My advice to you is don’t do it. Psychotherapy and counseling is a dying profession, more and more people are getting into the profession, and client bases are shrinking because folks are starting to distrust ethical enforcement, corrupt therapists and the extremely high prices. You have universities overselling the profession to students because they are money grubbing students any way they can these days, there is a glut of new therapists coming on stream, The only way you are going to make it in private practice is to charge three figures per session, it has become a service for the idle upper middle class with nothing better to do with their money, the people who truly need therapy and could benefit from it don't have insurance and can't afford to pay more than 20 or 30 per hour and out of that comes your overhead so you won't break even unless you are in a rich area and that is where the competition is extremely fierce with too many therapists in affluent areas, many are abandoning talk therapy for the meds – less hassle lots cheaper.

If you are getting a steady paycheck, stay there. If you want to start up a business, there are many ways to make money but these days you are not going to live a comfortable lifestyle in a start up private practice while shrinking client bases, huge numbers of new graduates in PhD and Masters programs to compete with, more competition, more liability insurance, more lawyers dueling over the prospect of suing therapists for malpractice, worry about getting slapped with ethical complaints, trust me it’s a dirty business all through.

They days of making six figures in private practice and a living the good life as a psychotherapist are gone.