7 Steps to Help You Find and Settle on Your Therapy Niche in Private Practice
Part 2: Your Last Three Steps
Okay, now that you have had a little bit of time to really think about the questions I asked to brainstorm, we are going to take the next few steps towards finding your niche. We’ve explored your interests.
We’ve reminded ourselves of who you wanted to be as a therapist. We’ve really deeply looked at our current caseload so that we know the clients who are the best fit for your practice. Last but not least, we’ve explored our identities and experiences to see if anything might fit.
Now it’s time to explore a little more and then settle on the niche that is going to help you establish yourself as an expert and help you to develop a practice that is sustainable and enjoyable for years to come.
Let’s get back to it.
Step 5: It’s Okay to Start Specific or Broad
So it’s possible, after all of this brainstorming, that you have some ideas about possible niches, but you might be worried that the niche is too broad or that it’s way too specific. Or you might still be feeling overwhelmed by choosing one thing.
All of these are very normal feelings.
If You're Worried It’s Too Specific
Maybe through all of this, you’ve identified that you love working with neurodivergent teen girls. Or that you love working with female-identifying, people-pleasing young professionals.
Now I know that as a therapist who has been seeing everyone, picking a group of very specific people to work with feels terrifying. Especially if you have just opened your practice and you need clients now.
I often hear therapists worry that they will be bored or that there aren’t enough of this specific niche out in the world to fill their practice.
Remember that having a specific niche makes marketing easier and really helps the right clients find you. When someone is searching for a therapist who treats your niche, you are the obvious choice.
When I first started looking at niching down in my practice, I was terrified, so I focused on parents of kids with special needs, anxiety, and depression. But the reality was that this made it harder for the clients I really wanted to work with to find me. My practice got busier as soon as I claimed the population I did my best work with.
More on that story in a bit.
If You're Still Feeling Broad
There’s a good possibility that you are having a hard time getting really specific, and a broad niche feels right for now. You might be worried about being too specific or just not really knowing what you like. But that’s okay.
You don’t have to narrow things down now or ever if this is what works for you.
You might stay at “people going through major life transitions” or “anxious high achievers”.
Starting broader gives you plenty of room to find your place and the work you do best. The more clients you work with in your niche, the more you’ll know if you work better with anxious college students or parents. But this gives you the time to figure it out.
As I said above, I started working with parents of special needs kids and anxiety and depression. But as time went on, I dropped anxiety and depression. Once I worked in my niche more and more, I realized it wasn’t parents of special needs kids, it really was mothers of neurodivergent kids. And that’s probably where I’m going to settle. But who knows?
You're in The Middle
The other possibility is that you have some ideas, but you are having a hard time settling on one. Often, when we are struggling to settle on something, it’s the same issue but from different angles.
An example of this is that you feel like the niche possibilities are substance use, relationship anxiety, and perfectionism. But when you really look at the clients, you realize that these are what your niche comes in for when they are looking for therapy, but underneath that, they are really all high-achieving people pleasers. So your niche is high-achieving people pleasers, and the other three are specialties that we can talk about in another article.
There is also the possibility that you just have a couple of interests that you are having a hard time narrowing down. For now, I would pick no more than three and just let time help you decide.
Let’s look at using all the work we’ve done to pick your niche and put it all together.
Step 6: Put it All Together and Pick a Niche
So now that we’ve done a bunch of contemplation and probably either have a ton of ideas or one that really stands out, it’s time to actually pick a niche.
If you know what it is, go ahead and skip to the next step.
If you are still feeling overwhelmed, read on. I would start by looking for patterns and similarities in all the possibilities. Think about going to trainings for your niche, is there one where your heart skips a beat and you get that feeling of excitement and joy that means this is something you are going to really love.
If, after that, you still have multiple options or more than three possibilities that have nothing to do with each other, make yourself a pros and cons list. It’s possible that there is a group you want to work with, but the list of cons is too long. For example, you might love teens but hate dealing with the parents, or you might love working with Axis II but hate working with collaterals.
If you have to, you can choose a couple, but really, I wouldn’t focus on more than 3. It’s hard to really become an expert on more than 3 areas.
Read through the possibilities and pay attention to how your body feels when you think about working with all of these options. Talk it over with another therapist who has a successful niche practice.
If you still can’t settle on one, look at what you have going on in your area. Are there other therapists with your niche (this isn’t necessarily a bad sign) or is there no one else that does what you do?
If there are other therapists doing this work, find out how their practice is going. If it’s full, that’s a sign there is room for you, too.
You have my permission to experiment here. Pick a niche or a couple and try it out for 6 months, see if you enjoy the training and enjoy seeing the people. This doesn’t have to be set in stone today.
Progress over Perfection
The important thing is to pick one (or a couple). Settle in and try not to worry.
You want something that feels authentic and exciting. Don’t get too worried about where you're going; you will figure it out as you go.
Perfection isn’t the goal here. As we cover in the next section, your niche will change as time moves on.
Step 7: Your Niche is Ever Evolving
So the next step is to relax and start seeing clients in your niche. As time goes on, your niche will either become more narrow or broad, depending on how you feel about the work that you are doing.
For example, you might be a trauma therapist who starts by working with all kinds of trauma, but as time goes on, you might realize you love working with victims of single-incident trauma. Or you might start by working with parents of kids with Down syndrome and decide you really just like working with all parents.
It’s also important to note that often our niches evolve as we do. So you might start working with teens, and as those teens go to college, you might start focusing on that age. Or you might love working with older adults, but as you get closer in age to them, you might find that it is no longer interesting to you, and you might switch to middle age.
I started out working with kids, and when I had kids of my own, I knew I had to save my kid energy for my kids, and I decided to switch to working with the parents, where it also felt I could make a bigger impact.
When you are picking your niche, it’s important and sometimes reassuring to remember that this isn’t forever. You can always change if you get bored or want to do something else.
While changing niches feels like it might be a big deal, remember the skills you have from one niche will definitely transfer, and often we change to something close, so it isn’t like you are starting over. While you establish yourself in the new niche, you don’t have to worry about getting clients because you can continue taking clients from the old niche until you are fully established.
Conclusion
Finding your therapeutic niche isn’t just choosing an expertise, it’s finding the clients you do your best work with and building a practice that doesn’t just support your clients but supports you as well. When your niche is the right fit, being a therapist doesn’t feel like work; it feels like a calling.
We aren’t trying to find the “perfect” niche, we are just taking steps toward finding the right niche for you in the near future. The most important thing is that it feels authentic to you and what you enjoy doing.
As I’ve discussed in previous blogs, having a niche helps you in all areas of your practice, from marketing (see my next blog), to burnout prevention (see my previous blog here), and everywhere in between.
It’s expected that your niche will evolve as you do; it’s kind of exciting to see the changes as you grow as a clinician. Just as the person you are today is not the same person you will be tomorrow, the same is true for your practice and who you are as a therapist.
Ready to Get Clear on Your Niche?
If you are still feeling stuck or if you want 1:1 guidance, I’d love to help. I offer clarity calls as part of my website packages and on their own, where we really dive deep into who you are as a therapist and the people you love to work with.
You’ll leave our call with a unique niche that feels perfect for you and your practice. As well as some ideas for your copy if you are doing it yourself.
Find your ideal clients and get back to the place where therapy feels like a calling that you were meant to do. Your ideal clients are looking for you- let’s help them find you.
Don't let another year go by working with everyone and burning out. Your ideal clients are waiting for exactly what you have to offer—let's help them find you.