Summer School Lesson 3: Your business model

Summer School Lesson 3: Your business modelHello 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 SchoolI would love to see you in the community.Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of PsychologyLinks & References:PBS Summer School Sign UpPBS Start and GrowEpisode 41: How to set your fees in your psychology private practice with “pricing queen” Sally FarrantRosie on Instagram:@rosiegilderthorp@thepregnancypsychologistWeek 3: Your business modelIn 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...