The Skill Most Private Practitioners Overlook
- Jan 29
- 4 min read
Samantha Crapnell is the founder of Training for Counsellors Ltd and practitioner-facilitator of professional qualifications and continuing professional development events to support the training and ongoing development of counsellors and clinical supervisors.
Most of us start a private practice to help people. Some set out to feel stable and have consistency and predictability. Others want to grow, expand, and have a larger impact. Underpinning all of this is business-mindedness, the skill of turning values and vision into practical actions that support you at whatever stage of business ownership you find yourself.
Private practitioners rarely set out to build a business in the traditional sense of the word. Most want more opportunity to do what they trained so hard for while earning a decent living. Somewhere along the way, the reality of running a practice, taxes, compliance, marketing, growth, and diversification, forces us to face an important business question. Do I want to be a business owner or an entrepreneur?
This distinction between business ownership and entrepreneurism is more than semantics. How you answer it shapes your business and how you make decisions about it.
Business owner mindset
A business owner’s primary goal is reliability. Consistent services. Predictable income. Manageable risks. A business owner's thinking typically focuses on delivering a defined service well.
Standards: Maintaining ethical, professional, and compliance standards while controlling costs and protecting profit margins can feel conflicting, but it is necessary.
Consistency: Consistency is a core part of training for therapists, but it does not usually extend to business language. Extend the same principles of consistency from clinical practice to your emails, your invoicing, your communications, and your systems.
Smoothness: Creating a practice that can function smoothly, without constant firefighting, makes room for continuity.
The mindset is not small, but the repeatable actions that show the mindset may take time to develop. They demonstrate stability and control and can bring profitability, respect, and sustainability.
Entrepreneurial mindset
Entrepreneurs’ concerns move in a different direction. Motivated by the possibility of what could be, entrepreneurial thinking places emphasis on growth and opportunity, building connections beyond individual reputation. This usually comes with risk-taking and uncertainty management. Unlike business owners who focus on reliability and consistency, entrepreneurs are driven by innovation, curiosity, and a willingness to experiment.
Entrepreneurs understand that setbacks and failures are inevitable on the path to success, and they view these experiences as valuable learning opportunities. Even with calculated risks, there is an acceptance that outcomes may be unpredictable. They are comfortable operating outside their comfort zones, pushing boundaries, and exploring new ventures even when the way forward is unclear.
Business mindedness
Business mindedness, having a working awareness of what it takes to build and then sustain a business over time, is required at any stage of running a business.
Start-up stage
If you are on the verge of starting private practice, you do not need a fully fledged plan. Business mindedness means being intentional about structure, priorities, and resources from the beginning. It may be that this is part of making the mental and emotional shift to private practice. Tracking costs, clarifying who you are and what you do, and establishing boundaries creates a good foundation that will see you through those early steps, let people know that you exist, and set you up for the future.
Business owner years
Experience earns insight that informs further business decisions. This is business mindedness in action. Systems, costs, boundaries, and quality are tested, tweaked, developed, and maintained. You will feel and experience how values and viability, care and cost, intention and execution both conflict and harmonise. The wisdom that business mindedness provides is the removal of any assumption that good clinical work automatically translates into sustainability.
Entrepreneurial endeavours
In my own case, entrepreneurism crept in after a few years of being a business owner. Those foundations built earlier mattered. They still matter. Without the earlier groundwork, any attempt to expand would have felt like a greater risk. It was stability and predictability that led to entrepreneurial thinking. Growth was no longer about doing more but about doing differently.
For example, growing in private practice helped me to recognise where I was spending time that I did not need or want to be involved in anymore. Some tasks could be completed just as well, and usually better, by someone else. Recruiting a part-time team member to take on these responsibilities freed time to devote to ideas of growth and difference. Business mindedness in action meant recognising the trade-offs.
In retrospect, it was not about doing less. It was about doing more of the things I enjoy, using time, resources, and energy strategically while still being relational, values-driven, and intentional.
Business mindedness in action
There are many ways that private practitioners demonstrate business mindedness without naming it.
Naming a niche
For example, in deciding to move from generalist practice to developing a niche, there is an understanding that there is a risk around whether clients will want the niche you are offering. Training costs time and money, and so it is an investment. Business ownership thinking meets continuing professional development and meets financial clarity.
Investing in training of practitioners
Continuing professional development is a standard expectation of ongoing professionalism. Gaining qualifications can embed a position as a business owner or pave the way to entrepreneurism. Business mindedness is the awareness that there is a financial outlay, a time outlay, and no guarantee of a future return on that investment.
Price reviews
There is a time in every therapist’s practice when pricing needs reviewing. Again, business mindedness facilitates the objective calculation of what price our services deserve, balancing client affordability with the value of the offering and the desire for personal and business sustainability.
Business mindedness is the tool that bridges start up, business ownership, and optional entrepreneurship. Business mindedness is not something that is taught during counselling studies. That is okay, because it is a transferable skill set, drawing from something counsellors are already good at, supporting values and hopes in practicability.
Read more from Samantha Crapnell
Samantha Crapnell, Training Facilitator, Counsellor, Supervisor
Samantha Crapnell is a training provider and also in practice as a counsellor, clinical supervisor, and executive coach. Training for Counsellors Ltd was created so that counsellors can access alternative routes into and develop within the counselling profession through inclusive education and continuing professional development. Specialisms include anti-oppressive humanistic practices working with children, adolescents, and adults, neurodivergence, and solopreneurship.
