Welcome to McKeegan Insights, LLC
McKeegan Insights, LLC is about inspiring creative passion.
Creative passion is a powerful ingredient for starting a private psychotherapy practice, achieving personal and professional growth, or creating a Legacy Project reflecting your experiences, life meaning and purpose, and personal values.
The mission of McKeegan Insights, LLC is to inspire creative passion and support the journey to project success.
Bonnie McKeegan, LCSW Consulting
Bonnie offers brief consultation services to clinicians starting or struggling with their private psychotherapy practice.
You will find the foundation of services in the newly released resource manual: The 14 Concrete (but not so hard!) Steps to Private Practice, Plus Six More Steps to Consider: A Guide for Licensed Clinical Social Workers and Licensed Clinical Marriage Family Therapists
Click FREE PREVIEW to read a substantial sample and the Table of Contents.
SPR Detailed Review of The 14 Concrete (but not so hard!) Steps to Private Practice
To get an idea of the number of links to critical information and resources included in the book, you can view and download the References & Links Index under the Guide Supplements tab in the menu.
If you purchase the paperback version of The 14 Concrete (but not so hard!) Steps to Private Practice, I highly recommend you download the References & Links Index to access the live links as you work through the chapters.
The Book’s Origin Story
Eight years in private practice was the Best. Job. Ever. Fall 2014 to Fall 2022. It wasn’t really a job after all; it was an entrepreneurial adventure. Private practice was the last career goal on my social work bucket list. When approaching it 15 years ahead of my original plan, I was unsure what would happen. I had no idea how to go about it. When I think about achieving my goal of private practice, making good money doing it, and growing my social work psychotherapy practice, I am ever grateful to those who mentored me along the way.
In 2022, I closed my therapy practice to take care of a dear family member with a chronic progressive brain disease. However, I’ve continued consulting services on a limited schedule.
My private practice was successful from the get-go.
Within that first year, other clinicians that I’d met through my networking and marketing process noticed and asked how I did it. They were working in agencies and considering starting their own practice or were struggling with their own private practice.
Initially, I wrote notes and emails and had informal conversations to help colleagues with specific questions. When those scratch notes weren’t sufficient, I wrote the first draft of The 14 Concrete Steps which sold as “A Quick Guide to Private Practice” on my website.
Over time, the guide grew and grew and grew… until it was no longer a “quick guide.” It is now a jam-packed resource manual meant to help you save time, money, and frustration starting your practice or when struggling with your established practice.
Step Seventeen: Get the Word Out – You’re Open for Business! explains the strategy I used to meet my therapy client caseload goals at each stage of business development. The book is not a marketing manual, however, the process I used worked wonders without needing an actual website, blog, or other expensive online presence.
Those notes I shared, phone calls, emails, and talks with colleagues over coffee, all inspired me to find a way to formally help clinicians.
Thus began my consulting path while growing The 14 Concrete (but not so hard!) Steps to Private Practice: Plus, Six More Steps to Consider – A Guide for Licensed Clinical Social Workers and Licensed Marriage Family Therapists into the massive resource manual it is today.
I love being a social worker – so many professional opportunities!
My trip to private practice land included working in a community non-profit family service agency and a county perinatal substance abuse program as a social work intern, then, after graduation with my MSW, county mental health, outpatient case management for a large medical system, an inpatient medical center (level II trauma center), and a too-brief stint with a local non-profit hospice organization.
The decision to try private practice 15 years ahead of the original plan came out of my need for better control over my schedule and commute; a need for more autonomy and self-determination related to my professional life; and a growing intrigue about being my own boss as a self-employed person. I started out with a bazillion questions, but underneath it all was a primary question: Could I attain all of what I needed to continue my professional life considering my current circumstances and be successful?
The day I saw my first client I knew I’d made the right decision. As stressful and foreign as it felt for the first few months (despite my years of experience working with people as consumers, patients, and clients), I persevered and achieved every business goal along the way.
I went from subletting to my own office about seven months after seeing that first client. For both roles—therapist and later as a consultant to local clinicians—I sat in a red velvet wingback chair that I’d found nearly new in the local hospice thrift store when I furnished my first office. I imagined it was from a ranch because I found alfalfa under the cushion. My therapy clients sat opposite me in the matching red velvet chair or the white overstuffed chair big enough to curl up in and take a nap (which I did on occasion!).
These days I write and offer consulting services sitting in that same red chair. It’s getting a little rough around the edges, but I love it even more so for its perseverance. This chair is like an old friend who knows many secrets. A safe friend who understands the ancient saying:
Silence is a true friend who never betrays.
~Confucious
The identical red velvet chair sits in my living room. It’s still inviting with a lap quilt and a fleece blanket thrown over it for good measure. The white overstuffed chair is there, too, in my living room, and everyone loves that one as much as I do.
Pandemic Shift to Telehealth
I blazed through the beginning of the pandemic by pivoting to telehealth within a week of California’s Stay-at-Home orders. I didn’t know if I’d get paid; I didn’t care. I just knew my clients needed to lean on me.
I came down with a serious case of whooping cough the same week as the toilet paper insanity in March 2020. Remember that? Toilet paper became the world’s most coveted commodity, but I was so sick I had no idea until a friend asked me if we were stocked up.
Onward I continued, only taking days off when I literally couldn’t talk due to whooping cough spasms.
I spent the next two and a half years providing telehealth-only psychotherapy.
I learned a few things as did everyone else in private practice during those years. All of my clients were grateful for the option to continue therapy by phone and video-conferencing immediately following the shutdown. Consulting clients asked, “How’d you do that?” I look back now and sometimes wonder about that myself.
When things were safe enough, I returned to limited home visits for established clients who were homebound.
Over the summer of 2022, I shifted exclusively to consulting services and proceeded through the steps of closing my therapy practice.
Advice for Starting Your Practice
Save your notes. Ya never know when you’ll need them. Plus, they might become the outline for a book!
The notes I’d taken as I went through the steps of starting and growing my therapy practice not only helped me stay organized (really important), but also became the outline for: The 14 Concrete (but not so hard!) Steps to Private Practice; Plus, Six More Steps to Consider – A Guide for Licensed Clinical Social Workers and Licensed Marriage Family Therapist.
The Book I Wrote for You and Me
This jam-packed resource guide is now available exclusively on Amazon as an e-book and paperback.
If you want to know how I was successful from the get-go, want to start your own practice, or are struggling with some aspect of your established practice, you’ll want to read this book. There is a fairly detailed description on Amazon.
It’s FREE to borrow with an Amazon Kindle Unlimited Subscription, 2023. To purchase, it’s priced competitively.
Borrow with your Kindle Unlimited Subscription or purchase as an eBook or paperback: whatever works best for you.
Why Did I Really Write this Book?
I wrote this book because everyone asked me from the beginning: “What are the steps? How did you do that? What do I do? What do I do next?”
I also wrote it for myself. There is so much to learn, remember, and then relearn as things change that I couldn’t possibly hold all that in my brain. Now it’s right there where you and I can find some answers or return to valuable resources to find new answers.
These days there are plenty of books on the subject that didn’t exist when I started my practice. Each has its own value and focus.
Look at those books, too. Build a library that will support your business for years to come.
Author Request
Be sure to leave an Amazon star rating and customer comment so others can find this resource and decide if it’s for them.
Best wishes to you on your journey!
McKeegan Insights, LLC / Bonnie McKeegan, LCSW Consulting 