Anthony Centore

[Readers, don’t forget to leave your comments below—I reply to every comment or question!] It’s hard to get people to talk about your business…if you’re a restaurant. If you’re a counselor, you’re really fighting an uphill battle, as clients need to overcome the social stigma of being in counseling in order to tell others about your service.

As a counselor, your primary focus in on providing great clinical care. This, of course, is the most important thing you can do to help build your counseling practice. However, while great clinical care is necessary, it’s not all you need, and many good counselors fail at building a private practice.

Every week, for the past several years, I’ve received calls from counselors who’ve decided to begin offering online therapy. I used to respond to these calls with excitement: “Great! Congratulations! Welcome to the club!” I would say. However, more recently I’ve become a bit hesitant with my cheers, “wait a second” I might say, “What are you expecting to happen when you start offering online therapy?”

In the first installment of this article, we investigated the importance of familiarizing clients to a suitable frequency and duration of treatment (steps 1-3). This article concludes our review of this topic with the final 4 strategies for improving client retention. 4) Don’t Practice a Strict “Disorder Model” of Care Counseling isn’t just about mental illness and psychological disorders. It’s about helping clients to live exciting, fulfilling lives.

As professional counselors, we help others. It’s in our DNA, our personalities, and our extensive training. This is usually a good thing. However, it has its dark side too. Over the last 10 years, I have noticed an alarming reluctance among counselors to run their practices so that they benefit their clients AND manage to keep themselves in business. It’s as if counselors have the motto: “If it’s good for me, it’s probably bad for my clients—and it’s also probably unethical.”