With November coming up, this is my nineth month of having my own private practice as an occupational therapist and I feel like I have been doing a lot of reflection about how far I’ve come. I was very lucky when I decided to start my private practice to have a bunch of people that I knew and could reach out to to ask lots of questions and get guidance instead of starting from scratch and trying to figure it out all on my own. Because of this, I thought I would write a little blog post with some information that I learned as a private practice owner and then more specifically an Ontario registered occupational therapist. If any of this sounds interesting to you, stick around!
If you are new to my blog, my name is Kristina and I am a Registered Occupational Therapist in Ontario Canada. I have been fully registered since 2019 and in April/May of this year I decided to go on my own and start my own practice. If you are new to Occupational Therapy (OT) as a healthcare practice, we are allied health professionals with a BROAD area of practice, with the goal of treating clients as a whole and to support their engagement with the activities (occupations) they have to do or want to do in their lives. Check out an earlier blog post below about what is OT!
Here are a few things I learned about having your own therapy practice;
- Start imperfectly!
- There are so many different aspects to starting a business and it is so easy to get caught up in doing it perfectly off the bat. However, if you think about your business in a bigger picture, most likely you’re going to learn things as you go and have to make changes anyways as your practice grows/shifts or has to modify based on college requirements. Take time to do research about the bare minimum of what you need to comply with your college’s expectations and legalities and then build as you go!
- Networking > social media everytime
- Yes, I have this blog account and I have a social media account, I also have a website for my business BUT my main focus both when organizing myself to start a business and throughout the last 6 months has been on being authetically myself as a practitioner and networking with various other health professionals in my area. I don’t have specific goals around posting on social media or my blog or making my website fancy, because all of my referrals have come from people finding me either through previous clients, people I have connected with or health care professionals finding my website and recommending me to their clients! Don’t focus too much on social media right away
- Create a bio that shows who you are as a therapist that will help the right people find you
- As an Occupational therapist, your role can look SO HUGE and it is more common that people will niche off and find a specific population that matches them. When I was making my bio, I tried to focus on my strengths in working with neurodiverse individuals, while also explaining who I am and what my approach looks like. When people take a look at your bio, whether it is on your website or on a client portal for booking appointments etc, they are often looking for something that makes them feel they can connect with you. The same goes in the other direction – I have had some clients come to me looking for very specific things that I don’t offer or that I haven’t dug into enough to feel confident in, so I am very open to sending people in different directions to find the therapists that work best for you. Not every person will fit well with you so it’s helpful to be transparent with who you are!
- Take time research business requirements and to create your policies so you don’t have to go back and repair
- This sounds like it goes against the first point of starting imperfectly, but it is important to do your research to build your business right the first time. The difference in my opinion is the idea of setting up your ideal business with creative logos, website, blog etc vs setting your policies and legal requirements right from the start so that you don’t have to go back and repair things. For example, it’s easier to start your caseload with a consent form that writes out the cancellation policy that you can refer to instead of having a situation where a client cancels and then having to figure out what to do from there and backtrack. Doing research on taxes, business licenses, practice insurance etc will put you in a place where you can see your clients, run your business and then perfect the visual/creative aspects as you go! Even the offerings can change as you grow your clientele, for example I started with 1 hour sessions and as clients requested for more or less time I figured out cost for those.
- Start your business with the understanding that you may not be busy right away
- When I started my business I knew I was not going to have tons of clients right away and made sure I was financially ok with that. I found this allowed me to be more intentional with who I took as clients and also made me feel ok about taking unpaid time to do professional development and connect with other therapists for support. There are ways for you to stir up more business such as signing up for insurance lists or funding lists where people looking for a therapist can see you are available, you may just need to do some searching for that.

These are my reflections so far, I have had such an interesting and exciting adventure starting my business and am excited to see where it will go! Remember that imposter syndrome is so real as a business owner, but as a healthcare provider I’m sure you are familiar with that feeling! Take your time, connect with people for support, create something that represents who you are and I hope you fly!
