What tools do I need to run my practice?

One of the most frequently asked questions I get when people are thinking about setting up in private practice for the first time is what tools do I need to run my practice? So today, I’m going to be talking through the tools that I think are essential for setting up in private practice in 2022, and also some tools which are not essential, but are pretty nice to have, and make your experience and your client’s experience that little bit better. Every tool that I mention is linked to, so I hope you’re going to find it a really useful reference guide if you’re just getting set up in private practice. 

Essential tools for setting up a private psychology practice.

 So what are the essentials for getting set up in private practice? 

 

GDPR Compliant Cloud Storage: The first thing that you need to consider is getting some secure cloud storage that is GDPR compliant. This is where you can store all your documents relating to your practice and your clients. The one that I have tried and tested is Google Drive, which comes as part of the Google workspace. Very cheap, very affordable, and very good in my experience, and if you use it correctly, it is GDPR compliant. You will need to check their help documentation to make sure that you are using it in a compliant way, but they have thought all of that through for you, and I can vouch for it being very, very good, so I do recommend Google Drive. There are other options out there; I know Microsoft do a similar suite, and iCloud also have options as part of the Apple network. I haven’t tried either of those and I don’t know about their compliance, so I am recommending Google Drive, but do your research. So long as you’ve got some secure cloud storage, then you’re all good. 

Practice Management Software: The second thing you need to think about is practice management software. I’m a big advocate for this. This is the stuff which allows you to keep track of all your appointments, invoice your clients, store your notes, your reports, and track any communication that you have with clients. It makes the day to day running of your practice much smoother, and helps you come across as professional to clients and prospective clients, which ultimately allows you to make more money. It also takes all the worry out of things like freedom of information requests, and any legal requests you might get for access to your notes, because everything is there, under your client’s record, whenever you need it, at the click of a button. I really wouldn’t be without mine. In fact, I believe in this so much, that this is the one company that I have an affiliate link for. I’ve got an affiliate link for WriteUpp, which is a private practice management software, which I personally have used for a very long time, and really rate. And it’s the only company I’ve ever had an affiliate link for. So if you click on the link through to WriteUpp, I get a small amount of money from them, because I referred you to them, and I don’t do that for any other company. I just really wish that more psychologists and therapists got practice management software from the beginning of their practices, because I see so many people really bogged down in admin, and really stressed by getting their appointments muddled up, not being able to find their notes, not knowing how to secure things, and how to store things in a GDPR compliant way, and they really don’t need to be. Practice management software, like WriteUpp, starts at about £20 a month, and it takes all of those worries away. The other thing that you can do through practice management software is get your clients to sign consent, terms and conditions, therapy contracts, all of that stuff within the software. So again, it’s all saved in their record, so you never have to dart around in your Google Drive looking for it. I couldn’t recommend it more. WriteUpp is the one that I know so I’m recommending that one, but there are quite a few packages out there, so it is worth having a look around at the market and seeing what best suits your needs.

Email Marketing Software: Another thing that you might want to consider when you first get set up in private practice is making sure that you’ve got some email marketing software. This is so you can start growing a list of people who want to hear from you about any future projects, your Do More Than Therapy projects if you like, and you can contact them in a GDPR compliant way when you’ve got something to offer. Listen to our episode on marketing an online course to find out why you need an email list. And I really would recommend having some software that allows you to store those emails securely and in a compliant way from the beginning of your practice. I’m giving you some links to ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign. ConvertKit is the one that I use, I find it pretty simple and straightforward, so I’m recommending that one. But I’ve also heard really good things about ActiveCampaign, so I’ve got a link there for you to go and check that one out too. As with the practice management software, it’s well worth having a look at all the options that are on the market and seeing what’s going to meet your needs the best, those are just the two that I’ve had recommended to me. 

Secure Email: Another thing that you need before you start seeing clients is a secure email for clients so that you can communicate with them about clinical issues if they arise. For this I use ProtonMail, and I’ve found them to be really good. There are other providers out there; you’re looking for an encrypted email provider, so that you can, if you need to, communicate about clinical issues and send files securely, for example. So I use ProtonMail, I’ve hooked that up with my WriteUpp account so that any emails I send through WriteUpp go from my ProtonMail address, and as soon as somebody becomes a client, we switch to using that method of communication. It also means that it’s an account which other people in my practice don’t have access to. So if your practice grows, you’re probably going to need to outsource replying to inquiries. You might need to give somebody else access to your standard email address (that might be Gmail, or a similar kind of email provider that’s linked to your website), but you might not want to give that person access to client communications, which could contain more sensitive information. So I think it’s worth it from the get go, to have a separate email address for people once they become clients, and ProtonMail is brilliant for that. 

An Email Provider that can link to your Website: You will also need an email provider that can link to your website easily and can be shared with a VA or an associate when you get further down the track. And for that, again, if you’re using Google Drive, it would be wise to use Gmail, because that’s all within the Google workspace package. But of course, you could use Outlook or another of the major email providers so long as it links up and is easy to share with people. 

Accounting Software: I’d also really recommend from early on, getting your accounting software set up. A package like Xero can be used to send invoices, track payments and track your spending so that your tax return is a lot easier and you can do accurate financial forecasting. Most people I know who’ve been in business for a while wish they’d got Xero sooner, because it means you save all of your receipts and your invoices in there so you have no headaches at the end of the year when it comes to tax return time. I don’t even really register, if I’m honest, when tax returns are due, because it’s so easy for me to generate the information that I need and get it to my accountant. So I couldn’t recommend Xero more highly; I love it. But again, there are other providers out there. I’ve just heard that Xero is better than all of them! I’m not an affiliate or anything, but I do recommend Xero. I think it’s great. And it’s the one that Sally Farrant, our Pricing Queen, recommends and uses with her clients, so that’s going to be a good recommendation. 

Decent Laptop or Computer: The final essential tool that you need for your private practice before you can really set up is a decent laptop or computer. You’re not going to get very far these days if your computer takes 10 minutes to load a webpage; it’s just going to make everything you do clunky, even if you’re not offering online therapy. If you’ve got that spinning wheel of doom every time you try and load up your practice management software, for example, you’re going to waste minutes and hours that you simply don’t have. And if you are offering online therapy, there’s really no excuse for your client having to watch you buffer when your equipment is letting you down. So if you’re going to be running a business, take it seriously and get yourself a decent laptop or computer from the get go. If you don’t have the capital upfront, in the past I’ve used services like HardSoft, who allow you to basically get a laptop or computer on hire purchase, so it’s just a few quid every month to get something that works really well for you. And I’d consider that to be well worth it. If you skimp on this and you’re working with a crappy piece of technology, then you’re always going to feel like your practice isn’t worth the money that you’re charging. I think it really says something about your view of yourself and your skills. If you’re working from a laptop that maybe you got during training or maybe is more than 10 years old and is really rickety, don’t do that to yourself. It makes life really difficult and it communicates something a bit negative to your prospective clients. So get yourself a bit of kit that’s going to make your life easier, not harder.

Tools that are “nice to have” when setting up a private psychology practice

So, moving on then to the tools that are nice to have, but not essential when you’re setting up in private practice. 

 

Online Appointment Booking System: The first one I want to talk about is an online appointment booking system. Now, you can get this through your practice management software (WriteUpp off of their own), or you can have a separate one, like Calendly or Acuity. And this helps you to share a simple link with a client or a potential client or somebody that you want to have a meeting with, which they can then book and pay for an appointment using that link straight into your diary. So you don’t have to do that whole back and forth of ‘when can you make it, when can I make it?’ And it can be as sophisticated or as simple as you want it to be. So I really recommend using something like this, so that people don’t have to make a phone call to book an appointment with you. I mean, isn’t it crazy, the world has moved on so much! Even five years ago, when I set up in private practice, I would have thought it was really weird for somebody to book a therapy appointment online. And as a consumer, I wouldn’t have expected to book a therapy appointment online either. But nowadays, people really find it odd if we don’t have these in place. And people are becoming more and more anxious about making a phone call as well. And especially as many of our clients are already feeling anxious or overwhelmed, making it that bit easier for them to book an appointment with you is likely to be the difference between them choosing you and another therapist, particularly if they found you on a directory site, for example. So I would recommend having a link that clients can use to book appointments straight into your diary. Now all the ones I’ve mentioned here, Calendly, Acuity or the one integrated with WriteUpp, do allow you to put terms and conditions in there that people have to look at and accept before they can book an appointment, so you can still make sure that people have read your terms and conditions. A top tip for me if you’re going to offer this link out to completely new clients (so say hook it up on your website or your directory link) is to specify that you are committing to doing an assessment with that client. So for me, I don’t offer free consultations in my practice very often, I tend to have on my website a link that people can book directly for an initial assessment appointment. And I make it very clear that in that appointment, we’ll spend 50 minutes talking about their difficulties and working out if therapy, and indeed therapy with me, is the right thing for them. So they know that they’re only signing up for that one session; this is not a commitment to long term therapy, and it’s just very clear what the limits of that are, because I wouldn’t want people booking straight into that diary and say booking a block of six sessions, when we really don’t know yet whether we want to work together. So that that’s something that you want to consider if you’re setting that up, but I do think that it is well worth it. And it’s more in line with what people expect from other services that they might be purchasing online now. So do check out Calendly, Acuity or the integrated platform within your practice management software. The other thing that you can use these calendars for is creating links for other things. So if you’ve got people that you might want to have meetings with, you know, people that you meet at a networking event that you want to schedule to have a quick call with, you can offer these links to those people as well. And you can choose whether it’s a free event, a paid event, or several people can join the same time. They’re really clever and really flexible. So well worth having a look at what those can do. I personally have found that Calendly and Acuity are more flexible than the one that comes integrated with WriteUpp, so I use Calendly for mine rather than the integrated platform. But like I said, there are pros and cons to all of these; you really need to weigh up which one meets your needs the best but I would definitely consider using one.  

Phone Answering Service: Another nice to have is a phone answering service. So if you want to provide a phone number where inquiries can call and have a quick chat with you rather than using email, and for some client groups that is essential and worth having, then I would strongly consider setting up a phone answering service like the one offered by answer.co.uk, where a receptionist will answer the phone for you and take a message and then email it to you, so that you can batch your responses, basically. Because what I found when I first started in private practice, when I just had it all coming through to my business mobile, was that I would get bogged down for an hour talking to somebody who called me with an inquiry. Even if I knew that they weren’t somebody that I was going to work with, I’d then spend an hour talking to them about who might be the best person. And it would often happen at times when I was actually immersed in doing something else. And it would take me completely off track and away from the task I was meant to be doing. Now what happens is all of my messages get forwarded to my VA, not to me, and she will phone them back and qualify them and make sure that they’re a good fit for me before I even see the referral. And she has a list of other psychologists that I recommend to refer people on to if she can tell from that call that they’re not the right client for me. So if somebody called up about a child, for example, she knows a good child psychologist that I recommend, and she’ll just direct them straight away to that to that person. So that’s taken a huge weight off my shoulders. But even if I didn’t have a VA, and I was still answering all my own inquiries, I would still choose to use an answering service, so that I could then decide, right, this afternoon, I’m going to call back all my inquiries, and do it in one go, rather than having this constant interruption of the phone ringing. So definitely worth considering that. And it can be quite affordable. The reason I use answer.co.uk is that you pay only for the messages you receive. You don’t have to pay a monthly subscription; you just pay a set amount for every message that they forward on to you. That works really well for me, because I’ve been trying, over the past couple of years, to make sure all of my inquiries come in via email. I don’t really want inquiries coming in via the phone. So I don’t make my phone number the first port of call for clients, which is fine for the client group that I work with, but might not be for everybody. There are still a few people that really want to talk on the phone. And so I have the answering service to make sure that those people get a good service.  

LastPass: Another tool which is nice to have, and will help you work faster and more efficiently in your practice is something called LastPass. And this is a tool that allows you to securely share your login details for other tools that you’re using, or websites, anything like that, with somebody else, without them ever seeing your password. I use it to share details for my software packages that I use with my VA. I don’t need to have a separate account for my VA, she can just log in as me by clicking on this button. She never sees my password, it just auto-populates it for her, and she can log in. And the main thing that my VA uses it for is looking into these platforms and downloading my invoices, because she’s in charge of reconciling all of my expenses, and I used to have to email her all of the invoices. Now she just logs in and downloads them directly because we can do that with LastPass without her having to have access to all of the tools I use in my practice, some of which I wouldn’t want to share with anybody else. So that’s a good tip, and it saved me lots of time. And saving your time makes you more money. So definitely a good shout.  

Microphone: Another thing that you might want to consider, but is absolutely not essential, is a decent microphone. In the early days, when I first started offering online therapy, I was wearing this big, clunky headset so that my clients could hear me better and I could hear them better, because I wanted to make sure that for online therapy, we had the best sound quality possible. Well, it wasn’t until I started podcasting that I realised that actually using my podcasting mic, which is quite a cheap mic from Amazon (it’s called a Blue Snowball), gave people a much better experience because I didn’t look like an alien and I still had that really good sound quality. So if you want to invest in anything to make your online therapy feel a bit more premium or a bit more like you’re in the room with people, and you want to ditch the clunky headset, then I would recommend a decent microphone like the Blue Snowball. That’s the cheaper end of the spectrum. Lots of podcasters out there will tell you it’s naff – you’re listening to this, you can tell me whether you think it’s naff – it’s always felt good enough for what I do with it. But there are more expensive microphones out there that do more fancy things, so feel free to check those out. But any microphone that is additional to what is already inbuilt into your computer will enhance your sound quality for online therapy. And I think it’s better to not have a headset on if you want to feel like somebody is really in the room with you. So do go and check out the microphones they have to offer. If you type in podcasting microphone, you’ll find ones that are optimised for speech, and the Blue Snowball is a good one that I can recommend.  

Webcam: In a similar vein, you might want to have a look at a webcam to improve your picture. Again, it helps your online therapy sessions to feel a bit more premium, you might use it for any kind of online marketing that you’re doing, especially as I definitely recommend you have a video of yourself on your website. It’s unbelievable the difference that it makes; if you want to see the difference that it makes, check out my social media videos that are more than six months old, and compare them to the ones I’m putting out now, because I have no difference in my lighting setup, the whole difference that you can see is because of the webcam. I use the Logitech StreamCam now, and it is able to just pull in so much more light, that if you’ve got a problem with a slightly dingy office perhaps, it can really make a big difference to how normal you look to your client. And again, I do think it’s kind of important that that experience of online therapy is as similar to in person therapy as possible, and I think a decent webcam can help you to achieve that. And also, when you inevitably (if you listen to this podcast) go on to create online courses, or do a lot of digital marketing, then having that webcam will pay dividends because you look so much more professional when you’ve got a proper webcam, so do consider that.  

Noise Cancelling Screen: Again, while we’re on a tech note, another thing you might want to consider is a noise cancelling screen. I didn’t pay a lot for this, I think it was about £20 on Amazon, and I’ve put a link to the exact one that I use from TONOR. It just wraps around your microphone, and stops all of those kind of extraneous noises that might be coming from your house, interfering with your sound. Obviously, that’s important for anything that you do on the marketing front; you really don’t want people being able to hear your kids, because sometimes I do have to record these episodes on a weekend, and I can’t really avoid there being three noisy under fives in the house when I do that. For your online therapy, it’s likely, if you’re not using a headset, you’re probably doing it at times when there aren’t other people in the house making noise. But even when there’s no one else in the house, if your doorbell goes and you don’t have a noise cancelling screen around your microphone, your client is going to hear it. If somebody is mowing their lawn outside and you don’t have one of these screens, your client is going to hear it. If your washing machine is on downstairs, and you’re upstairs, your client is still going to hear it, whereas what I have discovered using my very cheap noise cancelling screen that I use for podcasting, is that any of those ambient noises that are not a screaming child, but are otherwise annoying distractions, my clients don’t hear them. I often check with people. Could you hear this? Could you hear that? I listen back to my unedited podcasts to see what I can and can’t hear in the background. And this screen will block out almost everything apart from my older children having a meltdown. So definitely worth investing in that, even if the house is always empty when you do your sessions.  

Backdrop: Something else you might want to consider, but is not essential, is having a consistent backdrop or screen behind you when you do your online therapy sessions. This is just really containing for clients. The way that I do it is I just physically make sure that my office always looks the same. Before I do a therapy session, I have the same books on the shelves that are behind me, the same plants etc. just to kind of recreate that feeling of coming to my therapy room. However, if you’re doing your online therapy from a less ideal location (maybe you’ve got to do it from your kitchen or your living space), you don’t have a dedicated office, or you do but the lights are just horrible in there and it just really doesn’t look very attractive behind you, then you can invest in a backdrop or a screen, which have been around for decades for photographers to use. You can get them really easily on Amazon or Etsy; there’s a big market. If you search something like online course backdrops, you will just find hundreds that you can choose from. Some of them look like bookcases, some of them look like inspirational mood boards, there’s literally everything ,and some of them are just plain backgrounds. Now, I would recommend having a physical backdrop or screen, rather than using one of those zoom virtual backgrounds. Now, it might just be me, but whenever I use one of those zoom virtual backgrounds, I get this weird thing where every time I move my head, a little bit of my real background is revealed behind me. And it’s not enough that anybody can actually see anything, but it’s just like this tiny little sliver. I’ve done webinars for the BPS, where they’ve asked me to use the BPS virtual background, and I’ve been happy to do it, but I find it extremely distracting when a speaker is using a virtual background, and I keep seeing little bits of weird colour emerge around them every time they move. For me, it’s super, super distracting. I don’t really want to do that for my clients, so I would prefer to use a physical screen. And indeed, when I move house, I won’t have dedicated office anymore, so that is what I’ll be doing. I’m already shopping around for ones that gives the feel that I want to give to my clients. So you might want to consider that.  

Lighting: Another thing you might want to consider is getting a light. So specifically, a ring light that sits behind your monitor when you’re doing online therapy can just really help you to again, look a bit more normal. If your lighting is a bit dingy in your room, it could create some weird shadows that make you look a bit odd. I think we might have all had that experience where you’ve been on a Zoom call, you look at your your own picture and think oh, my word, you know, I look really creepy or scary! And that’s usually because there are funny shadows being cast, or it’s just a bit too dingy in the room that you’re in. Again, a very cheap ring light that you plug in via USB to your computer can make all the difference and make you look a lot more approachable, bright and professional. And so I’ve linked to a ring light as well. But there are a million out there that you could have a look at. 

Project Management Software: Our final nice to have is project management software, like Asana. If you’ve listened to the episode with Amy Mitchell, where we talked about Systems for Success in your private practice, you will already have heard both of us talking about how much we love Asana. I couldn’t rate it more. It’s a tool that allows you to break down the things that you’re working on within your practice. So whether that’s something big and recurring like admin tasks, or something smaller and discrete, like updating a website, you break it down into projects, and then you break that project down into individual tasks that you can then assign dates and names to. So if you’ve got people in your team, you can assign that task to other people, as well as just yourself. And you can say what date it needs to happen on. And the brilliant thing about that is it’s got all these clever automations that mean that every day when I log in to my project management software, which I do every single day, it tells me what I decided already in advance I was going to work on that day. So I don’t ever have that feeling where I sit down at my desk and think ‘what should I work on next?’ I already know, it’s already been planned out when I did my quarterly business planning. So I fully recommend project management software. Asana is the one that I use. Personally, I think it’s the best, but I’ve not spent as much time on any of the others. Others might include Monday or Trello, so you can check those out too. But Asana is brilliant, and you can actually use it for free. I use it a lot. I run my whole business from Asana, and I collaborate with my team, which at times is about six people. And I’m still using the free version, I haven’t needed to upgrade to the pro version. So I really recommend  Asana. And if you’re interested in that, then do go and listen to my episode of this podcast with Amy Mitchell. I think it’s called Systems for Success. And it’s also brilliant to have something like that to keep you accountable for stuff you say you’re going to do. So for example, my Asana reminds me every week to post an Instagram reel, because I decided at the beginning of the quarter that that was something that was really important to me, and that focusing on Instagram and growing my reach on Instagram was something I really wanted to commit to. So Asana reminds me of that commitment every week at about the time that I should be posting my Instagram reel. And I just find that things that go in Asana get done, things that don’t go in Asana tend not to get done. And so I really, really recommend that. And again, you don’t have to make any financial investment at all. So there’s no excuse really, for not using that one.

 

So I hope that that has been a helpful roundup of the tools and equipment and software that I think you need to get set up in private practice. I’d really love to know if there’s any tools that you’re using that I haven’t mentioned today that you think are essential, because I’m always adding to this list, and I can always add it into the blog post that goes along with this episode. So please do let me know what tools you use and love, so that I can shout them out and make sure that everybody setting up in private practice is aware of these little things that make our lives easier. Because ultimately, when your life is easier, then you’ve got more bandwidth to reach more people and make more impact in your practice, and that is what we’re all about. 

Having mentioned Instagram, I would absolutely love it if you could come over and give me a follow @RosieGilderthorp on Instagram. I’m growing a bit of a community over there and a bit of a community around this podcast on Instagram. It’d be brilliant to see you there.

Are you setting up a private practice?

Do you sometimes wake up at 2 am worried that you’ve made a terrible error that will bring professional ruin upon you and disgrace your family?

I’m laughing now but when I first set up in private practice I was completely terrified that I had “missed” something big when setting up insurance or data protection.

Even now, four years in, I sometimes catch myself wondering if I have really covered all the bases. 

It is hard, no impossible, to think creatively and have the impact you should be having in your practice if you aren’t confident that you have a secure business. BUT it can be overwhelming to figure out exactly what you need to prioritise before those clients start coming in.

I’ve created a free checklist (plus resources list) to take the thinking out of it. Tick off every box and you can see your clients confident in the knowledge that you have everything in place for your security and theirs. 

Download it now from https://psychologybusinessschool.com/client-checklist