If Your Caseload Has Slowed Down, This Might Be Why (Episode 16)
Ever feel like the marketing strategies that once filled your caseload just aren’t cutting it anymore? You’re not alone. In this episode, I share my personal story from 2025—how I realized my own marketing systems needed a serious refresh and what I did about it. Whether you’re brand new to private practice or a seasoned therapist, staying flexible and connected to your business is non-negotiable right now.
We’ll dive into why the market has changed, why your clients’ expectations have evolved, and why that Psychology Today profile or “good enough” website might not be pulling its weight anymore. Most importantly, you’ll hear how getting scrappy—moving faster, testing, tweaking, and not waiting until things feel perfect—can help you regain momentum and confidence in your marketing.
Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:
1️⃣ Why relying on outdated marketing strategies can quietly stall your private practice—and how to spot when it’s happening to you.
2️⃣ What “getting scrappy” really looks like in your marketing (spoiler: it’s not about being sloppy—it’s about staying connected and moving forward).
3️⃣ How cultivating a flexible, evolving relationship with your marketing helps you fill your caseload in today’s more discerning, competitive client market.
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Hey, hey, welcome back to Marketing Therapy episode 16. I'm excited about this one. I'm gonna share a little bit about my personal journey so far here in 2025, because I don't think this year has been something any of us quite expected. If you've ever had that sinking feeling like something's not working.
Anymore. Maybe it's your website, maybe it's your referrals. Maybe it's something else entirely. That's what we're gonna talk about today because one of the biggest patterns that I see, and one that I have been through myself, which I'm gonna share today, is this. You launch your business, you set things up the way you are told to, the way you see other people doing it.
That system, it builds some momentum. You figure out what works for you and then. At some point, that system stops working at least as well as it used to. And when that happens, it is frustrating. It is discouraging. It is anxiety inducing because you already put in the effort, right? You thought you had this whole thing figured out.
. What I wanna talk about today is the value of pivoting. Okay, of getting what we call around here a little bit scrappy. It's about being willing to evolve your strategy, your approach, your marketing, your mindset, even when you don't feel like it.
Because whether you are brand new to private practice or years into running your own thing. Staying connected to your business, staying flexible is absolutely essential if you want to keep your caseload full, especially right now in the market that we find ourselves in. So in this episode, I'm gonna share a little bit of my own story around this, how I realized it was time to make changes in my own business.
Earlier this year. I was forced to confront the fact that things weren't working in my marketing the way that they had been. Things had slowed down a little bit, and quite frankly, I didn't wanna admit it. I really dug my heels in when it came time to look at changing things. But I wanna zoom in on what was really going on there.
'cause it wasn't just about numbers dropping, like the business was fine, we were functioning. It's not that we were in any sort of panic, five alarm situation, but it was about what those numbers meant to me. These were some of the thoughts going through my head, but this used to work. I already did the hard work setting this up.
I built the systems. I've already done this, and maybe you felt that too, especially here in 2025. I've talked to many therapists who can resonate with this. The seasoned therapists listening right now that might sound like I used to have referrals and now they've slowed down. I used to get a bunch of referrals from Psychology Today, and now I don't.
I built my website years ago. It was good enough back then, and if that's been true for a while, if you've been having those thoughts so far this year or even longer, I get it. I get it so deeply because it feels like you shouldn't have to mess with it again, right? You got it right the first time. There should be some moment where the marketing is done, set it, forget it, trust it.
But what I've learned and what I've had to just come to grips with, and what I ultimately wanna emphasize here is that the market that we find ourselves in requires evolution. The same effort today does not get the same result as it used to for a long time. A plus B equals C. And if your marketing has worked in that way, hallelujah.
What a wonderful thing Today, A plus B, they're not adding up to C anymore. The therapists who filled their caseloads effortlessly five years ago, maybe you came into private practice in the pandemic times. A lot of them are now realizing what worked then is just not cutting it now. Now, if you're newer in practice, this shows up a little bit differently.
Because it's not about holding onto old strategies, right? You're starting new, you're starting afresh, but it's about wanting to get it absolutely perfect before you even start. I see this all the time with the newer therapists we work with. They're telling themselves things like, I have to figure out my niche and get it perfect first, or, I need to finish my entire website before I even tell anyone about my practice.
Or the biggest one. I don't wanna waste time doing the wrong thing. Whether you are brand new or years in the same mindset is underneath these thoughts. I want this to be easier. I want this to just work and listen. That is a completely human instinct. It is something I relate to on a very deep level. We all want that.
We want the thing that once worked to keep working. Of course we do. We want the thing we're building right now to be done right, and to be done already. But here's the real issue. If you hold on to strategies that used to work, or if you avoid starting because you don't feel 100% ready, then you are going to miss what's really possible for your practice right now.
Because if there is one thing I can say to sum up where we find ourselves right now in our industry is that things have changed. The market has changed, client expectations have changed, and it isn't enough anymore to rely on the strategies of yesteryear. The Psychology Today Profile you wrote two years ago and haven't touched since, the networking contacts that you may be made five years ago and then never followed up with to be successful right now, you have to stay connected.
You have to keep refining and adjusting and evolving. The clinicians who I see being the most successful right now have a fundamental mindset that is flexible and open and willing to make changes. Now, if you are sitting here right now with systems that used to work, please know that this doesn't mean you have to throw everything out and start from scratch.
You don't have to burn it all down. But it does mean you need to get really honest with yourself about what's actually working and what isn't anymore. And once you identify what that gap is, you've gotta fill it. So consider pausing and reflecting as you're listening right now. Are you holding onto strategies just because they used to work or avoiding new ones because you don't feel 100% ready yet If the answer is yes.
That's okay, but it means it's time to pivot. That's the mindset shift we're really talking about here. It's what my marketing mentorship confident copy is all about too. Helping you build a marketing system that's not just set it and forget it. The idea of filling your practice on autopilot these days isn't real, but instead something that evolves with you, that evolves as you change and as the market changes.
We'll get into that a little bit later in this episode, but first I wanna talk to you a little bit more about my own story and what happened once I stopped resisting and digging my heels in. Once I decided and committed to getting scrappy and started moving forward again. So once I finally admitted to myself that things needed to change, and I came to terms with the fact that yes, Anna, while this used to work three years ago.
It's not working the same way anymore. Then the next question was, what do I do now? Because I had this belief that what I had done and set up two, three years ago was the best I could do. I had this thought that I wasn't capable of anything else, that that was the best of the best, and so I had to start examining what I might actually be capable of and pushing myself.
A little bit outside of my comfort zone to consider new approaches and new strategies and to not limit myself to what I believed was good enough back then. And I wish I could tell you I had some perfect plan that I sat down and I mapped out a flawless new strategy before doing a single thing that my friends is not what happened, not even close.
What actually happened was a whole lot messier than that. I think back to when I really had this light bulb moment. It was in February I had an idea on a Monday. I was implementing by Tuesday and delivering it to by Friday. So we're talking a five day turnaround for something brand new.
That's what being scrappy has started to look like. In my business. It is meant to moving faster than I'm used to. Letting go of the need for absolutely everything to be perfectly polished and buttoned up before putting it out there and not in a reckless throw stuff at the wall way. I mean, my standards for what we put out into the world are still extremely high, but in more of a deliberate, let's try this and see what happens kind of way.
And I wanna be really clear about this because I know we have two kinds of listeners here. For the experienced therapists. The ones who have been practicing for years and feel like you already put in your time, you did your time on your marketing. Scrappy here doesn't mean sloppy. It means staying present and staying engaged with your business.
With the ongoing effort required, it's not just setting things up once and expecting them to run forever. And for our newer therapists listening, the ones who aren't holding onto old systems but are trying to get things right the first time.
Scrappy means willing to figure it out as you go. It means not waiting until you feel 100% confident before you take the first step. It means testing and tweaking and optimizing. For both groups, both experienced and newer. It means being willing to test, to tweak and to stay connected. So in my case, I launched things faster.
I wrote new copy faster. I tried different approaches and angles faster. I gave my team updates with a much shorter runway than they were used to because I didn't have time to sit on things. And I'll be honest, it felt chaotic sometimes. Especially because I'm not someone who usually operates like that.
I am usually much slower and thoughtful and deliberate, and I tend to twiddle my thumbs a little bit longer. I like things to be really thought through, really dialed in before putting them out there. But the cool thing is there's also something really energizing about this because even when something I tried didn't work perfectly, that example back in February, it didn't work by all accounts.
What I hoped it would accomplish. It didn't. And so it's not that everything that I tried worked brilliantly, but I wasn't stuck anymore. I was taking action. I was in motion in a way I hadn't been for years. And that did something really important for me. It helped me get back in touch with my business because when you set things up once and then you leave them to run on autopilot, even if they're working.
You start to lose that connection and in some part that's okay. You're able to put your energy elsewhere, but it can lead to getting disconnected from what's really happening, what's really effective. And I found that once I started taking action, even when things didn't pan out the way I hoped, testing things again, paying attention again, I could feel that connection coming back.
I felt more committed. I felt more creative. I felt more energized and in touch with my business than I had been in years. Now, I wanna be honest again, the tangible business results, right? The bottom line, those numbers, the data, it didn't show up overnight. It took time for those things to compound, but that internal shift happened almost immediately.
The belief that if I'd done it before, I could do it again. The belief that I was capable of figuring it out. The feeling of, okay, I know how to do this. I am in charge of this. I am capable. And that's what I want for you too, because whether you are fixing a website that's feeling stale, you haven't looked at it in five years, maybe you are pivoting to a group practice and trying to fill your clinician's caseloads.
Maybe you are updating your Psychology Today profile that you haven't touched since your associate days. Maybe you are reconsidering what you need to be doing on an ongoing basis to get clients. The act of just engaging with your business in this way is powerful, even when it doesn't lead to an instant result.
It builds confidence, it builds momentum, it builds self-trust, and it keeps you from falling into the trap of waiting around and hoping things will get better on their own. Take a moment and be honest with yourself. Have you been doing that? I have talked to countless clinicians so far this year who are dumbstruck by what's happening in their caseloads and in the market, and I get it.
Believe me, if I, if this story about my own business tells you anything, it's that I deeply understand that. But are you simply sitting around and waiting, hoping things will get better, or are you doing something about it? That's really what we emphasize inside of Confident Copy as well, not about writing the perfect about page and then never touching it again, but about learning the skill of staying connected to yourself, to your clients, to your marketing, so that when things change, you know how to pivot.
You know how to refine, you know how to get scrappy without feeling like you're starting from scratch. That is what scrappy really is. And scrappy has become the word of the year for myself and my team. It's not chaos, but it's creative control. And if that's resonating with you, if you're realizing maybe it's time to get back in touch with your own marketing, we'll talk a little bit more about how to do that in a minute.
But first I wanna zoom out even further and look at why this kind of adaptability is so important right now. Not just for me, but for you, for every therapist I know who was trying to grow a sustainable full fee practice in 2025, because things are different right now. Now everything I've shared up until this point, what happened in my business, what I had to shift, how I got scrappy.
This isn't just my personal story. It's a pattern that I am seeing across the board right now with a therapist I work with every single day. And that's ultimately why I wanted to record this episode because the reality is we are in a different market. And I don't say that to be dramatic. I say that because it's true, and you probably know that too.
The therapists who filled their practices easily five years ago are not necessarily the ones filling them easily right now. And if you're sitting here wondering why things feel harder or why something that used to work doesn't seem to be cutting it anymore. It's not just you. You haven't done something wrong.
The landscape has just changed. Five years ago, we're talking early pandemic 2020. You know, the days clients were looking for availability, plain and simple. If you were licensed and had a slot open, that was pretty much enough. I know therapists who didn't even have a website back then, we put together their.
Psychology Today profile. They would get four calls the next day. It was glorious. But fast forward today, and here's what I'm really seeing now. I want you to really listen for where you might recognize yourself in these things. Therapists are saying things like, I've been full for years without a website.
Now I'm realizing I might need one. I used to get all my clients from word of mouth, but things have really slowed down. My Psychology Today profile worked great before, but now it feels like it's crickets. Do those things sound familiar to you? Here's why this is happening. Your clients are more discerning than they have ever been.
They are more skeptical, they have more choices, and they're ultimately looking for specialists, your client's standards are higher. It's not enough anymore to just have a general catchall website. It's not enough to say, I work with anxiety and depression and expect that to stand out.
Clients want to feel like you get them. Like you specialize in the specific challenges they are facing. Like your therapy services are designed for them. They want to know within seconds of learning about you and interacting with your marketing that this person is exactly who I've been looking for.
It's interesting as clients have become more psycho aware through Instagram and TikTok and all the things, they're realizing more and more that therapists do specialize. And so they go looking for specialists in a way that they never used to. That's why what worked five years ago might not be working today.
And that applies whether you've been in practice for 20 years or you are just starting out. For my more seasoned therapists listening, the ones who feel like, but I already did the work, I really want you to hear this. You're not wrong for wanting to lean on the systems you already built. Of course you want that.
But in this market, if you are still relying on strategies from 2018 or 2020, there's a really good chance they're holding you back. Now,
. that website you made a few years ago that felt good enough. If you haven't touched it since then, it probably doesn't reflect the level of expertise you've built. It probably doesn't feel as premium or as specific as it could in order to stand out to right fit clients who are more discerning and more skeptical.
And I say that gently because, hello. I've been there. I had things in my own business that I set up once and just let them run until they didn't work the way they used to. Now for my newer therapists, the ones who, again, aren't holding onto those old systems, here's the opportunity I see for you. You don't have outdated systems to undo, but you do have to be willing to figure out what works in this market, not what worked for somebody else years ago.
That means not getting stuck in perfectionism before you even start. It means not just relying on reverse engineering what you see other clinicians do, and it also means not waiting until everything feels 100% dialed in to get going.
It means accepting that building a full fee. Right-Fit caseload is not a one and done project. It is an evolving process. I've worked with newer therapists inside Confident Copy who joined because they didn't want to waste their time guessing. They didn't just wanna throw something together and hope for the best.
They wanted to get it right from the beginning. They wanted to invest the time and the energy now, so they weren't constantly spinning their wheels later. And I respect that mindset. But whether you are brand new or years into the private practice thing.
The main thing I want you to take away from today's conversation is that your marketing isn't something you can just set up once and forget about. Your practice evolves, your skills evolve, the market evolves, your ideal clients evolve, and your marketing, your website, your networking strategies, your.
Directory profiles, your visibility strategies, they need to evolve with it. That's why I always say marketing is like an ongoing relationship with your business. And the therapist who I see feeling their practice is the fastest right now is not necessarily because they have the flashiest websites or the biggest Instagram followings.
It's because they're paying attention. They're willing to pivot. They're willing to check in on what's working and what isn't. They're not simply waiting around for things to bounce back on their own. Growing a practice, growing a full fee caseload of clients who light you up is not a passive exercise.
That's what it really means to run a sustainable practice in this season of the market. It's why we built Confident Copy the way we did, not just as a course to help you write your website once, although that's helpful, but as a skill building system that helps you evolve your copy over time. I just talked with a former student.
She graduated three years ago and she said she still comes back to the Confident Copy curriculum to make changes to her practice as she has added skills and niches to what it is that she does. She continues to come back because it is that skill building system. So this isn't about writing your Psychology Today profile once and crossing your fingers, or sending five networking emails and expecting those to fill your caseload on their own.
Building a website that feels good for six months, and then wondering why inquiries have slowed down. Again, I want you to have the skillset, the mindset, the confidence, the clarity to adjust when you need to. Without having to second guess yourself at every turn. That's where a lot of clinicians tend to hang out.
They identify that there's an issue, they realize there needs to be action, and then they sit in between there, second guessing themselves, spinning their wheels, twiddling their thumbs, not taking forward action. So before we wrap up, I wanna leave you with a couple of reflection questions. When it comes to being scrappy and pivoting and staying connected to your practice. Where in your business might you be holding onto strategies that used to work without actually checking if they do? What's an experiment you could try this month to reconnect with your marketing, with your message, with your clients alliance? And how might these things feel if you approached them from a place of possibility rather than pressure?
Don't dig your heels in the way I did. Learn from me here. View this change as an opportunity, as the beginning of something new as possibility, not as pressure. 'cause pivoting doesn't have to mean burning it all down, and it doesn't have to mean being sloppy. It doesn't have to mean wasting your time. It means paying attention.
It means staying connected. It means recognizing you will learn something, whether something quote unquote works or it doesn't, that you will get valuable information because you are capable of this. You're building a practice that works now and in whatever season comes next. So remember, pivoting isn't failure.
It's critical. Scrappy isn't sloppy. It is what's required right now, whether you're brand new to private practice or you've been doing this for years. The therapists who are filling their caseloads the fastest right now in 2025 are the ones who are willing to get back in touch with their business to view it as an ongoing relationship and something that they have to continuously cultivate.
They're willing to pay attention, and they're willing to make changes when things shift. If you're realizing as you're listening to this that it might be time to reconnect with your own marketing, maybe your website, your niche, your approach to marketing could really use some love. That is exactly why I created Confident Copy.
Confident Copy is my signature program where we help you identify your niche, create a website that calls in those RightFit clients, and ultimately builds a foundation for your marketing that can work for years to come. Even when things change, it's about learning skills to evolve your marketing as your practice grows because your practice isn't static and your marketing can't be either twice every year.
I reopen confident. Copy at a reduced rate. And if you're listening to this in summer 2025 the good news is the next one is coming in August. You'll get access to not just an additional discount, hello, extra savings, but also a way for us to work together for an additional six months.
Then make sure your name is on the wait list, walker strategy code.com/waitlist. Also drop that link in the show notes. Thanks for being here today. Remember, you're capable of this. Get back in touch with your business. Remember that pivoting doesn't mean failure and keep your head up. You've got this.
I'll see you in the next episode.
Resources & Links Mentioned:
Confident Copy: walkerstrategyco.com/cc
The Walker Strategy Co website: walkerstrategyco.com
Waitlist for Confident Copy reopening: walkerstrategyco.com/waitlist
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About Marketing Therapy
Marketing Therapy is the podcast where therapists learn how to market their private practices without burnout, self-doubt, or sleazy tactics. Hosted by Anna Walker—marketing coach, strategist, and founder of Walker Strategy Co—each episode brings you clear, grounded advice to help you attract the right-fit, full-fee clients and grow a practice you feel proud of.
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