Group practices make no money. Despite taking a lot of yours.
- Jordanthecounselor
- 6 hours ago
- 3 min read
By Jordan Harris, Ph.D
What We Learned Running Private Practice Incubator.
From 2022-2025 I ran a small consulting firm with Paul Peterson. We helped clinicians go from having no practice, to having a fully booked practice, to having a plan for financial independence in 9 months.
We've since shut down the practice. Here's what I learned.
Many group practices make little money. Despite taking a lot of yours.
While Paul and I were doing all this stuff, I came to Paul and I asked him to run an analysis on what it would be like to use our skills to help a group practice.
What we found shocked us.
If you had a small group practice of 5 clinicians, you likely were making less than $3,904 a year.
Not $3,900,040. $3,904.
It wasn’t until you had a group practice of 15 clinicians, and did amazing job of running it, that you made $133,811 per year. Which sounds good, until you realize that a well run solo practice could reasonably make $142,914 per year.
So you could do more work, manage people, and make less or you could just seeing your own clients.
We posted this online and Facebook went bananas. Group practice owners from all over chimed in validating our findings; they were making no money.
So how were they keeping their businesses afloat? Well, they see clients. Think about that. They did all the work of running a group practice and then the majority of their income came from the clients they saw themselves.
What’s the problem? The major problem is most clinicians aren’t keeping clients in counseling long enough. At a minimum, you need to be keeping clients in counseling for 10-15 sessions. Otherwise, your dropout rate is too high and you’re just not making money.
The other problem is group practice owners pay clinicians too much. Many group practices do some sort of split. In our area, a 70/30 split is pretty normal. Well, the VAST majority of that 30% that the group practice owner collects goes to overhead (billing staff, building cost, EHR cost, etc).
Therapists don’t see this though. Therapists do quick math and say “I work 25 hours a week, and my hourly rate is $135 and I work 46 weeks out of the year. That means I make $155,250. And this group practice owner has 5 of us working here, so if you multiply 155,250 by 5 that’s $776,250. Geez, the owner is rolling in money.”
They aren’t. All the extra money is going to overhead.
When you see this, you see that most group practices aren’t actually group practices. They are all-in-one billing/marketing/office space for clinicians who can’t keep clients.
In our analysis, the average group practice owner would have to do a minimum of a 50/50 split to make the money worth her time. You can run your own numbers here.
Best,
Jordan (the counselor)
Jordan Harris Ph.D, LMFT-s, LPC-s, is a specialist in what makes a master therapist. He regularly offers trainings teaching this skills of master therapists. You can learn more about Dr. Harris's trainings here.
Jordan Harris
Jordan Harris, Ph.D., LMFT-S, LPC-S, received his Doctor of Philosophy in Marriage and Family Therapy from the University of Louisiana Monroe. He is a licensed professional counselor and a licensed marriage and family therapist in the state of Arkansas, USA. In his clinical work, he enjoys working with couples. He also runs a blog on deliberate practice for therapists and counselors at Jordanthecounselor.com You can find him on linkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-harris-lpc-s-lmft-s-418412301/
Paul Peterson
Paul Peterson is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) in the state of Arkansas. He has certification and/or training in EFT, hypnotherapy, and mindfulness as well as adult psychological development models. He's been in the mental health field since 2015 and in 2019 worked with a team of authors to publish a content analysis in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy. The content analysis reviewed almost 1,000 research articles and tracked trends in publishing and clinical effectiveness research. He has also published a book on a Wholeness-oriented approach to contemporary Christian faith. He gives regular training on clinical skills, hypnotherapy, and business skills for solo practice therapists.