What is a healthy number of clients per week?

Counting clients

In the early days of starting my practice, I craved a “full” caseload. My friends had “full” caseloads but I didn’t. For some a full caseload was 12 clients, 25 clients. Mine was 18. Three days a week with six clients each day. That’s what I wanted. 

Why? 

Was it because I had a deep desire to serve specifically 18 people?

No. It was because that was how many hours I was willing to work and I figured I’d make the most money that way.

On one of the many occasions I was complaining to my clinical supervisor about not having a full caseload, she said, “Never know how many clients you have.”

“Huh?!”

“That’s right. Stop counting your clients. When you don’t have the number you want, you feel bad about yourself and compare yourself to others. But it’s not really about how many clients you’re seeing. It’s about how much money you’re making.”

What she meant was, my desire to meet with 18 clients wasn’t because I had a deep longing to work with that many people. It was because that was the max I was willing to see and therefore determined the max income I thought I could make. 

Now don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to have 18 clients, or 25 clients, or more! But if you think the only way for you to make more money is for you to have more clients, then we need to look at that. 

Breaking it down

So when you’re asking “what’s a healthy number of clients to see per week,” let’s get clear on the other question you might be asking.

“How many clients can I pack into my schedule in order to make as much money as I can without losing my mind and wrecking my business?”

Once you break this idea that more clients equals more money, you can craft the practice you will actually want to for years to come. Instead of looking around at your friends with “full” caseloads feeling envious, you can feel in control of what you’re creating. 

This begins with spending some time with your goals and your finances. You can keep this super simple and just brain-dump on a piece of paper listing all of the things you want and any financial goals that come to mind. Or you can take a leap and speak with a financial advisor to get some professional advice. Regardless of what level of investment you are at, something is better than nothing. 

Crunch the numbers

If just reading this is giving you some anxiety, no worries. Let’s make this easy. Begin by brain-dumping all the things that come to mind when you imagine living an incredible life. One full of freedom and joy. One in which you have a huge impact on your clients and the world around you. What does that look like? Include information about your lifestyle and any financial pieces. 

When you know what your financial goals are (how much you want to pay yourself, how much you want to save, how aggressively you want to pay down your student loans) and you know what you want your life to look like, including how many clients hours you want to work per week, then we can figure out what you need to charge in order to meet those goals. 

The healthy number of clients to see each week is whatever feels good for you. Whatever allows you to live the life you want to live. And then you figure out how to find the clients who can pay that fee. 

It can seem so much easier to make a practice that’s like other therapists’. To set your fee based on what other people in your area are charging. To have cancelation policies that don’t ruffle feathers. To work the hours that other therapists work. We assume that because we’re making practices that are like other therapists, that we won’t have to deal with pushback from clients. Or it will be easier to get clients through the door. I’ve found this isn’t exactly true. You still have to deal with pushback. Even whether my fee is $30 or $300, I get pushback. It takes just as much work to get a client who pays $80 as one who pays $280 (by the way, these are sometimes the exact same client).

Find your alignment

The problem with not creating businesses that actually work for you is that eventually you end up resenting our clients. I’ve come to realize that resenting someone else means that I’m out of alignment with myself. It turns out I had a boundary somewhere and I didn’t uphold it. 

It might seem easier to just do what other therapists do. But you’re not other therapists. You’re you! With your own desires and preferences. You’ve already done the batshit crazy thing of becoming a business owner. You may as well take full advantage of it. You get to decide. You get to create exactly what you want to create. It’s not miraculous. It takes more than just a decision. It takes action to make it real. But before you can take action, you have to get clear. 

So I’m inviting you to get cozy, settle in and begin to ask yourself…

What do you want?

It can be so helpful if you spend some time connecting with pleasure before inquiring. We have been taught not to want, not to break the mold. Doing so can often set alarm bells off in the nervous system. Come back to this question over and over again. What do I want?

And if you want to go even deeper, we can work together. It so much easier and more pleasurable to do this work with someone else by your side. Sure, you could do it on your own but it’s nice to have a buddy who’s always got your back. If you’re feeling connected to me and want to see if it could really be this good, this challenging, this rewarding, then shoot me an email.