Each week, the lessons will go out on this podcast feed, but if you want the weekly tasks, workbooks, private community, and a live session with me at the end of the summer to hold you accountable and make sure nothing stands in your way, you will need to sign up here: PBS Summer School

I would love to see you in the community.

Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links & References:

PBS Start and Grow

Discount code for Start and Grow: SUMMER200 valid until Wednesday the 11th September at 10pm

Episode 146: Data Protection for Psychologists in 2024 with Clare Veal

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

Legal contracts and celebration episode

We have come to the end of Summer School, and as you might have noticed from the title of this episode, I'm combining two rather odd things here today, because firstly, I really want to say what an amazing summer this has been. Thank you so much for joining along with this journey. I have loved watching your budding businesses develop and hearing how your confidence has grown over the past few weeks.

I know September is going to be the start of so many epic psychology and therapy practices, and that is a fantastic thing. But one thing we haven't got sorted yet is your essential contracts and data protection policies, the legal bits. And these are critically important, but they couldn't really be fit into 30 minutes or less, and I did not consider them to be particularly sun lounger friendly, if I'm honest. But I do have a good solution for you for that one. 

Firstly, listen to the podcast that I recorded with Clare Veal, where we talk about data protection contracts and policies, the ones that you need and what needs to be in them. So do go and listen to that podcast. It's really amazing free advice from a leading lawyer in this space.

Then I have to recommend that you consider using your special summer school discount to join us in Start and Grow and get: 

• All the legal training policies and contracts that you could possibly need. 
• My clear step by step course to build a practice that supports your values and rewards your hard work. 
• Twice a month, group coaching sessions that keep you accountable and help you jump over any practical or mindset barriers. 
• Six months membership of our supportive student community where people will cheerlead you when you need a bit of cheerleading and give you feedback when you need a bit of compassionate feedback too.
• Access to our private student podcast so you can learn in your own time and in your own way. 

That takes the total value of the package to over £3000, but the legal documents on their own are normally £495, and you can get all of that within Start and Grow for just £650 for one week only. It's normally much more than that, but I'm doing a big discount for those of you that spent this time with me over the summer.

But you don't have to take my word for how good Start and Grow is. I've got some really kind words that some of the people that have been through the course recently were happy for me to share with you guys. And I think that's really important because why should you believe me, that Start and Grow is great, when we've had hundreds of psychologists and therapists come through the course. I think it's so much more powerful to hear from them. 

So this is what Dr Lauren Breese, who's a clinical psychologist focusing on neurodiversity in adults, had to say: 

"In a few days of implementing some of the strategies and guidance, I had new inquiries to my private practice. Having the community, resources, and specific supervision around growing a business has been invaluable. It's hard to find all of that anywhere else." 

And as you can hear, this feedback gets me a little bit choked up! 

I also wanted to share what Dr Misha Nixon, another clinical psychologist, had to say:

"I was thinking about joining Start and Grow for months before I actually did. I'm so pleased I decided to go ahead as, even though it's only been a few weeks since I joined, it's helped give me focus, provided a safe place to share my experiences with others and learn from others. And it's reduced the feeling of overwhelm and increased my confidence."

And that is really close to my heart because as you know, if you've listened to this podcast for a while, confidence was my biggest problem when I started out in private practice. And having that community around you, and the knowledge and the skills to avoid some of the pitfalls of business can make such a big difference to your professional confidence, which should be sky high because you are all awesome.

And as I mentioned, there are a ton more testimonials and videos and you can go and find all of those on the sales page for Start and Grow, which I'll link to in the show notes. If you scroll down, there's loads down at the bottom.

I also wanted to mention that there is a special discount for summer schoolers, and I consider you a summer schooler, and you can use the code SUMMER200 until Wednesday the 11th of September at 10pm, at which point the discount will stop working. That will get you £200 off the normal price of Start and Grow. And as I explained, the legal documents alone make that a really good bargain. So I would love to come and see you in the program. 

If you have any questions about Start and Grow or anything that we've covered over this summer, please do ping me an email, or if you are a registered signed up member of the Summer School, then please do come along to our wrap up Q&A session on Wednesday the 4th of September at 10am. That is for signed up summer schoolers only and I will be at your disposal to help you troubleshoot anything that's standing between you and the practice that you want to build. So again, thank you everybody for spending this summer with me. I've really enjoyed myself and I can't wait to see what you all do in September.

Each week, the lessons will go out on this podcast feed, but if you want the weekly tasks, workbooks, private community, and a live session with me at the end of the summer to hold you accountable and make sure nothing stands in your way, you will need to sign up here: PBS Summer School

I would love to see you in the community.

Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links & References:

PBS Summer School Sign Up

PBS Start and Grow

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

Week 6: Third parties and insurance companies

Welcome to Lesson 6 of Summer School, our final lesson! Today I'm going to be talking to you about third parties and insurance companies, because often when we start out in private practice, it can be helpful to supplement our own referrals with some from third parties, the most common being associate work for a larger, well established practice, referrals directly from insurance companies, or referrals from case managers representing medico legal firms.

Associate work

Associate work can be great to help you get your confidence and practice processes up and running at the beginning of your practice. In fact, many people choose to stay working as an associate rather than creating their own referrals.

The upside is you get the benefit of steady referrals and the best associate practices offer training and supervision opportunities or other benefits like free room rental when you see their clients. They also tend to handle the admin for you, so it can be very welcome in the scary early days.

The downside of associate work is less money, but less costs as well, so that might actually be fine. Just check that you don't go below your minimum fee that we worked out a couple of lessons ago, and also possible limitations on your own business growth. You need to check an associate contract very carefully for non compete clauses. These are clauses that state that you can't poach clients from the associate practice, which is very much fair enough. But, some of them do have some quite drastic terms in them. The chunkiest I've ever read was, 'You can never work with any mental health client within a 50 mile radius of the associate practice for one year after you finish with your last patient with us’. And I won't get into the pros and cons of that type of clause here, but just be aware, and if you see one that you think might limit your potential business growth in the future, then walk away from it.

Finally, make sure that the associate practice aligns with your values. It can be really uncomfortable working for an organisation that has very different values to you. You went into independent practice to avoid those kinds of culture clashes, so don't put up with it, you don't have to. Only work with practices that you feel excited to work for and proud to work for.

Insurance companies

Now, you probably know if you've been in the professional Facebook groups, that insurance companies often don't pay the best rates. When I have a lot of referrals coming in, I do tend to decline insurance referrals because of that. However, when I was starting out, they were a very important referral stream, and they do continue to be useful when referrals are a bit slow. You just have to make sure that they don't take you below that minimum fee.

You can register for insurance companies like AXA, Vitality and Bupa directly, or you can register with lots in one go through the Private Practice Register, or the Health Code System as it's now called.

It's unpredictable, to be honest, whether these will bring you referrals or not. I have students in Start and Grow who consistently get referrals from the main insurance companies, and I also have students who don't get any. For me, it has been really postcode dependent. Where I am now, I am getting referrals directly from some of the insurance companies, but I definitely didn't in the two previous parts of the country that I lived in. It's nothing to do with me, it is everything to do with what they need in the particular location that you're in. However, I do think it's always worth registering because you might get ideal clients coming to you who want to use their insurance to pay you. I find this is happening more and more, and when we look at the economic trends, more and more people are taking out private medical insurance and they expect to be able to use it. So I think that this is going to become a bigger part of our work over time. Some people might say regrettably, but it is a trend that I'm seeing, so I would get registered. But make sure when you register, you're aware of the cap that they have on their fees, read their terms and conditions, save those terms and conditions on your desktop, or put them somewhere safe where you can check them. And make sure that cap is not below your minimum fee. Also make sure that you set your fee at the very top of what they will pay, because the chances of them ever upping what they pay you are very low. They do not increase their cap every year. They haven't done so for a very long time in a lot of cases, so it is worth getting the most you can possibly get from the beginning.

So my top tips for taking on insurance clients are: 

• make sure you have your provider number, their patient number, and their pre authorization code, and the payment conditions and terms of the insurance provider saved into your practice management system and at your fingertips before you start therapy. 
• You need to know and make sure the client knows what the policy is around missed appointments. For some insurance providers, they will not pay for a DNA but they expect the patient to pay for that themselves. If they don't know that before they miss their first appointment with you, they might well refuse to pay it or be very upset and that's just a horrible conversation. So make sure that everybody knows and you've adapted your terms and conditions to reflect those terms from that particular insurance provider. 
• You also really need to know when you can invoice and when you should expect to be paid because that is slightly different for all of the insurance providers too and you don't want to miss out on the money that you're owed simply because you've got that wrong. 

Rehab work or medico legal case managers

When you take on cases from rehab companies, you're effectively working as an associate for them, so the same advice that I've already given for associate work applies. As an additional note of caution, however, and this is based on my own experiences, please do check the reputation of the company that you're dealing with before you accept referrals. I have seen psychologists and therapists treated really badly by these companies because they're quite prone to going under without paying their providers. They also often have completely unreasonable payment terms. You can't wait 90 days after submitting your invoice, or even worse, 90 days after the end of a whole course of therapy, to get paid. Not if you're in the early days of your practice, and not, to be honest, for most small businesses out there. It actually nearly put me out of business in my first year. So, where possible, check with peers if they've had good experiences of getting paid and working with these companies and triple check their payment terms are acceptable to you before proceeding. Some of them will negotiate with you. I did successfully negotiate down from 90 days to 30. It can be done, but just make sure that you do. And if they're not open to negotiating, walk away because it will be more trouble than it's worth. 

Week six task

Your final task of the summer school:

• Firstly, decide if you want to register with insurance companies, and if you do, then make sure that you save all their documentation somewhere and have it all clearly labelled and easy to access. 
• Then if you think associate work would be useful to you, do a Google search for practices local to you and make contact with three to five that you think align with your values to see if they have any associate work available and to set up a coffee or chat with the founder so you can check if their values fit and they run things in a way which works for you.

Okay, that's your 30 minutes for the final time. Go!

Each week, the lessons will go out on this podcast feed, but if you want the weekly tasks, workbooks, private community, and a live session with me at the end of the summer to hold you accountable and make sure nothing stands in your way, you will need to sign up here: PBS Summer School

I would love to see you in the community.

Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links & References:

PBS Summer School Sign Up

PBS Start and Grow

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

Week 5: Directory Sites

For lesson five of our summer school, we are thinking about directory sites. It's a good idea to be on a directory site or two if you're in independent practice. They can be a good source of referrals, but on top of that, they give you a home on the internet that you can direct people to before you get your own website up and running. They show up in search engines and they can give you a real boost of credibility. 

There are a myriad of directory sites to choose from, and the good news is that most of them offer a free trial, so you can test which ones work for you. 

What I do, and what I'm going to talk through today, is I create a perfect profile, which I save in a Google Doc, and then I just copy and paste it into different platforms that I want to try out.

At a minimum, I'd recommend trying out Psychology Today, Counseling Directory, and Find My Psychologist, but it's worth doing a search for a 'psychologist or therapist near me' and seeing what directory sites are dominating the search results near you, because it is different postcode to postcode, and you really want to make sure you're on those sites that are coming top for your area. For example, where I am, if I type in ‘psychologist in Tunbridge Wells’, the first results are from Harley Therapy, Psychology Today and Counseling Directory. So if I was starting out, those would be places that I'd really want to consider. 

There are some basic principles for a good directory site profile, that if you follow, you're going to be streets ahead of most people out there, because most profiles on directory sites are really awful. I'm going to talk you through some top tips, and then if you're in summer school, you will be able to use my template, which I've put underneath this lesson, in order to craft your directory site profile. 

Write as though you're speaking to a potential client 

If this is difficult and it doesn't come naturally to you, it's actually worth recording your side of a conversation with a new client and looking at the phrases that you use and what you say and how you explain who you are and what you do when you're really in front of somebody. For me, I can do this as a bit of an imagination exercise. As I'm writing, I just imagine that I'm speaking to a real person that's come to me and is asking ‘how can you help me with X, Y, or Z?’ But I know that that doesn't come naturally for everybody, so sometimes it's about recording those real life interactions, because if you've been a therapist for a while, you're good at this, it's just sometimes difficult to get it out on paper.

Specialise

You can't speak to everybody in your profile, you're just going to blend into the background. So make sure that you pick a particular client group to speak to. This is something we talk about a lot in Start and Grow; deciding on that specialism and who your ideal client is, is really important. But for now just pick your favourite type of client, the people that you've worked with most successfully in the past and go with that.

A few lines about your approach

When it comes to talking about your approach, say a few confident lines about this, let them know about your experience and literally how you will help them, but don't go into reams and reams about how your unique approach to therapy is X, Y, or Z. People can't make sense of that if they've got no prior experience of therapy, it's likely that every single word you use will just come across as jargon to them, even though it isn’t to us. I would know what you mean, but we're thinking about the ideal client, and if they haven't had therapy before, things like 'safe space' even, just sound like rubbish to them. So try and steer clear of that sort of thing and just talk about ‘my 25 years of experience in therapy, experience in the NHS working in this area to help you overcome the problems that you're facing with X, Y, and Z. I offer...,’ and then maybe something like, talking therapies like CBT and trauma focused therapies like EMDR. That would be enough. You really don't need to overwhelm people with more, which is probably most often more written for our peers than it is for the ideal client. So steer clear of that and just a few confident lines.

Don't list every piece of training

Give your core qualification and then maybe one or two other things which really say something about the way that you work. For example, if you are EMDR accredited, that's probably worth mentioning. But if you did a two day course in CFT, that's probably not worth mentioning, but if you've done the CFT Diploma, maybe that is. Keep it to core qualification plus maybe one or two other things if they're really important to the way that you work.

Have an easy booking system

Have an easy booking system and make sure it's really explicit. If the person needs to send an email to book with you, tell them to do that. If they need to phone, tell them to do that. Give one way of doing it. If you've set up something like Calendly or Acuity or you're using the WriteUpp booking system that we talked about in the tools lesson, then tell them about that and tell them exactly how to do it.

Tell them exactly what will happen next

If you offer a free consultation, tell them that's what's going to happen and then afterwards you will follow up with your recommendations. However you do it, just make it really clear what needs to happen next and what will happen immediately afterwards.

Make your fees really clear

None of this kind of sliding scale, none of this inquire and then I'll tell you the fee. No. People get really anxious about fees, understandably. Put yourself in their shoes. When I've been inquiring about therapy, the thing that is on my mind is can I afford this and what am I going to pay over the next three months, six months, 12 months, however long I think I'm going to need therapy for. And it's terrifying. People do not want to have a conversation, get to the end of it and have to tell you that they can't afford you. Horrible for everybody. Don't put anybody through it. Make your fees really explicit. 

Use a professional headshot 

If you don't have one, put that on your list of things to get sorted, because people need to feel that they have a sense of who you are and what your presence is like and the photo really communicates that, and it's very difficult to get right on your own. You need to make sure that there are no weird shadows over your face, and that you just look how you really look. So making sure that you've got a really good quality image will really help. There's lots of evidence that people do use those to make decisions about who they contact. So make sure you've got the best image you can possibly get. I really recommend going to local networking events and finding a local photographer to do that for you. It's not that expensive and it can make a really big difference to your profile success. 

So overall, the key here is to write your profile for an overwhelmed potential client, not for your peers. We talk about this loads in Psychology Business School and especially in the Start and Grow programme, and we spend a lot of time giving each other feedback on profiles because even I struggled to do this. After years and years of helping other people with their own, I still struggle to get mine right because it's very difficult to see your profile through the eyes of a potential client when you've got all your own stuff in your own head going on about it. So sharing what you've got for feedback is my biggest piece of advice. And don't worry if you need to tweak it a few times to get it right, because we all do. 

If you're in summer school, then there's a template below this lesson that you can use to create a great profile. And remember, it doesn't have to be long to be effective.

Week five task

So your task for this week: 

• Pick one photo of yourself that you like, or one that is good enough, and use that for now. If you've got a professional headshot, great. If not, get to local networking and try and get one sorted out as soon as possible. 
• Write your profile in a Google or Word document using the template that I've given you here and share it for feedback in our Summer School community.
• Google 'psychologist near me' or 'therapist near me' and note down what directory sites come up and then sign up to all of them, and track where inquiries come from. If you're on holiday at the moment, which I hope some of you are, then you can save your profile as a draft and set it live when you are ready to come back in September, but make sure that you've got some way of tracking where your inquiries come from, and is this profile worth continuing with? And then you only continue with the ones that bring you something useful. But I would give them three to six months to produce a result because it does take a bit of time, often, to get it right.

Okay, 30 minutes, go!

Each week, the lessons will go out on this podcast feed, but if you want the weekly tasks, workbooks, private community, and a live session with me at the end of the summer to hold you accountable and make sure nothing stands in your way, you will need to sign up here: PBS Summer School

I would love to see you in the community.

Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links & References:

PBS Summer School Sign Up

PBS Start and Grow

Episode 41: How to set your fees in your psychology private practice with “pricing queen” Sally Farrant

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

Week 3: Your business model

In this lesson, we focus on making some key decisions that you need to feel comfortable with in order to start seeing clients. And these questions are basically about how you want to work and what boundaries you want to create around your practice. So, a great thing to be thinking about while you're on your sun lounger this summer!

In order to do this properly, you're going to need some way of documenting your decisions and doing a few calculations. Whether you're a spreadsheet person like me or a notebook person, just make sure you've got something to hand so that you can write down your answers as we go and work a few things out.

How much do you want to earn?

First question, the uncomfortable but essential one. How much do you want to earn from your private practice? What income makes all of this effort worthwhile for you? Forget any comparisons or what you think you should expect. Just think about what is going to make this truly rewarding for you, and write down the annual and monthly figure.

How much time will you spend working?

Then think about how many weeks of the year you will actually work. So consider holidays, sick time, unexpected work interruptions due to caring responsibilities. For many parents, you can only realistically expect to work 40 weeks of the year. Sometimes less, for me it is less because of the needs of my children.

If you're the one that is responsible for taking school holidays and sick days off, or you've got any other caring responsibility that means you're going to have to be the person that drops everything if something changes, you need to factor that in. Write down now how many weeks you actually think you're going to be able to work.

Then you need to think about how many hours in those weeks you will work in total, including your admin and your business development time, and write that down. 

Next you need to consider how many of those working hours you want to spend in front of a client? You can't spend every minute in your practice working with clients. There's lots of other stuff that you need to do to run a business successfully. So you most probably already have an idea of what your personal threshold for therapy hours is. I think of it in terms of my ability to do my best work. I know that I do my best work when I have about three therapy clients a day in the diary. I can see more than that and survive, and I have done, and I did do for many years. But one of my values is giving a really high quality service to my clients. I like time to think, formulate, read around. I'm not just showing up and going back to back with clients anymore. I've done it, didn't like it, I prefer working the way that I do now, so I personally don't go above three. But this is wildly personal and it will depend on what other stuff you have going on in your life. So think about what that number is for you right now and write that down. But know that you can always change it if your personal circumstances change.

Now you're going to use the number of weeks that you expect to work and the weekly number of client facing hours that you've come up with to generate your annual number of client hours, and write that down. 

What services do you want to offer?

Next, think about what kind of services you want to offer. It could be therapy, supervision, consultation, coaching or group sessions. We're not thinking about the long term here because this is all about kick starting your practice for September. So think about what's going to be the easiest way for you to bring money into your practice and write that down too.

Where will you work?

Next, consider whether you want to work online or in person or offer a hybrid. If you're choosing to work online, get some quotes for local therapy rooms and estimate the monthly and annual cost to you.

Other costs

Next, you need to add up your costs. Include all the software that we talked about in the last lesson, insurance premiums, add a £1000 a year CPD budget, or more if you know there's something more expensive than that that you want to do. And also add in £350 per month for admin support for a full time practice (less if you're working less hours), and whatever rental you've estimated so far, pop that in as well. Don't be afraid of this. You're just estimating it really roughly for now. And keep those annual and monthly figures to hand.

This is why I find a simple spreadsheet really helpful, because you can just organise all this information and see it really clearly. So now you have all the information that you need to set your fees. 

Week three task

Your task is to go and listen to Sally Farrant's podcast episode, which I've linked to in the show notes, and work out your minimum fee.

This is the fee that you need to charge in order to earn the salary you want to earn from your private work. And you will know that you can never charge below that without compromising on your salary and that knowledge is power, especially when something like imposter syndrome tries to convince you to drop your prices.

So, your 30 minutes this week is going to be spent listening to Sally's podcast episode, which may actually take slightly more than 30 minutes, but is very doable on a sun lounger, so I hope you won't mind, and make those key decisions about your working life and write those answers down in a spreadsheet. I want you to know your minimum fee before you come back for next week's lesson!

Each week, the lessons will go out on this podcast feed, but if you want the weekly tasks, workbooks, private community, and a live session with me at the end of the summer to hold you accountable and make sure nothing stands in your way, you will need to sign up here: PBS Summer School

I would love to see you in the community.

Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links & References:

PBS Summer School Sign Up

PBS Start and Grow

Episode 118: Cyber security: What mental health professionals need to know to protect their practice

Episode 81: Insurance for psychologists and therapists who do more than just therapy with Catherine France

BPS Register of Supervisors: https://www.bps.org.uk/register-applied-psychology-practice-supervisors

ICO registration: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/data-protection-fee/

Sole trader set up: https://www.gov.uk/set-up-as-sole-trader 

DBS certificate information: https://www.bps.org.uk/resources-and-benefits

DBS certificate list of approved umbrella companies: https://dbs-ub-directory.homeoffice.gov.uk/

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

Introduction

Welcome to your first lesson summer schoolers! It's fantastic to have you here. 

I know that when you first decide to start seeing some private clients the setup can be really intimidating but in this course we're going to use your summer holidays to get your foundations sorted so that you can have the most fulfilling, rewarding and profitable September without one ounce of overwhelm.

Every week you're going to get a new lesson with a video or you can listen on the podcast if you prefer - I'll be putting all of these out on the main podcast feed - and a challenge for the week. Each weekly challenge can be completed in just 30 minutes. So it's a very sun lounger friendly course.

Throughout the summer, you can ask me and each other for help and support in our Kajabi community. Just make sure that you tag me so I see it. And because I'm on holiday with kids and all of the rest of the stuff as well, do give me 48 hours to respond. 

Week one: Getting your essentials in place

I know that you're short on time over the summer so in this lesson I'm just going to cut to the chase and tell you what I would do in your shoes based on my experience. Everything I suggest is purely because I found it helpful or my students and coachees in Psychology Business School have found it helpful.

These are the things I think you must do before you start seeing clients and we can get them ticked off now so that you're ready to go in September. 

Insurance 

Professional indemnity insurance is essential. 

This is the insurance that covers you should somebody make a complaint about you as a professional or if anything bad happens to a client while you're working with them and you could be held liable for that. It's really really important to have. 

Business insurance is also essential. Cyber insurance is something I would strongly recommend, but many people would choose to leave that until they're up and running.

So let's talk about professional indemnity insurance first. This is essential for you to practice as a psychologist or therapist in independent practice. Business insurance is not mandatory until you're at the stage of employing people, however, I think it really makes sense to cover all forms of difficulty that could prevent you from running your business.

So for example if you have business insurance and your laptop gets stolen, then you'll be able to get a replacement very quickly. We all know in the early days of a business, finding that £500 to get a new laptop can be really, really difficult. And it's not very expensive, business insurance typically is around £5 a month.

Cyber insurance is something I would definitely consider because we would typically not be very well prepared for any kind of cyber attack that resulted in a data breach, for example. And with cyber insurance, you get access to help and support through that kind of crisis. Now, these things do not happen often, but it's on the rise. I recorded a podcast that convinced me with a cyber expert that we should really be thinking about this. So I'd urge you to listen to that podcast and also listen to the insurance episode that I recorded with Catherine France, insurance expert, to make your decision about what kind of cover and what level of cover you need. But certainly at a minimum, I would get your professional indemnity insurance sorted, and I would think about looking into business insurance as well at this point.

Supervision

Okay, so next thing on the list to tick off is supervision. Choose a specialist who you're excited to work with, who you think is going to be able to bring something that you need to your practice. So for example, if, in the NHS, you really wanted to develop your EMDR skills, but you weren't able to do that, find a supervisor that can help you to do that. If you wanted to get supervision from somebody that's worked independently, perhaps in a particular area that you're interested in, like medico legal, LAC any kind of client group that you want to work with independently, and you're not quite sure how that's going to work, then plug that gap with your supervisor.

The wonderful thing about working independently is that we get to choose our supervisors, and we can look for multiple supervisors and sort of magpie people's expertise to bring into our own work. It's a fantastic opportunity, so make sure that you find the right person. 

There are directories of supervisors. If you're a psychologist, you can use the BPS directory of supervisors, but also use the professional groups. Lurk a bit, search for topic areas you're interested in, and see who's speaking authoritatively on those subject areas, and that will be a really good place to start looking for a supervisor. 

ICO registration

The next thing you need to get sorted is your registration with the ICO. The ICO are the Information Commissioner's Office and if you're based in the UK it is mandatory that you sign up and pay £40, it's usually about £40 anyway, every year. And that just helps them to run their office. 

Basically what the ICO does is provide advice and information around data protection. So they are the people who you can go to and say, I'm not really sure how much information I need to share with the courts from my confidential patient notes, for example, they can be really, really useful. They've got lots of free guides and lots of advice about data protection, and they've also got quite a useful chat function on there, where you can ask a question and then have your answer documented so that you know that if you ever had to prove that you'd thought properly about what to disclose and what not to disclose, you would have that proof in front of you.

Set up as a sole trader

If you've never run any kind of business before, setting up as a sole trader in the UK is extremely easy. You just go to HMRC, it's https://www.gov.uk/set-up-as-sole-trader and  all you have to do is decide on a trading name and register for tax. You may decide further down the track that a different business formation, such as limited company, suits you better for tax reasons, for example. But for now, you're just trying to get set up and your first few clients through the door. So it's a good idea to take advantage of how easy it is to do that in the UK and just get going. Then when you've got some money coming in, you can use that money to pay an accountant to give you advice. 

The only exception to this is if you're still working in the NHS or in any other form of employment, in which case it usually makes good sense to be a limited company straight away. If that's you, then book that consultation with an accountant because it's likely to be worth it early on. So get that in the diary for September. Or, if you want extra brownie points, get it sorted now so that you've got your company formation. It makes it much easier for you to then progress with the other things that you need to do to get your business off the ground.

DBS certificate

Next thing is get a DBS certificate if you don't have one already through your employment. For anyone that doesn't know, a DBS certificate is simply a document that proves that you haven't had any relevant criminal convictions or investigations in a particular time period. So there's nothing very complicated about it, but it is a requirement if you're going to be working with vulnerable people or children, so it's very much something that we need to have in place in independent practice. 

If you do already have one through your employment, then make sure that you're signed up to the update service. Because that means that you can just pay a renewal fee every year and your DBS certificate will never run out.

They're a bit of a faff to get if you don't already have one. If you don't have one already, don't panic. If you're a psychologist, you can use the BPS service in order to get your DBS certificate through them, and I will link to that in the show notes.

If you're not a member of the BPS, there are other umbrella companies that will help you apply, because you do need to apply through a company. So I'll give you links to those in the show notes so that you can find the solution that works best for you. But just make sure that you get that sorted. 

Week one task

So that is all you have to worry about for week one of the summer school. And I know that some of those things will seem daunting, but I promise you if you set a timer and you're intentional about it, this can be done in 30 minutes. Just don't overthink it, okay? Because none of these things need to be perfect at the beginning.

None of these things need to be perfect. They just need to be good enough at the beginning of your practice. You will continuously update your systems and change things as your business grows and develops. For now, we just don't want anything to be holding you back in September. So set that timer, 30 minutes, and get it done.

Alright, so your task for this week is just to sort out all of the above. It's boring, but knowing that you have this stuff in place will allow you to get on with the more interesting stuff in September. You don't want to be faffing around with this when you want to be working with clients. So, set timer, 30 minutes, go!