Hello, and welcome to Counselor Weekly! Thanks again for being part of the community!

Here's the short and skinny of today's newsletter:

• Meme of the Day

• Weekly Practice Tip

• Interesting Articles

Meme of the Day

This Week’s Practice Growth Tip

Everyone in private practice wants a full caseload of self pay clients.

Sounds great! The problem: it’s not reality for most successful counseling practices.

Short answer: panel with at least three insurances that are prominent in your area.

I know a lot of private practitioners and most of them accept insurance. The few that don’t have a couple things in common:

• They have been in practice for quite a while and developed multiple referral streams

• Live in an area that is more affluent

• Have a specific niche that people seek them out specifically for their expertise and additional training.

It takes time (if ever) to transition to a fully private pay practice. Accepting insurance is a way to fill your caseload, make 💵, develop more referrals, and work towards developing a group practice (if that’s the goal).

You’ll see a lot of advertising from people selling workshops on creating a full time private pay practice with the clients of your dreams. What they’re really selling is a way for them to make money on your fantasy of owning a private practice. Unfortunately, this seems to be snake oil for the most part. If you disagree, respond to this email with information about a program that is effective and worth the money and I’ll be happy to share your feedback. The reason they are selling this is because they can’t sell the idea of you paneling with insurance because THEY can’t do anything to make that happen for you (and it’s a lot simpler than you might think). Rather than invest money into one of those programs, put it in your business and additional training in your niche.

So how do you panel with insurance? It’s a lot easier than you think! If you have some extra money and limited free time, most billing specialists will charge $150 to get you paneled with an insurance company. What I would recommend is do a little Internet research and find the 3 top insurers in your area to panel with ($450 investment). This way you’re not stressing about getting paneled with a bunch of different insurers and trying to keep it all straight.

You can also panel with insurance companies on your own and it’s free! Just takes some elbow grease. I’ll be explaining that process in greater detail in future posts.

Also, billing insurance has become super easy through software now. You can do it yourself, or pay a billing specialist (usually 4-5%) to do it for you.

Finally, if you don’t want to deal with the paneling process at all, check out my link below for Headway. I’ve used them to contract with the major insurers in Texas and they did all the hard work. I do all the clinical notes through their app and they take care of the rest, including guaranteeing payment!

More on insurance to come!

Headspace XR Made Me Forget How Much I Hate Meditation Tech

Not sure how I feel about this… Headspace has teamed up with Meta (i.e. Facebook) to create a meditative experience using their VR headset.

How Existential Therapy Works

I’ve always been partial to Existential Therapy after reading Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”. If you’ve never read it, I would check it out asap.

Considering an additional source of 💵? Check out this online platform for a quick/easy way to grow your practice with little to no expense.

In Texas, my rates for 53-60 minute sessions range from $84-$129. Keep in mind that Headway takes care of everything at no cost to you and guarantees payment! Click below for more info👇:

Are you an LPC Supervisor in Texas?

Are you an LPC Supervisor in Texas wanting to market your services and connect with potential Associates? Are you recently graduated from your Master’s program and beginning the search for an LPC Supervisor? If so, Find Your Supervisor is a directory for LPC Supervisors to list their information in a searchable index so that potential Supervisees can connect with them and hopefully find a perfect match! There’s even a FREE version! Though you will not get all the robust search capabilities and members only resources you receive with the paid version, the FREE option still allows you to market basic information about your practice.

What do I get in the paid version? The short answer: A LOT! CLICK HERE to access the pricing page to learn more. Just think, if you contract with one new Associate from the site, the PREMIUM plan has paid for itself for the whole year within one month. PLUS, I’m giving you a discount code to take one of my Supervisor Refresher Courses (6 hours of CEs) for FREE as part of the Premium membership. It’s almost paying for itself just with that discount.

If you have any questions, click REPLY to this email and I can answer any questions you have. Thanks again for allowing me this personal promotion! 🙏

Don’t forget you can now receive some cool rewards simply by referring your friends/colleagues/parents/whoever to Counselor Weekly by clicking below: