The Most Expensive Decision Therapists Keep Making (Episode 26)
If you’ve been telling yourself, “I’ll start marketing when…”—this episode is your wake-up call. Whether it’s the economy, your confidence, or your calendar, it’s easy to delay the hard stuff. But waiting for the perfect moment to market your practice is one of the costliest decisions you can make.
In this episode, I’m unpacking the most common objections I hear from therapists about why they’re holding off on marketing—and offering some grounded reframes to help you move forward. Because just like healing in therapy, growth in your business starts with one brave step.
You don’t need to wait until you feel perfectly ready. And you don’t need to do everything at once. But you do need to decide. If you’ve been stuck in indecision, this is your invitation to choose action—imperfect, courageous action—so you can finally start building the practice you want.
Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:
1️⃣ Why “waiting until the time is right” keeps your practice stuck—and what to do instead
2️⃣ The real cost of putting off your marketing (it’s not just lost clients—it’s lost confidence)
3️⃣ How to reframe fears about money, time, and readiness so you can move forward with clarity
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Hey there. Welcome back to Marketing Therapy. We are right now in the final stretch of our Confident Copy promotion this summer. Now we do this twice per year, and one of my favorite things about these promotions is the number of conversations I get to have with clinicians. I usually talk to between 20 and probably 30 plus therapists who are considering confident copy have questions about it or wondering if it's the right next step.
And about half the time I say Absolutely, I think this can serve you well. And about half the time I'll point them in a different direction because I think that while confident copy may or may not be able to help a little bit, I don't think it's the best next step for them. Now as a result of these conversations, I get to hear a lot about the inner workings, right?
About what therapists are thinking about the things that they are weighing, the questions and doubts that they have in their mind when it comes to making a decision about their practice. So while this episode is born out of the conversations I've had related to confident copy, I think that it indicates a larger conversation happening in the private practice space in general right now because one of the things I hear most often from therapists is some version of, I'll wait until, I'll wait until the economy feels more stable. I'll wait until I feel more confident in my skills or my niche. I'll wait until I have more time or more money or more experience.
And on the surface, these reasons make sense. And sometimes you gotta be realistic. I don't have the time, or this would put undue financial stress on me. But other times we hold onto these reasons because they feel responsible, they feel logical, they feel safe. Am I right? Waiting feels safe. But so often, and what I often see in these conversations that I have,
it's that waiting that feels safe, that's actually keeping those clinicians and their practices stuck. I have never in my life seen someone wear every factor lined up perfectly. Because we all know that it's just not how it works in this life, right? There's always going to be something. The economy, your confidence level, your family, your schedule that's gonna make right now feel imperfect.
So if you've been waiting for the perfect time to arrive, to take the next step to prioritize growth, you're gonna be waiting forever. And remember, this isn't just about confident copies. Confident copy isn't always the right next step for therapists, but I see so many people staying in holding patterns because it feels safer when in fact that's what's keeping them stuck because these aren't silly excuses, right?
They are rooted in real fears and real pressures. The economy is shaky, time is limited. Money might be tight. And when you're already stretched thin, it feels almost impossible to add one more thing to your plate. So again, there's a healthy balance here. It's not just always push, push, push, but here's what I want you to know is I look at the therapists in my sphere and in my world, in our community who are break in records, right?
They are setting revenue records in their own practices. They are raising their fees, they are de paneling clarity. That confidence and the momentum in those practices, none of them came from waiting. They came from action. Just like with your clients, right? Most of your clients don't start therapy because they suddenly feel ready.
Some of them do. They'll reach some sort of tipping point though, and there's a little bit of hesitation, but they decide to push forward anyway. They start when they're scared, when they're hurting, when they're uncertain. And what would you tell your clients. That taking the first step is the most important part, 'cause that's where healing begins, right?
Healing cannot begin without that first step, and I would invite you to consider if the same is true in your practice, that the sooner you start taking marketing seriously, the sooner you start putting in the reps, the sooner you start investing your time or energy or money or what have you. The sooner your circumstances can change.
So in this episode, I wanna break down the most common objections I've heard recently from therapists about delaying their marketing. And I wanna show you why waiting is actually the most expensive decision you can make because every time you delay, you are not just avoiding discomfort, you are losing potential clients.
Income, confidence, momentum.
So I hope that this episode can perhaps be the perspective shift. You need to finally make a decision one way or the other, because remember, waiting is also a decision. If you're sitting on the fence of joining a program like mine or of reaching out to that networking colleague of launching your practice at all, remember, no matter what, you are making a choice.
And so today I want to help you get off that fence and make a choice one way or the other.
Now, let's start with the biggest myth that I see therapists holding onto the idea that there's going to be a perfect time to start this or to restart it, or to uplevel it or to prioritize it, that someday all the stars are gonna align. The economy is gonna feel good again. Your caseload's gonna feel manageable.
Your bandwidth is gonna be high. You're gonna feel fully confident in yourself. You're gonna reach some point of nirvana where you just know that you're the best therapist you can possibly be, and then you'll finally be ready to take action. Friends, I have never seen that moment arrive for any therapist that I know, any business owner that I know, because there's always something, there's always a reason why right now isn't gonna feel ideal.
Take the economy, for example. It's never been perfect. It never will be. There's never been a time where everyone is rolling in cash and financial security feels guaranteed. Never. It's just not how our world works. And yet, right now, this year, I personally know therapists charging 200, 2 50, 3 50, even five 80 a session, therapists offering premium priced intensives who are having their best year ever in this so-called shaky economy.
The difference is not that those therapists had better timing, it's that they decided not to wait,
or sometimes we tell ourselves that we'll start when we feel more confident. Maybe that's finishing another certification or figuring out your niche before you start. It's a really common one because I talk to so many therapists about their niches, but confidence doesn't come first. Clarity doesn't come first.
These things come through action. Confidence comes through taking action. Clarity comes through, taking action. I've seen this again and again with Confident Copy students. About half of them are brand new to private practice. They're kind of building the plane as they fly it. They don't have everything figured out yet by any means, but it's through the process of showing up and doing the work and putting themselves out there that their voice sharpens.
And their niche becomes clearer and their confidence grows.
So if there's no perfect time to start, then what actually happens when you keep waiting? I think the costs are a lot bigger than most therapists realize. Now, let's start with the obvious one. Lost clients, right? Right. Now as you're listening to this, as I am recording this in my office, there are people in your community.
The very ones you would love to work with who are actively searching for a therapist. And if your marketing isn't clear, if your website isn't pulling its weight, if you are engaging in ongoing marketing routine and putting in those reps, those people looking right now, they won't even know you exist.
They're gonna click on another profile, they're gonna book with another therapist. That means lost income, of course, but it also means more time stuck. Filling your caseload with clients maybe you don't enjoy. I read a kickoff form from a clinician today who said one of her biggest challenges is that she has people on her caseload that she doesn't enjoy working with, and she's hoping that by getting clear on this, she can start attracting those right fit clients, and I'm so excited to support her in that process.
It can mean relying on group practice referrals that eat into your income going 60, 40, 70 30. Or just that hustle to keep things afloat that constant week to week am I gonna make it feeling? But then there's the hidden cost. What waiting actually does to your confidence, because the longer you put it off, the more doubt creeps in.
You start to wonder if you'll ever feel ready, if your practice will ever be stable, if you're even cut out for this whole private practice thing in the first place. That kind of self-doubt compounds. It weighs on your mindset. Your stress ramps up, and it makes the hill that all of us have to climb. As business owners feel even steeper, when you finally do decide to start down the road, remember not deciding is still a decision, and usually it's the most expensive one.
So what are you sitting here right now resisting? What fence are you sitting on as it relates to your practice and to your marketing? What do you know you could or should be doing and aren't, for whatever reason? What excuses might you be using to avoid things that feel uncomfortable, but you know, might help?
We've talked about how weighting costs you, the clients, and the income and the confidence, but I wanna walk you now through the five objections I hear most often. And again, each one sounds responsible on the surface. The first one, the economy, like I mentioned earlier, I hear so often no one's paying for therapy right now.
Are the economy's too bad for private pay therapists? All kinds of rhetoric. Around that idea. You know what I say? Yes, the economy is shaky. I am not gonna fight you on that. There is absolutely no denying it. But again, there's never been a moment, and there never will be a moment when everything is perfectly stable.
Now, something that I have realized as I've become a mom in particular is that we all are operating with a limited capacity, right? I view it like a gas tank. We've all got a gas tank, and the way that we use that and the way that we spend that capacity and up to us, when you hand over part of your capacity, your energy, your decision making to something you cannot control, like the economy.
You are using up space that could be spent on what is in your control. It would be unreasonable to say that the economy doesn't impact you as a business owner, but to let it dictate you and the decisions you make is giving up that capacity to something you can't even control. Because I see therapists showing up clearly and confidently still filling their caseloads right now, even raising their fees while others keep waiting for conditions to change.
The difference here is not timing, it is action or the idea of not being ready yet. Another really common one, I referenced it earlier, this one should show up as, I'll market myself once I get one more certification, or I figure out my niche or whatever. But like I mentioned. Readiness doesn't come first.
That type of clarity, that type of confidence in your skills, in how you put yourself out there, it's not just gonna come out of nowhere. It's gonna come from you taking steps in that direction.
You sitting here right now have an incredible ability to bring your clients toward life changing transformation. You're allowed to market that. You don't need another certification to be allowed to claim that and put it out into the world. You don't need another credential to be allowed to show up. You are capable right now of supporting your clients in absolutely transformational ways.
Having been in the therapy space for over six years now, I've supported over 3000 therapists in our paid programs and services. And as a result of that, I've been able to know some clinicians for five or six years, and it's been really incredible to watch them evolve into strong, confident therapists and business owners.
But early on, they didn't feel that way. They did not feel that way. They do today as they've grown into that. But they didn't wait until they felt ready. They started with what they had five or six years ago, and the clarity and the confidence has come through the process. Okay, another huge objection, and again, as a mother of multiple children, I get the capacity thing.
I don't have time. Time is a real constraint, no doubt about it. Again, we've only got a limited amount of capacity. I have two kids. I run a business. My husband travels. I get it. As best I can. I don't know your exact circumstance, but all of our capacities are limited. What I've also learned is that if you are waiting for your calendar to be magically clear, to take the next step, to prioritize your marketing, to establish a marketing routine, whatever it might be, you my friend, are gonna be waiting forever.
The cool thing is that marketing doesn't need to be all consuming. That growing a practice in this market is not one size fits all. And sometimes it can be carving it out an hour here or a couple hours here, 15 minutes there to send that email. One focused afternoon to knock out a couple key initiatives.
A little bit of consistency now is ultimately what creates more time freedom later. So if it's a time thing again. There's a very real constraint here that if you don't have the time, sometimes you just straight up don't have the time. And sometimes you just could be using your time a little bit differently to create the future time freedom that you are ultimately seeking.
The amount of late nights and weekends I put in early on in my business in order to be able to take half day Fridays now wild. But it was worth it. Right? And that's not to say that we all have the room to do that, but. We can't just be sticking around waiting for again, that perfect time 'cause it doesn't exist.
Now another one, this one's really interesting for established clinicians. This idea that my caseload is fine right now, this one's really sneaky because when things feel okay, it's really easy to take your foot off the gas of your practice and of your marketing, right? 'cause you're just focusing on serving the clients you have.
Things are good. We're rocking and rolling, but marketing is what I call a lagging indicator. Because the effort that you're putting in today is showing up weeks or months from now. So if you stop the moment, things feel fine, you are setting yourself up for that feast or famine that is so uncomfortable and stressful.
As a business owner, I encourage you to think about your marketing like a dial. Okay? Dialing up and dialing down. Not a light switch on or off. You should always be doing something. Now, you're probably gonna be doing more in the growth seasons of your practice, and you're probably gonna be doing a little bit less in the maintenance seasons, but you're still doing something.
You're not turning it off because restarting from zero is what creates that anxiety and burnout and that hair on fire. Maybe I'll just burn it all down and work at Costco feeling that we've all had. Okay. Another one. What if it doesn't work? I think this is the one every single person listening can probably resonate with.
What if I do this and it doesn't pay off? What if I invest in this program? What if I pay for it and it doesn't pay off? What if I use my limited time and it doesn't pay off? Listen, I get this. I've mentioned before that I have a business coach. I've had one since I began my business and I've been working with my current one.
It'll be four years in October and every year she raises her rates as she should. And every year I feel the same lump in my throat.
Maybe I can do this on my own. What if I don't use everything that's offered here? Is this really the best use of my money? But you know what I've learned? Not paying because I trust my coach, although I do very much. I'm paying because I trust myself. And that reframe has shifted how I spend money as a business owner because I no longer believe in wasting money because I trust myself to get what I need out of every investment. That doesn't mean I use every single feature offered to me or that every program I've bought has produced.
Instant. ROII purchased a course last year for a significant amount of money, and I haven't actually implemented what I learned there, but what I learned did give me clarity on what to do next, and now I have a resource I can go back to if and when I decide to, but I got something out of that even if it wasn't tangible right away.
Because every single investment that I've made has given me some sort of insight, some sort of momentum to move my business forward. Have I made some investments that weren't great? Yeah. That I felt a little disappointed in. Yeah. But I've still trusted myself to find and to mind those investments for insights, for learnings, for takeaways that I could apply.
I've seen the same thing with my student. Take Catherine who you heard a few weeks back on this podcast. She told me straight up she was afraid of getting scammed when she joined Confident Copy. She'd already tried other things that hadn't worked, but she decided to invest anyway, not just in Confident copy.
She was investing in herself in her ability to take what she learned and use it. And now if you listen to that episode, Catherine is a hundred percent private pay now. She's making more than she did on insurance. Seeing fewer clients working in a niche she loves and feeling absolutely lit up and energized by her work.
That's what happens when you stop waiting for a guarantee and start betting instead on yourself. You can trust yourself. That's why I always tell people, like at the end of the day, go with your gut. If your gut says, oh, I'm skeptical on this, and the SI can't get over the skepticism, okay, then trust it.
Then trust it. But if you're just living in a space of, what if I pay for this and it doesn't pay me back, then I would really invite you to reframe that. By paying for this, how am I trusting myself and what am I gonna do?
So here's the big takeaway. We've looked at a couple of those big objections. I've. Heard from folks recently and have been chatting about in the inbox and dms lately. On the surface, every single one of these objections sounds logical, but underneath they are safer ways of saying, I'm scared and that's okay.
Being scared is absolutely okay, but if you let those objections, a k, a fears run the show, then you very well may stay stuck exactly where you are.
Now if waiting costs you, and if these objections aren't actually protecting you the way that they feel like they are, then what happens when you decide to start Momentum? And momentum is one of the hands down, most powerful forces in your business. Like I mentioned, clarity. It doesn't just drop from the sky.
Confidence doesn't just show up one morning. They are built and cultivated in motion. Every single small step you take when it comes to growing your practice compounds, making the decisions to launch. Creating a site today, profile, finishing your website, copy, talking about your work in a clearer way, reaching out to your first networking contact.
Each of these things builds visibility, trust. And ultimately inquiries, referrals. But here's the thing, these results, they do not show up overnight as much as I wish they did. Marketing is so much these days like planting seeds and my friend. The sooner you plant them, the sooner you will bear fruit. The longer you wait, the longer it will take to harvest.
That's what it comes down to.
Today's most successful therapists aren't the ones who waited for perfect timing or a perfect economy, or to not feel any fear in investing or taking the next step. They were the ones who were willing to do those anyway. Even when it felt scary, even when it felt uncertain, because they realized that by starting now, they weren't just investing in their practice, they were investing in their future self.
The one who feels calm and steady, confident in their fees, proud of the practice that they've built, fully secure in their identity as both therapist and business owner. That is what is on the other side of taking action today.
So here's what I want you to take away from today. There is no perfect time waiting costs more than starting, and the objections that feel safe. The economy not feeling ready, not having time. A caseload that feels fine. A fear of wasting money. Have the potential to keep you stuck where you are. Because not deciding is still a decision.
Not taking action is still a decision, but it's often the more expensive one. So if you've been listening today and hearing yourself in any of these reasons, this is your moment to choose differently. The sooner you start, the sooner your circumstances can change. The sooner you begin building momentum, the sooner clarity and confidence are gonna follow.
Whatever fence you're sitting on in your practice, I encourage you to think through these questions and make a decision to get off that fence one way or the other.
Now, as I mentioned, the doors to Confident copy for this special promotion. Do close tomorrow. So if you're listening in real time, I do encourage you to jump in before the price increases permanently. All the details, Walker strategy code.com/confident-copy. But please know at the end of the day you have what it takes to be successful.
The therapist I've referenced here today. The ones raising their rates and having record breaking months, they are not that different from you. And if you choose to take action and you choose to get scrappy, and you choose to do things scared and you choose to trust in yourself, you can do that too.
I'm cheering you on and I'll see you in the next episode.
Resources & Links Mentioned:
👉 Confident Copy: walkerstrategyco.com/cc
👉 The Walker Strategy Co website: walkerstrategyco.com
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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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