THREE WAYS to Recession Proof Your Therapy Practice

https://youtu.be/7feCPoaXTuE

I know it’s pretty scary, looking at the news, and seeing the dipping economy, but it’s important that you start making the moves necessary for your practice NOW, to make sure you can make it through this economic dip. Here’s 3 ways you can recession proof your practice today!

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The global economy is about to crash. And I’m going to tell you exactly what you need to do if you’re a psychotherapist, to deal with what is coming right now.

I was watching a video this past weekend and I’ve actually been paying a lot of attention to what’s going on economically around the globe. And I saw something that really startled me. And what I saw was because of the trade war that’s going on, and we need to recognize it is a trade war, that is how the entire world views what Donald Trump is doing by increasing tariffs to the degree that he is.

There are people who work in shipping and they are saying there are no shipments coming into America. They’re saying the shipping containers that usually come are not coming, and the ones that have arrived are empty. And they’re saying in the next couple of months there’s not going to be anything on the shelves to buy. America has got to get ready for what is coming. And it is coming. It is not maybe coming. It is not potentially coming. It is not kind of coming. It is coming.

And it got me to thinking, how do we like recession proof or even depression proof our businesses if we’re in full time therapy practice? And I’m going to give you three things I would do if I were still in full time therapy practice, right now to make sure I could deal with whatever is coming.

And by the way, I still have a therapy practice. I still see clients. I’m just not full time in therapy practice because of all the other things that I that I do. But I was for about 15 years before I started writing books and traveling around the world and doing TV stuff and all that kind of stuff.
Here’s what I would do…

Number one, I would stop thinking like a therapist and start thinking like a creator. And here’s what I mean by that.

You guys probably know if you’ve been following for a while, you know that I’m pretty close to Tiffany Haddish, who is a well known comedian, and when we started working together on one of my TV shows, she’s a producer of one of my TV shows, she kept saying to me, “Elliott, you’re really funny. You should try stand up comedy.” And I would say, “No, I’m not doing that.” And she would be like, “Why not?” I was like, “God, I don’t want to do that.”

She really pushed me about this for like a year. “Like, bro, you’re really funny. You should try this. Like, bro, you’re really funny, you should try this.” And one day she said to me, “Why do you keep saying no? You do know you’re funny. I’ve seen you do a training.” She actually had attended one of my lectures. “I’ve seen you teach. You know, you’re funny.” And I was like, “Because I’m a therapist, Tiffany.” And I watched Tiffany’s brain, like, not understand what I was saying. Like, she did not understand, “Why are you saying no because you’re a therapist? What does being a therapist have to do with any of this? Let’s do this.” And I thought about that for a really long time, and I realized she was right.

Now, a few things, twists and turns have happened, and eventually I accepted one of Tiffany’s invitations and I went and opened for her. And it was one of the most fun, amazing, exciting experiences of my life.

And I share that to say, academics is a wonderful thing. And sometimes so are labels. Like, I love that I’m a licensed clinical professional. I love that I’m a psychotherapist, and I’ve earned that title. But I also realize that sometimes that puts a box around us, and then we are no longer, doing things outside the box. And I think you need to diversify.

So when I say the first thing I would do is stop thinking like a therapist, I mean, I would stop thinking with the limits of a therapist. And this is a time, though it’s very crazily scary economically, it’s also a time of great opportunity, because if you are really good on camera, you can start making YouTube videos and make money from YouTube.

If you knit really well, you could start knitting blankets and sweaters and sell those online. And set up an online store and sell your things.

If you sing really well, you could sing on social media, or you could record content and sell that content.

You can do so many things if you stop thinking like a therapist and start understanding there are other opportunities for me outside of just this box of thinking.

I realized I was being held captive just because I was only thinking like a therapist. And I lived in that box for so long. One of the things I’m enjoying so much about life now is as I’ve broken down that box, I’ve been able to explore other parts of my personality. I’ve been able to explore other parts of who I am and who I want to be.

So right now, I think that’s a very important thing to do because you’re going to need to diversify in this current time.

The second thing that I would do, and it kind of speaks to diversification, but I would add other streams of income related to my skills as a psychotherapist.

So here’s another thing that I know, if you’re watching this video, you are a good writer and you need to understand that. And the reason why I know that, because most of the people watching this video are psychotherapists or psychologists or psychiatrists or coaches or somehow of higher education. And in doing that, you’ve already proven the ability to write at a really high level.

So I’m telling you, write a book. Writing a book makes you an authority of something in an industry, whatever your industry is, it makes people recognize your authority and then they want to hire you to give lectures, to give webinars and all those sorts of things.

So that is the second thing I would do, is I would write a book, and I would use that book to help me build a platform, help me go out and get speaking engagements, and help me do all of those things. And that’s an incredibly important thing. So as you diversify your income, just think about the other things I’m good at that are within this field or out of this field.

Would it be good for me to write a book? To want to go speak and take stages? Can I create a therapeutic game based upon the expertise I have in this field? All of that kind of stuff is going to help you, so diversify.

The third and final thing that I’m going to say in this video that I would do, is I would put a lot of energy and effort into building an audience.

I would start putting content on YouTube, on Instagram, on TikTok, and do content that’s congruent to you. If you see, I post content all the time, you never see me doing a dancing video and you never see me behaving foolishly, but I would do a video or a series of videos or something on my YouTube channel, something to start building an audience and building a platform. Because no matter what happens to the economy, if you have an audience that follows you, you always have people that you can reach out to. And you’re never dependent upon the world to just randomly give you opportunities.

And the scariest thing, and I know this, I was in full time private practice for about 15 years. I know this to be true. The scariest thing about being in full time private practice is your entire livelihood is the dependent upon clients coming to you, or not. And we live in a world where that is becoming very expensive for psychotherapists. Number one, you got to run like ads on Google. People use platforms like BetterHelp, and what they’re actually doing is they’re asking BetterHelp to send me clients. But the trade off is you make way less money.

So this is a very scary endeavor. But if you do the three things I suggested today, you’re going to be recession proofing your business as much as possible, you’re going to be even depression proofing your business as much as possible, and you’re going to be much more in a stronger position to be able to succeed, no matter what happens.