Most solo counselor practices run on six different tools that don't talk to each other. I pick the right ones for how you work, wire them together so they do, and stay on call when something breaks.
My dad runs a counseling practice in Colorado Springs (matthewbaileycounseling.com). Rebuilding his site — and wiring the rest of his practice around it — taught me what most counselor practices are missing. It's never the part that looks broken.
It's the homepage not saying what you actually do. Fees buried three clicks deep. A contact form that filters nobody. Missed calls that never get a reply. An intake email sitting unanswered for two days because it landed in the wrong inbox. A calendar that doesn't know about the booking link on your site. You can't see any of this. It's costing you bookings.
Small caseload, by design. The person who sets your system up is the same one you'll text six months later when something breaks.
Psychology Today gets you onto someone's shortlist. Your site is what wins the next click — or loses it. Someone looking for a therapist is overwhelmed; they click through four or five PT listings looking for one that feels right. The one they pick is rarely the highest-rated — it's the one whose site makes them feel yes, this person gets it. That signal lands before they read a word.
A new site doesn't rank on Google the day it ships. It ranks 90 days later, if someone keeps working on it. Most counselor sites never get that work. Here's what it actually looks like:
Most "rebuilds" list twenty deliverables. Here are the five pieces that actually run a counseling practice — and how I wire them together so they work like one thing instead of six.
Form + auto-text reply for missed calls + AI-drafted first response on new inquiries. The right people get through; the rest filter themselves out.
Fast, mobile-first, built around the decision a prospective client is making when they land. Sometimes a rebuild, sometimes a tune-up — whichever your current site actually needs.
The highest-leverage thing a solo practice can do. Most people skip it.
The biggest dropoff on counselor sites. People leave because they can't tell what it costs.
The piece nobody else does. I pick the right tools for how you actually work (AgentZap or Smith.ai, SimplePractice or TherapyNotes, Calendly or built-in booking, Spruce or plain email), configure them against each other, and make them talk. Most counselor practices have all of these — just not connected. That's the whole game.
The setup is a one-time project with a flat fee. Once your stack is wired and running, you have two options for what comes next — and both of them are good options.
Foundation setup
Everything above — site, local, intake, fees, full stack wire-up. 2-3 weeks kickoff to launch. $1,500 for the first 5; $2,500 after.
Payment
50% on kickoff, 50% on launch. No retainer required to start. No long contract.
Maintenance
Uptime, small content updates, fee changes, broken links, renewals, the AI receptionist behaving itself. Handled quietly. 24-hour email turnaround.
Active growth
Two blog posts a month, weekly Google Business Profile activity, AI-drafted intake replies tuned as your practice changes, monthly check-in on what to adjust. The full engine.
Two paths. I hand you the keys and walk away — your stack is yours, you owe me nothing. Or you keep me on retainer and I keep the whole system humming. Either way, you own what you paid for.
No. I work on the public side — site, Google profile, intake form. Anything sensitive lives in your EHR, where it belongs.
About 3–4 hours total. A 60-minute kickoff, an hour of content review, a 30-minute walkthrough at launch.
Yes, any time, no contract. Your stack is yours from day one of the setup. Retainer is month-to-month — pause it for a slow month, cancel it entirely, upgrade or downgrade between tiers.
An agency would charge $15K–$25K to set up the same wired-together stack — their overhead, not your value. AI lets me deliver it for $2,500. The first five counselor setups go for $1,500 in exchange for being the case studies; $2,500 after.
Those tools are genuinely good — and you probably should use one. The work isn't building the receptionist; it's picking the right one for your practice (AgentZap if you want full AI, Smith.ai if you want humans backing it up), configuring it against your EHR and your calendar so it actually books real appointments, and tuning it as your practice changes. That's most of what I do. If you set it up yourself and never tune it, the answer it gives a prospective client at 9pm Saturday is whatever the default prompt said in week one.
Then we don't rebuild it. The setup isn't a website project — it's a wire-everything-together project. Your site is one piece of five. Often the bigger wins are the intake flow, the AI receptionist, and the Google Business Profile, and your current site just gets tuned where it needs it. I'll tell you straight which pieces actually need work.
Not right now — everything's built around how a solo counselor runs a practice. If you're curious anyway, send me a note and I'll be honest about fit.
First conversation is free, no expectation either way. If it's a fit, we line up a kickoff. If not, you leave with a punch list.