The sky’s the limit when it comes to entrepreneurship. Your unique ideas and skillset may lead you to many opportunities beyond those listed here — but the five below are a great place to start your brainstorm.
1. Building a specialized private practice
Therapists who are currently part of a group practice — or who are already in private practice but struggling to gain traction — may want to consider starting a private practice that fills a specific niche. Whether it’s offering a certain treatment modality, focusing on a specific mental health concern, or working with an underserved population, carving out a specialty may help more patients connect with you. Think about any relevant training courses you’ve already completed or could take to shore up specialized skills, and do some research on the competition in your area. Is there a gap in the market that you could fill?
By defining and advertising a specialty, you may find that marketing becomes easier and more effective, leading to fewer unpaid consultations that don’t go anywhere and more paying clients. You may be able to charge more for your services, too.
And remember, when you’re starting your specialized private practice, working with a partner like Headway can minimize the burden of time-consuming administrative tasks required for launch, such as credentialing.
2. Launching a teletherapy platform
In today’s digital-first world, therapists who don’t offer teletherapy risk getting left behind. If you don’t already offer virtual services, consider adding them to your repertoire and advertising these services online. Headway makes it easy to see patients virtually, with the option to add online bookings directly to your provider directory page.
The benefits are twofold: you'll attract new patients who don’t want to meet face-to-face and you may be able to save time and money if you can work from home on at least some days, saving the time required to commute and potentially cutting down on overhead costs.
You don’t necessarily need a fancy platform to offer teletherapy sessions; even HIPAA-compliant versions of consumer-friendly platforms like Zoom can work. Just be sure your technology is fast and reliable, and brush up on all relevant HIPAA regulations before you start offering these sessions.
3. Creating digital products and courses
If you have particular expertise or unique experience, you can monetize that knowledge by educating other therapists or members of the public. Selling online courses, training webinars, e-books, blog subscriptions, or other types of paid content can be a great way to diversify your income — without having to take on new clients and all the additional administrative work that entails. While creating these offerings does require a lot of up-front effort, these products provide passive income once they’re complete.
Take inspiration from the famous psychotherapist and relationship Ester Perel, who has developed paid digital courses on topics likely to be popular with the public, such as rediscovering desire and conflict resolution for couples. She also offers training sessions targeted toward fellow clinicians.
4. Developing a therapy app or digital tool
There’s a huge market for therapy apps and other digital tools focused on mental health, like chatbots, meditation and mindfulness apps, and digital gratitude journals. If you’re tech savvy, you could consider creating tools that complement your therapeutic services and generate additional income without the need to see more patients. Or, you could partner with developers who are interested in working in this space.
Again, this path would require quite a bit of up-front time, effort, and money. Depending on the ambitions of your project, you may even need to explore opportunities for venture capital or other investment. But, if successful, an app or digital tool could generate considerable passive income over time.
5. Offering consultation and training services
If creating virtual tools or remote training courses isn’t your thing, consider sharing your expertise in person. If you’re a seasoned therapist, you could offer your insights to those just breaking into the profession. Or, if you have a particular area of expertise in your clinical practice, you could design seminars or conference presentations focused on that topic.
Mental health is also a hot topic outside the field. Schools, corporations, health systems, and other types of businesses may be looking for mental health experts who can advise them on initiatives to improve well-being among their people. Or, you may be able to provide content consultation, writing, or editing services to media organizations or companies that create therapy-focused content.
