It sounds almost impossible.  Actually manage to enjoy doing your own billing?

Yet, at TheraThink, within our billing service we literally have a different mindset about helping therapists figure out all this stuff.

We embrace the importance of billing.

You need to too.

We're going to walk through how you can embrace billing and "your job" as a therapist to lessen the negative experience of doing your own billing and admin work.

We’ll also teach you how to speed up your billing and never get denied claims again.  Join our newsletter at the end of this article (read all of it!!) and we’ll send you our free PDF report.

Self Employment is Empowering

One of the best parts of being a private practice therapist and small business owner is that you are self employed and every dollar you earn is directly because of your effort and expertise.  It’s empowering to know you’re completely responsible for your success (and scary to know you’re equally responsible for your own failure).

Exercise:  Take 15 seconds right now to mentally note 3 unique benefits of being self employed and running your own private practice.

Self Employment Requires Additional Work

Likewise, being self employed also requires additional work.  You have to file your own taxes, make sure you have accurate accounting information, do marketing, scheduling, billing, and as much miscellaneous work as any other job.

Exercise: Spend 30 seconds thinking about other peoples jobs, realizing they have boring and repetitive tasks they have to do just like you to earn their living.

See Billing and Admin Work as Part of the Job

You need to take responsibility for the benefits and costs of running your own private practice.  With the benefits come the responsibilities of handling your own billing (or spending some of your earnings outsourcing it).

While you could outsource your taxes, your scheduling, and your billing, if you choose to retain those revenues and try hard to automate your admin work, you need to have a system to do all of your administrative work.

Now more than ever there are free and cheap services and apps to help you do many of these tasks yourself.  (Our whole blog is dedicated exactly to learning those tips and tactics to always file your claims correctly the first time, skip insurance company lines, get on insurance boards, and get online.. and there are many other websites and services out there for free).

Embrace Waiting on the Phone

I know it sounds impossible but embrace getting on the phone and spending 10 minutes listening to bad music on hold.

Make peace with it.  Relax, sink into your chair, and take a break.

When the person you talk to doesn’t know what they’re doing, have compassion for them and try hard to be patient.  Also, pro tip: calmly ask to speak to their manager.

None of the hard part about doing admin work is a reflection on you or your actual work: doing therapy.

All of the office work is just “part of the job”.

So make friends with it being a pain in the butt.  Laugh it off.

Just like you, we are making calls everyday in our billing service and we try hard to simply smile, ask them if they’re doing well, hold on a bit, and relax.

Hopefully this mindset shift helps you embrace the “day job” part of running a private practice!  Comment to let us know.