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Are You a Nervous Tech Worker? Financial Pros Offer Tips for Uncertain Times

If you're in high-tech (or many other sectors) and nervous about your job evaporating. here's a collection of tips from financial professionals that should help reduce your stress and help you make it through to the other side in even better shape.

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5 Emotional Benefits of Starting Your Own New Business

Starting your own business isn’t for everyone. You need to have a service or product to sell that people want to buy. You need to be willing to take full responsibility for your outcome — be it success or failure. You need to have a long enough financial runway to be able to take off before (figuratively) crashing into the fence. However, if you have what it takes, there are few paths in life that offer the emotional (and financial) benefits of working for yourself.

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Are You Missing This Epic Little $10 Million Tax Benefit?

"...nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes," wrote Benjamin Franklin in a 1789 letter. As it turns out, taxes aren't necessarily certain and unavoidable. Here's a little-known way that (some) people can avoid paying taxes on multi-million-dollar windfalls. Even if that's not you, knowing how and why Congress decided this was a good idea can be instructive (though it might cause you to experience a bit of jealousy...).

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Innovative Way to Save Money by Legally Avoiding 401k RMDs

After working a lifetime to build your nest egg, RMDs may force you to deplete your tax-advantaged retirement plans faster than you need or want. There are at least 7 ways to reduce or delay your RMDs, but most throw out the baby with the bathwater. Instead, here's an innovative approach that lets owners of small businesses legally sidestep RMDs for as long as they want. In some cases, it could help workers who don't own the business.

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3 Super Simple Guidelines for Setting the Right Financial Goals

If you own your own professional business, financial goals are crucial for success. However, you need to do it right. First, your goals need to be SMART (and that all-caps is because it's an acronym, not merely "shouting" about its importance). Then, you need to follow these 3 simple guidelines to make sure you’re setting the right goals — in other words, that you’re climbing the right mountain, or (with a nod to my dogs) that you’re barking up the right tree.

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7 Opportunities and Advantages of Starting a New Professional Business

Tens of millions of Americans run their own businesses already. About a million new businesses start each year (though in honesty, about 900,000 cease operations, after an average of 4.5 years in business). Here are the 7 top opportunities and advantages of starting your own professional business (#2 is the opportunity to pick who you work with...). If these resonate for you, it may be time to consider striking out on your own. With a bit of good fortune and good deal of grit, it could be the best professional decision you'll ever make.

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This Small-Business Retirement Plan Can Really Build Wealth

If your practice is raking in high profits, and you want to build wealth for retirement, you should open a small-business retirement plan asap and max it out. Do that for a decade or more and you may easily become a (multi-)millionaire! Here's a comparison between the three most popular small-business retirement plans, along with an example of what your results would have been had you maxed out the best plan for 15 years starting in 2006.

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7 Attractive Financial Benefits and Freedoms of Starting New Practices

Over 30 million Americans felt their best path forward was to start a small business - they probably know something others haven’t thought of (or at least haven’t acted on)! Over the past 11 years, I started 3 solo businesses including a full-time consulting practice. Starting my own businesses brought me multiple attractive benefits, and here are the top 7. If you’re considering doing the same, make sure you have marketable skills, enough resources to tide you over until you become profitable, and the “intestinal fortitude” to ride the roller-coaster without bailing out.

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Are Employee Benefits Actually Worth as Much Money as You Think?

After being laid off from a high-paying job, I decided to open my own one-man company. Things worked out well. Over the decade plus I've been doing it, several companies tried to entice me to shutter my business and come in as a highly compensated employee. Some salaries mentioned were high enough to make me at least consider it. Here's how I calculated the value of benefits to decide if it was worth it to become an employee again.

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5 Super Simple Ways that Help Avoid Burning Out When You're Your Own Boss

When you're self-employed, you can never avoid your boss. You're also on the hook for everything that needs to be done. This almost inevitably leads to taking on too much, stressing, and a variety of poor choices. Unchecked, this can easily lead you to burnout. Follow these 5 simple tips to help you avoid doing that to yourself (and those around you, who suffer as a result of your choices).

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3 Simple Business Mistakes All Practice Owners Need to Avoid to See Success

There are many benefits to opening your own practice and being your own boss. At the same time, it means that you’re responsible for making sure everything gets done, correctly and on time. Paraphrasing a sage saying, “The wise person learns from others’ experience.” Here are the three top mistakes I’ve made myself or seen clients make in their practices. Hopefully, knowing about them will help you be wiser.

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Private Practice Cheat Sheet: How to Plan Your Time for Growth and Success

"How should I plan my time to run my business?" is a deceptively simple question. Inside it hide multiple other, bigger questions. What are your financial goals? Do you want a solo or group practice? Do you want a private-pay-only practice, or do you plan to take insurance? Are you keeping a full- or part-time job while building your practice and potentially beyond then? Do you have other business(es) to run? Do you consult/supervise/mentor others? What non-work activities do you do (e.g., family, volunteering, leisure activities, etc.)? Here is a step-by-step plan for planning your time for growth and success.

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Here Is How to Save Money on Your Business Checking Account Fees

If your practice or small business is just starting out and you can’t afford to burn your cash by giving a big bank an interest-free loan of $5000 per account in perpetuity, or paying account fees, you may be better served going with a smaller bank, likely an online one. This is especially true if you plan to follow the “Profit First” model. In that book the author recommends opening 7 checking accounts for your business across 2 banks, and even says, “When in doubt, add an account.” Here's what happened that had me start going in this direction, and the online bank I chose.

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Should I (Continue to) Take Insurance?

One of the most common (and vexing) questions private practitioners ask is whether to take (or continue to take) insurance. Personally, I fall firmly in the “no” side of that, for reasons you can read in Are You a Walmart Therapist? However, if you see it as a life goal to provide therapy to everyone who needs it, overriding your own wellbeing and prosperity; and/or if you’re completely unwilling to do the (ethical) marketing needed to make sure your ideal clients know about your services so they can choose to call you, taking insurance may be the right choice for you. If you make that choice, here's how you can do it sustainably.

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Affected by COVID-19? Keep Your Small Business Going with These Growth Strategies

Life coach Elena Stewart faced the challenges of COVID-19 to her coaching practice and found a host of ideas and resources to turn this massive upheaval into an opportunity. Here are her best ideas and how she is using them to not only survive, but actually grow her practice in these unprecedented times.

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3 Things You Need to Do to Conquer the New Normal

As upside-down as it may feel to us, it looks like the current situation isn’t going back anytime soon to what we used to call normal. This means it’s time to embrace it as our new normal. There are three arenas for mastering this new situation, making it sustainable for the long haul, and even making it work to your advantage. Here are the three arenas with specific suggestions.

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No Myth – You Absolutely Can Create Passive Income

Unless it’s a matter of someone gifting you cash or a winning lottery ticket, there’s no way you can create a stream of passive income without investing time, money, and expertise upfront. That’s not the point, however. The point is that while creating passive income does take that upfront investment, once you’ve invested in it, you can reap the benefits over the long haul. You can’t, and shouldn’t, expect to have a stream of cash come in without ever providing any benefit to anyone. Once you accept this, you’re ready to build the machine that will bring in truly passive income at some future point, with little or no additional time and effort spent by you. Here are seven plausible paths for building such a future edifice for yourself and your family.

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4 Reasons to not Charge More (and How to Change Things)

I’m a big believer that professionals in general, and therapists especially, undercharge for their services far more often than not. That was one of the main reasons why I asked a while back, “Are You a Walmart Therapist?” Since nearly a thousand people have already read that article, it seems to have struck a nerve. Today, however, I’m asking the opposite question. Are you already charging as much as you should, if not more? Here are 4 signs this may be the case, and what to do to change that situation.

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If You’re Ready to Expand – Here’s Your Detailed 28-Step Checklist Before You Hire Associates

Hiring employees isn’t something you do on a whim. It’s a long process with many critical and non-trivial steps. The right support team will help you avoid expensive missteps. It also requires a significant investment of your time and money. Make sure you know in advance what’s needed, so you have all the needed resources available and don’t get stuck halfway through the process. Here's a 28-step checklist to help you organize your thoughts.

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18 Sensible (Financial) Coronavirus Response Ideas for Your Practice

If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past several weeks, you’ve been bombarded with stories about COVID-19 caused by the novel coronavirus. We’re all watching with concern, if not fear, a rapidly escalating health crisis with an expanding geographic footprint and ever-increasing numbers of people testing positive for the virus, people becoming severely ill, and people dying. My wife Risa and I were talking about what she should do around her practice as a result - should she close the office and do teletherapy only? Should she keep the office open and put bottles of hand sanitizer everywhere (if she can even find any after the panic-buying of the past few weeks)? I then wrote a whole article about sensible responses for your practice. Just one problem - I'm not an epidemiologist, and you can find online the same things I find there so what's the point of my writing it? Then Risa suggested that I concentrate on what is in my wheelhouse and offer you a financial coronavirus response plan for your practice. So, with thanks to Risa for the idea, here it is.

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Here's What You Need to Know About Business Credit Cards

As a small-business owner (and if you have a private practice, you own a business), you need a credit card. Whether it’s to pay for extra memory in that sleek new smart phone, place orders on Amazon, or just so you don’t have to carry a lot of cash or an unwieldy checkbook to the store when you buy supplies. The question is, should you use a personal credit card, or get a business credit card?

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A Simple Free Way to Reach More Clients

According to Business Insider, a large majority of economists expect a recession to occur by the end of 2021, with most of them expecting it in 2020. This is bad news especially for private-pay-only therapy practices, as client traffic will probably slow when the economy contracts, the outlook is gloomy, people get laid off, and wages stagnate or even drop. My work with therapists shows that rent is typically their largest ongoing expense, or close to it. This has therapists make significant decisions regarding their practice based to a great extent on the rent they’d have to pay. Covering rent becomes even more challenging and anxiety-provoking when the economy slows and client traffic drops as a result. But what if I could suggest a simple and (mostly) free way for you to reach double the prospective clients that you reach now?

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Do You Know How to Speak to Your Ideal Client?

Imagine that it’s morning and you’re sipping a delicious cappuccino (or tea, if you don’t share my coffee vice). You open your calendar to see what your day will be like. Oh look, your first appointment is with Jane. That’s so great. You love working with her because there’s never any BS. You don’t have to struggle to get her to share what’s going on. It doesn’t hurt that she’s such a nice person, you know, someone you’d have been happy to have as a friend (if she wasn’t a client, that is). After Jane, it’s Sarah. Another great client. Then lunch, followed by appointments with Tim and then Sam. Two more clients you love working with. After that, you have to catch up on some notes (sigh…) but not too many, and then you’re done for the day! What would it feel like to know that’s what your day will be like? What would it feel like if that was your day every day at your practice? How would you like knowing you’ll only be working with people who let you make the biggest difference with the least struggle? That’s what happens when you focus on your ideal clients. As a bonus, they’re also the ones most likely to want to be your clients.

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Second Tip to Get More Clients from Your Website – Add Relevant, Fresh, and Valuable Content

You’re walking along a familiar city street. You’re approaching a bakery you know and like. Still, you’re in  a bit of a rush so you’ll keep walking past it. Suddenly, your nose gets tickled by the amazing scent of freshly baked bread. You can’t resist and go in. What just happened? The combination of knowing and liking the bakery, and knowing and experiencing the scent of fresh bread overrode your initial intention to walk by. If your website can emulate that experience for your prospective clients, they’ll spend time there. Over time, assuming they find your fresh content valuable, they'll start trusting you as an authority, recommend you to others, and be more likely to reach out when they need your services. Here's what content's most likely to work.

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First Tip to Get More Clients from Your Website – Show Up

A website doesn’t guarantee clients, but having no website (almost) guarantees a struggling practice. As I mentioned before, almost all therapy websites I’ve seen have major issues that prevent them from getting as many clients as possible. But our first deep dive tip talks to those of you who haven’t yet put up your own website. As long as you haven’t done that, how would most clients even find you? If you do already have a website live, use my checklist to make sure your site ticks all the boxes.

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10 Tips to Get More Clients from Your Website

If you have a practice, you have a website (you do, right?). However, almost all therapy sites out there have major issues. Here are 10 tips on improving your site so your ideal clients find and contact you. These include “search engine optimization” (SEO) that gets you ranked higher. If your site isn't optimized, you're whispering in a loud auditorium – not very effective. However, just showing up in search results doesn’t guarantee your ideal client will call. For that, he has to feel understood when visiting your site, which the rest of the tips address.

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Financial and Other Business Routines Can Save Your Practice

Do you feel overwhelmed by too many moving parts, too many reports, too many things to track in your private practice? Do your keep missing payment due dates and/or feel sure that many payments owed to you disappear and you never even know? When tax time arrives, are you sure your accountant hates you because you hand over to them a huge, messy pile of receipts, statements, and other assorted piles of paper? Business routines can help you tame the paperwork beast, and here’s your checklist, culled from over a decade of running multiple small businesses, including a Marriage and Family therapy practice.

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Best Way to Pay Yourself from Your Practice

You have your very own private practice, and even paying clients – congratulations! You’re officially the owner of a business with revenue (and hopefully profit too!). How do you pay yourself out of your profits? Is that the best way? Can doing it differently save you money? Here are some ways practice owners pay themselves, their pros and cons, and which one is best for what situation.

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Rental Space Checklist - What your Private Practice Needs

It’s one of the biggest, if not the biggest expense in your business budget. Getting it right can attract more of your ideal clients. Getting it wrong can be a painful and expensive mistake from which it’ll be hard to extract yourself anytime soon. It’s renting the right space for your private practice. Here’s the 15-point checklist we used to choose rental space when my wife was still renting from others. I use the same list when coaching therapists today.

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Are You Setting a Trap for Yourself?

If you’re a member of online therapist groups, I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of threads that start off something like: “I’m looking for intake forms for my private practice. If you don’t mind sharing, please…TIA.” There’s nothing wrong with frugality, and I’m all for reducing business expenses. However, being frugal has its time, place, and appropriate targets. Your intake forms are not one of those! If you’ve been collecting forms shared by other therapists here and there, you’ve been setting up a trap that may well spring on you one day… when you’re audited for HIPPA compliance or worse, when someone sues you for breaching their health information privacy.

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7 Crucial Considerations When Renting Out Space to Others

If you see clients in person in your practice, office rent or mortgage is one of your largest business expenses. If the space is large enough, subleasing or renting out to others is a great way to offset a big part of that cost. When my wife Risa’s practice reached full-time, she rented a 5-office suite and subleased several offices to other therapists. Several years later, we bought and built out our own suite, renting space to six therapists. Several of them have now been with Risa for over nine years, moving with us when we established our own suite. Here are the most important lessons we’ve learned over the years on how to get the best renters, and how to keep them. Whether you’re considering becoming a landlord or renting space in someone else’s suite, this post is for you.

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Holidays Checklist for Your Practice

You know the old saying, "Can’t see the forest for the trees"? Holidays serve a really important purpose for us humans, beyond any religious or cultural reason. They help demarcate our lives, and give us an opportunity to stop, take stock, and see our context (the forest), rather than just the day-to-day details of our lives (the trees). So, what should you be doing this Holiday season, looking at your practice's big picture, to ensure next year is a success?

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Figure Out Your Perfect Office Space Solution in under 5 Minutes

Rent is the biggest budget item for many practices, so you need to choose the right space solution. My wife Risa started by renting daily office space and gradually worked her way up to where we now own our office suite and rent out excess space to other clinicians. This means that not only have we seen it all, we’ve experienced most of it firsthand. Based on that experience, we've come up with a few simple questions that will guide you in figuring out what your own perfect space solution will be.

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You CAN Recover from Slowdowns in Client Traffic

It’s a fact of life – slowdowns in client traffic are a matter of when, not if. However, there’s no reason why such a slowdown should lead to financial or business ruin. In fact, it may be a blessing in (albeit very effective) disguise! When a slowdown come knocking at your door, if you respond by keeping a positive outlook and taking immediate and effective action, you may find yourself piercing its frightening disguise and seeing it for the opportunity it hides.

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