What about opening my own office?

Opening your own office is a great option as a professional hypnotherapist. Be sure you are ready to handle the additional expense before you commit to a lease. Remember, like any new business, it usually will take about 18-24 months before your marketing, advertising and local networking efforts will bring you new clients each week.

Simply hanging a sign on your own office does not guarantee a rush of new clients. In fact, it is probably better to start out renting an office space by the day or by the hour in an established healing or health building. They can often be an excellent referrer of clients for you.

Also, keep in mind that if you are "on your own" (as opposed to being part of a health practitioner's office group, for example), you'll need to do your own marketing and business management. These skills are different than hypnosis skills, and may or may not be taught in your hypnotherapy classes.

Marketing and business skills aren't difficult to learn or execute, but you do need to have knowledge and skill in those areas to strike out on your own. Also, even skilled business marketing people work on a time line, giving the marketing time to work. A new customer will need to see or hear about your business an average of six times before they will consider it as a possible answer to their needs, and that can take a year or two.

It is wise to include hiring skilled people to help you with any marketing, accounting or business operations if you don't have these skills yourself. And, of course, always have an attorney review leases, publishing agreements, and contracts that you may have in your course of business.