The Private Practice Specialist

Imagine being able to whip up a session summary to give to your client before they leave the room? This template does exactly that and in under 5 minutes. See what it looks like and grab my template (free)

Using AI to Elevate Service Delivery This Loom shows how to use AI to generate a client session summary document during or right after a session. The creator, Dr. Brooklyn Storm, demonstrates a template that reviews the session goal, what was covered and progress made, what happens next, and suggested resources, with clickable links in...

As you know, I do website audits for therapists and most of the time, clients order them because their website isn't converting and they're unsure why. After doing nearly 1000 audits, there's definitely been a noticeable trend in the amount of AI I'm seeing on them. And that can be a problem.

Google restricts visibility if it assesses your content as thin, generic, spammy, or unhelpful. AI content like that can perform poorly or even trigger spam-related actions which we obviously don't want. But you can use AI to generate content but the content itself should be helpful and add value for users if you want to rank the content (Google, Feb 25).

One of my clients had a lovely website with great design, fonts, logo etc but there was a large amount of low quality AI on it. During our work together, she's learning how to use generative AI effectively. She is still updating the website however, after her last big update, she received feedback unexpectedly from someone that visited her website, telling her how much it resonated with them. And that's exactly what we want.

What I hope you take away from this is that it's not about using AI to write content (or do anything else), it is about the quality of what's being generated. Go ahead and use it but publish it only when you're satisfied that it does two things: adds value and is helpful to your audience. If you'd like to learn more about how to use ChatGPT or Claude more effectively so you can start seeing results too, let me know. I'm more than happy to help.

Two reasons you might think you're struggling to get clients that aren't based on fact Discover the truth behind two of the more common reasons that women in private practice cite for not being able to find clients. You'll also hear what needs to happen in order to change that. Links: Free 15 minute discovery call Free Ultimate Private Practice Community Free 7 day trial of the Therap...

Position Available

Expression of Interest – Male Counsellors Wanted

I am interested in hearing from male counsellors who may be interested in joining a new private practice eHealth counselling service as contractors.

Man Counsellor is being developed as a specialised counselling service focused on supporting men with male-specific issues. We are looking for counsellors with a Diploma (or higher) of Counselling qualification who may be interested in growing with us over the longer term.

To be open and transparent, we do not currently have a client backlog. This opportunity will suit counsellors who are interested in joining at an early stage and growing alongside the service as referrals increase. We have a mature and active marketing system in place, which is generating strong interest, and clients are now beginning to flow through.

This is not suited to someone looking for an immediate full or part time paying role. However, for the right counsellor or counsellors, there may be future opportunities for employment, professional growth, and diversification as the service develops.

Contractors will receive:

✅ No-cost Clinical/Professional Supervision
✅ No-cost training in the specific Man Counsellor service model
✅ The opportunity to be part of a developing male-focused counselling service
✅ Potential long-term pathways as the practice grows

Eligibility for Full Membership with the Vocational Mental Health Practitioners Association of Australia is not mandatory; however, it is preferred.

✅ New graduates with relevant background, skills, and experience will also be considered.

📧 If you are interested, please email [email protected] and include a current CV outlining your qualifications and relevant experience.

I would welcome hearing from counsellors who are passionate about working with men and contributing to a service designed specifically around men’s needs.

Man Counsellor | Video and Phone Counselling | Australia Wide Counselling services for men, or women who want to support the men in their lives. Gain practical support tools. Book online.

One of the fastest ways to see results in the practice is by tracking and because of that, I ensure all of my clients have access to KPI trackers. But, if you're neurodivergent, you might appreciate the value of a spreadsheet but struggle to maintain them. One option is to use visual cues and an example of that is a kanban board. You can find lots of videos on YouTube about them if you're interested or you can make your own version.

One way is to grab some poster-sized sticky notes from Officeworks, draw a few columns on one to set it up and then use sticky notes to track ie a client's pathway / referral pathways / income sources / what's selling or not of your digital products / enrolments to your course etc. Maybe the first column is that they booked a call, the next is your follow-up, etc.

Once set up, you can use a different colour sticky note to represent different things like the type of client, or service, or product, or income stream, or value etc.

Visual tracking works because you get insights fairly quickly into what's working and where the bottlenecks are minus a spreadsheet. This information gives you clarity so you know what to focus on to get it flowing again.

You can buy kanban boards on Amazon (they're also called scrum boards) but they can be expensive. Starting with something simple like this though with the poster post-its and putting it up near your computer or desk will give you a chance to see if works for you before you decide to go all in with the 'real' boards and magnetic notes etc.

But it really doesn't matter so much 'how' you track as much as that you DO. Without information, you'll forever be feeling behind, overwhelmed and scattered because you just won't know what to work on and as a result you'll be either trying everything, not implementing effectively or just completely lost and that's when things can stall. It can make you feel defeated, like giving up, or as if it's all too hard.

And I know sometimes if you're brand new to private practice, you might be thinking that you have 'nothing to track' because you don't have clients but that's exactly WHY and WHEN you really DO need to be tracking. It'll show you what's working and what's not with your marketing for starters. For example, if you're tracking and you're using a board (like my lovely poster down below), you'll be able to see where you're posting, where your inquiries are coming from, how many inquiries are converting or not etc and that's good information. If you don't have a client but can see you have been getting inquiries, that tells us something right there and we can work with that ie do we need to look at what's happening on your discovery calls or maybe is there a mismatch between what someone is expecting you to help them with versus what they hear on the call in which case we have a messaging problem etc.

My most successful clients track their numbers and together we use that information to map next steps. It means they move ahead faster because they know where to put their attention. If you're feeling lost, behind, overwhelmed, etc start tracking even the basics and you'll begin to see what needs your focus. Track things in a way that works for you - there's no right or wrong way. Well, the wrong way is to avoid it or not do it altogether like I did when I first started 🤣

If you have other ways of tracking, let us know in the comments so we can all learn from each other!

Creating passive income, course or even digital products sounds like so much fun until you come to sell them and they flop ( ). To ensure you can hopefully avoid the trillion mistakes I made, you can use the Revenue Roadmap.

It starts with a quick check-in so it can understand your situation and walks you through, step-by-step everything from choosing the program, product or service, delivery, fee etc right through to setting up and delivering your pilot and launch with confidence. This is one of the most comprehensive tools you'll find and my clients love it! One therapist had printed off her completed program and showed me on our call and was so proud of it! You can do it too and this tool will do a lot of the heavy lifting for you so you don't miss a step.

By the end, you'll have your creation battle-tested and ready to sell AND you'll have everything you need to sell it.

Enjoy!

PS: It's also on sale x

Therapist Revenue Roadmap: Passive Income Dashboard for Private Practice (digital) - Etsy This Guides & How Tos item is sold by TheHappyPractice. Ships from United States. Listed on May 8, 2026

The VMHPAA is currently welcoming expressions of interest from speakers and facilitators who can contribute to one of the three streams: Learning Dialogue, Practical Skills, or Lived Experience Stories.
​
If you have a talk, workshop, panel idea or skills lab proposal aligned with peer support and trauma-informed practice, they’d love to hear from you.
​
The Association is also welcoming Poster Presentations and those who authored a book you might like to retail on the day.
​
If this sounds like you please remember to submit your EOI today as today is the cut off.

Being part of this is great for your professional experience, helps you be seen as a leader and contributor, looks great on your professional bio (hello, LinkedIn), on your website and more. It's a great opportunity to be involved.

For more information and to submit an EOI, please click the link in the comments.

Good luck!

And here we go again, stomping on the financial opportunities for women in health services (imho).

The Fair Work Commission has updated the Health Professionals and Support Services Award (it covers psychs, counselling roles and in some instances depending on the role, social workers).

Quick overview:

The changes came about in recognition of gender inequality in the helping professions. The intention as I understand is to boost wages but as I'm interpreting it, it's a double-edged sword. It removes some things and replaces them with others.

Imagine a big playground where all the grown-ups who help people with their health (like psychologists, counsellors, and some social workers) are paid based on how much school they finished.

Right now, the playground has a complicated rulebook about who gets paid what. So, the people in charge wanted to make a new , simpler rulebook. In this new rulebook, the main thing that decides your pay is how much school you completed, called the AQF level. The higher the school level you completed, the more you get paid and the higher pay rises you'll get every year ongoing.

Here’s how it could look:

Imagine a counsellor who has finished a very high level of school like a Masters (AQF 9).

In the new rulebook, they would get a bigger pay raise each year than the counsellors that didn't, somewhere between 18.77% and 31.16% more money.

Now, imagine a counsellor who has finished a lower school level like a counselling Diploma (AQF 5). In the new rulebook, they would get not only a smaller starting salary, but they would also get much smaller pay rises each year, roughly 10-15%.

Broadly speaking: higher school level = bigger starting salary and ongoing bigger annual pay raises.

Some counsellors who used to be paid more under the old rules might get less money in the new system. To stop that from happening, the people in charge have said:

“If anyone would get paid less under the new rules, we will keep paying them what they get now while they’re already working here. Their pay won’t go down.”

That’s the transitional arrangement / recommendation. Basically, you won’t lose money, but new counsellors starting later ie after 1 October 2026, will be paid according to the new school-level rules from what I can see.

The FWC have said they've taken the approach of, 'start lower, stay lower'. Start lower means you're starting work on a lower qualification for lower pay from day one. Then, you get a lower percentage pay rise annually than other qualifications like a bachelors, ongoing. So you'll still get a pay rise, but it'll be more slowly than those above you. And, because the changes mean pay is determined by qualification, the pathway to more pay is via more courses and degrees.

What start low, stay low can look like:

Imagine two counsellors starting work at the same time:

Sue has Diploma of Counselling (AQF 5) → starts at $60,000/year, gets 3% raises each year.

Kim: Bachelor + Master (AQF 9) → starts at $90,000/year, gets 5% raises each year.

After 10 years:
Sue: $60,000 → ~$80,635/year
Kim: $90,000 → ~$146,640/year

Sue is still far behind, even though they both worked the same number of years.

I guess my major concern is for women, especially those looking to enter the workforce because this proposal would essentially mean their locked into a lower pay grade potentially for most of their career, from the outset.

The other issue I have is that many of the women counsellors, psychs and social workers started later. They've already had time out of the workforce, missed out on salary / pay rises / accruing their long service leave hours and their superannuation and now, even though they go and get a qualification, they're again, behind - out of the gate.

Some women opt for a Diploma because it's maybe more affordable compared to tertiary education or because the time commitment is more manageable or because it can be completed more quickly than a bachelors and therefore means they can get out and start earning. So how is it fair to expect them to cough up money for tertiary degrees they may not have for a degree they don't want to do and then how long will it take them to recover from the expense - sorry, the 'investment' - anyway? If she got credit for her diploma and paid 60K for the degree, she'd go from AQF5-7 and average roughly a 12K year increase - so she's still behind for a full five years.

If she didn't get credit for the diploma or if the course she did was more expensive ie 90K for the bachelors, with the jump from AQF5-7, she's waiting just over 7 years to recover financially.

Now, if we go by the ACA's data, it shows 59% so say 60, of counsellors are aged 41-60 years. Do you think these beautiful souls 'aren't' being disadvantaged under this new system or do you think women counsellors, psychs and social workers will be better off?

You can read more and see the updated award at fair work Australia. If you employ health professionals and or support services staff under this award, you may want to check-in with your HR rep to ensure you're across the changes and what they mean for your practice (some people may need pay rises, others may need transitioning, etc). You also may find it helpful to speak with an accountant about the changes if they apply to your practice. The information I've shared here is just my quick read and I'm not an expert or fully across this aka don't rely on Facebook for you info x

PS: I've just used Counsellors here for illustration. If you're a Psych, as I understand the Psych Board has a consultation up about this given their proposed changes to becoming a psych going from 5+1 to a 5 qualification only and they'll be calling it a Bach. This could obviously have a significant impact on your pay etc - please keep an eye on the Psych Board website, the AAPi and the APS for info as it unfolds. Likewise for Social Workers - this may impact you based on roles etc so please do ask the AASW or other reliable sources for info / clarity as things unfold.

Comments like, "I can't believe how easy this was?!" and "thank you for making it so much fun!" were coming through following the practical AI for therapists workshop on Monday.

On the call, we made a unique, branded and high-value client resource and did it in less than 30 minutes (and the attendees had never used this AI and were total beginners). The good things about it are:

💜 they can give them to their clients now and blow their sox off!
💜 they could sell them as therapy resources
💜 they could use them to create passive income
💜 now they know how to make them, they can make as many as they like, however they like!
💜 once word gets out, they're going to become known for them and when you're known, your inquiries and bookings can increase (without social media!)

And they've asked for another so of course I've said yes. If you'd like to come along and join us, i'll pop the link below. It's goodbye PDF, hello new tools! So much fun! See you there

PS: If you’re a Practice Momentum client I have gifted you access 💖

Not sure if you've either noticed or felt it too lately, but it seems to me that more of us are talking about feeling overwhelmed, stuck, lost and confused which is why today's episode is all about why, IMHO, it's perhaps happening more now and of course, what you can do about it if you're wanting to feel differently. Hope it helps x

How to Deal With Overwhelm as a Therapist in Private Practice | Practice Momentum - Private Practice Business Coaching Podcast Book a free discovery callAccess your free 7 day trial of the Therapist Resource HubDiscover some of the trending causes of overwhelm for counsellors, psychologists and social workers in private practice in 2026 and how other women business owners are navigating it successfully. ...