Diversifying Your Counseling Practice

Diversifying a Counseling practice is often said to be key to building a successful business, but Counselors may not know where to begin. It’s a broad term that speaks to many possibilities.

Charmaine Conner, PhD, NCC, sees two sides to diversifying a practice, encompassing both clients and services.

“I’m thinking about from the perspective of, one, are you utilizing inclusive practices to make sure that mental health services are accessible to people who may hold various intersecting identities,” Dr. Conner says, referencing opportunities for expanding into group counseling and other areas of specialization.

In Dr. Conner’s view, Counselors often unnecessarily limit themselves and their practice. She encourages Counselors to consider everything they can do with their degree.

“As far as services go for your private practice, I think that oftentimes Counselors . . . were trained to believe that you got in this profession to be a Counselor,” she says. “And you’re right, you did. And that isn’t the limit of your degree. I want people to understand that there is so much more that you can do with your Counseling degree beyond therapy.”

Dr. Conner has presented on the topic of “Maximizing Your Counseling Degree to Diversify Your Income” as part of the NBCC Foundation’s Building Professional Excellence webinar series. This presentation grew out of her own experience as a practitioner and conversations with students and colleagues.

“When I was a Counselor Educator, I would hear students complain a lot that ‘nobody ever tells us about how to own our own private practice. We never learn about the business side of Counseling.’ I’ve heard colleagues complain about this, and they’re not wrong. We often aren’t taught these things,” explains Dr. Conner. “We just don’t have the space in the curriculum for that as well, as the goal is to prepare you for being eligible for licensure.”

This leaves Counselors often unaware of the options open to them or of the reasons to diversify their professional work.

As Dr. Conner explains, there are many reasons to diversify one’s practice. It can provide financial benefits, enhance services for clients, share one’s expertise, and even help with self-care and burnout prevention.

“I think it’s helpful because you get to reach a wide range of clients who have a variety of needs,” says Dr. Conner. “I had the unique opportunity of being trained in assessments specifically for children and adolescents. It would be very upsetting for me if all of my clients that I see need to be assessed and I have to refer them out to someone. I’m lucky to have this specialized training to be able to give the assessments to my clients, so I’m meeting the needs of clients.”

One aspect of diversifying can be providing training opportunities or developing publications to share a Counselor’s knowledge with other professionals, explains Dr. Conner. Spreading knowledge and experience benefits the profession and clients.

“You might be specializing in a specific area of focus that other people need to know about,” she says. “And it could be a greater service to clients in the future because then you can get some publications out of that. Potentially you could do more speaking, you can expose organizations to it.”

Diversifying also helps to keep self-care practical and effective. A Counselor whose practice involves only therapy may be more vulnerable to burnout.

“When you experience compassion fatigue and burnout, you need to go in another direction,” says Dr. Conner.

If a Counselor’s work only involves seeing clients, taking time off can be a tall order. The Counselor must both see to their clients’ needs and ensure they have sufficient income. This becomes much more feasible for a Counselor who has already diversified their practice.

“If I’ve got to see 28 clients to make income work for me this month, [seeing fewer clients] is kind of unrealistic,” says Dr. Conner. “But if we’ve diversified our services and we’re utilizing  our degree to its maximum potential, maybe I can scale back on seeing clients, and do less clinical work, go into teaching. I could go into consulting. I could go into some research areas. I could be an assessor. So, all these different avenues that people have available to them, you need to make use of it.”

For a Counselor ready to begin diversifying their practice, the options may seem overwhelming. To begin the process, Dr. Conner advises Counselors to look within.

“I think it can be important to figure out what are your strengths and what are your areas of growth,” says Dr. Conner. “That’s really important to make sure you’re operating from your strengths, because if you’re operating for only the purpose of maybe making more money or just not providing a particular service anymore, you’re probably going to run into lots of barriers. So, I would suggest doing some type of strength assessment to figure out what you could potentially tap into.”

This process doesn’t end with self-reflection, though. Colleagues can offer useful insights from their own experiences, says Dr. Conner: “Talk to other Counselors who do things beyond counseling and understand that what works for them may not work for you, but just hearing their story and their journey could be very helpful.”

Dr. Conner uses herself as an example of balancing strengths and needs. She explains that, despite her talent for public speaking, the activity is a source of discomfort. Because of this, she paces herself and finds other ways to employ her talent.

“I just choose not to engage in speaking engagements if I don’t have to,” says. Dr. Conner. “I have to be really passionate about the topic these days. Instead, I use my strength of speaking in a little bit of a different way through consulting. I get to have more intimate experiences and that kind of brings some of the anxiety about speaking down.”

Successfully diversifying a Counseling practice is more than just knowing oneself, however. It also means knowing what clients need and what opportunities exist.

“You’re trained in research,” says Dr. Conner. “Everybody has to take a research class. So do some market research. Do a program evaluation of some sort to figure out what is out there.”

These processes can turn up many options for diversifying, from authoring, to teaching, to consulting, to assessing, and more. With so many possibilities, it’s important not to overextend.

“When I did this presentation for NBCC, I think I listed over 60 different options that people could get involved with,” says Dr. Conner. “I would not suggest anyone get involved with all 60 of those options. Don’t do that. Don’t spread yourself too thin. Choose maybe one or two that you’re really passionate about.”

However a Counselor chooses to diversify their counseling practice, it’s essential to do so ethically, explains Dr. Conner.

“I think about scope of practice,” she says. “I want Counselors to understand you do not need to be engaging in anything that is outside of your actual scope of practice. You need to be very honest about what you have training in. You need to be honest with yourself and others. Having one class in one particular area does not make you an expert, so don’t market yourself in that way.”

Diversifying ethically means following state law and following national professional ethics codes. It also means learning and applying best practices in all aspects of work, including pricing.

“When I do that market research that I spoke about earlier and realize what the competitive rate is for assessments in the field, that’s one factor that goes into that,” explains Dr. Conner. “Another factor that goes into making that decision is: Who am I actually trying to serve, and how do I reach those clients while also making sure they can afford it, also making sure that I can get paid appropriately for my time and my labor?”

When diversifying and offering a wider spectrum of services, it’s important to educate potential clients and customers.

“Sometimes when I’m in the consultant space, I find that I encounter people who don’t know much about mental health and how we are supposed to run things ethically,” says Dr. Conner. “So, informed consent is important for all stakeholders, no matter which area you might go into to diversify your practice.”

Dr. Charmaine Conner is a Licensed Professional Counselor and Approved Supervisor in Texas and Virginia and the founder and owner of Embrace Counseling and Wellness, PLLC. She earned her PhD in Counseling from the University of North Texas, a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology from Arkansas State University, a Master of Science degree in Counseling with a concentration in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from the University of Memphis, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from Arkansas State University. Dr. Conner was selected as a 2018–2019 Doctoral Fellow with the NBCC Fellowship Program. She dedicates herself to providing comprehensive mental health services to individuals across the lifespan, with a particular focus on children and adolescents. She also shares her wealth of knowledge through tailored training sessions for corporations, agencies, and universities, fostering environments that embrace diversity and promote mental wellness for all.

**Opinions and thoughts expressed in NBCC Visions Newsletter articles belong to the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or practices of NBCC and Affiliates.