Season 2, Episode 1: How to Get Full Fee Private Pay Therapy Clients in My Area (Even if I Think They Can't Afford It)
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Welcome to the online income for therapists podcast!
what this episode is all about
"How do I get full fee private pay clients, when people in my area can't afford that rate?" One of the things that I feel super important is that we at least know how to get a few private pay clients so that we're diversifying the way that we are receiving our income. So today, I'm going to talk to you about what to do when you think that the people in your area can't afford private pay.
Want to Follow Along…
1:25
I want to start by first questioning the premise. So is it true that there are really no people in your area that can afford your full fee private pay rate? And I think about this, because as therapists, we tend not to be, let's say upwardly noble economically, we tend not to be rich. And what we do know is that people tend to hang out with other people in their socioeconomic bracket. So you might be looking around thinking, "I don't know anybody that can pay that rate." And that might be totally true, but it doesn't mean that those people don't exist. Even if you've done the work to look up the highest and lowest SES socioeconomic status in your area, or even in your whole state and it tends towards low, that does not mean that there aren't pockets where there are higher tax brackets. And that's super helpful to know, because it's far easier to market to a particular zip code or city within your state than it is to market to your entire state. I think a lot about when I was a kid, my parents and I, you know, our Sunday thing to do would be that we would drive around, like higher end fancy neighborhoods, you know, like, wow, look at that house. And I wonder what they do for a living. Are there not any of those neighborhoods in your entire state? And if so, awesome, we can start marketing to those areas. So I just want you to question the premise that, you know, my state is a lower SES state, and therefore, I can't market to higher end, high paying private practice clients. Okay, so let's just start with, can we make sure that that's even true? Before we start living by that parameter. And then let's start thinking creatively about well, how can I find those areas where these folks might be living and then how can I target them with my marketing. One last thing that you can do to make sure that you're not limiting yourself when you're thinking about other people in my state who could actually afford this rate is to think about or even Google, are there concierge medical services available in your state? Because if there are, what that tells us is that there are people paying privately out of pocket for their medical needs. And those same folks may be willing to pay privately out of pocket for your help.
03:48
So that leads us to the next point here, which is there are likely pockets in your state where you could be marketing, but you might be thinking, "Oh, I don't know how to market." So think about this, we want to narrow down your actions. I always talk about we want to do the least effort necessary. So when you think about concierge doctors, for example, if we Google concierge doctors in your state, those are people that I would spend time and energy to network with. So when I think through like, where are people spending money, because people who spend money, spend money. So the people who are willing to pay for a concierge doctor are willing to pay for a medical spa, are willing to pay for private pay therapy, are willing to pay for high end physical therapy. There's a physical therapist that I know who's charging $300 for a 30 minute session. So as soon as you locate those folks, you've also located the people who enjoy and prioritize paying for their health care. So, network with people who are already hooked up with the folks that you would like to target. And you might even go beyond services that are typically covered by insurance. And you know, you're marketing to folks who aren't taking insurance, you might even think about high end hair salons, right? People who pay a lot of money to have their hair done, and listen, that Biologe is not cheap, you know what I'm saying? So folks that are willing to pay for that are also often willing to pay for private pay therapy.
05:26
I want to underline this point, in case you weren't hearing it because I didn't say it so directly. As an online therapist, you are not limited to your city or your county, take advantage of that. Google highest socioeconomic status in your state, you will get zip codes that pop up, we're going to market to those zip codes. Marketing to a particular geographic area is so much easier than marketing to an entire state. So this is a gift and you want to take advantage of this. And just as a kind of like side note, tangent, if you're wanting to set up your practice, like I did mine where I could market to high end clients that could pay my full fee private pay rate and as a result, I was able to free up three to five sessions per week that were completely pro bono. If I wanted to, I could market to folks who needed pro bono using the same strategy. As it happened for me, I had a lot of clients that I had seen in counseling centers with complex trauma, who weren't going to be able to afford therapy anyway and they had found me. So I was able to fill those pro bono spots without having to market. So just another thought, remember that we need to look outside of your state, your city or county, find those zip codes and then market to those. And you might be saying, well, "how do I market to those?" Remember that in Psychology Today, you can list multiple zip codes. At the time of this recording, you can have two addresses. And each address has an additional zip code. So that's four total zip codes. Make sure you take advantage of that. When you are working on your website and you're trying to build up SEO, you can embed zip codes that you know you want to target in your website so that your website's more likely to get in front of people in that area.
07:13
Lastly, we started with challenging the premise. But there are absolutely going to be some states where perhaps the pockets of wealth have already been tapped and there's genuinely no one you can market to in your state, you can hear that I find this hard to believe, but just in case, okay. Or maybe after watching this video, it totally does get tapped. That would be so cool. So, let's say totally tapped. Let's market outside your state. Right. So there are some states while there's one state at the time of this recording, Florida, that you do not have to be licensed in to practice here. There is a telehealth certification or certificate something like that. You can just Google it telehealth out of state provider certificate, I think is what it's called, it is a super fast thing that you can get just as long as your license is in good standing in your state. Again, this is could be time bound. It's open right now. And it's a super small fee. If you have questions about how to work through the details of that, just hop into the Online Therapist Group and Facebook and we'll answer those for you. So, number one, consider taking advantage of easy to practice in states like Florida. Number two, know that there are things called compacts that are being worked on right now so that if you are licensed in one state, you can practice in many states that have agreed to this compact. So psychologists have the PsychPact, there are pacts compacts for most of our mental health professions right now, or at least the profession is moving towards having that. So we are moving towards national ability to practice, we're just not there yet. But I know many people licensed in a single state who through the psych compact PsychPact had been able to now practice in 14 states. Okay, the last thing here isthinking about getting licensed, true licensure in a sister state. So here's a good example for you. In Florida, many people vacation here, and they vacation for like six months out of the year. And the places they come from tend to be in New Jersey and New York, if you're on the East Coast, and Ohio if you're on the west coast. So those three states would be great places if I was trying to expand my network. Let's say I had a super tight niche and I knew that I could charge, I don't know $300/$350 per session, I don't charge. But you know, like I'm super tight niche, I could, let's say hypothetically, then it would be cool if I could access markets in multiple states because it would be harder to find people willing to pay that rate.
09:50
So, I hope those are some helpful tips for you if you're thinking about, like I really need at least a few private pay clients so that I can afford to keep doing insurance-based practice or I'm looking to move to private pay altogether, I hope these tips are really helpful for you!
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