private practice consulting for therapists
for the therapist who built something real and is ready for it to actually work.
You went into this field to help people. Somewhere along the way you also became a business owner, a marketer, a bookkeeper, an HR department, and a brand, usually without anyone teaching you how to do any of that.
Maybe you’re just starting out and the idea of building a practice from nothing feels like standing at the bottom of a mountain with no map. Maybe you’ve been doing this for years and something about how you started no longer fits who you’ve become. Maybe your caseload is full but your business doesn’t feel like it reflects you, and you’re not sure what to do about that.
Whatever stage you’re at, the same question applies: what would it look like to build a practice that’s actually yours?
OPENING
the strategies that got you here aren't always the ones that get you there
This is the same question I bring to therapy in nyc, just applied to your business instead of your life. The strategies that helped you survive grad school, get licensed, and start seeing clients are often not the same strategies that help you build something sustainable. What worked when you were small can become exactly what’s keeping you small.
Most therapists weren’t trained for any of this. Graduate programs teach clinical skills, not business skills. So you’re often building the business side of your practice the same way you built everything else: by figuring it out, by being resourceful, by working harder when something isn’t working instead of stepping back to ask whether the approach itself needs to change.
WHO THIS IS FOR
therapists at every stage
This work is for therapists who are ready to build, refine, or grow a practice that reflects who they are, not just what worked when they started.
That includes pre-licensed clinicians thinking about what private practice could look like down the road, and newly licensed therapists trying to get a practice off the ground with a clear niche from the start rather than years of trial and error. It includes established therapists whose growth has plateaued and who aren’t sure why, and therapists who’ve outgrown their original niche or model and need to reposition without starting over. And it includes clinicians who know exactly what they want to build but can’t yet articulate it clearly enough for the right clients to recognize themselves in it.
I also work with therapists navigating the specific dynamics of being first-generation, Asian American, or queer in this field. If you’ve read the page for Asian American clients, the page for queer and LGBTQ+ clients, or the page for first-generation Americans and immigrants, you already know the patterns I’m talking about: perfectionism, people-pleasing, the difficulty trusting your own voice, the pressure to be exceptional. Those patterns don’t disappear when you become the one running the practice. They often just show up in new places: in how you price your services, how you market yourself, who you let into your caseload, and how hard it is to say no.
Most practice-building advice is generic, built for a generic therapist with a generic caseload. It doesn’t account for the fact that the systems that shaped your clients also shaped you, and that those systems show up directly in how you price your work, how you talk about what you do, and how much you believe you’re allowed to ask for.
HOW THERAPY SHOWS UP IN BUSINESS
the patterns that follow you into the practice
One of the things I notice most often, working with therapists on their businesses, is that the same patterns that bring clients into therapy show up in how therapists build and run their practices. Understanding that connection is often the fastest way through.
If perfectionism and self-worth is something you recognize, it probably shows up in your business too: the website that never feels ready to launch, the niche that never feels specific enough, the fear that if your marketing isn't perfect, it means something about you. Setting your fees is often where this becomes most visible. Charging what you're worth requires believing you're worth it, and that belief is often the actual work.
If people-pleasing and boundaries is familiar, it shows up as the inability to say no to clients who aren't a good fit, the discounted rate you offered once and now can't take back, the caseload that's full of people whose needs are easier to meet than your own. Filling your caseload with the right people, not just any people, often requires the same boundary work you'd help a client develop.
If identity and life transitions resonates, it often shows up as a practice that was built by an earlier version of you and no longer fits who you are now. Finding your niche is sometimes less about discovering something new and more about finally letting your business catch up to who you've already become.
If existential dread and meaning is part of your story, it often shows up as a successful practice that still doesn't feel like enough, or a nagging sense that you're doing the right things but for reasons you can't quite name. Marketing your practice becomes a lot easier once you're clear on what you're actually trying to build and why.
And if family estrangement or complicated family dynamics are part of your history, starting your practice sometimes means building something without a model to follow, the same way you may have had to build an adult identity without a script. That's harder. It's also often where the most original work happens.
Most of the time, what looks like a pricing problem or a marketing problem isn’t really either of those things at the surface. Patriarchy devalues care work. Systemic racism tells therapists of color they have to be affordable to be accessible. These aren’t abstract social issues. They’re the invisible architecture shaping how you run your business, how you price your services, and how much you believe you’re allowed to have. Before we talk tactics, we get clear on the foundation, so nothing gets built on top of something that doesn’t fit.
DO IT WITH ME
working together directly
For therapists in private practice who want direct support, I offer consulting across the areas that tend to matter most when building or growing a practice.
- Starting your practice covers the foundation: the business setup, the early decisions, the groundwork that’s hard to get right without having done it before.
- Finding your niche is about positioning, what you offer and to whom, and how to talk about it in a way that’s both authentic and findable.
- Setting your fees addresses pricing, sliding scales, and the conversations around money that most therapists were never taught how to have, including with themselves.
- Marketing your practice covers SEO, directories, referrals, content, and visibility, the practical work of making sure the right people can find you.
- Filling your caseload focuses on the consultation process itself: how to run a consult call, how to assess fit, and how to convert inquiries into the right clients without over-promising or over-functioning.
DO IT YOURSELF
the visible practice
For therapists who want a self-paced option, the visible practice is a course that walks through the same ground as one-on-one consulting, structured as six modules you move through in order, each one building on the last:
- preparing your offer — getting clear on your clinical identity, your values, and the lens you bring to your work before you build anything else.
- picking your offer — defining exactly what you do, who you do it with, and what makes your approach distinct.
- positioning your offer — learning to communicate what you do in a way that makes the right clients feel immediately found.
- pricing your offer — setting your rates with confidence and dismantling the beliefs that keep therapists chronically undercharging.
- promoting your offer — building visibility that feels authentic and reaches your specific communities without feeling like performing.
- practicing your offer — refining what you’ve built as you grow, so your practice evolves with you rather than something you have to keep outrunning.
Most therapists skip ahead, do these out of order, or never get asked some of these questions at all. The course moves through each one deliberately.
For therapists who aren’t ready for either consulting or the course yet, free resources offers checklists, guides, and templates to get started.
A WORKED EXAMPLE
how this site is built
One of the most common questions in marketing your practice is what it actually looks like to build a website that brings in the right clients through search, not just referrals. This site is one example.
Rather than a single generic services page, this site has a dedicated page for each modality I practice: cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, attachment-based therapy, relational therapy, mindfulness-based therapy, and intersectional and identity-affirming therapy, alongside dedicated pages for each issue I work with and each community I specialize in. Each page targets a specific search, speaks to a specific person, and links to the others in a way that helps both the reader and search engines understand the full picture of the practice.
This isn’t the only way to build a practice website, and it isn’t right for every stage. But if you’re at the point where finding your niche means getting specific about what you offer and to whom, this is one concrete model of what that specificity can look like once it’s built out.
meet your private practice consultant
hi, i'm kristie
a licensed therapist, supervisor, and consultant based in New York, and the founder of Uncover Mental Health Counseling.
I didn’t plan to build a private practice. I was working two jobs after grad school with the belief that this was going to be the rest of my life. However, when I finally got licensed, people started reaching out faster than my group practice could absorb them, and I started seeing some of them on the side, telling myself it was temporary. I ultimately quit my full time job while looking for a replacement. But the pandemic hit and the job market I’d been applying to disappeared, and the thing I’d called temporary became my actual practice.
In the first year, that practice made close to half a million dollars. I figured out almost all of it by trial and error, the niche, the pricing, the marketing, the systems, often the hard way, as a first-generation Asian American queer woman with no one in my family who had done anything like it before. What I bring to this work is not a theory about how private practice is supposed to work. It’s the actual experience of building one without a map, and the patterns I’ve learned to recognize in myself and in the therapists I now work with.
WHAT CHANGES
what's different after this work
The shifts in consulting work tend to mirror the shifts in therapy, just applied to your business.
The decisions that used to feel paralyzing, the pricing, the positioning, the marketing, start to feel clearer, not because there’s a single right answer, but because you have a framework for making the decision that’s actually yours.
The patterns that were running quietly in the background, the perfectionism, the people-pleasing, the difficulty trusting your own voice, become visible in how they show up in your business specifically. Once visible, they become workable.
The practice starts to feel less like something you’re managing and more like something that reflects you. The niche fits. The fees feel sustainable. The caseload is full of people you actually want to work with.
And the version of your practice that exists at the end of this work isn’t a generic template. It’s built around who you actually are, which tends to be both more sustainable and more distinctive than anything built from a formula.
fees
investment
different challenges require different levels of support. whether you’re just starting to think about private practice, working through a specific decision, or facing something that needs focused attention, there are multiple ways we can work together.
consulting session (45 minutes) Ongoing consulting designed to help you navigate the decisions of building or growing a practice, from niche to fees to marketing to caseload, with consistent support over time.
consulting intensive (90 minutes) An extended session to explore a specific challenge in depth, whether that’s a pricing decision, a marketing plan, or a niche that needs sharpening, without feeling rushed.
VIP sprint (3 hours) A focused, deep-dive experience for a significant decision or transition in your practice, starting your practice, repositioning your niche, or planning a major change. Together we’ll identify what’s keeping you stuck, uncover the underlying pattern, and build a clear plan forward.
session
$375
45 minutes
intensive
$750
90 minutes
vip sprint
$1500
180 minutes
new here? i offer a complimentary 15 minute consultation to talk through what you’re looking for and figure out whether this is a good fit.
FAQs
what made you start your own practice?
Honestly, I didn’t plan it. People started reaching out to me for therapy and my group practice was in person at the time and didn’t have room to accommodate them. I was deep in people-pleasing and didn’t know how to say no after saying yes, so I looked for an office space and started seeing them on the side. One person became a few. A few became more.
what made you leave your full-time job?
I was unhappy at my full time job. I really wanted to see clients but I had transitioned into doing compliance and utilization review work after my limited permit lapsed. After my full licensure came in, I was stuck in that role. For months, I was buried in paperwork for work that didn’t feel like mine. At some point, I realized I was making quadruple the income from my practice working a quarter of the hours, and that math started to feel impossible to ignore.
what made you go fully independent?
The pandemic. I was still applying for full-time jobs when it hit. Postings disappeared, hiring froze, and more and more people were reaching out for therapy. The door to the old path quietly closed. I stopped applying. Then my dad got sick and i realized how much I valued having the time freedom to be with him. I went full-time, not because I made a bold decision but because the circumstances made the decision for me, and then I had to figure out how to actually run a business. That experience is a big part of why I now help other therapists do the same thing with a lot less fumbling around in the dark.
do you only work with therapists in New York?
No. Therapy is licensed by state and limited to New York, but consulting isn’t a clinical service, so I work with therapists anywhere.
what's the difference between consulting and the course?
Consulting is one-on-one and tailored to your specific practice and questions. The visible practice is self-paced and covers the same general areas at your own speed. Some people start with the course and move into consulting for the parts that need more individual attention. Others go straight to consulting. Either is fine.
how do I know which consulting area I need?
Most people start with a free consultation, where we talk through where you are and what’s actually getting in the way. Sometimes that’s pricing. Sometimes it’s something underneath the pricing question that hasn’t been named yet.