Show Notes

Welcome back to The Designer Practice Podcast, and I’m your host, Kayla Das.

In today’s episode, Dr. Hayley Kelly, clinical psychologist and founder of Therapist Rising will share why therapists are expanding, how they work beyond the one-to-one service model.

Hi, Hayley. Welcome to the show. I’m so glad to have you here today.

I am excited to be here. I’m excited to have this conversation. Thank you for having me,

Hayley, before we dive into today’s episode, please introduce yourself, where you’re from, and tell us a little bit about your practice journey.

Sure. So I’m a clinical psychologist, as you mentioned, as you can probably hear from my very obvious accent, I’m Australian and I’m Australian based, although I work globally now. And I’ve been a clinical psychologist for 16 years, which makes me feel very dated and very aged. So I spent years and years in very traditional psychology, mental health type of work. I done all of the things. If you look at my resume, I’ve managed perinatal mental health units. I’ve worked in private practice extensively. I’ve done all the things.

And during that, I definitely witnessed and experienced the strain. And that’s what we’ll be talking a little bit more about today. But I noticed and felt the strain long before I necessarily had words for it long before I think it was really being named. So Therapist Rising emerged very much from pattern recognition. So I didn’t set out to build a business. I set out to solve a problem that I just kept seeing over and over again, both in myself and in my peers, my friends, my colleagues in other therapists.

And what I do today is built and founded upon that pattern recognition, seeing the problems, and basically just trying to solve them, trying to help. So my work really does sit at the intersection of ethics, sustainability, and systems change and advocacy work. So I’m really supporting therapists now to build sustainable careers where they can continue doing the work that they really love, but not at the expense of themselves. They’re no longer going to be killing themselves for the system.

So I’m really curious because you’re talking about patterns and the problems that you have seen. Could you share a little bit about what those problems are that you have seen?

Yeah let’s relate these, there’s probably countless problems that we can all point at. And I think really importantly, as a caveat to this conversation these types of conversations can be hard to hear as a listener and they can evoke pretty intense emotional reactions. And so I think it’s really important for us to just really state that we are not here to bash or overly criticize. The system or people in it, business models or anything of the like, this conversation is really about just pointing at some of the really obvious things that I’ve experienced. You’ve probably experienced many people I’ve spoken to have experienced as well.

And if anyone’s feeling particularly triggered by this conversation in terms of no, that’s not happening, or that’s not my experience, you know what? That’s okay. Two things can exist at the same time. That’s okay, but maybe there is something in here for you as well. So first and foremost, we’ll relate this back to some of the structural pressures that I have seen in private practice. That’s probably one of the big patterns that would be relevant for this conversation.

So I think importantly, we have all probably experienced burnout to some degree across our careers, and I think one of the things that I came to realize very quickly is that burnout was almost an acceptable part of the work that we did. It was like everyone experiences it. It’s common, so therefore common equals normal, and we just have to accept that.

And I’m autistic, and there’s a part of me that’s what? That does not make any degree of sense what is happening. This should not be so. But what we’re seeing right now is a widening gap between demand and capacity.

What does that mean? That means that there are way more people demanding and needing mental health services and support. Then capacity can actually keep up with or adequately attend to. So more and more people are seeking support, usually earlier and with more complexity, but the number of trained clinicians hasn’t grown at the same pace. And if anything I’m not sure what the stats are like in Canada for you, Kayla, but in Australia, if you look at the training pathways across the last 10 years, for example, what you would see in Australia, is it we have actually reduced the number of training places. So they’ve cut master’s programs, for example. So the number of trained clinicians not only is not keeping pace, but if anything has probably actually slowed down while demand has gone up. And on top of that, a workforce that is actually exiting practice at a rate that we have not actually experienced before. So there are many clinicians leaving practice.

So even when therapists are working at or beyond capacity, the system still feels like it is falling behind. We can never keep up, we can never get our head above water. And that tension doesn’t come from the fact that you are not doing enough. It doesn’t come from the fact that therapists are the problem here. Although we usually address it in that way and we try to do more, but it’s not because you are not doing enough. It comes from a very obvious structural mismatch between need and supply. And to me that is a huge pattern to recognize.

The other pattern that I see is around the emotional load and some of the regulatory pressure that we are under as therapists. So therapy is not time-based work, right? It’s not just time-based work. It’s incredibly emotionally intensive work for us. We are constantly holding risk, responsibility, relational depth, all day, every day.

And at the same time, there’s also increasing regulatory scrutiny. There’s increasing demand for documentation, compliance, and fear of getting it wrong, like fear of I’m going to miss something and get in trouble if I’m ever audited or anything along those lines. And I think that combination of emotional labor plus constant vigilance that’s heavy right, and it compounds over time in ways that I don’t think are always visible from that outside. And I don’t always think it’s something that we are necessarily as therapists very aware of in terms of the interplay between that. We’re obviously aware of how demanding the work is. We’re obviously aware of the compliance, but I don’t necessarily know if we’re very aware of in our day-to-day work, just how much of a toll those things take on us.

Although I know from experience that one of the big issues that many therapists that I work with, that they point at. When we talk about burnout, they point at compliance as being one of the things that really does contribute significantly to their burnout. So I think that’s really interesting.

The other pattern is around financial ceilings that are inherently built into one-to-one work. And I think this one’s very obvious. Like obviously one of the things that we run up against is that private practice as a business model has inherent limits. It is time based, capacity dependent, and emotionally intensive. It doesn’t mean that business model is necessarily wrong and you should just light a fire on it and burn it down. It just means that it cannot carry everything on its own, even though we expect it to.

So there’s a very real financial ceiling in one-to-one therapy, your income is going to be directly tied to your hours, your energy, and your availability. And so even some of the most highly skilled trained in-demand therapists, they are eventually going to hit a limit where working more is just not doable. It’s not sustainable. It’s not ethical. And the ceiling that we’re talking about, just to add to this, it’s not about ambition. It’s not about being greedy.

We are talking about a business model that makes it difficult to be viable over the long term. It makes it difficult for us to have a sustainable long-term career in the work that we love.

And then the final pattern which might be somewhat controversial, but I’m here for that, I’m here to say it is around the invisible labor that therapists absorb to keep the system afloat. And I will die on this hill. But a lot of what keeps the mental health system running in Western countries is actually the weaponized, invisible labor that we contribute as therapists. Unpaid admin, emotional carryover, staying late, squeezing people in, absorbing gaps where the system doesn’t meet the need even though it should. Therapists are very often compensating for that, and we do it quietly. We don’t complain. We’re not kicking up a fuss. We do it out of care. We do it out of responsibility. But obviously over time that hidden labor becomes a cost to our wellbeing.

And when enough individuals absorb systemic strain, burnout is obviously going to start looking like a personal issue. But it’s actually a system level one. So they’re some of the patterns that I have seen playing out over my career, and definitely the ones that I reflect on in terms of what’s really contributed to the unsustainable parts of my career and really forced me to make necessary changes.

I really appreciate that. And one of the things you asked, like in Canada, are we seeing a similar trend in patterns? And interestingly enough, we might actually be seeing the opposite happen, but it still creates the same roadmap. So here in Canada, according to the statistics we are a competitive market, especially when we think of private practice in the sense that there has been an increase in practitioners coming to the field.

And according to Mental Health Research Canada (2025), last year in 2025, only 11% of Canadians had accessed mental health services. So if we think of our current population, and I won’t break down all of the math here, but if we think of our current population that is not a lot of people accessing mental health services, whether it’s they cannot access or they do not want to access also plays a role when we think of developing programs and services beyond a one-to-one model because there are contributors to, again, why someone is not seeking professional service.

And you also mentioned about that kind of invisible labor. And even if we think of in private practice, one of the most common, I guess I call it a solution that therapists lean to is I’m going to decrease my rate. I’m going to cut my rate in half so I can serve more people. But going back to that roadmap you just shared, it leads to burnout, it leads to financial instability. And it’s not necessarily addressing the accessibility issues that are preventing people from accessing services. Sure, that might solve one of those many issues, but it’s not going to solve all of them.

And in addition, if we think of which I know we’re going to get into in this episode, if we think of diversification and adding services beyond the one-to-one model, you can provide services that are still affordable, but also increase more revenue into your practice and decrease burnout as well.

Yeah, absolutely. I think you’ve made really important, valid points there. So I would agree with all of those. And I think the clarifying thing here is in Australia where we are seeing less clinicians being trained. Yes. But actually since COVID, we’re seeing more clinicians move directly into private practice so there’s less clinicians. Sure. But actually there are more private practices now than there have ever been before because the bar to entry, since COVID, is so much lower. It’s so much easier now to start a solo private practice, for example, telehealth and do it in that way.

But I think the other thing that I was thinking about too, as you were talking I think one of the really obvious business model issues here, and I’ll give a direct example of, I was talking to one of our students the other day, and she has a private practice in a rural country town here in Australia. She, 10 years ago was the only private practice there. Now there are like seven private practices in this tiny country town in the middle of the Outback in Australia, and she’s like, I am finding it really hard to actually attract clients, and that’s been one of her primary motivations for diversification, is to be able to actually offer services that differentiate her in a busy, crowded market of private practice.

Like all private practices are essentially going to offer the same thing. Inherently. Yes, you can niche differently and all of those things, however, it’s still inherently going to be the same service. The person may change accessing the service, but it’s still going to be the same service. And so we get into a very like the bread aisle scenario, right? Where there are like now thousands of different variations of bread. Which one do I choose? As business owners or working in private practice, we really need to start to think about, as a business, how do I actually start to differentiate myself in a noisy, crowded market where potentially everything might look very similar.

No, I can appreciate that a hundred percent. And this kind of brings me to my next question. What are the most common misconceptions do you think therapists have about diversification and what it actually looks like when it’s done well?

This is a great question. It pains me that I would have to whittle this down to just a handful for time’s sake. But there are obviously so many misconceptions I think about diversification. I think first and foremost, diversification from my perspective. One of the biggest misconceptions is that it is a nice to have, and I actually think we’re getting to the point now that diversification is becoming more of a necessity than people actually realize. So I think that’s one of the misconceptions that I want to clear up, first and foremost.

I think we’re moving more and more into a time where we’re probably not going to have that much of a choice anymore. You are going to have to think about this very soon if you have not already.

Another big misconception is it means I have to become an influencer, right? So really importantly, diversification is not about abandoning therapy. It is about expanding your impact appropriately. So no, you don’t have to become an influencer or a content creator or paid for your YouTube videos or anything like that.

No, you don’t have to suddenly be online all of the time. You don’t have to be sharing your life and behind the scenes of you making your breakfast. You don’t even necessarily have to be building a brand straight away For most therapists, that’s not the work that they are actually interested in. If anything, it makes them repulsed thinking about creating reels and social media content, and that’s not necessarily what diversification has to look like.

So expanding your work, it’s not going to require visibility for visibility’s sake. Yes, you are going to have to market and promote and do all of those things, but one of the misconceptions is that it has to look this way when it actually doesn’t have to look that way. There are many different ways to market to promote your business that don’t feel like you’re selling your soul to the devil or anything like that.

Misconception number two slash three now is, it’s unethical or out of scope. So this is a really common fear that is like anything beyond one-to-one therapy or what we would call group therapy. We all know what that mental picture of like group therapy is. Anything that doesn’t look like that, it must be unethical. It must be outside of scope.

And I think that fear makes sense and there is some very important truth to that in terms of the ethics and some of the legal requirements that we really need to navigate carefully. So I think that fear makes sense and it makes sense because we as therapists.

Not only are we trained to be careful, but inherently, if you looked at a therapist’s risk profile in terms of personality, you would see that most therapists are highly risk averse. It makes us wonderful as therapists because we toe the line, we do the things we’re supposed to. We operate very ethically and compliantly. It makes us wonderful therapists, but it can make us very terrified when we look at something that might smell, feel, looks slightly different to what we’re used to. But really importantly, ethical practice is not limited to the therapy room. It is not limited to one-to-one.

And I think COVID showed that with this massive shift from like the mentality of one-to-one therapy can only happen in person in a room. I don’t know about what it was like in Canada, but prior to COVID, you couldn’t even get Medicare rebates, for example, if you were doing telehealth. It had to be in person in the room. But I think COVID really changed a lot of that. So there is not necessarily one right and only way to do therapy, and it can be very ethical.

It is about role clarity, it’s about consent, it’s about how the work is designed very intentionally to continue to be ethical and safe, and when those things are in place, expansion can be very solid. It can be very responsible, it can be very ethical.

The other misconception that I see floating around is that diversification, when we think about education, when we think about prevention, work, training, systems level work, I think there is a misconception that those things are only supposed to be dealt with by the system. So for example, here with prevention work, most of our prevention work is done at a population level by the government or large scale organizations. Very rarely is prevention work done in private practices, for example. That would be very rare.

But diversification can actually look like education. It can look like prevention. It can look like psychoeducation, group learning, training other professionals, contributing at a systems level that is not just relegated to the realm of the systems to implement.

And I think importantly, these things are probably already being done by therapists. We just do them informally, probably every day, right? The difference is about making them more intentional, more structured, more clearly defined, rather than just thinking I have to add more one-to-one work in order to be able to sustain my business. So there’s some of the misconceptions that I probably want to touch on, first and foremost.

Those are really great misconceptions. And I think you’re touching on this, being able to diversify requires having a foundation. So what are some of the things that either could go wrong or therapists should watch out for when they do try to diversify, when building that foundation?

Yeah I think you’re a hundred percent right. When diversification fails or goes wrong, it’s usually because people skip some of the fundamentals, some of the foundations. So usually one of the first failure points is that people lack clarity on scope or on their role.

I see this go wrong quite often actually. So it’s a real lack of clarity around what am I actually doing here? So therapists will start to create something without being very clear on whether they are acting as a clinician, as an educator, or as a something else entirely.

And why that’s important is because when we are not clear on the role that we’re playing in this diversification that we are now undertaking this thing that I’m going to create, when we’re not clear on what role I’m playing in that the role blur, it creates confusion for not only your audience, but also for you.

And that’s where people might start to feel unsafe. They might start to feel unsure, or we start to open ourselves up for complaints to the board and things like that. So we really do need to be clear on what is a role that I’m actually playing here? What’s my scope of practice for the thing that I’m creating over here?

And how can I really maintain that role so that I’m not. Accidentally moving from educator, for example, into therapist and mistakenly doing therapy, when that might actually get me in trouble with my board.

The other big mistake that I see is copying business models not designed for clinicians. Kayla, you and I met through a more general business space and I see time and time again that when we copy business models that were never designed for clinicians in the first place, it goes wrong. Not all the time, but certainly enough of the time for it to be a problem. Because I think, particularly like the online business advice, so when you’re following some of the big gurus in the space some of the big names, influencers, some of their advice assumes things like, unlimited energy, flexible boundaries, and a very different risk profile.

So when therapists try to slot themselves into those models and do what they say, these people out there say, I think it can clash with our ethics, with our capacity, with our nervous system, and with our scope. So what we are actually allowed to do, required to do all of those things. So I think it’s really important to just know what is the information that I’m consuming? So if I’m learning from a coach or a mentor, is this actually safe and appropriate for me to implement as a therapist? What would my board have to say about this particular thing? And it’s okay to recognize that not all business advice, even if it’s good for the vast majority of people out there, not all business advice is going to be good for us as therapists, we have complexity and we have nuance.

I absolutely love that because I am thinking of even just marketing strategies. When we think of our ethical codes or standards while some marketing strategies might not be inherently unethical in the business world. According to our ethics and our standards, they may be considered unethical according to our practices.

Again, some of that advice that we may get in kind of the general space may not necessarily be appropriate when it comes to building a therapy practice. In addition, and I’m thinking of Canada specifically. In Canada, every province has its own regulatory body, per profession. And of course there’s multiple professions that are also doing therapy as well. So even when we think of even going into like social work groups and therapist groups and asking, I’m having this problem, what is the right answer?

Sometimes you’re going to get 10 answers and they’re all probably right and they’re all probably wrong, depending on where you’re practicing. And also your current standards of practice and ethical codes.

Absolutely. I could not agree more. Like I think marketing is a very obvious one. The other thing that I have come to realize is even things like when these wonderful business mentors will try and help you to create like a framework or an approach. So let’s just use the example of creating an online course, for example, and you’re following a guru who says, here’s how you create your content for your course. Here’s how to create your unique framework.

And you’re talking to therapists who might be doing things like EMDR, DBT, or ACT, or whatever it might be. Actually, we really need to think through what is it that we are put into frameworks? How is it being applied to the person sitting in front of us, and how do we actually differentiate what we do in a one-to-one therapeutic setting versus what is appropriate and ethical to put into something like a course.

Now, it might be the case that we are looking at something like ACT. How is a business mentor going to understand the nuance, the complexity that’s required to understand in this particular scenario? ACT is going to be acting, playing the role of a clinical intervention, but if we change this and we move that now it’s going to be acting more as a psychoeducational tool, and there’s not a general business owner that’s going to be able to help you with that.

And again, these are the things that we probably don’t necessarily think about immediately as therapists. We’re just like, oh, that person has a million followers and they’re talking about courses and therefore I should follow and trust them. Actually, no, we need to really think about the complexity that we bring to the table when we are diversifying and be very cautious or filter the types of information that we are taking in and very clearly think through, how does it apply to me?

I absolutely love that. So how can therapists expand their work in ways that are ethical, that are within scope and align with professional standards?

Great question. Obviously that’s a huge question. We could probably do a whole episode just on that because it’s got multi-facets that probably deserve a lot of space and a lot of talking through.

I think one of the things that I didn’t mention that I think would be a miss of me not to before we move into that is around one of the other mistakes, which I do think. Really lovely branches into this next conversation. But I think one of the final mistakes that I see is around trying to add complexity on top of potentially an already overwhelmed nervous system.

So I see a lot of therapists who come into my programs, you’ve probably seen them too, Kayla. They’re like, oh my God, I’m so burnt out. My nervous system is fried. Life really sucks. And they come from this place of I just need to create a course or write a book, or start a podcast or whatever it might be.

And I’m like, dude, you need to slow down and realize that most therapists are not starting from a place of excess capacity. Like the vast majority of us are not sitting around going, gosh, I have so much time. I’m going to spend 30 hours a week creating an online business. Like that’s not us. And we have to recognize that, right? Like you are already probably holding a full caseload, whatever the definition of full is for you, you’re probably already holding really complex emotional responsibility. You don’t fix overload by just adding complexity on top and thinking that’s going to go well because it’s not.

So you have to adjust. You have to adjust. Or you have to get support because otherwise it’s going to completely overwhelm you. That’s when you try to do something and you stall or you start and then you abandon the idea because now suddenly private practice is requiring too much labor or whatever it might be.

Or you’re just like, oh, I’m just not cut out for this because I couldn’t get through it. Actually, no, this could potentially just be you trying to add complexity to a very raw nervous system. So when we think about scope and ethics and standards, really importantly, ethics don’t just disappear when we diversify.

If anything, ethics probably become even more important, and we’ve already touched on this a little bit in terms of like really thinking through some of the advice out there and why that might not always be appropriate for us, but one of the really important things. You need to do, as I mentioned before, is you need to clearly differentiate your role.

So an educator is not the same thing as a therapist, and a therapist is not the same thing as an educator. And when you are playing those two different roles, you really need to make sure that you create parameters around those.

So that foundation is really important when you are explicit about which role you are in at any given time. It’s going to create clarity, safety for everyone involved. And it’s going to reduce, not necessarily reduce it to zero, but it’s certainly going to reduce the potential for things like being out of scope, reports to the board, things like that.

The other thing to think about is around language boundaries, because language matters a lot. Again, it might not matter to the average coach out there. But language matters to us. The way things are described sets an expectation about what our work is and is not. So when you are very clear in the language that you’re using, when you have very clear language boundaries, it helps people to understand the limits of what you are offering, and it’s going to protect you again from drifting into that role that you did not intend.

To take on in the first place. And we can do that through the use of, obviously in our sales pages and in our messaging and all of those types of things. But even in things like disclaimers, we should be plastering them everywhere. Really telling people things like so if it’s a non-therapeutic service, for example this does not constitute a therapist client relationship.

We should have all of this stuff literally littered throughout our terms and conditions of sale. If we’re selling, for example, a course or a membership or whatever it might be, language matters. So really thinking about how can I be very clear about what this is and what this is not to avoid any confusion, you also need to think very clearly about things like informed consent and transparency. Ethical expansion is going to require you, it’s going to rely on informed consent and transparency.

One of the things that most boards in Western countries tend to have a big problem with is when we have not adequately informed, either our clients or our customers, again, what this is, what, this is not what the limits are of this very transparently.

They also have a very big problem when we mix business models. So for example, when we are treating someone clinically and we move them over into a group program, for example, so we just need to be really careful about informed consent, relationships, transparency. People need to understand what they’re engaging in, what type of support is included, what isn’t included, and when we set those expectations up from the outset, trust is going to only increase rather than decrease. It’s also, again, going to decrease the amount of refund requests. Difficult conversations with clients who didn’t understand what they were purchasing, questions from the board around, what is this and how is it different from the clinical work You’re doing all of those things.

And then finally, it’s designing offers that support clinical care, not replace it. So I will never, you’ll never hear me say that one-to-one therapy is dead. We should not bother. It is not working anymore. We are just going to do away with it and replace it with courses, memberships, and the like.

At its best, the kind of work that we create, it should support clinical care rather than trying to replace it or take the place of. So education programs, all of these types of things can compliment therapy. They can help people to access support earlier. Yes, they can help to reduce pressure on individual clinicians, but the goal is not to do less care like, we are just trying to do care differently and more sustainably.

So when you think about it in that way, like I’m not trying to replicate or replace one-to-one therapy. How is what I’m doing differently? How does it compliment or give an individual something that they can choose different to that? Do those things make sense to you, Kayla?

A hundred percent. And actually, when we think about not replacing, but complimenting that is super important. And something I talk about quite often is the client path and how they seek support or access support. And as I mentioned earlier in this episode not everybody is accessing one-to-one services, but some are, right. Understanding the path that, prospective clients come from are ways that we can enter into these areas in very appropriate ways to be able to support our clients.

And I actually like to give this example. When I was doing my BSW, I was experiencing a lot of anxiety. I did not seek any type of professional help, even though I had access with my university. I had free services if I wanted to. I did not access them. But what I did do was buy every self-help book I could find that even today I still use in my therapy practice with clients. And that was my choice. And so that was a low-cost option, self-paced that I chose in that moment.

Now, of course, not everybody chooses self-help books, but that’s just an example of people are seeking support in alternate ways, and we can show up in all of these ways and still be able to provide one-to-one therapy for people who are at that stage.

Agreed. 100000%. Agreed. And to add to that, I think, again, if we’re thinking about how people are accessing. Services beyond one-to-one or options beyond one-to-one, and how the vast majority of those things are not actually created by mental health clinicians.

It’s terrifying to think that we are relegated to this tiny sliver of mental health support when there are so many other options out there available for people. But what is the quality they’re actually getting? So if anything, writing the book that you wanted to write or creating that membership or creating those digital downloadables.

You are the perfect person to be able to do that, and we actually need more trained clinicians creating services beyond one-to-one, not less like we should actually be moving more into that space to give people evidence-based, high quality services that they’re probably not going to get unless we start moving into those spaces.

I couldn’t agree with you more. So where should a therapist start if they feel overwhelmed by diversification options?

I think most therapists probably feel somewhat overwhelmed when they think about, oh my gosh, where do I start? There’s all of these things that I could be doing, and then they’re bombarded on their Facebook feed by ads like, you should do this, or Come and write your book, or, here’s this thing.

So I think it’s really important to just recognize that the world is probably primed to overwhelm you in that way and take a breath. The most important advice I can give people is start smaller than you think and start slower than you want. So if you are feeling overwhelmed by all the options, just think smaller and slower.

So people assume. You’ve probably seen these types of posts too. I’ll go into one of the big professional Facebook groups for creating additional revenue streams, for example, and there is always posts in there of oh, I’m thinking of creating a course. What platform should I use? Where should I host my course?

They haven’t even decided on whether or not they’re definitely going to create a course. What the course is going to be about, what problem it’s going to solve. None of that has happened. They’re already down at the tech road and that’s probably going to overwhelm them. So you don’t need to start thinking about platforms or funnels or big builds or a nine-month program or anything like that.

That is rarely the place to start. Those things will come later. What matters first, I think is just noticing. What you probably already explain every day in the work that you do, the questions that you are repeating time and time again, like you are answering repeatedly time and time again. It might be thinking about some of the concepts that clients seem to struggle with, some of the language that you’re naturally using to help people make sense of things.

Look for patterns in your everyday work. From there, it’s about choosing one clear problem and one clear audience rather than trying to solve everything all at once. So what is one clear problem and one clear audience that problem sits with, that I can start to address, that I can start to help.

Once you do that, then you can start thinking about the next steps, how am I going to do that? And then comes all of the litany of other things after that. But you can’t do anything after that. You can’t think about platforms and tech and marketing and how scared you are of creating a reel, if you haven’t yet figured out one clear problem, one clear audience.

So I would start there. And then most importantly. Coming back to an earlier part of the conversation, capacity has to come before creativity. If you are burnt out, if your nervous system and workload are already stretched, no idea, no matter how good it is going to feel sustainable and is going to be doable.

So start with the question of capacity, because when you start from that place of how much capacity do I actually have? And then you can start to potentially make some of the necessary changes to release some of that capacity, that’s what’s going to make expansion possible in the first place.

I couldn’t agree with you more. So Hayley, you have a free guide that you would like to share. Can you tell us what it is and how it can help listeners?

Absolutely. So I’ve got a free guide. It’s going to help you to really think through. Online programs as an option. So one of the supports that I really help therapists with is creating courses and not that don’t have to be good big courses. They can be mini courses, they can be short, all the things. And this guide is basically going to help you to go through the steps of figuring out some of the things that we’ve started to talk about today in terms of is this even right for me?

So it’s going to help you to assess readiness. It’s going to clarify some of the ethical pathways and quandaries that you really need to think through. The guide is going to help you to reduce noise and pressure, and it’s going to be a really helpful thinking tool. It’s not going to push you to act or do all the things that you’re not ready for. It is a wonderful low bar entry to start thinking about. Do I want to do a course? And if I do, here are some of the steps, the things that I need to think through in order to do that. So I think that’s a wonderful place to start, and I believe that you are linking that in the show notes. And then for the people who do want to take the next steps after that, we host a bootcamp a couple of times every single year.

Therapist rising.com/bootcamp. Where we come together as a community and we actually start to put some of this into practice, so we support you with the actual steps to start taking to create your course or your online program.

Fabulous. So to sign up for Hayley’s free guide, check out therapistsrising.com/guide or to sign up for her bootcamp head to therapistsrising.com/bootcamp,

or you can simply scroll onto to the show notes and click on the link.

Hayley, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today to discuss the reasons behind why therapists are expanding how they work beyond a one-to-one model.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you everyone for tuning into today’s episode, and I hope you join me again soon on The Designer Practice Podcast.

Until next time, bye for now.

Credits & Disclaimers

Music by Denis Pavlov Music from Pixabay

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Reference

Mental Health Research Canada. (2025). Key Facts on Mental Health. Retrieved on January 23, 2026 from www.mhrc.ca/key-facts-on-mental-health#:~:text=11%25%20of%20Canadians%20have%20accessed,they%20should%20but%20are%20not.