Instructor: Shane Trudell
Dates: April 4th
Time: 5:00 pm – 9:30pm PST
Location: Online
Price: $70
Course Description
Are you considering starting your own counselling therapy private practice?
If so, you may be asking:
1. What are the steps to create a legal business & how much does it cost?
2. Where will the clients come from?
3. What are the ethics of charging private practice fees for such a needed service?
4. How do I know if I have what it takes?
The workshop begins with the details — how to register a business, when to include lawyers and accountants, how to select an office — to ensure you have the essential tools to create a legal business. We include examples of the specific apps, services, and accounts that we use to grow Nightingale.
Next we look at the ethics of private practice. It can appear that the demands of the open market are perversely related to the obvious social need for accessible counselling. With room for open, critical discussion we look at the intersection of pricing, ethical responsibility, and financial sustainability.
Finally, we discuss defining success for yourself and what it takes to reach it. Anyone can write a bio and register with the CRA and the BCACC: what distinguishes those businesses which are creatively, ethically, and financially fulfilling?

Shane Trudell is a Founding Director of Nightingale Counselling — starting with under $10, 000 in startup funds, the practice expanded within the first year of the partners’ graduation to include a second office, administrative staff, and multiple associate counsellors with the income and profits to continue driving reliable growth. Shane’s counselling practice and business practice are each rooted in critical theory and an emancipatory ethic, and his aspirational vision of what private practice can and should be guides this introduction to the business of counselling therapy. Shane’s work and research in his role as Director are about elevating the potential of private practice counselling therapy, for the benefit of clients, other counsellors, and counselling therapy itself. He works as a mentor, consultant, and instructor on how to contribute to the mental health community through ethical private practice.