When and how to hire your first VA in private practice: Outsourcing for psychologists and therapistsIn today’s episode, we will cover why you should outsource, how to decide what to outsource and when, the types of tasks that you can outsource and some of my tips on how to do this effectively.
Why should you outsource admin in your psychology or therapy practice?Have you noticed that if you ask me the date or time for something I never know?


It really is a huge problem for me. I am reasonably intelligent, have a good head for many things but I cannot hold any kind of number or date in my mind so, almost as soon as a date or time is mentioned to me, I have forgotten it. Any of the students on Psychology Business School or members of Do More Than Therapy will probably be aware of this fact...


This is a problem in private practice. Even though I use all of the tools like https://calendly.com/ (Calendly) for scheduling meetings, https://writeupp.com/default.aspx?refid=7168 (WriteUpp) for running my clinics and https://www.google.com/calendar/about/ (Google calendar) for everything else I STILL double book myself all the time. And then I procrastinate about putting it right because I find it so stressful to try and find an alternative date for someone.


In the first year of my practice, I lost a lot of money because of this. I would turn down clients because I thought I had no space when that wasn’t true and I came across as deeply unprofessional with some who I had to re-book several times. I also had a contract with a company who wanted me to keep my availability up to date on their online system so they could book their employees in with me whenever they wanted and I just could not manage to do it so I rarely got work from them. 


After 12 months of hating myself, I listened to a podcast that told me about a magical person called a virtual assistant. Until that moment, in my head, I had imagined that only very successful, established practices could afford help with admin. Coming from the NHS land of scarce admin support and the horrendously unequal way that support was distributed, had made me think I wasn’t really worth of it. I am guessing some of you may relate to that way of thinking. If that is you I am hoping this will be a lightbulb moment for you too…


If you are doing less admin you can see more clients and earn more money than you pay for admin support!


I will say that again. If you do less admin you will earn more money.


For me it was instant. I took on my first VA, Samantha Dawkins from Koala VA in Plymouth and within a week she had made me £300 simply by keeping my diary up to date on the online booking system for the company I had a contract with. She is a specialist VA and they tend to charge between £20 and £40 per hour so they are not cheap but, because she is good at what she doe, reconciling my diary every day took her only a few minutes. It would have taken me a full hour.


Even better… Once you hand over tasks that really stress you out like that you have more time available for marketing, networking events and seeing the people on your waiting list so whatever your problem whether you have not enough or too many clients, outsourcing the stuff that sucks your time and that you are just bad at is really helpful. 




How do I decide what to outsource in my psychology practice and when?

Here are some key outsourcing principles I wish I had known from the beginning:


Outsource what you are worst at first. If there is something that takes you ages because it is just not natural for you give it to someone who can do it in half the time. It will free up your time, energy and creativity for tasks that will actually bring money into your practice. There is actually quite a lot that falls into this category for me. As I mentioned the first thing I outsourced was my biggest weakness, the diary. Then I had to look at what else I messed up most frequently…...