Join LACPA’s Business of Practice SIG meeting!

Friday, July 24^th, 12:00 – 1:00 Pacific Time

Title: Boost Your Business: Designing, Marketing, and Launching Psychotherapy Groups and Support Groups in Your Practice

Groups can be both a marketing strategy and a profit center in your practice.

Our ethical code limits us from making public statements that we, as individual practitioners, offer truly unique services. Individual therapy, couples therapy, family therapy, and psychological evaluations are not inherently unique. Even specific trademarked or certified methods are not unique to us as individual providers.

However, from a marketing perspective, offering a specialized group can distinguish you from much of your competition by virtue of the group’s specialized nature: demographic composition, diagnostic specificity, problem or focus, and the group modality itself.

Of the 25,000 non-physician psychotherapists in Los Angeles County, only about 1,000 offer psychotherapy groups or support groups on a private outpatient basis. For many therapists, trying to start and maintain a therapy group is a discouraging process because it requires specialized marketing skills that many of us were never taught.

Objectives of the Presentation:

1. Identify clinical niches for therapy groups and support groups that are in demand and that you are skilled at and enjoy facilitating.
2. Learn effective advertising channels for promoting a group.
3. Enumerate the core steps needed to build a waitlist and successfully launch a group.

Presenter: Jim De Santis, Ph.D.

LACPA member Jim De Santis, Ph.D., earned his bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Southern California, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and his master's and doctoral degrees in psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology, Los Angeles. Dr. De Santis has been in full-time private practice as a clinical psychologist for thirty years. He has facilitated a variety of therapy groups and support groups, both inpatient and outpatient, for men and women. He is president and co-founder of the Glendale Area Mental Health Professionals Association and the East San Gabriel Valley Mental Health Professionals Association, has authored the book The Business of Practice, and publishes several independent community directories of mental health services, most notably The Group List, a free online directory of 1,000 therapy groups and support groups offered by 500 licensed mental health professionals throughout Los Angeles County. He is a knowledgeable and engaging lecturer on the subject of building a private practice.

Location: Zoom

RSVP: Daniel Franklin, Ph.D., at [email protected]

LACPA SIG meetings are open to all LACPA members.

Nonmembers are encouraged to join LACPA by visiting lacpa.org.

Daniel Franklin, PhD, LACPA Board of Directors

Founder, President, and Clinical Director

Franklin Educational Services, Inc.

"The opinions of presenters, and their approach to psychological issues and interventions, do not represent a formal endorsement of any position by the Los Angeles County Psychological Association, leadership or its members. The opinions, ideas, and concepts expressed are purely those of the presenter."