Ray Smith

If you’re interested in a successful private practice, you are probably driven by some legitimate personal and professional needs. In Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs, he described our basic needs for physical care of our bodies and security or safety, then our psychological needs for belonging and self-esteem, and only after those are satisfied, self-fulfillment needs for self-actualization and achieving our potential.

To enter into private practice requires us to make a decision on what kind of business we are entering: sole proprietor, non-profit organization, limited liability partnership with others, or professional services corporation.

Before making the leap into private practice, you might want to do a little arithmetic to make an informed decision.

You may have played the old board game named “Clue.” The goal as a pretend detective was to discover the evidence of the person, place and murder weapon to convict who did the crime. In the new game named “My Private Practice,” you look for real life clues during your assessments and interviews. The goals are different: help the clients, their families and communities.

I used to teach Active Parenting, and one of the many good ideas in that curriculum is the definition of courage as taking a known risk for a known reward. Almost everyone wants a level of certainty and security in their lives, so overcoming the fear of the unknown and the fear of failure requires some courage as well as some risk taking.