Happy, Healthy, & Wealthy Therapists | Ep 15: How Group Therapy Increases Impact and Income

Released: 02/20/2026

Show Notes:

In this conversation, Amanda and Sara Schreiber discuss the intricacies of group therapy, including Sara’s journey into the field, the financial benefits of running groups, effective marketing strategies, and the importance of training and supervision. They explore the dynamics of group therapy, the necessity of flexibility, and the value of building relationships within the therapeutic community. Sara shares insights on how to navigate the challenges of group therapy and emphasizes the importance of being adaptable and open to new experiences.

About Sara Schreiber:

My guest today is Sara Schreiber, LCSW CGP, and she’s a licensed clinical social worker and certified group psychotherapist who specializes in helping therapists build, market, and fill therapy groups in private practice. She’s the founder and director of Collaborative Mind Psychotherapy, a multi-clinician practice serving adolescents and adults in New York and New Jersey with a strong emphasis on interpersonal process groups and social skills groups for teens and young adults.

In addition to running a group-based practice, Sara is the creator of Groups in Private Practice, where she teaches therapists how to design, launch, and scale profitable, clinically strong therapy groups. She is passionate about helping clinicians move beyond one-to-one burnout and into sustainable, high-impact group work. Sara is also actively involved in the group psychotherapy community and loves bringing together clinical depth and practical business strategy to help therapists grow with integrity.

3 Key Takeaways:

1. Group therapy can be a powerful antidote to one-to-one burnout because it can increase impact and income per hour—often without requiring more weekly sessions.
2. Building and filling groups is less about a “perfect idea” and more about flexible marketing + relationships (SEO, directories, referrals, listservs) that keep sending the right people over time.
3. Groups are a distinct clinical modality—skills groups can be a simpler entry point, but process groups require training, consultation, and the ability to facilitate member-to-member connection (not just “individual therapy in a group”).

Connect with Sara:

• Instagram: @groups_in_private_practice
• Website: https://www.groupsinprivatepractice.com/
• Freebies: https://www.groupsinprivatepractice.com/freebies

Connect with Amanda:

• Follow on Instagram: @amandakbcoaching
• Check out the Amanda KB Coaching website

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Sponsors:

• This episode is sponsored by Alma – learn more here
• This episode is sponsored by Jane – use code: AMANDA2MO for a 2-month grace period

Resources & Links:

SEO for Therapists Membership

Therapy Intensives Academy

Happy, Healthy, & Wealthy Mastermind

Free Training: 3 Steps to Booking Your First Therapy Intensive

Free Guide: 3 Steps to Double Your Income

SEO Freebie

Just a quick heads up, everything I share in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It’s not legal advice, financial advice, or tax advice. Every practice and every state has its own rules. So if you’re wondering how something applies to your situation, make sure to check in with an attorney, accountant, or another qualified professional who can give you guidance based on your specific circumstances.

Transcript:

Amanda (00:02)
Hey, welcome, Sarah. I’m so excited to have you on today.

Sara Schreiber (00:05)
Me too. It was so cool hearing or getting an email or message from you asking. I think we’ve interacted a bit but never like actually met face to face. So I’m excited just to chat with you.

Amanda (00:15)
Yeah,

yeah, yeah. I know it’s so fun to, like I don’t network really for my therapy practice and I’ve never done that, especially in like my local area, but I feel like I almost do more networking across the whole US with other therapists. So get to learn from Instagram, like all the cool things that therapists are out there doing, whether that’s in their practice or how they help other therapists. So it’s just a.

a fun thing to do in a way that I don’t normally do it. So yeah, I’ve seen your posts, you’ve seen mine, so it’s fun to actually now have a live interaction.

Sara Schreiber (00:46)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, totally.

Amanda (00:52)
So for those who may not know about you, can you share a little bit about who you are, what you do, and anything that you just like to share?

Sara Schreiber (01:01)
Sure. So I’m a social worker and LCSW. I’m also a certified group psychotherapist, which I pursued because I was really entrenched in the group world and thought it was a cool thing to add to my name and my signature. I have been running groups in a private practice setting since 2019.

It just, I kind of stumbled into it by accident, which we could get into, we don’t have to, but I kind of stumbled into it and ⁓ totally fell in love with groups, all different types of groups, but specifically more intense interpersonal process groups. And that journey has led me to run a lot of groups. And through that, I started seeing that groups could actually be pretty profitable and other people wanted to learn from me about just how.

how to run them, how to start them, how to lead them. that eventually led to me starting a consulting business all around group therapy.

Amanda (02:07)
Yes, and I’ve gone through your course. It’s got tons of helpful information. So anyone who is interested in that, like shout out to Sarah and the work you put out there. But I am curious to learn a little bit more of your story because I know in my graduate program, we did have one class on group therapy and the research behind it and how to run them and things like that. And then my primary work before I went into private practice was all community, not community, university counseling centers.

where I worked with college students. So we actually did run quite a bit of groups. did maybe like at least one a semester and there were different topics, like a lot of interpersonal process groups. I did some childhood trauma focused groups or like body image groups. Like I’m used to, there’s so many opportunities and things that you can do out there, but I never explored it in private practice. So what got you into, you said you stumbled into it. What did that look like?

Sara Schreiber (02:42)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

So I also ran groups before private practice. ran groups in like my internships and my job, my first job out of grad school. I was at a hospital. so those groups felt like we just had the people in front of us, you know, and we were able to run them. ⁓ you didn’t need to think too much about the marketing side of it. And when, because I kind of enjoyed that creativity of running the groups when I was applying for my job.

⁓ After this hospital-based job, I, in my interview, let them know that I was interested in running groups and it was a private pay, like a fee-for-service private practice. And I was told also that I would make like more per individual session, or sorry, per person per group than I would per individual session. And I was like, well, why wouldn’t I want to do as many groups as possible? So I was like, and the backdrop also of me getting this job was that I was working at a…

at a, I was in a grant funded position at a hospital. was like my, amazing, amazing first job, loved it so much. And then we lost funding, right when we lost funding, I found out I was pregnant with my second child and I was like freaking out because I needed ⁓ money and I needed maternity leave and just all this stuff. And so I ⁓ was really desperately looking for a job that I could start before I was like so visibly pregnant and also like start working with clients before I had to then.

Amanda (04:18)
Yeah.

Sara Schreiber (04:32)
take a leave. So this position, I had a connection to it from like a supervisor at my hospital job also worked there part time. So she kind of connected me. And, ⁓ and so I took the job. And they, they offered me the position of director of group therapy. And I was like, what? I don’t know what, like, I’m not eligible to be a director of anything, but okay, I’m just gonna take it sounds like a good fit. And ⁓

Amanda (04:57)
Mm-hmm.

Sara Schreiber (05:01)
because they were, it was, it’s a private, I didn’t know anything about private practice. So they, I said, can I be full time? And they said, yes. So I arrived there being like, where are all my full time clients? You know, where’s my full caseload? And they’re like, we have one client ready to start working with you. And I was really surprised and it was a really slow build. And here I was five months pregnant at this point being like, I can’t, this is not sustainable, but.

Amanda (05:21)
Yeah.

Sara Schreiber (05:29)
And I was like, so what about the groups? And they’re like, yeah, like you can start a group. What kind of group do you want to start? And so I was like, okay, so also that. So also I need to learn how to do that. So I got to work and I really treated my free time as this is me sitting down to work and create something. And so I feel really lucky. It was the most stressful time of my life, I really think, but I felt really lucky.

Amanda (05:40)
Mm-hmm.

Sara Schreiber (05:55)
being able to have the time to devote to learning how to market ⁓ groups. so for me, was like all of that marketing stuff, I was forced to learn. And then I had no training in running groups, actually. So at the same time, I also asked my boss, or he offered to me, he was like, do you want to join this local chapter of AGPA? ⁓

and I’ll pay for your membership.” And I was like, yeah. So I joined and I was immediately confused and like activated and excited and nauseous, like all the feelings all at the same time. And I was like, and someone approached me and was like, you know, the annual conference is this March, ⁓ you should come. And it’s in New York this year. And I was like, okay. Like.

Amanda (06:36)
Yep.

You

Sara Schreiber (06:48)
Sure.

And I got my boss to pay for the conference for me and I attended and I was eight months pregnant. And then COVID hit like at the conference. That was the week that COVID came to New York, March, you know, the first week of March in New York City. But that was my introduction. Like that, those few months was my introduction to group. And I started running groups. Like I did, I sat, I did all that marketing and I got like 14 people into

Amanda (06:58)
Yep.

Sara Schreiber (07:18)
three between three groups and got them started. And one of them, we went virtual in the middle of it because of COVID and the other one we had to end early because they were younger kids. But that really set the pace for me, like this set the tone and I just kept learning and investing in group training. And here we are six, you know, seven years later at this point. And I feel like, wow, like I can’t believe that I got here.

Amanda (07:41)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, just to be thrown into something to have to make it work. Like, I think we are all so capable of making things work and being successful when our feet are to the fire and we have to spend so much time learning marketing and in your case, learning how to do a group, how to market a group, how to fill it and keep refilling it. Like, we are capable of learning the things and to your point too, part of the reason I wanted us to chat in this

podcast is you and I make our money per hour very differently. Like a lot of people come to me for intensives because they want to learn how they can charge $300 to $500 an hour for a therapy intensive. And then I see your post where you’re like, but actually you could be making like a thousand plus per hour, even if your groups are like 90 minutes, can still like, what is your earning potential with groups? Cause you said that was a part of what really excited you about it.

Sara Schreiber (08:42)
Yeah, so I think it really depends on a lot of factors. It depends on where you live and what the going rate for group is and how much you choose to charge and what people are willing to pay. So there’s like so many different factors. At the practice that I worked at when I was in the group practice, they actually charged $200 a session for group, which I don’t do.

Amanda (08:59)
Yes.

Sara Schreiber (09:12)
at the time that’s what they were charging and I would have groups of like eight people paying that and then I would be able to give people sliding scale and lower fee but the groups were generating a lot of income and honestly just being exposed to like seeing that that that was like possible made me feel like ⁓ like that’s possible that’s actually possible like that’s not so crazy ⁓ or maybe it is crazy but it also was possible so

Amanda (09:38)
Yeah.

Sara Schreiber (09:41)
I, and then I was getting paid like pretty well per person. Like I was making probably as an associate, I was making maybe like $200 an hour, which like a newer therapist is that’s like pretty good, which thinking about it, like one person was that, but that’s, you know, like that was still good money for me. And so then when I went out on my own and I was like, I was definitely going to keep doing groups. I’m not going to charge 200. That feels a little too high for me, but I think I could charge 150.

Amanda (09:50)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sara Schreiber (10:09)
And so I started charging 150 and I was able to get it. And then I raised my rate for my, I was running a college group that I raised the rate to like 175 for. And that, and then I was able, I got that also. And that group was definitely my highest. I had like eight people in it and I had some people who were on low, like sliding scale. But still a sliding scale was still like 125 or something. It wasn’t like they were.

I had one person who was paying under a hundred, but everyone else, was, and so with AP, I mean, I was making over a thousand dollars for the group session. And that always felt a little like, I was like, can’t actually post about this on Instagram. Like this doesn’t feel like, you know, like I had to like, when I talked about money, like I would like actually lower how much I said I was making sometimes, cause I felt like a little like awkward about it.

Amanda (10:55)
Hehehehe

Hahaha!

Sara Schreiber (11:07)
It also didn’t feel like in reach for a lot of people and for a lot of communities or like in a lot of places. I’m licensed in New York and New Jersey and Connecticut and some other places, but those are higher SES states. And my referral network was coming from this higher SES practice. And so I definitely had access, I think, to people who could pay more for groups. ⁓

Amanda (11:11)
you

Sara Schreiber (11:37)
I actually, now I think the landscape has changed a little bit since there’s more groups, things are more in person, the economy is not as good and I’ve actually reduced my rate back to 150. And then within that I have more people on a sliding scale. So in general, I would say right now I probably make between 450 to

$700 a session, ⁓ depending on the group that I’m running, ⁓ which is still nothing to sneeze at or not nothing to sneeze at. I don’t know how that saying goes. It’s still pretty good. Yeah.

Amanda (12:19)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. However that phrase goes, I got what you mean. Yeah,

yeah, because it is I think there’s all of these. Yes, like what you’re saying part of it does depend on state of the economy, geographic pieces, like how familiar people with groups. But I feel like the default I always saw was even

All of my education was in Iowa. So I saw a lot of like, are people in Iowa charging for groups? And then I moved out to the Pacific Northwest and could see a little bit of that. But it always felt like there was something about the like 25 to like $75 range. Like that’s all I ever saw groups being offered at. And I think when people do that math, you know, it doesn’t always make math sense in that aspect of like, okay, well, maybe I don’t want to do the extra marketing and maybe I don’t want to.

do extra notes and maybe I don’t want to do groups if the earning potential is essentially the same. But that’s not the case for all locations. And so a lot of it just depends.

Sara Schreiber (13:25)
And

totally, but also like, so my individual rate where I am, charge $295 a session. And so that is what I can get in a 50 minute session, weekly, you know, all of that. ⁓ In a place, so I’m making more than my hourly rate in a group that’s a little longer, but also is ongoing same time every week.

I’m charging per person. If you’re in my group, you get charged regardless of if you come or not. That’s part of my group agreement, which also protects me financially ⁓ from if someone’s not there, vacation. That spot is being paid for. ⁓ And so if you’re looking at an annual amount of money that you can make for my group, it really is. I did the data. I looked at the data from my practice. And one of our groups…

alone, I think it was run for 50 weeks straight. That’s your charging for 50 weeks. Like that is in that’s almost a whole that’s two sessions in the entire year they didn’t meet. ⁓ And that’s wild. Like most people do take off more my group didn’t meet that many sessions. But like it’s just and that group was not per week was not the highest earning group of the whole practice weekly, but quant

Amanda (14:30)
Yeah.

Sara Schreiber (14:48)
definitively from the end of the year it had made the most money of all the other groups because it ran the most weeks. ⁓

but what I was going to say about my hourly rate is that like someone who is charging, let’s say they charge 150 per session and they run a group where they’re now making 250 for the group session, they’re still now making a hundred dollars more than what they make for an individual session. So sometimes the math still works, you know?

Amanda (15:25)
Yeah. about all of the other pieces? Because I know when I was doing, when I did groups, my training experience, somehow they put this into like a growth edge for us. They’re like, it’d be good for you as the doc student to write the notes, like for you to learn how to write process notes for groups or psychoeducational, if it was more of like workshop style, instead of interpersonal process. So the notes part I didn’t love, and I know these days more

therapists are using some AI services and that can help a little bit there. But a lot of people do see, okay, well, if I’m going to see six clients, now I have six notes instead of the one client and one note situation. Does that really feel like a barrier to you or because you have more experience with it? It’s so streamlined and not even a thing you think about.

Sara Schreiber (16:13)
Yeah, I don’t, I, I’m not the best person to ask probably about notes because I don’t, they don’t bother me. And I have ADHD, so they should bother me, but they, but they don’t in the way that I think part of it. Well, this actually is really relevant to the conversation. Part of why notes don’t bother me is because I don’t have such a high caseload because I run groups. So I’m only, if I’m seeing eight individual clients a week, I do, that’s like maybe two or three clients a day maximum.

Amanda (16:21)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sara Schreiber (16:41)
I can easily take care of those notes daily. So I’m not stressed about my individual and on my E, I don’t use ⁓ like AI to help me with my notes because I really don’t, I don’t need to. If I had like way more clients, I probably would, but I have, ⁓ at the end of my, at the end of my day, I just, I, my EHR has me like, I could just say like paste previous note, and then I just update based on, you know, but like mental status stuff, like all of that’s already in there. ⁓ and so for groups.

It’s one group thing in the EHR, one group, ⁓ schedule, don’t want to say a group session and all the clients who are in the group are inside that group session. And I just plop that onto my calendar. And so I write one note and it goes to all their charts. And then I can add in extra information about each person, which like, I don’t, I don’t take insurance. So like I can, I don’t need to, if someone brought up something really concerning, let’s say someone

Amanda (17:21)
Yeah.

Sara Schreiber (17:41)
talks about SI and then I decide to like hold them, keep them a little bit after group and like check in on their safety, I’ll write an extra note about that in their chart. ⁓ But yeah, it doesn’t, it takes me like three minutes when the group ends. So it doesn’t feel stressful to me. I mean, if you’re charging insurance, then yes, you probably need to write like a specific note for each person. ⁓ But again, like that could go, that could be like the copy and paste and change a couple things. ⁓

Amanda (17:54)
Yeah, so it’s exactly.

Sara Schreiber (18:09)
And like the rule of thumb in general is for a group note, you don’t write details about what each person did. Like this is a general note. So I’ll say the group processed feelings of loneliness as it relates to being back home on their break in between semesters. You know, like validated each other’s feelings and offered support. And then I might say something about what I did, like group leader.

Amanda (18:27)
Yep. Yep.

Hmm.

Sara Schreiber (18:35)
helped bridge conversation. I don’t know. You know, it’s not, that’s it.

Amanda (18:37)
Mm-hmm. ⁓

Yes, and that was ultimately what I learned from many, many semesters of doing the group notes is yeah, it is literally, it’s like a process note about what the group did and like maybe a sentence of this person was a little quieter today or this person was more engaged than normal.

Sara Schreiber (18:52)
Right.

Exactly.

Exactly. And then I actually write my own notes as well, which is separate. And I do that for my own consultation. So I meet with a consultant every two weeks to talk about my groups and for her to, you know, just good practice to have a supervisor, you know, clinical consultant. And so I actually have like supervision, like a supervision note that I write for myself.

when I think about like, what do I want to talk about? And then I’ll go into a lot of detail about like specific dynamics and then how I felt so that I can remember it when we meet. And I don’t put those in the chart. aren’t, you know, those are just for me.

Amanda (19:36)
make sense. And so to that point too, like how essential is it? Do you feel like if someone’s like groups sound great to reach more people potentially make more money, but also like you’re saying, like I can offer more sliding scale and still make a good amount of money each session. How critical do you think it is to get a good amount of training and supervision or consultation?

Sara Schreiber (20:00)
like very critical. ⁓ So I tell people like think about it like EMDR, let’s say, right? Like, I am not an EMDR therapist. I’ve never been trained in EMDR. I’ve never even been an EMDR client before. And you do EMDR intensives, right? Am I making that up? Okay, so yeah. So I would never in a million years be like,

Amanda (20:02)
Yeah. ⁓

Mm-hmm. Yep. Nope. ⁓

Sara Schreiber (20:28)
come see me for EMDR therapy. Like what, like that’s crazy to me, right? ⁓ And so group therapy is, ⁓ it is a different modality of doing this work and it should be treated that way. Now I say this with a caveat that running skills-based groups is very different than running interpersonal, like psychoanalytic process groups. And that, so therefore I think that if you,

Amanda (20:30)
Mm-hmm.

Sara Schreiber (20:56)
do want to go into group work with very little training, that the route to go would be starting really small with doing something like, know, let’s say you’re a CBT therapist and you specialize in social anxiety, read a manual on how to run a social anxiety group and then start the group. ⁓ Or you want to run a psychoeducational group about ⁓ how to safely take psychopharm medication or something like.

and you’re a psychiatrist, then that’s fine, like psycho-ed. But if you don’t have training on running, like on the more complicated group dynamics and how to appropriately intervene in a way that is clinically effective, then you should definitely get training for that if you wanna run those kinds of groups.

Amanda (21:45)
Yeah, because I think it is, it is very different to, you know, even have three clients in a group. And I’ve had as small as three or four in a interpersonal process group before. And like, it is different. It’s not the same as I’ll just do what I do with one client, but make sure I’m checking in with other people, like to be attuned to so many different levels of dynamics that are happening in a room. Like it does require a lot of training and consultation and

There are more areas I get stuck working with a group than I do with my individuals, which I don’t have as much training as you do with groups. And that tells me if I wanted to offer more non-just psychoeducational groups, like that would definitely be something I’d want to get more training and consultation in.

Sara Schreiber (22:17)
Right.

Totally. I also want to say that in with right like what to your point when individual it’s one you’re going back and forth. I think some people fall into the trap of they have a group and then it’s sort of like they’re offering individual therapy in a group. And really a huge goal of group is to get people talking to each other.

Amanda (22:41)
Yeah.

Sara Schreiber (22:46)
And that takes a lot of skill and practice. And so I like the model though, also with training is that it’s a very experiential. So all of the group training that I’ve not all, a lot of the group training I’ve done has been where I’m in a training group and I’m.

we’re practicing things live, or maybe I just had a didactic, I learned about something and now we’re in a demo group. And that’s a lot of the group therapy training models run that way. And I run now groups for therapists that are 12 weeks to train them experientially in running process groups. ⁓ So there is a lot of benefit to being in a group that is, that you’re actually a member of. And

the good, I don’t want to label them as good group therapists, but like group therapists who are really serious and committed to the work of doing this kind of work are almost always in their own group as well because that’s how you really, you know, kind of grow and learn and have your own space to process the counter transference that you have in your groups.

⁓ So I’m a big fan of clinical training and really passionate about it.

Amanda (24:05)
Yeah, yeah, because I do think it’s a good equivalent, like parallel to if you didn’t have EMDR training, if you didn’t have couples training, like we can’t just offer something just to offer something because we think it’ll be helpful and maybe we’ll be good or okay at it. Like this is a whole separate modality and way of working and the skills groups do feel different because yes, you can follow a manual, you can get some.

Sara Schreiber (24:25)
Mm-hmm.

Amanda (24:31)
maybe like briefer training, may not need ongoing consultation, but you can set up a four to six group on CBT skills. You can set up something that is pretty simple to move through. think that’s why a lot of therapists are also interested in creating courses is because we have so much knowledge that we can dump into presenting information and you can make a group out of that. But the process part is very, very different.

Sara Schreiber (24:52)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Exactly.

Right. And I got started running skills groups. Those were the groups I was running because I didn’t have… Even though I started training basically at the same time that I started the groups, I wasn’t confident in running a process group for the first probably two years that I was doing group work. And then I had a mentor and…

I was like, I’m just nervous, but I think I want to do it. She’s like, just you can do it. Like, go for it. And so I started and the first ones I did were for teens. Like the first process groups I was running were actually for teens, which was so cool. ⁓

Amanda (25:20)
Mm-hmm

Sara Schreiber (25:30)
And I think like back to the money conversation, ongoing interpersonal process groups are probably more lucrative than short-term skills groups, because even if you run it, let’s say an eight week group and every session you’re making a thousand dollars, let’s just say, then it ends. So that’s like $8,000 more that you made that year, but it’s not sustainable long-term versus an ongoing group that meets every single week for years and years and years.

that is way more sustainable because that’s one hour of your time. You’re not actively marketing. So the biggest marketing push is like when you’re getting it started, that’s when you’re going to work the hardest. But once it’s there, people will leave, but then new people will come. And you’re able to just kind of like replenish and have the space, the spot. And that is really valuable and definitely where you can make more money as a therapist.

Amanda (26:29)
Yeah. Which I think too also speaks to the value of getting good training and consultation because when you give keep, when you give people a good experience, that’s what’s going to keep them continuing in the group versus they were like, that felt disorganized. felt obviously group therapy is always uncomfortable, like uncomfortable in a, also don’t feel like I took anything away. Then you’re going to keep losing those spots as opposed to, you know, what you’re doing. makes it easier for people to keep signing on. Yeah.

Sara Schreiber (26:50)
Yeah, exactly.

Right, and people naturally graduating out or maybe

it’s they’ve been in it for a year and now they’re graduating college and now they have a job or you whatever. Whatever’s happening in their lives that it feels a little more it’s not about you as much as it’s about their life circumstances.

Amanda (27:04)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And so, right. The marketing piece, a lot of that will depend on some of the ebb and flow of what a therapist is offering. If it is, you know, process group versus skills-based group. How do you find, like, what are the fundamental differences between marketing individual therapy versus group therapy?

Sara Schreiber (27:32)
So funny, I feel like I’ve literally never marketed for individual therapy before. I think I just market for groups and the individual clients come from that. ⁓ Individual, okay, maybe it’s not the same. Maybe that’s my answer is that it’s actually not really the same. I mean, sorry, sorry, sorry. Maybe it’s not different ⁓ because…

Amanda (27:36)
That’s awesome. ⁓

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Sara Schreiber (27:59)
I’m like, how do people market for individual therapy? I don’t even know. ⁓ My referrals come from word of mouth, ⁓ Psychology Today, SEO, ⁓ and group also same places. And so I think, I think them are and actually I tell people that it’s a good way to get yourself out there personally as for one on one is by marketing a group.

They say, like, I’ve got this different thing going on. I want to connect to people, talk to them about it. And then you end up networking with people. And because you’re letting them know, you’re putting something out there about yourself. And then also on top of that, you are saying, this is my specialty and I specialize in it so much that I have a group about this topic.

Amanda (28:28)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So some people will see the group and be like, this sounds like the perfect thing for me. And some people will be like, I’m not a group person, but maybe I can work with her one-on-one. And so, yeah, you are essentially marketing two services by marketing one service.

Sara Schreiber (29:00)
Yeah.

Exactly. And therapists also, they’ll be like, ⁓ Sarah sees, like, I have a neurodivergent younger adult group. So Sarah sees neurodivergent young adults. Awesome. I have a client that I want to refresh. Like, they don’t want group, but like, that clearly is her specialty.

Amanda (29:22)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, ultimately I like your answer because I agree. think the only real fundamental difference I see between marketing one-on-one versus group is obviously group is like, this is the day and time that it’s happening. And like, this is when we do or don’t have an opening. Whereas with individual slots, right? Your weekly times might change if sometimes you see this client at that time or that day or something. So.

Sara Schreiber (29:42)
It’s more ongoing.

Yeah,

I guess one difference is right is within like the time crunch. If you’re starting a new group and you want to get started at certain point, then your marketing efforts will be a little more active than if you’re passively marketing yourself. in yeah, in a less but I do focus a lot on networking. And I know I’ve seen your posts about that. Like I know you really

shy away from them, you teach more around SEO and stuff. So I know this is podcast is interviewing me, but I am curious about like, that part of it around like not doing networking and how that works. I don’t know if you want to tell me.

Amanda (30:30)
Yeah,

that’s the part I’ve been curious with, you know, how if I ever decided to do a group, like how would I do that within my SEO framework? And ultimately I don’t think there would be much that I would change in it because it’s still people would be looking for the specific thing that they’re looking for. So even if they landed on my service or specialty page that talks about complex trauma or attachment or couples therapy, like I can still promote.

by the way, here’s this group that’s happening here. So like I can still take all the website traffic I’m getting and maybe fill it that way. But also I think there’s something different to be said for like what it is you’re trying to fill and if there are different marketing strategies for that. Like I do have a lot of therapists ask me like, okay, you say you don’t do Instagram marketing for your therapy practice, but you are all over the place for your coaching business.

And I’m like, it’s different businesses. So it’s different marketing strategies of Instagram brings in business really well for my coaching business. It never really worked well for my therapy business. So I don’t do it there. But if I did want to start a group, I would both do my SEO stuff that I already do. But then I think I would take advantage of the listservs that I’m on of here’s my flyer with my information and send clients my way. Cause I see requests for groups all the time. So it’s not like there’s a

lack of need, it’s just, well then it’s a different marketing strategy for this thing and you figure out how that works for you.

Sara Schreiber (31:58)
Mm-hmm.

Absolutely. I agree also about the Instagram piece. I’m like working right now on figuring out how to do Instagram for my group practice, which I think is also a whole other thing because it’s a group practice. It’s not individual practice, but my groups in private practice Instagram is like so easy and it attracts so many people because it’s just like, hey, I’m a therapist. You’re a therapist. Like, let me teach you about group. It’s so clear. You know, it’s less clear when you’re talking to clients who are

Amanda (32:27)
Yes.

Sara Schreiber (32:29)
more complicated than that one goal. ⁓ For me, at least, I don’t know how feels. I think some people really nail it. ⁓ And I think also for you, you do intensives. That’s what you’re known for, and that is so clear from your messaging. But I do agree with the marketing piece. Right now, a lot of our group referrals for ongoing groups do come from Google searches, from SEO. ⁓

Amanda (32:32)
Yes.

Sara Schreiber (32:58)
But when I teach therapists about, like I do focus a lot on building relationships because they may not have any SEO going on right now. And I do teach them a little bit about it in my course, but that’s not going to help them in a month from now, right? It’s like a lot more of a long game. So building up like community relationships and like remembering who you already work with and who you already collaborate with is also really good and helpful. ⁓

Amanda (33:13)
Right. Yeah.

Sara Schreiber (33:29)
And with groups too, is really cool, is you get to collaborate with the individual therapists. So when I was first starting out with groups, I had a whole list of all the people who had referred people to my groups and I would talk to them all the time. I would like once a month probably be on the phone with them collaborating about the case. And they would continuously refer new people to my groups because they trusted me, because we had this working relationship already. So those were the best people to…

Amanda (33:35)
Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I it’s just like forming those relationships with doctors, psychiatrists, whoever, like the more you maintain that, the then easier your marketing becomes because they just trust you they’re going to continue to send people your way. You don’t have to, you might still do pushes, but you’re doing that more intentionally of, I happen to have this one spot open and you know exactly who you’re going to reach out to instead of

Sara Schreiber (33:58)
You

Exactly.

Amanda (34:24)
What am I going to post on Instagram? What should we update on the website? It just, it’s clearer for you.

Sara Schreiber (34:28)
Right,

right, and those those they also I refer to them all the time.

know, we refer back and forth for individual too. Many of them are psychiatrists actually. And so also like, I love working with the same psychiatrist, because we’ll just get on the phone and talk about, you know, all of our shared cases. And, and we’ve become friends over the years. And it just, I think it’s funny thinking about how I really got started with private practice at the same time I got started with groups. And so my marketing was actually just with the same, it was just the same.

Amanda (34:44)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that’s awesome. Is there any therapist that you’ve worked with or that the more you do groups the more you think about it? Anyone who generally tends to like not be a good fit for groups? I know sometimes when people are like maybe I am more introverted or I’m already socially anxious like should I be running a group even if I want to? Like is anyone a bad fit to do it?

Sara Schreiber (35:19)
Yeah, I mean, if you don’t want to be doing groups and like don’t, ⁓ I don’t think I have any interest in doing couples therapy as a therapist. ⁓ And so I haven’t pursued that. Like I haven’t really pursued any training in that because it’s just not something I really want to be doing. Even though I can run like a whole group of people who are having conflict, feels like safer for some reason ⁓ that a couple who are married to each other or, you know, in relationship with each other. But ⁓

Amanda (35:23)
Yeah.

⁓ huh.

Sara Schreiber (35:50)
But so if you don’t want to, if you feel like anxious about the idea of doing it, then like, don’t do it. ⁓ I think also you have to feel comfortable actually like executing your plan. So I find this with, with people who joined my course, like there’s the people who are going to get group started and the people who, who will not. And, and I find that the people who don’t are often either really like rigidly.

connected to the idea that they had and if it doesn’t pan out, don’t pivot and they just stick with that original idea and decide that like, I guess group isn’t for me because nobody wanted to join like this one specific idea. ⁓ And I try to start groups all the time that don’t work. Like it’s, you know, that’s just part of it. And then the ones that do, do, and they’re great. So you have to be flexible. So maybe that’s really what I’m trying to say is that you have to be flexible with like,

you might try and it may not work out, but good things will happen when you put yourself out there anyways. And then also, right, you have to feel comfortable putting yourself out there. And that’s something I find too that people struggle with ⁓ is being able to like, hey, this is me, this is what I’m doing. know, talking about yourself is really hard. And I think it is an important part of starting groups. You don’t, it’s not impossible to do it without it, but it is, it does make it a little more challenging.

⁓ If you do feel a little more shy about putting yourself out there, it can make it more challenging.

Amanda (37:23)
I I agree. think there’s, yeah. Yeah. I think there’s a difference between like, I’m anxious because it’s new versus like, I’m anxious and I don’t even really want to do it, but maybe it would help me make more money in less time and I’m burnt out. So maybe I’ll try it anyway. Like don’t ever do something you don’t want to do. Like I’ve done things I haven’t wanted done before. And it took a lot of time and energy to reverse things, right? So.

Sara Schreiber (37:23)
But otherwise, if you’re interested, like, you know, try it out.

Amanda (37:51)
be intentional about why you would be starting it. And I agree, like you’re saying, even this putting yourself out there, let’s say you do this hard marketing push for two to four weeks to try to fill this group and the group doesn’t pan out, but look at all those ways you just put yourself out there for that amount of time and what that can bring into. Like it may not have that immediate benefit, but it could have benefits in other ways too. So it’s not all for loss.

Sara Schreiber (38:16)
Absolutely, yeah. And also the group that you were trying to start could potentially start like in six months from now. You you get the SEO up and running, you put it onto your psychology today, you have already connected with people, and then maybe people will start coming in for referrals for the group.

down the line and then it’s ready to get started. And so that also is something that I think people lose sight of. There’s like this immediacy or urgency that people have to get things going now. And it just doesn’t always, know, sometimes you do need to have some patience. One more thing also, just the clinical side of it is that sometimes you’re running a group that doesn’t feel very good to be running and it’s not necessarily you. Like it could just be that the group

is just there’s a mismatch maybe in the people that are in it or the type of group that you’ve decided you wanted to start. You’ve got like a different type of client in it. ⁓ And that’s because that was who you got. You were like, well, I’ll just try. I’ll do it anyways. So ⁓ I just also want to say that, that I’ve had in my practice specifically, my clinicians get, I’ll give them a group to run. So it’s not always their choice. ⁓

And sometimes the group just doesn’t feel aligned with what they want to be doing. But this is their job and they’re in training and they’re doing it and it’s fine. And then they’ll have another group where it’s like they started it themselves and they’re alive and being like, I actually do love running group. So I think actually more people like group than you would think. ⁓ You just need to be running the right kind of group for you and your personality.

Amanda (39:48)
Hmm.

And so clearly you have a lot of value, a lot of knowledge, a lot of experience and ways that you can help therapists. So what is the best way that they can get in contact with you and learn more?

Sara Schreiber (40:10)
Yeah, so find me on Instagram, groups in private practice. There’s like underscores in between each word. ⁓ And then also my website, groupsinprivatepractice.com. Those are probably the best ways to find me.

Amanda (40:25)
Well, thank you so much for everything you’re sharing today. I always appreciate all the posts I see from you around like, yeah, just what’s possible. And you post a lot of relatable things too. So definitely go check Sarah’s stuff out. And again, thank you so much for being on today, Sarah.

Sara Schreiber (40:39)
thanks. Thanks for having me.