About Sharyn
“Cherish your visions and your dreams, as they are the children of your soul; the blueprints of your ultimate achievements. ~Napoleon Hill
My name is Sharyn Warren and I have been privileged to be a psychotherapist for 35 years– in private practice for 19 of them. I suppose I would have continued in this capacity until retirement, but life has a way of pushing us into places we never expected to go. As we so often see in the lives of our client’s, life has encouraged me to grow in ways I never thought to grow.
These days my focus is on successful enterprise, happiness, and well-being. Having made the decision years ago to exit insurance panels, I embarked on a mission to keep my psychotherapy practice alive via direct marketing strategies. What a journey it has been!
Helping therapists enliven their business in order to thrive financially and become free from the heavy burdens of an insurance dependent practice has become my passion.My singular interest is living, teaching, sharing and empowering attainment of professional success and personal well-being–for myself and anyone else who wishes the same for themselves.
THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD….(or how being fired by a client helped start me on the road to building a successful business)
I won’t go into all of the marketing starts, stops, steps and mis-steps I have taken in this journey. Years ago when Managed “Care” first began to insert itself into our business, there was a defining moment when a client–let’s call her Lucy– I had worked with for about 9 months came in and announced she was not going to continue therapy with me, as she had switched her insurance to a managed care plan, and I wasn’t on her list. Furthermore, everybody she knew was doing the same thing. Wow. Just like that.
Our goodbye’s were kind and respectful, but brief, which allowed me some time to sit down and have a good cry. While I continued to deal with getting on managed panels, it didn’t take but a few years of struggling to get payment–such as it was–to understand that route simply was not going to work for me. That prophetic moment The fear and sadness when Lucy fired me combined with practices by managed care/insurance companies that I dealt with at the time were catalysts that started a fire in my belly. A fire to succeed on my own. To figure it out, to practice independently, captain of my ship, master of my fate–all of that freedom stuff. I just didn’t have a clue about how to go about it.
Marketing and focusing on money was NEVER what I had in mind when I chose a career as a helping professional. But, being a reasonably smart cookie with a mission, I figured I could learn. And so in between continuing to work with clients, clinical courses, ethics seminars, HIPAA instruction, now I was attending workshops on marketing, reading everything I could get my hands on about marketing one’s services, taking sometimes uncomfortable steps figuring out how to adapt to the special sensitivities of psychotherapy. No one was doing it yet.
THE ‘MENTOR COACHING’ STORY (or making money is really OK)
While enrolled in a course at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology on Transformational Life Coaching, I was reading one of the required texts for that course, The Last Word On Power. (A great book, by the way.)
Doing my homework literally on the run, I was in the passenger seat reading the assigned chapter as we barreled down I-85 on the way to Florida to see our son, who was stationed at the Naval base in Pensacola at the time. I can remember that as I read, something huge shifted inside. A sudden ‘revelation’ of possibility. What I had believed was impossible for me suddenly seemed not only possible, but necessary. A bright and shiny future. An expansion of mind and of the entire universe. Sounds weird. And honestly, I wasn’t drinking, on drugs, or asleep. I just saw a world of possibility that simply hadn’t existed for me before.
The possibility of real private practice success. Not just getting by or managing to stay in business, but real success!
One of the interesting things about consultants/coaches is that they are neither afraid nor ashamed to discuss money. They are not embarrassed about prosperity. Profit, even wealth, are not dirty words. It is their job to empower their client’s for success. They actually teach classes on how to prosper in business, and flourishing is considered healthy, smart, and of benefit to all concerned. My goodness. What a notion. Well, what a wholesome notion. A happy notion. Felt right. Also very, very different from my traditional training.
A NEW RELATIONSHIP WITH “SELFISH”
As I approach my 61th year, ideas of success, flourishing, and prosperity don’t seem nearly as self-centered as they once did. Actually, they seem healthy, mature, appropriate, and responsible. I believe I became a better therapist for this understanding, feel that I am a healthier human being, and a more balanced family member. I know I am a good teacher/coach/consultant who can help others break through old habitual limiting attitudes and beliefs, discover the many new and emerging means of communicating about our work to those who want and need our help, and create a private practice that is both a model of effective therapy AND successful business practices.
WHY I AM DOING IT FOR YOU?
It’s true that I could just bundle up everything I have spent years, time and effort, and big wads of money learning and simply continue expanding my private practice business. In fact, I fully intend to evolve and strategically development my business to be what is best for me and my situation over the next 5-7 years based on the information and skills that I have been acquiring. It’s going to take time and focused effort because the world is changing so fast, but I am going to do it!
However, I love our profession, deeply believe in the work we do, the people we help and the lives we improve. Moreover, the clinicians–YOU–who do this necessary and incredibly valuable work are being horribly stressed and depleted. Businesses are failing right and left. As one client of mine recently put it:
“I was sitting in my little office doing what I love to do, and meanwhile, Rome was burning all around me.”
There is as much joy for me in helping a psychotherapist save his or her business as there has been in helping a client become free of debilitating anxiety. More so, in a way, because a good therapist that can stay in business and be healthy, happy, and thrive in their own lives is going to be able to help a lot of people. Do a lot of good in the world.
“Prospering For Good” was the original name of my business because I fully believe that when a good therapist prospers in their business, their clients benefit greatly and prosper as well, as do families and their communities. In this way, the world is made a little happier place and it is all good.
HOW I AM DOING IT FOR YOU
I know that most therapists just want to do therapy. You don’t really care for business, business development, and are really turned off by “marketing.” For some reason, I have discovered a strange affinity for those things. Maybe out of necessity from the decision to make a go of my business outside of managed care. Who knows. But it is my job to scour the world looking for best business practices that will work in our very unique profession. Distilling those concepts, re-framing them into language that is understandable and agreeable to us, and creating frameworks (services and programs) that you can learn and implement that are simple, easy, and most of all, EFFECTIVE!
If you are wondering if I can help you reach your psychotherapy practice business goals, contact me.
I would love to hear from you, to have you share your thoughts regarding what you love about your work, what youare struggling with, and what your hopes are for your business. If you are ‘stuck’, I can help you get going again. If you want to free yourself from the bind of the old ‘money for time’ feast but mostly famine treadmill, I can help you systematically develop multiple streams of income, some of which will generate revenue for you while you sleep. If you are starting your practice or needing to start over in the way you practice, I can help you set up a process of growth that is manageable and secure. CONTACT ME. I would love to help you succeed.
Sharyn
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“Sharyn helped me focus and operationalize my desire to become a coach in the mountains. In a short time, I felt fortified and inspired. I took my creative ideas, mixed it with her concrete suggestions, and began my own journey of developing my counseling practice. Thanks, Sharyn, for your caring, focusing questions and believing I could.” Judy Schattner, M.S.N., Somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains “
Working with Sharyn Warren as my Coach has been a privilege…she seems to know ‘just the right question’ ‘just the right time’ to help me see the path to follow…her personal warmth and gentle wisdom are great assets…Sharyn guides her coaching clients, with numerous tools and techniques, and coaxes us towards our goals. My thanks to you, Sharyn, for being on this path with me…it’s been a blast!” Janice B., Ph.D., Lansdale, Pa.
“Sharyn Warren helped me to clarify core issues and to focus on elegant, creative new approaches. After one session, I easily finished projects that had seemed intimidating. I continue to have great clarity and awareness of steps I take toward (and away from) my greatest priorities and am making wiser choices.” Bree Kalb, LCSW, Carrboro, NC
