Align Therapy Shop

Align Therapy Shop I help therapists create a modern + aligned practice through an anti-hustle, anti-burnout strategy.

Through my courses, programs, and membership you'll learn everything you need to start, fill, and scale your practice, the right way.

09/03/2026

Everyone wants affordable therapy. But who exactly is supposed to pay for it?

Right now, it feels like the answer is increasingly therapists. And people wonder why so many therapists are becoming telehealth-only. (Well... it's because so many therapists can't afford their in-person offices on the sh*tty insurance reimbursements they get 🫠).

Therapists are expected to take on graduate school debt, pay for years of supervision and licensure, continuing education, liability insurance, our own healthcare and retirement, AND all the expenses that come with running a practice… and then also keep our fees low enough to personally make up for the fact that our healthcare system has made mental healthcare unaffordable for a lot of people.

👏🏻 I BELIEVE THERAPY SHOULD BE ACCESSIBLE. 👏🏻 Most, if not all, therapists feel this way.

However, I ALSO believe individual therapists should not be personally responsible for solving a systemic access problem by making their own careers financially unsustainable. Nowhere else do we see this, including other healthcare professions. Those two beliefs can coexist.

Insurance companies, healthcare systems, reimbursement rates, government policy... none of these things are within your control. So if your caseload, referrals, income, and ability to stay in business are pretty much entirely dependent on them, THEIR decisions become YOUR business decisions.

I’m not saying every therapist needs to drop every insurance panel tomorrow and go fully private pay, but I AM saying you should know how to build a practice that can survive if one of those outside systems changes the rules on you.

There are four specific things I believe every therapist needs to understand if they want that kind of independence.

They’re the same four things that allowed me to stop relying on insurance referrals and build a private-pay practice where I could set my own fees, attract my own clients, and have WAY more control over how I practiced.

Most therapists focus on tactics before they have these four things figured out.

Comment CORE and I’ll send you my free Core 4 Guide so you can see what they are. ⬇️

09/01/2026

If your caseload isn’t filled with the kinds of clients you actually WANT to work with, your niche might not be as clear as you think it is. 😬

And before you come for me with, “But Krysteena, I DO have a niche!!!” I know, you probably do. But there is a difference between *technically* having a niche and having a niche that is specific enough to actually help you attract your dream clients.

If you’re still:

👉🏻 getting inquiries from people you don’t really want to work with
👉🏻 constantly referring people out because they aren’t a good fit
👉🏻 struggling to fill the remaining spots in your caseload with private pay clients
👉🏻 watching the exact clients you’d LOVE to work with land on your website and… disappear

Then obviously SOMETHING is getting lost in translation.

Your niche is not just a label you slap on your website that says “I work with anxious women” or “I specialize in trauma.” Your niche needs to make the right person recognize that you understand the specific problem they are experiencing and help them understand why YOU are the therapist they should choose to help them with it.

Your dream clients cannot choose you if they don’t recognize that you’re for them.

✨ THAT is why we’re starting with your niche on Day 1 of my upcoming Challenge, a live, FREE, 4-day Marketing Challenge that will help you identify the gaps keeping you from filling your practice with private pay clients, and FIX them. ✨

Over four days, we’re going to work through the core pieces of building a private-pay practice that doesn’t depend on insurance referrals to stay full.

We’re starting with your niche because EVERYTHING you do to market your practice gets harder when you aren’t ridiculously clear on who you want to attract.

I’m going to help you write a niche statement that makes the right clients think, “Holy sh*t. She’s talking about me.” (BTW, the last time I ran this I had a student get 4 new inquiries during the week 🤯)

More details to come, so comment NEWSLETTER below to get on my newsletter and be first to hear about the Challenge when it launches! 🫶

08/31/2026

Psychology Today is okay, BUT there are niche directories specifically for certain specialties, populations, identities, religions + more, and getting listed in the right ones can put you directly in front of people already looking for a therapist like YOU.

I put together a list of niche directories worth checking out. ⬇️

Comment DIRECTORIES and I’ll send you the link!



therapist business coach, private pay practice, private practice

08/27/2026

Okay my numbers people, let’s do the math. 🤓

I’m using a 3% website conversion rate for this example.

So, VERY simply:

100 website visitors ➡️ ~6 inquiries ➡️ ~3 new clients

That assumes about half of the people who inquire actually book.

Is 3% some magical number that every therapist’s website will hit? No. Obviously not. 😂 Your niche, copy, branding, pricing, location, how easy it is to contact you, etc. ALL play a role here. But this gives you something concrete to look at.

If you want 3 new clients per WEEK and you’re getting 20 website visits per week… you probably don’t have a “people don’t want therapy” problem. You have a numbers problem. And once you know your numbers, you can stop randomly changing things and actually figure out where the problem is.

👉🏻 Also: these numbers are WEEKLY. If you’re looking at monthly website traffic, multiply them by 4.

Now the obvious next question is, okay Krysteena, but how the hell do I get 100+ people to my website every week?!

That’s exactly what I’m breaking down in the next part! Follow so you don’t miss it. 👀



[marketing for licensed therapists, licensed psychologists, licensed mental health counselor, psychologist, private practice, private pay practice]

08/14/2026

“But I already have a website, and I don't get private pay clients from it…”

Great. Do you know how many people visited it last month?
Do you know your bounce rate?
Do you know which page gets the most traffic?
Do you know what key words you're ranking for?

If the answer is no… you don’t have enough information to diagnose why your private-pay practice isn’t growing.

And when you don’t know the diagnosis, you end up fixing the wrong problem.

Comment FREE and I’ll send you the guide that walks you through the foundations I’d do if I woke up tomorrow with an empty caseload that I needed to fill immediately.



licensed counselor, licensed psychologist, licensed therapist, licensed mental health counselor, private practice, private pay

08/10/2026

Even though these two therapists make the same amount on paper, one of these therapists has it WAY easier.

I speak to a lot of therapists who want to build a course or a digital product as an additional income stream because they are SO. BURNT. OUT. in their practice. And then when I talk to them, I'm like...

"No no no, you don't understand, you are going to have to work MORE, not less, if you want to create a 'passive income source' as a therapist. You are essentially starting a second business. You think you hate marketing your practice now? When you create another offer, that's ALL you do."

That's when those therapists realize that what they need first is to create spaciousness in their practice by seeing less clients.

It’s easier to see 15 clients a week when you know how to consistently attract private-pay clients who are willing to pay cash for your increased session fees.

It’s easier to attract private-pay clients when people are choosing you, not just your insurance panel.

And that kind of practice isn’t built from one marketing tactic (we're not a fan of "tactics" around here).

There are four core pieces that have to work together, and even if one is missing, you can keep posting on Instagram and wonder why you're not attracting enough private pay clients to phase off the insurance panels.

If you haven't phased off of insurance panels yet, you may not need a course, a membership, or another income stream right now. You may be one missing foundation away from seeing half the clients and creating the spaciousness you were trying to get from a second business.

Before you start building a digital product or another offer, figure out which of those four pieces is keeping your current practice too full, too fragile, or too dependent on insurance.

Comment SPACIOUS and I’ll send you my free Core 4 Guide so you can identify what’s missing and what to fix first!



licensed psychologist, private practice therapist, licensed counselor, licensed psychologist

08/07/2026

Most therapists aren’t paying attention to what’s happening behind the scenes. I think they should be.

Over the last few weeks alone, we’ve seen reimbursement cuts, AI replacing parts of the intake process, and CAQH, a platform many therapists rely on, move further under the control of major health insurers.

On their own, each of those headlines might not seem like a big deal. Together, they’re an example of vertical integration.

In plain English, that means the same companies are starting to own more and more pieces of the healthcare ecosystem.

Own the patients.
⬇️
Own the providers.
⬇️
Own the data.
⬇️
Control the access.
⬇️
Control the reimbursement.
⬇️
Then eventually, automate pieces of the care.

When one company controls more of the system, it has more influence over how care is delivered, who gets paid, and under what terms. Therapists should be paying attention because depending on a single source of referrals or a single payer has NEVER been riskier.

So what do you do? 👇🏻

You build leverage. How? By:

• Building a recognizable personal brand instead of relying solely on insurance directories.
• Investing in a website that consistently converts visitors into clients.
• Learning how to market ethically so you aren’t dependent on one platform or one company.
• Diversifying your income instead of relying on a single revenue stream.
• Building a practice you actually own.

None of that means you have to leave insurance 100% tomorrow. But it does mean putting yourself in a position where you have options if the landscape keeps changing.

Because if the last few years have taught us anything… it’s that healthcare can change a lot faster than most therapists expect.

There are four core principles every therapist should be building into their practice, regardless of their payment model, if they want to build a sustainable practice. If you don’t own those four things, someone else effectively owns your business.

Comment LEVERAGE and I’ll send you the framework.



[therapist, private pay practice, licensed therapist, licensed psychologist, licensed counselor]

08/03/2026

And by the way, there are SO many ways to build a profitable private pay practice. You DON'T have to open a group practice like me or pivot into coaching to create a $100k+ practice.

Curious what it really looks like to build a multi-income, multi-six-figure business? It all started with a strong private practice foundation — the exact strategy I teach therapists inside my Private Practice Lab every day.

Comment NEWSLETTER below if you want my full financial report, and follow along for Part 2 where I break down where all that money goes and how much of it I keep. 💸



private practice, marketing for therapists, therapist business coach, private pay

07/30/2026

People will complain that the U.S. mental health system doesn't care about the mental health of its citizens, and then the same people will criticize therapists for not wanting to participate in this broken system. Make it make sense. 🫠

Let’s break this math down even further ⬇️

$150k a year - taxes, continuing education and licensing costs, accounting fees, marketing, programs + tech, savings, health insurance + retirement = 50% of gross income.
= $75k net per year
$75k net divided by 48 working weeks = $1563 per week
Divided by 30 hours of work (actual hours it takes to see 15 clients and run a practice) =
$52.08 an hour

And this is being generous because most therapists see WAY more than 15 clients and work much more than 30 hours a week. That’s why this conversation isn’t reaaaally about income. It’s about sustainability.

Because the number of clients you need to see each week affects everything:

👉🏻 How much emotional energy you have left at the end of the day.
👉🏻 Whether you can take time off without panicking.
👉🏻 Whether one cancellation is the determinant of whether you can pay your bills or not
👉🏻 Whether you can be fully present with the clients you DO see.

Whether or not you think private pay is right for you or not, every therapist deserves to understand the math behind both options so they can make an informed decision instead of assuming there’s only one path.

The therapists I see make this transition successfully learn how to:

✅ Replace insurance referrals with their own marketing.
✅ Position themselves so the right clients are willing to pay out of pocket.
✅ Set fees based on their actual financial goals—not guilt.
✅ Have confident conversations about private pay.
✅ Transition strategically instead of all at once.

If you’re wondering what your own numbers could look like, comment FREEDOM and I’ll give you the tool that can show you exactly how many clients you’d need at different fee levels to stop needing a 30+ client caseload. ⬇️

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Boise, ID

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