Starting a group therapy practice
What to know before starting a group therapy practice
If you’re a successful solo therapist, you may be thinking about starting your own group therapy practice. At My Denver Therapy, we grew from a single-therapist practice to one of the largest therapy group practices in Colorado in just 3 years with no debt or investors.
We now have 20+ therapists working with full caseloads—all while still being a therapist-owned, private pay therapy business with room to grow. We did it all while paying our therapists a higher percentage than nearly every other therapy private practice in the Denver area.
Starting your own therapy private practice as an individual isn’t easy, and operating a group therapy practice has its own unique challenges. The good news is that you’re likely already familiar with the basics, like establishing yourself as a business (LLC or S-Corp), getting liability insurance, and finding the right client management software (we use SimplePractice, by the way).
Many of the challenges of starting a successful therapy group practice aren’t easy to spot until you’re in it, so we’re here to help you learn many of the things we learned along the way so that you can plan to build your own therapy group practice.
Becoming a successful group therapy practice
When you’re ready to expand beyond being a single-therapist business, there’s much more to becoming a group practice than a solid business plan, a lot of motivation, and management skills. Here are some of the most important things we’ve learned on our way to becoming a successful group therapy practice.
Understand employment laws
In some states, therapists are either required to be or are typically W-2 employees who are paid a salary. In other states, like Colorado, most therapists are independent contractors or 1099 contractors who are paid as they work. Especially before you have enough clients to support your employees, it can be much more difficult to have therapists who are paid as full-time employees instead of independent contractors because of the significant additional costs involved. This is a critical part of building your business model.
Only 20%-30% of Private Pay clients convert
When you're deciding if you want to take insurance or run a private pay group practice like we do, it's important to remember that only about 20% to 30% of private pay new clients actually start therapy. That means if one of your therapists wants a caseload of 30 clients per week, you may need 150 new client inquiries (or more!) to fill their caseload. Many private practices optimistically assume 50% of new clients will convert. They don't. Make sure your inflows match your ambitions.
Hire therapists with specialized training
Therapists who don't have specialities or have no trainings in specific therapy modalities, like EMDR or trauma therapy, are much more difficult to get clients for. If your team of therapists is made up of people who only want clients who have mild anxiety or are experiencing life transitions, your practice will be competing with literally every other therapy practice in your city. Most clients come to therapy to work on difficult things. You want a team of therapists who can help people with those things.
Know what makes you different and better
At My Denver Therapy, most of our therapists have worked at other private practices or even previously owned their own therapy practices. As a result, we know that most therapy practices in Denver do a 60/40 revenue split with their therapists. Our split is much higher. We also know that many clients never hear back from a therapy practice after contacting them. As a result, we have a policy to contact every single one of our new client inquiries, whether it's by email, phone, or text.
Prepare to become a therapy group practice
Whether you’re thinking about becoming a group practice, or you’re just doing research about working for yourself as a therapist, here are some important things to consider.
If you take Medicaid or insurance, you'll likely have a steady flow of clients. If you're planning to be a private pay practice, you'll need about three times as many inquiries per week as you have therapists. That means if you have 3 therapists, you'll want to have at least 9 new client inquiries every week to keep caseloads consistently full.
Many private practices specialize in something, like trauma, anxiety, or even men's issues. This can be an advantage, but it can also be limiting. For us, we expand our practice's specialties with every person we hire so that we have a therapist for every person who contacts us.
When you're ready to hire, you need a differentiator to attract the right therapists to work for you. Maybe you pay people more, have strong community relationships to get clients, or you have an overflowing caseload yourself to get people started. If you have nothing to offer therapists, they should and will just work for themselves instead.
From new furniture to client management subscriptions, there's a cost to adding new therapists to your practice. Think about how you can use the office space and resources you already have more efficiently to reduce some of these costs.
When you own a therapy private practice, you are providing jobs to other professionals who are depending on you to come through. This means that there are few to no days off, and if new clients aren't coming in, it's up to you to solve it.
Your first hires can make or break your success as a therapy group practice owner. Find people whose values and work ethic align with yours. You and your first couple of therapists will create the culture and drive the clientele for your business.
We provide effective therapy in Denver
As one of the largest woman-owned therapy practices in Colorado, we’ve helped thousands of people living in the Denver area. We provide in-person therapy in Denver, Greenwood Village, and Lone Tree, and we’d love to match you with one of our therapists near you.
We use effective, proven therapy methods and develop personalized treatment plans that are personalized and unique to you. Most of our clients come to us through referrals from friends or family members who have had a great experience with our therapists.
Meet our therapists
My Denver Therapy is one of the largest woman-owned therapy private practices in Colorado with many of the best, most requested mental health therapists in the Denver Metro area.
As a therapist-owned practice with decades of combined experience, we care about seeing our clients heal, grow, and thrive. We’re one of the only therapy practices in Colorado with licensed professional counselors, marriage and family therapists, addiction counselors, social workers, and psychiatric nurse practitioners who actively see new clients. Whether you’re an adult, teen, young adult, couple, or family, our inclusive therapist team is built to specialize in you.
Our practice started with one therapist in a shared office suite, but we’ve grown to help thousands of people in Colorado by providing in-person therapy at our conveniently located Denver Metro area counseling offices in Denver, Greenwood Village, and Lone Tree, plus online therapy for clients throughout Colorado. Because of the way our team works, our therapists also provide consultation for other therapists and private practices in the Denver Metro area.
Our inclusive therapists provide some of the most innovative, effective, and in-demand forms of therapy available today, including EMDR, Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, CBT, and IFS. We also have more therapists trained in Ketamine-assisted therapy, EMDR, and more teen therapists and young adult counselors than nearly every other private practice in Denver.
We know that clients want to find the best therapists in Denver, so our team includes therapists with different backgrounds, specialities, and experiences to help you find the right fit. We’ll match you with one of our therapists who is the best for your goals, location, budget, and schedule to help you get started quickly.
We’re out of network for insurance, Tricare, and are unable to take Medicaid, but most of our therapists’ rates are lower than the local and national averages for therapy.
All of our therapists take a client-focused approach to counseling and approach each session with a commitment to your progress and growth.
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- With therapists and counselors in Denver, Greenwood Village, and Lone Tree, My Denver Therapy provides in-person mental health counseling for adults, teens, couples, and families in Colorado.
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