My Therapy Side Hustle Failed Because I Thought TOO Big.
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.
We should have started smaller.
Near the end of PPI I started giving trainings on how therapists can watch tape, break it down, and learn the skills of master clinicians. These trainings were very popular for our standards and very easily fed into our case consultation group. Looking back I think we should have done the same for our PPI. We should have given regular business training to therapists and used that to lead into a weekly business for therapists consultation group.
I now believe that part of why PPI wasn’t more popular was that it sounded like an extreme ask. Our basic pitch was “Let us help you take your business from 0 to fully self sustaining in 9 months.” Honestly we don’t have a very large distribution base. We have a 1000 person newsletter, and a few hundred views per blog outside of that. With such a small audience, our ask was simply too big.
It’s funny though. There’s no way I could have seen this when we were in it. To me because I knew our system worked, it was such a no brainer I assumed we’d have people crawling over themselves to come work with us. I thought the people who went through our program would rave about us so much that all of their friends would come flocking. I mean we were literally paying people to start their practice. So wanted to hold the line on what our core offer was.
The thing I missed was that many therapists don’t have a strong network of other therapists, so word of mouth falls short. In fact, we were helping therapists go into solo private practice where they’d have an even smaller network. There was no way for a successful graduate of PPI to bring in more clinicians via word of mouth because we’d effectively helped them shrink their network.
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.
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