You’ve finally crept all the way out to the edge of the high diving board.  Your toes are wrapped around the final centimeters of the white sandpaper-y bendy piece of something.

“You’ve got this,” your mom calls from the other side of the pool, video camera poised.

“Common, you’ll love it,” your friend yells from below.

“Yes, but…” you adjust your goggles.

2 breathless seconds later you’re pushing hair and water away from your face frantically scanning for the nearest ladder.  You did it.

“I did it!”.  You beam at your friend, “Let’s do it again!”.

And just like that you did something new, grew in a new layer of confidence in your capabilities, and had a blast (if I do say so myself).  Tomorrow, you’ll be the friend yelling, “Common, it’ll be fun!”.

But, let’s rewind real quick, just seconds before you were unsure…scared…wishing you hadn’t made it all the way to the edge because then you’d be allowed to walk back down.  And in a fraction of a minute you became a believer, right?!

What flipped you from scared and unsure to confident and excited?!  Experience.

That’s it.

And, believe it or not, experience is often the deciding factor between whether or not online therapy is a good fit for therapists looking to build or scale their practice.

Sure online therapy has its share of scary moments, so does face-to-face therapy, and so does jumping off the high diving board.  But fear and uncertainty, don’t make face-to-face therapy ineffective or dangerous in itself, just like fear and uncertainty don’t make jumping of the high-diving board not-fun or dangerous.  It’s the same way with online therapy.

Here are the three areas we have seen EXPERIENCE make the biggest impact in whether or not online therapy is a good fit for you – yes, you!

BUSINESS

There’s this whole business side of things for online therapy that still have to happen, right?!  Like a place to keep all your client records, notes, billing, and scheduling. Having a reliable platform or system to process and store all this information is critical in you being fully present during sessions and online therapy being a successful experience for you and your client.

I mean, if you’re hosting a session, but subconsciously freaking out about all the details and admin stuff for the session….probably won’t be a great session.

This is kinda like the ladder and everything holding the diving board….structure first.  You gotta get up those stairs in order to jump. So, make sure they’re sturdy (shameless plug alert: serving you in such a way that you can focus on your clients is what makes us proud, so schedule a demo with us to see if we’re you’re missing link to a thriving online practice).

TECHNOLOGY

Now.  The. Tech.  Basically, anyone’s worst enemy unless you’re some tech genius, which might mean you should join our team.  Seriously though, how familiar are you with the platform you will be using to host your online session (also, is it HIPPA compliant)?  

Have you hosted a mock session?  Do you know what all the buttons are?  Do you know how to mute the other person – mute yourself, for that matter?  How is the audio on your device/microphone? Are you even comfortable with video chat?

In other words, do you know how to swim?  Swimming lessons generally (most definitely, should) come before jumping off a high diving board.  Being comfortable with video chats should definitely come before an online session.

Get good at video chats.  Get comfortable talking to your friends and having a genuine conversation via video.  You. Can. Do. This.

PEOPLE

How good are you at building rapport with people in general?  Most therapist are concerned about online therapy with the simple thought that they won’t be able to build rapport.  But, are you good at building rapport with your clients in a face-to-face session?  What if your experience building rapport with clients face-to-face is the very thing that gives you a leg up to building rapport with clients via an online session?!

Thought of that, yet?

The fact that you could swim meant you weren’t gonna die jumping off that board.  Okay, maybe you wouldn’t have liked it and never done it again, but you knew you would surface and swim to the edge.  All you had to do was jump. That single jump would rule out an experience for you or open a whole new thrilling world.

So, jump.  Give online therapy a chance.

Chances are, online therapy isn’t as scary as you think and it’s probably more of a fit than you ever imagined.  You just need to decide if you like “the thrill of falling through the air” or not.  So all I have left for you today is…

What if you jump and find that online therapy isn’t a fit?!  You tried it so you’ll never have to wonder, “Could I have made more impact and income with online therapy?”.  

What if you do jump and online therapy ends up being the link to you not having to choose between your love for therapy and your love for your kids EVER again?!

In other words, what if online therapy is a fit, but you never knew because you never jumped?!

P.S.  We get it, this whole jumping thing can be scary (even after our epic post) so if you have questions or you’re just ready to get started with someone you trust schedule a demo with us.  Helping people who help people is what we do!  Seriously, the demo is on us, so book it!