Summer School Lesson 1: Get your private practice essentials in place

Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology Summer School edition. 

Over the six weeks of the English school holidays, we are doing things a little bit differently around here. If you're looking to start up an independent practice in September, then this is the place to be as each week I'm dropping in with a quick lesson and tasks that can be completed in 30 minutes or less from your sun lounger.

By the end of the six weeks, you will feel ready to step into your practice in September, confident that you can find clients and have a safe and viable business foundation. 

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!