Business Coaching for Therapists: What’s Ethical, What’s Not, and What to Look For

Does the phrase business coaching for therapists make you cringe? You’re not alone. For many clinicians, the worlds of ethical practice and business growth can feel at odds. But what if you could build a financially sustainable practice without compromising your values?

In this episode, we’re challenging the idea that therapists must choose between being good clinicians and smart business owners. We explore why marketing, pricing, and business development aren’t inherently unethical—and how building a sustainable practice can actually give you more freedom, flexibility, and capacity to serve your clients.

We’ll also talk honestly about the skepticism surrounding business coaching, including the harm caused by unhelpful coaches, unrealistic promises, and questionable practices. You’ll learn what to look for in a coach who respects your clinical expertise, understands ethical and licensure considerations, and genuinely supports your growth.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why ethical practice and business savvy can—and should—coexist.
• How sustainable pricing and revenue can create more opportunities to serve clients.
• Why marketing, selling, and scaling don’t have to feel sleazy.
• What to look for when choosing a business coach for your therapy practice.
• How coaching can support clearer positioning, diversified income, better systems, accountability, and reduced burnout.
• Why you don’t have to let bad experiences or anonymous online criticism dictate your business decisions.

You became a therapist to help people. You don’t have to abandon that purpose to build a business that supports you, too.

You can be an ethical clinician and a confident business owner. Let’s talk about what it looks like to pursue both.

Learn more about membership here.  Book a strategy session here. 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:29

If the phrase business coaching for therapists makes you roll your eyes, I am recording this episode for you. I really believe that we can practice ethically as therapists and be smart business people at the same time. And for many reasons, the two seem to be very disconnected in our field. Either you're practicing ethically and you're a moral and good therapist, or you're hurting prospective clients into a sales funnel just for profit and you're a dirty business person. Those are the narratives in our field. And I'm here to say that I just don't think that it's that binary for most people. Here's what I want to say. Many people enter this field because they want to help. Most people, probably. And things like marketing, pricing, and sales can feel like they conflict with that. If the words funnel or conversion or scale feel sleazy to you, there's probably good reason for that. That's not why we're in this work. We didn't get into the work to profit off of people's suffering. And yet we also are not volunteers. We do make money from this work. We do need to pay our bills from that money that we make from our time with our clients. And so I think it's really important to be able to see both sides of this and find a place where they intersect. Clients are not revenue. They are human beings that we care for deeply. But having enough revenue gives us the choice to say, hey, I want to offer my services to that particular client at a lower rate because they're working really hard and they don't have the means to pay my full rate. That's a gift that only you can afford if you're treating your business as a business and not as a volunteer opportunity. I totally get that coaching is unregulated, which is really hard for therapists who have jumped through a thousand hoops to get our licenses. It's really hard for someone to come alongside and say, hey, I'll teach you how to do this for $1,000. I have no credentials and no way for you to know if this is actually going to work for you. When there's a lot of hype and you don't know if you're going to get good results out of it, it's really easy to be skeptical of that. And in some ways you should be. You should be skeptical. You should be looking at reviews. You should be seeing, is this just another person looking to make a dollar? Or is this someone that actually desires to help me? Is this someone with a skill set that they're using as a strength to propel me towards the business and work that I really do want? I know that a lot of you have been burnt by coaches, and that's totally fair. I have too. I've seen people that were not helpful at all or just didn't even show up for meetings that I'd already paid them for. It's so frustrating and it's so disappointing. But I think if we get stuck in those experiences, then we get stuck in our businesses. In 2026, you have to be working as a business person in addition to a clinician. I know I've talked about this on other podcasts, but you can't just sit around waiting for clients to line up at your door without marketing, without looking at what kind of revenue you need and how you're going to price your services and create policies around cancellations, without figuring out how you're going to write on your website in a way that brings in clients that you're wanting to work with. All of that is business. And we have to be doing that now in a way that we didn't before. So I think it's really important to acknowledge the harm that has been caused in some business coaching arrangements for therapists and also recognize the benefit that is there. Another thing that I hear a lot of people saying is like I went on Reddit and saw another clinician calling this business coach a grifter for trying to be smart about business. And that I would say is just pure noise that we don't need to listen to. I think if that is making you feel like you can't pursue your own coaching or your own growth around yourself as a business owner, I would say it's like allowing someone's voice into your life who's totally anonymous and allowing that to dictate your business. Those threads online where people are just anonymously criticizing other people, we all know that person isn't healthy. And that's not someone that you should be taking advice from. If they've had a bad experience and they're wanting to share that experience, that's totally fair. They should be discussing that in their collegial groups. But those types of reviews are just noise. And I would hope that we are not determining whether or not we're ethical clinicians based on someone's opinion of a coach they've probably never worked with on Reddit. Also, I think it can be really easy to make judgments about people who are needing to diversify income streams, needing to expand their income, or even have really premium rates. And to that, I would say there are really, really compassionate reasons to need to make not just a decent living, but a really good living off of the work that we do. I have come across countless clinicians who are single parents, who have very high medical expenses, which in this country can bankrupt you, who have children with special needs and the costs associated with that. My point is that there are endless numbers of things that can happen in our lives that we don't choose that are really difficult and are very, very costly in a country that doesn't have great social systems. So if someone is working really hard to meet those needs through secondary income, through scaling, or finding ways to leverage their income, it's very often not because they're greedy or sleazy or are just about making money. There's often something underneath that that deserves a lot of empathy and compassion. And I would hope that we have the curiosity as clinicians to think about that as opposed to allowing the comment on Reddit to dictate our decision about the way people are running their businesses. Those are the things that I want to acknowledge as challenges around business coaching that are really fair. But I also would encourage us to ask, what if we are sharing our services instead of selling them? What if you're building expertise instead of scaling? What if you're speaking in a way on your website that attracts your ideal client and makes them resonate with you instead of converting? They're actually one in the same, but sometimes we just need to reframe it. Sometimes getting away from the business language and recognizing that nobody's gonna come see you if you don't share about what you're doing and that is selling. Nobody's gonna look out for your practice specialty if you're not building your expertise around it and letting people know that you're looking for a particular type of client and that is scaling, and nobody's gonna resonate with the words on your website if you're not writing in a way that converts. So I would consider those things if you've been on the fence about business coaching. If you're hesitant but you also see the benefit, here's a few things I want to leave you with. Finding a coach who's invested in your growth should come with some criteria. Here's some good things that you can be looking to expect from a person who's offering business coaching for therapists. They should bring clarity. Good coaches help clinicians define who they serve and how they're different, which tends to make marketing easier and attract better fit clients over time. They should have pricing and income confidence. They're helping you move away from undercharging or unethical insurance models or burnt-out caseloads and towards fees and structures that are more sustainable. They're leveraging beyond one-to-one hours. They're helping therapists who are capped by the number of sessions that they can see. Coaching opens you up to secondary income streams like groups, intensives, memberships, courses, supervision, consulting. So the income isn't tied directly to face-to-face hours. They're aware of systems that save you time through referral flows, intake onboarding, and follow-up processes that reduce the mental load and the constant sense of having to reinvent yourself. They help with accountability and momentum. This one's huge. Many therapists know what to do, but stall without structure. Regular check-ins and pure cohort time help people actually implement. Coaches need to be aware of ethical guardrails. A coach with clinical practice experience can help build marketing and sales approaches that respect licensing rules and the therapist's values, so growth doesn't require compromising integrity. There's less isolation. We all know that private practice can be really lonely. Being around other therapists tackling the same problems normalizes the struggles and gives access to shared knowledge. And then there's reduced burnout when income boundaries and workload are more intentional. Therapists often have more energy and presence for clients. So all of that to say what separates effective coaching from the kind of people that we fear giving our money to who aren't going to deliver results. The coaching that earns trust tends to share these features. The coach has actually built and run a practice of their own. Their claims are realistic and not guaranteed. They're not saying that they're going to get you 47 clients by January. Their approaches are tailored rather than one size fits all. Ethics and licensure are treated as constraints to design around, not to discard. And there's transparency about price, scope, and what outcomes are typical. At the Alliance, we do offer business coaching and community. We have our membership, which is a community-focused space for clinicians to get placed in peer supervision groups, to attend learning labs around business skills, and to grow their network. And then we also have our strategy sessions, which are one-to-one tailored business development containers for clinicians who are looking for something a little more personalized. I also do website audits with folks who are looking for help around how to write and design a website that translates well. I'd encourage you to look at our site and find the answers to all of these things that I just listed for you around how I come to the work of coaching. If it's a place that you feel like you're interested in exploring, I'd love to have a conversation with you. You're more than welcome to reach out on the website and schedule a discovery call. If it's not for you, that's totally fine. I'm also really honest with folks, and there are people who I've said, you know what, I don't think this is the right thing for you. And here's where I would go if I were you. So I will be honest with you and I'll let you know. But if it feels like it might be a good place for you to grow as a smart business person and an ethical practice owner, I would love to have a conversation with you. Because I think you can be both at the same time. Until next week, I'm with you in pursuit of growth and connection.