're not strategists. Most of them are not strategists, and even the ones that are, don't tend to be very well experienced in mental health services. So, for us, I could not emphasise more strongly, you need to let yourself be in the driving seat, do not allow someone else to take control of your marketing. You are the boss, you know what your clients need better than anybody. So, enjoy the process because you'll be really good at it if you let yourself use your skills to do it well.

I really hope that this has been a helpful and practical episode to help you save money when you do decide to outsource social media. Please let me know what you think over on Instagram. I'm @RosieGilderthorp and I'd really love to hear from you.

Evolve and Thrive: Starting before you're ready - the Supervisor Platform with Natalie Stott

Fri, 24 Oct 2025 06:00:00 +0100

Evolve and Thrive: Starting before you're ready - the Supervisor Platform with Natalie Stott

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. Today I'm joined by clinical psychologist in independent practice, and founder of a fancy new supervision platform, Dr Natalie Stott. I'm really excited to have her here today because we’re going to talk about the journey of putting something innovative out there into the world, especially something that is designed to support independent practitioners. I think this is really important because it's very often a mindset issue that stops people from getting started with something innovative, and I know Natalie is really well placed to talk to us about those mindset issues that crop up and how we can plow through them.

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

Links for Natalie:

Supervisor Platform: supervisorplatform.com

LinkedIn: Dr Natalie Stott

Mastering Therapy Podcast: masteringtherapy.com

Website: www.drnataliestott.com

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

The highlights

Natalie tells us about herself and her practice 01:02
I ask Natalie about the problem she saw that needed fixing, that let to creating Supervisor Platform 02:42
We discuss the importance of supervision and community 06:33
Natalie talks about the difficulties with advertising your services as a supervisor when you are in independent practice 11:36
We discuss the importance of visibility and personal branding 20:08
Natalie talks about how she pushed through the discomfort of being visible 29:25
Natalie highlights the power of feedback 35:40
Natalie tells us how to get in touch with her 39:17

Evolve Your Practice: The map to more income, impact and flexibility

Are you craving more flexibility in your practice?

Maybe you've built something amazing and you're proud of your business, but it's also bringing you to the brink of burnout.

Maybe you want to use your skills differently and create recurring revenue outside the therapy room.

Whether your priority is financial stability or flexibility, or both, adding recurring revenue streams into your business is essential.

I'd love to see you there. You can sign up here: https://psychologybusinessschool.mykajabi.com/offers/fnr6d7si/checkout

Is it time to Evolve? Welcome to the new series of Business of Psychology!

Fri, 17 Oct 2025 06:00:00 +0100

Is it time to Evolve? Welcome to the new series of Business of Psychology!

It's Autumn, so it must be time for a new series of the Business of Psychology.

I'm really pleased to be back behind the mic, and this time I'm going to be sharing my thoughts on the changes that are happening in mental health and the inspiring stories of psychologists and therapists finding fulfilment in new and exciting ways.

We start the series talking about software development with the amazing Natalie Stott, who you might know from her podcast, Mastering Therapy. Over the series, we'll be looking at writing, social media, and unpacking the stuff that often keeps us stuck, in independent practice.

I really hope that this series will be the springboard you need if you've been wanting to evolve your practice into something new that meets your needs and lets you live your personal and professional values, maybe in a slightly different way.

So I'll see you right here in your podcast feed next Friday for the new series of the Business of Psychology podcast.

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

https://psychologybusinessschool.mykajabi.com/offers/avzEAAiw/checkout

Set Up For Success 6: The bad news that broke my practice

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 06:00:00 +0100

Set Up For Success 6: The bad news that broke my practice

“I’ve got some bad news…”

Every military spouse knows that at a certain time of year your partner returning from work and uttering this phrase can only mean one thing… You’ve been posted to hell.

This time I was at the end of 38 weeks of solo parenting a toddler through a rough pregnancy thanks to a “surprise” deployment and had just been told we were moving 300 miles “as soon as” I gave birth.

I don’t think I took it well.

In that moment, the fledgling practice I had built was surely about to crumble around my ears and my children would surely grow up miserable 300 miles away from everyone who cared about them.

My despair only got deeper. When my boy was orn he became ill and teh time which would have been spent packing was spent in hospital, watching his tiny body fight.

Thankfully, he recovered, the move happened, and, after a few very hard months, it turned out I was wrong. Plymouth turned out to be one of my favourite cities, the children found people to love them locally (I mean, they were adorable) and my business flourished as I embraced technology and threw myself into the local business scene. I learned SO much about how to make a business work because of that “adversity” that subsequent moves felt more exciting than threatening.

Now I use that knowledge to help others create practices that bring them the income, stability and fulfilment they need without the added drama of military life!

I've now set up my practice in 4 different locations so, if you are setting up for the first time or perhaps hoping to jump “all in” to your practice, I wanted to share with you the 7 things I’ve learned that I think might help.

Relationships are everything, and business and professional networking are essential (listen to this podcast episode: How to network as a mental health professional)
A specialism creates resilience, fulfilment and marketing super-power (listen to this podcast episode: Why you should specialise - old gold that is still important).
Your fees need to sustain your business for the long term (listen to this podcast episode: How to set your fees in your psychology private practice with “pricing queen” Sally Farrant)
Invest in the things your clients will value the most (EMDR training is a definite yes from me)
SEO is worth spending time and money on (listen to this podcast episode: How to find your ideal clients in 2025: SEO for psychologists and therapists with Chris Morin)
Business is a skill you need to keep learning (don’t be hard on yourself, just get the coach or take the course)
Co-create with your clients; they know what they want and value (listen to this podcast episode: Thinking differently about your practice: A tool to put the client first)

This is a short one from me today but I hope you will find what you need in the links above if you are facing down the overwhelm at setting or scaling up your independent work. I also hope I will get to see you face to face (online) at the masterclass I am running. Details below!

Ready to turn your private practice dream into a reality?

Join my free masterclass, "Set Up Your Practice for Success”," on September 8th. I'll share my 3-part framework to help you create a practice that is professionally fulfilling and financially secure, giving you the flexibility you crave without the burnout.

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

https://psychologybusinessschool.mykajabi.com/offers/avzEAAiw/checkout

Set Up For Success 5: Your website doesn’t work because it was written for your peers not your clients

Fri, 29 Aug 2025 06:00:00 +0100

Set Up For Success 5: Your website doesn’t work because it was written for your peers not your clients

Most of our websites receive very little “traffic” and many of our directory site profiles get scrolled past evey. single. time.

We all know there are weird algorithms and AI at play in the online game BUT the truth is some people manage to get people onto their website or directory site profile and booking sessions with them and others don’t.

The difference is the words.

I got sent to the headteacher at 7 years old for filling up an entire exercise book with illegible short stories on the first day of term. If I could have stopped crying to speak I would have told them that putting words onto a page makes my head quiet. Writing feels like a conversation with myself where I can figure out what I really think without the continuous interruptions of a demanding world. These days I would call it flow.

As a child I thought everyone felt that way, that everyone needed the page to structure and understand their own thinking. Of course, life has shown me that for many, my children included, the page actually veils their thoughts, forcing them to squint and sweat as they try to articulate what is perfectly formed in their minds.

Ten years ago my skills as a writer set me apart and allowed me to achieve success in marketing my practice very quickly. Thanks to AI, and I do mean that, the modern world allows you to use the skills you have as a psychologist or therapist to create website “copy” or a directory profile that speaks perfectly to your ideal client group even if writing is painful for you.

Here are the principles you need to stand out in the online crowd:

Write Like You're Talking to a Client: This is the most important one. Don’t write for your peers! Imagine a real person who has come to you, asking, "How can you help me with X, Y, or Z?" Use natural language. If you struggle with this, try recording yourself explaining what you do to a potential client and then transcribe it. We therapists are great at connecting in person; sometimes it's just hard to get that onto paper so let technology be your friend. Record into chat gpt or gemini and ask the AI to tidy up yoru words.
Specialise, Specialise, Specialise! You cannot speak to everyone in your profile. If you try, you’ll blend into the background and sound generic. Pick one particular client group – your favourite, or the people you've worked with most successfully in the past – and speak directly to them. This is a huge focus in my Start Up Your Practice programme because it's vital for attracting your ideal clients.
Keep Your "Approach" Simple: Say a few confident lines about your experience and literally how you will help them. But please, for the love of all that is good, avoid jargon! Phrases like "safe space" or deep dives into your unique theoretical orientation often sound like gibberish to someone new to therapy. Stick to: "I have 25 years of experience in the NHS helping people with X, Y, and Z. I offer talking therapies like CBT and trauma-focused therapies like EMDR." That’s enough. Really.
Don't List Every Training Course Ever: Your core qualification is key, plus one or two other significant accreditations (like EMDR accreditation) that truly define your practice. A two-day CPD course, while valuable for you, probably doesn't need to be front and centre here.
Make Booking Super Easy & Explicit: Tell people exactly how to book. "Email me to book a consultation." "Phone me on X." Or, if you're using an online booking system (which I highly recommend, like Calendly, Acuity, or your PMS's system), tell them "Click this link to book your session directly." The less friction, the better!
Be Crystal Clear About Your Fees: This is a big one. People get incredibly anxious about fees, and rightly so. Don't make them inquire to find out, and avoid vague "sliding scale" statements. Put yourself in their shoes, they want to know if they can afford you. It’s horrible for everyone if they get to the end of a conversation only to find they can't. Be explicit about your fee.

Use whatever tools you can find to make your life easier.

I think it is a great thing that more talented mental health professionals are able to reach the right clients thanks to modern technology. If it is new to you please don’t be afraid to use AI to help you write. My top tip is to give prompts in several steps.

A prompt for AI could look like this:

Step one: Analyse Dr Rosie’s advice on how to write a good directory site profile from this article (give link to this piece)

Step two: Analyse my CV (attach your CV or current summary of your credentials)

Step three: My ideal clients are (give a full description of your ideal client or link to your ideal client persona document if you are a coaching client of mine!). Please draft a compelling directory site profile/about page that will encourage them to choose me as their therapist following Dr Rosie’s principles.

This will not be the finished product but it can do the heavy lifting of the written word so you can focus on injecting your personality, passion and the language your ideal clients need to hear into it.

I’d love to know if this advice helps you connect more easily with your ideal clients. Let me know in the comments if you use the prompt!

Ready to turn your private practice dream into a reality?

Join my free masterclass, "Set Up Your Practice for Success”, on September 8th. I'll share my 3-part framework to help you create a practice that is professionally fulfilling and financially secure, giving you the flexibility you crave without the burnout.

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

https://psychologybusinessschool.mykajabi.com/offers/avzEAAiw/checkout

Set Up For Success 4: Beyond the Scroll: How to Get Your First Private Practice Clients (Without Endless Social Media)

Fri, 22 Aug 2025 06:00:00 +0100

Set Up For Success 4:

Beyond the Scroll: How to Get Your First Private Practice Clients (Without Endless Social Media)

If you’ve been spending any time in the online business world, you've probably been bombarded with ads telling you to master Instagram, run Google ads, or become a TikTok sensation. And while those can be part of a strategy, I'm here to tell you something that might surprise you: for therapists, often the most effective marketing isn't what's being shouted about by the noisy online gurus.

If you were looking for a therapist, where would you start? Scrolling through Instagram? Probably not. Most of us would start by asking the people we trust: friends, family, and other professionals.

This is where the magic of "relationship marketing" comes in. The best time investment you can make in the early days of your practice is to become "top of mind" for the people your ideal clients are most likely to ask for recommendations. This is simple, ethical, and completely aligned with your skills as a psychologist – it's about building genuine relationships!

But networking feels gross!

Networking feels icky, right? I was totally icked by myself at the end of my first ever networking event. I was heavily pregnant in a room full of suits and had struggled to stutter out a version of my name through the blur of sweat, nerves and heartburn. It felt totally wrong, what was the point of a clinical psychologist talking to two close to retirement managers from a printing company about perinatal mental health?

No one in that room needed ME so after my horrendous introduction, I gave up. I focused on the sparkling water and listening to the local small business gossip. The event was a write-off but I might as well hear some interesting stories. And interesting stories there were! Employees were “taking the piss” left right and centre it seemed, some of them not coming in for weeks on end, supposedly many of them signed off with “stress.”

Because I’d done such a terrible job of introducing myself no one expected me to contribute so I didn’t really, I just asked questions. I don’t even remember what I said or asked about. I certainly didn’t come away thinking I’d been insightful or helpful, just a bit nosey perhaps!

So imagine my surprise when at the end one of the printers came up to me and offered a heartfelt thank you. He explained he’d never considered what “stress” really meant before and that he now understood his own (and I hope his employees!) reactions better.

Well I never? It turns out that not everyone knows everything we know! Psychologists and therapists can offer immense value to the community when we offer our expertise, even informally. Plus when you show (rather than tell) someone what you are like as a therapist, they tend to refer to you. I even got a client off the back of that event.

Building networks is miles more powerful than social media because:

It's a two-way conversation, you will learn from the conversations you have
It opens you up to collaborations with other professionals or small businesses (and we are definitely stronger together)
You become the person that is recommended by a friend or trusted professional

The principles that make it work

1. Local Business Networking: Your Community Connection

Networking can be gross if it is done the wrong way but it can also benefit everyone in the room. Local business networking events are full of people who might know your ideal clients. Go with a specific list of professionals or businesses you think would be useful to your ideal client group (e.g., nutritionists, personal trainers, midwives, physios, yoga teachers if you work in perinatal). Your goal? Find out enough about their business to decide if you would refer to them. If you approach it with an intention to give referrals, you'll very often find they want to refer to you too! If an event isn't attracting the right people, don't keep going back out of obligation. Find a different one next month. Your time is precious!

2. Join Local Mental Health Professional Groups: Collaborate, Don't Compete

I’m a firm believer that there's no such thing as "competition" in our field. Sadly, there are more than enough people who need our services. Building a network of other local psychologists and therapists is invaluable. These are the people you can refer to if you're over-capacity or a client needs a different specialism. They can also become a peer supervision group, offering advice and support when you face tricky situations. You can even extend each other's knowledge. It's about raising each other up in pursuit of our shared vision of better mental health.

3. Link Up with Other Health Professionals: Broaden Your Reach

Think beyond mental health. Who else might encounter your ideal client? Private GPs, specialists, even school nurses. You can find these people via Google or at networking events. Getting their attention can be tough because they're busy. Think about what you can offer them. Could you put together a short, 20-minute talk on a mental health topic relevant to their patients that they might not know much about? For example, I did this with a talk on the mental health impact of severe pregnancy sickness. This demonstrates your expertise and gives them something valuable, making them more likely to remember and refer to you.

My Top Tips for Building Your Network:

Be Reciprocal: Always approach networking with the mindset of giving first. If you want referrals, be ready to offer them.
Your two-liner: Write and learn a simple, two-line summary of who you are and who you help. You can add to this if you are looking for something specific too. For example, I might say “I’m Dr Rosie Gilderthorp a Clinical Psychologist offering therapy for mums struggling with their mental health in pregnancy. I’d love some help with SEO if anyone has a good contact.”
Preparation is Key: What do you want to get out of the event? Are you looking for a new service provider for your business (e.g., a photographer, an SEO specialist)? People are inherently reciprocal. If you work with someone in the group, they and others are more likely to refer to you.
Listen and Help Others: This is where you truly shine. Listen genuinely to others' business problems. Offer your perspective, ask thoughtful questions. Your unique psychological perspective will impress far more than a hard sell. You are good at this already, so just let yourself shine.
Don't Overthink It (or Procrastinate!): You don't need a fancy website or business cards to start networking. A Psychology Today or LinkedIn profile is perfectly fine as a starting point. Just make sure people have a way to keep in touch with you.
Follow Up! This is crucial. Get contact details and nurture those relationships. A quick email, an offer for coffee, or sharing a relevant blog post you've written keeps the connection alive.

So get out there, use Google to find three local networking events and commit to attending one per month from September.

No social media, just real people.

Ready to turn your private practice dream into a reality?

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

https://psychologybusinessschool.mykajabi.com/offers/avzEAAiw/checkout

Set Up For Success 3: Don’t be a bad boss (to yourself)

Fri, 15 Aug 2025 06:00:00 +0100

Set Up For Success 3:

Don’t be a bad boss (to yourself)

Ping… the dread came quickly. Somewhere in my mind I knew I had missed something vital in one of the 15,000 school emails that heralded the beginning of term. Sure enough, I had missed something critical. A school trip…tomorrow.

One of my kids can only go on school trips if I am there to give a helping hand and a reassuring bolster for the risk assessment so making sure my diary is clear and my attitude positive for those days is really important to me. But with three kids, the craziness of the EHCP system and a lot of medical appointments to juggle things often slip through the net.

This is when I am so incredibly grateful that my boss is ME and I am generally a reasonable employer. Thanks to my independent practice I was able to message my assistant to reschedule my (thankfully manageable in number) clients to later in the week and I got to witness my kid laughing with friends in an old castle.

It meant so much more to me than a morning off work, IYKYK.

If you’ve been teetering on the edge of going “all in” in your private practice because you need that kind of flexibility and autonomy in your life I recommend it whole heartedly and I would love to hold your hand as you jump in.

To truly create flexibility you need to start with asking yourself some honest questions about what you want from your practice financially.

1. How Much Do You Really Want to Earn?

Let’s be honest, this can feel a bit uncomfortable to talk about, can't it? As helping professionals, there’s often a pervasive belief (sometimes from our peers) that it’s somehow "wrong" to make good money from mental health services. But let's ditch that shame right now. You are highly skilled, highly qualified, and you deserve to be paid well for the incredible impact you make.

Forget comparisons to others. What annual and monthly income makes all this effort worthwhile for you? What figure will make you feel truly rewarded and respected for your expertise? This isn’t about being greedy; it’s about sustainability. Write that figure down. This is your target.

2. How Much Time Will You Actually Spend Working?

This is where reality meets aspiration. Consider:

Weeks worked per year: Factor in holidays, sick days, and those inevitable caring responsibilities. For many parents, realistically, it might be 40 weeks or even less. My kids dictate that it’s less for me!
Total weekly working hours: This includes everything – client sessions, admin, business development, CPD, supervision. Don't just think "client hours."
Client-facing hours per week: You can't see clients 24/7. There's so much more to running a successful business. What’s your personal threshold for doing your best work? For me, it’s around three therapy clients a day. I can do more, and I did for years, but one of my core values is delivering high-quality service, and that requires time for thinking, formulating, and reading. This number is wildly personal, so be honest with yourself.

Once you have your realistic weeks worked and client-facing hours per week, you can easily calculate your annual client hours. This is a critical number!

3. What Services Do You Truly Want to Offer (Right Now)?

Don't overcomplicate this for your start-up phase. What's the easiest way for you to bring in income? Therapy, supervision, consultation, coaching, groups? What aligns with your current expertise and makes you feel excited? Think "kick-starting," not "long-term grand plan." 90

4. Tally Up Your Costs (Don't Be Afraid of This!)

Now, add everything up. Include:

All the software we talked about (PMS, secure email, accounting).
Your insurance premiums.
A realistic CPD budget (at least £1000 a year, or more if you have specific, pricier training in mind).
An allowance for admin support if your practice grows (e.g., £500/month for a full-time practice, less if you’re working fewer hours).
Your estimated rent, if applicable.

It's just a rough estimate for now, but knowing your costs is empowering. This is why a simple spreadsheet is your best friend – you can see everything clearly.

The Golden Ticket: Your Minimum Fee

With all this information, you now have everything you need to set your fees. Your task for this week is to listen to the brilliant Sally Farrant's podcast episode and work out your minimum fee.

This is the non-negotiable fee you must charge to earn your desired salary from your private work. Knowing this number is pure power. It's your shield against imposter syndrome, that little gremlin that tries to convince you to drop your prices! 97

I know you probably didn't find this in any way easy. BUT I also know that you will thank yourself for this exercise. You can use the numbers here to set yourself realistic expectations and goals for your practice AND you won’t set yourself up to be so over-scheduled you can’t drop everything when you need to.

Getting your fees right is the key to days with enough blank space to cope with the dramas of family life!

Happy number-crunching!

Ready to turn your private practice dream into a reality?

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

https://psychologybusinessschool.mykajabi.com/offers/avzEAAiw/checkout

Set Up For Success 2: Work-life balance, can any psychologist achieve it?

Fri, 08 Aug 2025 06:00:00 +0100

Set Up For Success 2:

Work-life balance, can any psychologist achieve it?

“How much are you paying yourself this month?”

I probably shouldn’t have wanted to throw the lamp at him when my husband asked me that but in all honestly anything not tied down was at risk on that evening.

It seemed so unfair, I’d worked so hard, so many hours in front of clients, in excel spreadsheets, manually typing invoices and (of course) agonising over my inferiority as a therapist and, despite having a huge caseload, I was paying myself far less than I earned in the NHS. In fact, it was looking a lot like minimum wage.

All of the self-flagelating thoughts were running through my head. Had I been reckless with money? Was I incompetent? Stupid? Bad at business?

But the truth was none of those things. I had one core problem: I didn’t take myself or my expertise seriously enough. I didn’t believe (deep down) that I deserved a healthy business so I didn’t educate myself on what it took to create one.

That’s why we need to work on our minds as well as our spreadsheets when we set up in private practice, especially if we need to replace our old incomes.

I’m here to help you do that so you don’t have to *almost* commit a criminal offence to work it out.

What is a “healthy” business?

In the first year of my practice I would describe the business as unhealthy in all areas. It wasn’t meeting my financial needs and it wasn’t allowing me to flourish professionally. In fact, it was leading me closer and closer to burnout as I went to sleep every night wondering how on earth I was ever going to replace my NHS salary in my tiny windows of childcare.

Coming through the other side of this experience made me re-think the platitudes around work-life balance. This experience taught me that when we say work-life balance, what we really mean is are we making “enough money” in the amount of time we want to spend working?

For that reason, work life balance looks completely different in different phases of life depending on your relationship to work, your other responsibilities and your financial situation.

When I was 25, working 50 hour weeks for £26,000 looked like good work-life balance for me. I ran marathons, had an active social life and cats. Fine.

At 35 if you had asked me to work a 50-hour week I would have literally drowned in nappies, school emails and overwhelm.

There is no one-size-fits-all all business template that will bestow you with work-life balance. Finding the right balance for you requires understanding your own personal and professional values, your financial needs and designing a business model that allows you to live with enough of both.

The bit most of us miss

So, rather than giving you practical stuff as you read this on your sun lounger (I really hope some of you are doing that) I want you to stick with the mind today. If you are planning a new independent practice I want you to jump into it really clear on what it needs to give you professionally and financially to allow you to feel healthy.

Here are some journal prompts to help:

Think of 5 pivotal moments in your career. For each one consider - what motivated you at this point of your life and what did this experience leave you with? You might want to think about learnings, passions, experiences, skills and perspectives gained.
What is the common thread that runs through these important experiences? How have they shaped you as a professional?
What abilities do you have that created your best work during these moments? When did you feel that you were most, in-flow and using your natural talents?
Is there anything you should be doing more of in your career now to experience more of that feeling of being in flow and using your natural talents?
How much money would make you feel comfortable, free and at ease? Is it hard for you to answer that question and if so, why?

I hope that gives you some pause to reflect, whether you are starting up for the first time, scaling up to go “all in” after years of juggling employment and business life or just opening yourself up for a potential business re-design.

Let me know if you got any aha moments!

Ready to turn your private practice dream into a reality?

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

https://psychologybusinessschool.mykajabi.com/offers/avzEAAiw/checkout

Set Up For Success 1: 3 things your imposter syndrome tells you to do that you should ignore

Fri, 01 Aug 2025 06:00:00 +0100

Set Up For Success 1:

3 things your imposter syndrome tells you to do that you should ignore

Want to know a dirty secret?

The thing most psychologists and therapists in independent practice fear the most isn’t bankruptcy, being sued or letting their clients down.

It’s each other.

“Peer Fear” is a term many of my coaching clients have used to describe the paralysing terror of snide comments and condescending tone that we become so used to in our professional forums.

There is so much insecurity among professionals and so much “competition” in the journey to become one that we have all witnessed some horrific “put downs” from supposedly trained reflective and ethical practitioners. Comments designed to keep people small and discourage any diversity of thought.

This reality is what stops so many people from taking the leap into independent practice, even when they know they can do amazing things if they are allowed to use their entrepreneurial spirit to do some good in the world.

The good news? I found the antidote and I’m here to give it out freely.

We are the cure if we choose to be.

Let’s build each other up. Like each other's posts, recommend each other to friends, be a cheerleader for other professionals we see doing their best to make a difference out there.

We don’t have to all agree on the best way to make change but if you are properly qualified and using your knowledge to help others I am absolutely glad that you are doing it. There is a mountain to climb if we want to improve the horrifying state of mental health and I’m grateful for every psychologist and therapist I see strapping on their climbing boots.

This is the WHY behind by coaching practice, Psychology Business School. I feel I do more good for the world as a whole, empowering other psychologists and therapists than I could in my own practice. I also get to create an outstanding network of entrepreneurial, innovative professionals who inspire me in every session.

Over the summer, I am dedicating this space to helping those who might be sitting on the fence of independent practice, desperately wanting or needing the flexibility that it brings but feeling too anxious or ashamed to risk taking the leap. Each week I will be here with a simple step you can take forward, sometimes a bit of thinking, sometimes a bit of doing. I hope if you choose to join me here each week you will find the shame lifting and the excitement at what is possible begin to take its place.

Your first task is simply to identify what your imposter syndrome/shame is telling you that needs to be let go of. I will tell you what mine told me back in 2018 when I started up:

It would be better to create a practice website that didn’t have my name or face anywhere on it (shame likes us to hide).
I should avoid networking (because I would obviously be found out there)
Other professionals were my competition (100% peer fear)

All of these stories harmed my practice in its first year.

Take a notebook, journal, Remarkable or your phone notes and just take a minute to reflect on whether there are any similar stories lurking in the back of your mind. I promise you it is these, not your relationship with tech, money or business planning that will sabotage your new practice.

Ready to turn your private practice dream into a reality?

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

10x Is Easier than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Building a diverse and successful associate practice in 2025 with Dr Esther Cole

Fri, 30 May 2025 06:00:00 +0100

Building a diverse and successful associate practice in 2025 with Dr Esther Cole

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. Today I'm joined by Dr Esther Cole, the clinical director and founder of Lifespan Psychology, which is a proudly diverse and thriving associate practice. She's here today to talk to us about what it takes to build a thriving associate practice, particularly in the more challenging context we find ourselves in in 2025. This is a must listen if you are somebody that is thinking about building your team and expanding your impact through associate work. Esther is also an impressive psychologist in her own right. In 2020 she won the BPS Early Career Award for a book that she initiated and co-edited on pediatric acquired brain injury. Esther has a great passion for helping people who may not always feel confident to come forward for therapy and may not always be well served by the therapy on offer, and that's part of the reason that she set up her podcast ‘Breaking Through Therapy’, which I think is amazing.

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

References:

We Should All Be Millionaires: A Woman’s Guide to Earning More, Building Wealth, and Gaining Economic Power by Rachel Rodgers

Links for Esther:

Breaking Through Therapy Podcast: www.lifespanpsychology.co.uk/podcast

BOSS: www.lifespanpsychology.co.uk/coaching

Website: www.lifespanpsychology.co.uk

LinkedIn: Dr Esther Cole

Instagram: @lifespan_psychology

Facebook: Lifespan Psychology - The Diverse Practice

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

The highlights

Esther tells us about her podcast, Breaking Through Therapy 01:20
Esther tells us about herself and her career, and how she came to set up an associate practice 02:39
Esther talks about the most common mistakes she’s come across in associate practice 16:12
I ask Esther how we can encourage dedication from our associates 20:29
We discuss recruitment and how to find the right people for your practice 26:42
We talk about the skills you have to develop as a manager 34:10
I remind people to listen to the Breaking Through Therapy podcast 44:29

Evolve and Thrive Mastermind

Are you a psychologist or therapist with a thriving practice, but you're feeling stuck?

Do you dream of more predictable income or more time for your family and maybe the ability to make a wider impact in mental health?

I get it. You are passionate about helping people, but the business side can often feel really overwhelming.

You've probably tried it all; podcasts, books, maybe even some short term coaching.

But maybe you're still struggling with procrastination, indecision, or just not knowing how to create a passive income stream.

If that sounds like you, I've got something really exciting to share with you. I've been developing it for a while and I'm really excited about it.

It's called the Evolve and Thrive Mastermind, and it is designed specifically for psychologists and therapists like you that have a thriving private practice already, but are desperate to bring some passive or semi-passive income into their practice so that they can make more impact in the world and maybe have more flexibility in their life as well.

This program includes mastermind sessions with me and guest speakers, a Clarity and Values day retreat to hone in on your ideal client and the offers that you should be making to them, and the creation of a personalised business and marketing plan. So you will leave the Mastermind with everything that you need to make your plans a reality. You'll get tangible results out of this. So you're going to come away with documents, like your business plan, your marketing plan, and your sales emails, all written. Plus you'll get ongoing support and a community of like-minded professionals to keep you accountable and raise you up when you need it.

So if now is the time to stop feeling held back by uncertainty, and you are ready to really grow your impact and your income with a clear strategic plan, then the Evolve and Thrive Mastermind is the right place for you. So to learn more and take the next step, come over to psychologybusinessschool.com and look for the Evolve and Thrive Mastermind.

This could be your opportunity to transform your practice and give you more flexibility in your life.

Join the Waiting List for Our Growth Courses and Coaching here.

Permission to be human: How to be a parent and a psychologist with Dr Jade Redfern

Fri, 23 May 2025 06:00:00 +0100

Permission to be human: How to be a parent and a psychologist with Dr Jade Redfern

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. Today I'm joined by Dr Jade Redfern, a clinical psychologist who specialises in supporting parents. With experience in both the NHS and a busy private practice, she's now the founder of the Permission to be Human group for psychologist parents, and is passionate about helping other mental health professionals to thrive in their roles both as business owners and parents.

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

Links for Jade:

Website: www.drjaderedfern.co.uk

Instagram: @drjaderedfern

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram: