Why this one number is so hard
Most people building a practice put the fee off until last. It feels like a self-assessment: what am I worth if I am still in the middle of my training? Asked that way the question has no answer, which is why the number that eventually lands on the page is usually copied from the cheapest colleague in town.
It helps to ask it differently. Your fee does not describe your worth as a practitioner. It describes what it costs for this practice to exist, and to still exist in two years. That number you can calculate, and you can explain it without justifying yourself.
Work from your costs
Add up what your practice costs per month, including the items that do not look like practice costs:
- Your training instalments, spread across the month. They keep running no matter how full your calendar is.
- Supervision and your own therapy hours, which you need regularly in this phase.
- Room, liability insurance, software, bookkeeping. Even a room rented by the day is a fixed cost.
- The unpaid time: preparation, notes, answering inquiries, absorbing cancellations. A session hour is rarely a working hour.
Then divide that total not by the hours you want to work, but by the sessions you realistically bill. Someone seeing eight to ten clients a week in the build-up phase is still working a full week. That gap is why so many new practices feel tight even when the hourly rate looks reasonable on paper.
The introductory rate for your first clients
At the start you need clients you can work and learn with, and a reduced rate is a fair trade for that. Set it for roughly your first five clients and say from the outset that it does not apply to the ones after them. From then on, new inquiries pay the number you calculated.
Two things make that step easier. First, announce the increase instead of explaining it afterwards; one line on your page is enough, saying the rate applies while you are building the practice. Second, leave existing clients on the old rate. It costs you money and it spares you a conversation that has no business turning up in the middle of someone’s process.
One price on the website, not a scale
Sliding scales are well meant and expensive during training. They move the decision about your income into every single first conversation, and you hold that conversation with people who are talking about something painful for the first time. For both sides that is a poor combination.
A visible number does the same work as a tidy waiting area: it takes a question out of the room before anyone has to ask it. Add a line about session length and a line about how payment works. People who find you through a directory or an ad usually have no idea whether their insurance is involved, and that conversation decides on a first appointment more often than your method does. The groundwork for being found in the first place is covered in How do I get found online as a therapist?
Discounts on purpose
None of this means nobody may pay less. It means you decide when and for whom, instead of renegotiating it every time. Three rules keep that workable:
- Limit the number. Two reduced places is a decision; “rate negotiable” is an invitation to negotiate with every inquiry.
- Name the reason. A place for people in training, or for someone in an acute financial situation, is understandable and leaves you nothing to defend.
- Set an end. A reduced rate for an agreed period can be ended without anyone feeling downgraded.
Where it tends to come apart:
- The fee appears nowhere, so every inquiry opens with the question.
- The introductory rate quietly keeps running until, two years later, it is simply the price.
Say where you are
That you are in training and working under supervision belongs on your page and in your profile. It costs you a few inquiries, and the ones that remain arrive with matching expectations, so there is nothing to defend that would not become visible anyway. Which titles you may use, and which claims are risky, depends on where you practise and, in the US, on your state, so check your local rules. As general orientation on wording: What can therapists say in their marketing? None of it is legal advice.
If you are still deciding how much fixed cost to take on at all, the fee question is tied to the room question. That one is here: Start your practice online, then rent the room.
Where Kaufmann Health fits
A verified profile in a curated directory for somatic practice is one place where your details sit complete and in your own words: how you work, where you are, and how someone books an intro call. Being listed is free, and we check your credentials first. Training in progress is explicitly part of what we list.
Your fee is yours to set. And whether this directory is the right one for you depends on your method and where you work.