Home

Welcome to McKeegan Insights, LLC
logo with book and flowers
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 Steps
A little about this book’s 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. The last career goal on my social work bucket list. When I think about achieving my goal of private practice, making good money doing it, and growing my social work 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.

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 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… and is 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 with no need for 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 more formally help clinicians.

Thus began my consulting path and 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 grew into the massive resource manual it is today.

I love being a social worker – so many professional opportunities!

For both roles, therapist and consultant, I sat in a red velvet wingback chair that I found nearly new in a thrift store when I furnished my first office – about seven months after seeing my first therapy client. It must have been from a ranch because I found alfalfa under the cushion. My therapy clients sat opposite me in an identical chair or the white overstuffed chair big enough to curl up in and take a nap (which I did on occasion!).

I still write sitting in that same red chair; my therapist and mentor 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 saying:

Silence is a true friend who never betrays.

~Confucious

The identical client chair sits in my living room. It’s still inviting with a lap quilt and a soft blanket thrown over it for good measure. The 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 happened to have a serious case of whooping cough the same week as the toilet paper insanity. Remember that? Toilet paper became the world’s most coveted commodity.

I kept going, only taking a few 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. You could say I learned a few things 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 wonder about that myself sometimes.

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 became the outline for my newly released: 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!

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 through April 30th, 2023. To purchase, it’s priced competitively.

Borrow or purchase. 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.

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!