Private Pay Practitioners Premium Podcast

DJ Burr
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Business
  • Updated Weekly

Private pay isn't a dream. It's a decision. And this podcast is for the therapists who are making it. Each week I sit down with private pay practitioners and industry experts who are actually doing the work -- building sustainable practices, ditching insurance, and creating businesses that don't require their burnout to survive. Real conversations. Practical strategies. Let's get to work. New episodes biweekly. Join 17,000+ therapists at privatepaypractitioners.com

  1. Sep 29 ·  Bonus

    Member Spotlight: Dr. Lauren Chase on Less Insurance and More Income

    Dr. Lauren Chase first came on the podcast in November 2025. She was seeing 20 to 25 clients a week, mostly insurance, with a plan to drop Blue Cross Blue Shield and Aetna in 2026. She joined our community that December. So I asked her back to tell us how it went. She dropped BCBS in April. She raised her rate from $200 to $225. She's at about a 50/50 split between Aetna and private pay right now and working out the timing on that last step. And this is the part I want you to hear: "The more money I'm making in each month and similar, if not less, clients I'm seeing." We also talked about networking with intention instead of meeting with anyone who might send a referral, what Summer School did for her, finishing her EMDR training, and why she feels she got more out of her membership than a $3,000 course she took. (She guessed $20 a month. Essential is $25. We'll let it slide.) Lauren is running a women's boundaries group focused on navigating family stress during the holidays, and she's accepting 1:1 clients for talk therapy and EMDR. She's licensed in NC, SC, VT, ID, and FL. Find Dr. Lauren Chase: Website: ClimbingHillsCounseling.com Instagram: @ClimbingHillsCounseling If you've got your own insurance exit plan sitting on a sticky note, bring it to the monthly Essential call. That's exactly what it's there for. Lauren, thank you for showing up the way you do. I'm proud of you.

  2. Sep 23

    S2E42 | Not Knowing Yourself Is the Main Mistake | Private Pay, Niche & Building With Intention | Gary Hominick, LPC, CSAT

    Gary Hominick and I share a niche. He works with men navigating problematic sexual behavior and the betrayal it leaves in relationships. We do not talk to many people who do what we do, so this one was personal for me. He is a licensed professional counselor and CSAT based in Texas and the founder of Aletheia Counseling TX. He built a solo practice after almost nine years in community mental health. He has a five-stage model for problematic behavior recovery that helps clients normalize what is happening without putting a piece of tape over the check engine light. And he has been intentionally moving toward fully private pay ever since. We talked about the eighty twenty principle and why flyers at churches will not fill your caseload. How Gary built his network by only reaching out to people he would actually send referrals to. The business hat versus therapy hat distinction and why mixing them up is costing therapists money. Why he had a no-show policy freebie in his informed consent and what I told him to do about it. And what happens when a client tries to negotiate your rate while you are on vacation. He also asked me what the main mistake clinicians make when moving into private practice. I said not knowing themselves. That is the whole thing. If this episode got you thinking about your own practice and what you know about yourself as a business owner, let's talk. Book a 90-minute strategy session at privatepaypractitioners.com. Gary Hominick: aletheiacounselingtx.com

  3. Sep 16

    S2E41 | Somebody Set That Rate and You Accepted It | Insurance, Boundaries & Taking Back Your Practice | Acelli Crippen-Kok, LPC-S

    Acelli Crippen-Kok started private pay, got scared, and went back to insurance. She was honest about every bit of it. She is a licensed professional counselor and supervisor based in Cedar Park, Texas, and the founder of Solid Ground Counseling and Wellness. She specializes in working with women navigating people-pleasing, generational trauma, complex trauma, anxiety, and chronic guilt and shame. She is also an LPC supervisor who loves working with new associates. We talked about what fear did to her decision-making, what Aetna just did to the CPT codes and what that means for clinicians doing complex trauma work, why she has not told her clients yet and what she is going to do about it, how Open Path is another version of the same problem, what she is going to change in her informed consent after this conversation, and why when you accept a rate that somebody else set you are telling them how to treat you. She also took notes. Live. On air. I loved it. If this episode got you thinking about your own rate and who set it, let's talk. Book a 90-minute strategy session at privatepaypractitioners.com. Acelli Crippen-Kok: solidgroundcounselingtx.com Instagram and Facebook: @SolidGroundCounselingTX

  4. Sep 8

    S2E40 | First Brick | Private Pay, LGBTQ Affirming Care & Building From the Ground Up | Jay Hess, LCSW

    Jay Hess named the practice First Brick as a nod to the Stonewall riots. If you know, you know. If you don't, now you do. Jay is a licensed clinical social worker based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and the founder of First Brick Counseling. The practice is fully private pay, in-person only, from day one. Every single decision flows from what the LGBTQ plus community, and specifically transgender and gender nonconforming clients, actually need. There was a gender neutral restroom or Jay was not signing the lease. We talked about why affirming care is not a specialty for most clinicians but it absolutely is for Jay, what WPATH is and why most self-described affirming therapists have never heard of it, why Jay does not document gender in clinical notes and what that has to do with protection, how Jay built a referral network that includes surgeons, pelvic floor specialists, affirming faith leaders, and financial advisors before the practice even opened, the resentment that shows up around reduced rate clients and how to work through it, what it actually costs to run a practice when you factor in taxes and business expenses, and why Jay spent two years as the biggest thorn in the side of the local school district until the board finally flipped. Two years in, profitable within six months, and first time presenting at a conference this year. Jay has a lot to say. And is not quiet about any of it. If this episode got you thinking about your niche and who you are actually built to serve, let's talk. Book a 90-minute strategy session at privatepaypractitioners.com. Jay Hess: firstbrickcounseling.com linkedin.com/in/jay-hess-lcsw-47931288

  5. Sep 1

    S2E39| Building Connections in Mental Health Care w/Dr. Brian Dixon, MD

    Dr. Brian Dixon is back. He owns a seven-figure practice in Texas, built Feel Guide to solve the referral problem he kept running into, and has invested close to $100,000 in business coaching over his career. He knows what he is doing and he does not sugarcoat it. We talked about how to ask for a consult the right way and why most new clinicians get it wrong, why nothing about building a private pay practice is free and what it actually costs to do it right, what the referral network has to look like in year one and why you cannot skip the pavement pounding even if you are an introvert, what to do when the VC companies start absorbing your clients and you are feeling the fear, why you need to know where you are going before any of it makes sense, and Feel Guide, what it is, how it works, and why you should get on it now before the price goes up. He also said something that I keep coming back to. If you don't do it, it won't get done. Nobody is coming to save you. Build the thing. If this episode got you thinking about where you are going and who is helping you get there, let's talk. Book a 90-minute strategy session at privatepaypractitioners.com. Dr. Brian Dixon: feelguide.network Feel Guide: feelguide.network Feel Great: feelgreat.today

    S2E39| Building Connections in Mental Health Care w/Dr. Brian Dixon, MD

  6. Aug 25

    S2E38 | Get Out of Your Own Way | Private Pay, 37K Followers & Two Books Sitting on the Shelf | Alinne Butcher, LMFT

    I sat down with Alinne Butcher, a licensed marriage and family therapist and founder of Over The Rug Therapy based in Granada Hills, California. Alinne is a trauma-informed, antiracist, attachment therapist who has been in practice for three years and is also a new mom doing all of this with a baby at home. She also has 37,000 Instagram followers, two completed books, and zero products on the market. We had a real conversation about what it looks like to build an audience of that size without a plan to monetize it, why she stopped posting, why both books are done and neither one is out, what she is actually afraid of, and what it means to get out of your own way when the people are already sending you DMs asking where the products are. I told her I want to see the book in 30 days. She said okay. We also got into her insurance journey, what Kaiser was doing inside her practice that made her feel like she was dancing with the devil, why she left and how the mindset shift made it possible, and what she would say to every therapist who is sitting on something they have been too scared to put out. If this episode lit something up for you, let's talk. Book a 90-minute strategy session at privatepaypractitioners.com. Alinne Butcher: overtherugtherapy.com Instagram: @overtherugtherapy

  7. Aug 18

    S2E37 | I Never Set Out to Build a Business | 20 Years, Private Pay & Delivering What You Sell | Lynn Zakeri, LCSW

    This week I sat down with Lynn Zakeri, a licensed clinical social worker based in the Chicago area who has been in private practice for over 20 years. She is the 2022 Illinois NASW Social Worker of the Year, has been featured in over 100 national media outlets, and runs a hybrid group practice licensed across 15 states between her and her associates. She never set out to build a business. She set out to become a really good therapist. The business followed. That has been her philosophy for over two decades and this conversation is proof that it works. We talked about how she went from school social worker to solo private pay practitioner to group practice owner almost by accident, why she added five associates during COVID in what she calls the best and worst thing to ever happen to her business, what it actually means to deliver what you sell, how she has built long term client relationships that span decades, why she told her son when he started editing her videos that credibility mattered more than going viral, and what doing without feeling costs you when you are juggling everything at once. She also said something I keep going back to. If you want 10 tips for anxiety you don't need to see me. If you want to know why you keep getting activated, that's what we do. If this episode got you thinking about the kind of practice you actually want to build, let's talk. Book a 90-minute strategy session at privatepaypractitioners.com. Lynn Zakeri: lynnzakeri.com Instagram and TikTok: @lynnzakerilcsw YouTube: @lynnzakeri4260

  8. Aug 12

    S2E36 | We Make Spectacular Friends | Provider Community, CE Training & Bringing Bodies Together | Elena Khazanova

    This week I sat down with Elena Khazanova and I did not expect to almost cry. Elena has been doing this work for over 25 years. She started as a massage therapist and craniosacral therapist, went back for her counseling degree, and built a practice that now centers entirely on provider wellbeing. She brings providers together for connection, friendship, networking, and play. And she trains therapists to become CE providers so that the clinical wisdom sitting inside practitioners who are not PESI favorites can actually get out into the world. We talked about why you do not have to go straight to the APA to become a CE provider, how EFT tapping helped her teach over a thousand therapists a trauma intervention that also protects them from secondary trauma in real time, what it means to build gift bonds instead of trauma bonds in your provider community, why visibility has been the hardest thing for minority and marginalized therapists to claim, and what happens when you get providers in a room together and ask them to talk about their gifts instead of their credentials. She also asked me what my deepest gift is. And then she asked me what the world would look like if that gift fully flowed into it. I did not see that coming. And then we talked about the friends I have made in this community who have shown up for me in ways some of my blood family never did. Friends who sat in the bed with me when I lost my daughter. Friends who were officiants at my wedding. Friends I called from the ICU. We make spectacular friends. This episode reminded me why. If this episode got you thinking about who is in your corner and who should be, let's talk. Book a 90-minute strategy session at privatepaypractitioners.com. Elena Khazanova: elenakhazanova.com

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About

Private pay isn't a dream. It's a decision. And this podcast is for the therapists who are making it. Each week I sit down with private pay practitioners and industry experts who are actually doing the work -- building sustainable practices, ditching insurance, and creating businesses that don't require their burnout to survive. Real conversations. Practical strategies. Let's get to work. New episodes biweekly. Join 17,000+ therapists at privatepaypractitioners.com

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