Running a Hypnotherapy Practice Over 50: You Get to Decide What Happens Next

If you're running a hypnotherapy practice over 50, this article is for you. (And if you haven't quite reached the big five-oh yet, you're very welcome too!)

Most of the therapists I work with are over 40, and many are in their fifties or sixties. Some are just starting their hypnotherapy businesses, others have been practising for years, and some are developing new specialisms or taking their businesses in completely different directions.

And as we get older, there are certain stories we can begin telling ourselves about what's possible, how much time we have left and what we should or shouldn't be doing at our age.

I've certainly caught myself doing it.

Every so often, I have a little existential panic about getting older. I start calculating how many years I might have left to do the things I want to do, wondering whether I've left certain ambitions too late, and generally allowing my imagination to run away with itself.

And occasionally, a little thought creeps in about retirement. Other people are retiring at 65, or looking forward to the day when they can finally stop working. Should I be thinking about that too?

But the reality is, the thought of retirement holds no attraction for me at all. I love my work. It inspires me, gives me a creative outlet, allows me to learn from other people and constantly pushes me to develop new skills, explore ideas and challenge myself.

Now, you've probably heard the saying that if you do something you love, you'll never work a day in your life.

Having run a business I adore for nearly two decades, I think this is nonsense.

I work hard. Some parts of my work are wonderful, some are a complete slog, and there are days when I'm absolutely exhausted but have to keep pushing on to meet a deadline. Running a hypnotherapy business involves plenty of things that aren't particularly enjoyable, however passionate you are about what you do.

It's still work.

But I love it. And when I find myself getting caught up in those occasional thoughts about ageing, I come back to something that matters to me: I refuse to let age dictate what I can or can't do.

Of course, circumstances change. Health, finances, family responsibilities and personal priorities all influence the choices available to us. But there's a difference between making decisions based on our actual circumstances and allowing assumptions about age to make those decisions for us.

So, whether you're setting up your hypnotherapy business after training or you're much further into developing your practice, here are five ways to question some of those assumptions and decide what you want the next stage of your professional life to look like.

Running a Hypnotherapy Practice Over 50 - 5 tips

1. You Get to Decide Whether to Start Something New

There's a story we can begin telling ourselves as we get older that perhaps the time for starting new things has passed.

Perhaps you've spent decades in another career and are now considering training as a hypnotherapist. Or you've been practising for years but want to develop a new specialism, start teaching or create something completely different.

And somewhere in the background is the thought that you should have done it years ago.

But why?

You're bringing decades of experience with you. You've learned how to communicate, solve problems, manage difficult situations and understand people. You've probably made plenty of mistakes, too, and learned something useful from at least some of them.

Starting something new doesn't mean starting from nothing.

In fact, some of the qualities that make an effective hypnotherapist develop through life experience. The ability to listen without immediately jumping to conclusions, recognise complexity, tolerate uncertainty and respond flexibly to different people can all develop over time.

Rather than asking whether you've left it too late, ask what your experience allows you to bring to this new stage of your professional life.

You get to decide whether there's something new you want to explore, regardless of whether it fits anyone else's expectations about your age.

2. You Get to Decide What Success Looks Like Now

When we're younger, we often have quite fixed ideas about what success should look like.

We might imagine reaching a particular income, achieving a certain level of professional recognition or building a business that continues to grow year after year.

And when our lives don't follow that imagined timeline, we can interpret it as evidence that we've somehow fallen behind.

But fallen behind whom?

There's no universal timetable for building a successful hypnotherapy practice.

Some therapists begin their training in their twenties. Others discover hypnotherapy after decades in another profession. Some develop thriving practices relatively quickly, while others take years to find their feet.

And what you wanted from your business when you first considered becoming a hypnotherapist might be quite different from what you want now.

Perhaps you originally imagined success as having a full appointment diary and a steady stream of individual clients. But as your experience develops, you might discover that there are other aspects of running a hypnotherapy business that you'd like to explore.

Perhaps you'd enjoy developing a blog, working with groups, creating hypnosis recordings or concentrating on a more specialist area of client work.

And this is where your life experience can become particularly valuable.

You've spent decades discovering what interests you, what you're good at and what you find rewarding. You've also had plenty of opportunities to discover what you don't particularly enjoy.

Why not draw on that experience when deciding how to develop your business?

Perhaps you've developed a particular interest in supporting people through major life transitions because of your own experiences. Or maybe you've discovered that you love writing, teaching or creating resources that allow you to share your knowledge in different ways.

You don't have to keep running your practice in exactly the same way simply because that's how you started.

And you don't have to pursue someone else's version of success.

Spend some time considering what genuinely interests you now, what you'd like to explore and how you could bring more of that into your business.

You get to draw on your life experience to decide what a successful hypnotherapy practice looks like for you, rather than continuing to follow a plan that might no longer fit.

3. You Get to Choose the Stories You Tell Yourself

A good example of how we can limit ourselves through the stories we tell ourselves as we age is telling ourselves that we are "useless with technology".

And this story can become a surprisingly powerful part of someone's identity.

Therapists I meet don't simply say they haven't learned how to build a website, edit a video or use an email marketing platform. They say they're rubbish with technology. And there's a difference.

One describes a skill they haven't developed. The other becomes a story about who they are.

And once we begin identifying ourselves as people who can't do something, we're less likely to give ourselves opportunities to learn.

Technology can be frustrating. I've certainly spent more time than I'd like trying to work out why something that worked perfectly well yesterday has suddenly decided not to cooperate.

And the number of different platforms we're expected to understand as business owners can be ridiculous.

Websites, online booking systems, social media, email marketing, video editing, online courses, artificial intelligence. There's always something new.

But you don't need to understand everything.

You need to decide which skills are useful for the business you want to develop.

Perhaps you'll learn to update your website, create a simple video or use an email marketing platform.

Perhaps you'll decide that some tasks are better outsourced.

Both are perfectly reasonable choices.

The important thing is recognising the difference between deciding something isn't worth your time and assuming you're incapable of learning it because of your age.

And here's something that can make a real difference: add the word 'yet'.

Instead of telling yourself, 'I'm rubbish with technology', try saying, 'I haven't learned how to do my website SEO yet.'

That's a completely different way of approaching the problem.

One statement suggests there's something fundamentally wrong with your ability. The other simply acknowledges that there's a skill you haven't learned.

And then do something about it.

Sit down, choose one thing and begin working your way through it.

YouTube and ChatGPT can be incredibly useful for this. You can ask questions, find tutorials and work through technical tasks one step at a time.

You might take longer than someone who's been using the software for years.

So what?

You're learning a new skill.

And once you've learned it, you've got something you didn't have before.

Being unfamiliar with something is not the same as being incapable of doing it.

4. You Get to Revisit Why You Started Your Hypnotherapy Business

Whatever stage you're at, whether you're setting up your practice after completing your training or you're much further into developing your business, it's worth reconnecting with why you wanted to become a hypnotherapist in the first place.

Perhaps you wanted to help people, become self-employed, have more flexibility or build a business that would give you greater financial independence.

Maybe you were particularly interested in a certain type of therapeutic work, or perhaps you simply wanted to do something that felt more meaningful than your previous career.

But even when you're just starting out, it's easy to become caught up in everything you feel you should be doing.

There are websites to create, marketing decisions to make, clients to attract, emails to answer and endless little jobs that seem to appear from nowhere.

And if you've been running your practice for longer, those day-to-day demands can become so familiar that you rarely stop to question whether you're still working towards what you actually want.

So here's something worth doing, whatever stage you're at.

Spend a little time reconnecting with why you wanted to start your hypnotherapy business.

What did you hope it would bring into your life?

What were you excited about?

What did you imagine yourself doing?

And what do you want from it now?

Perhaps you've already achieved more than you realise. Or perhaps there are things you originally wanted that have gradually been pushed aside.

That's fine. You don't have to have achieved everything you set out to do.

The important thing is to reconnect with what you actually want, rather than continuing to work towards goals that might no longer reflect your interests and priorities.

What still matters to you? What no longer feels important? And what would you like to work towards now?

You get to revisit your ambitions, change your mind and decide what you want the next stage of your business to look like, whether you're just beginning or have been practising for years.

5. You Get to Decide Whether To Work Less or Differently

There's an expectation that as we get older, we should gradually begin winding things down.

We should work less, take fewer risks and start preparing for retirement.

And for some people, that's exactly what they want.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to retire, reduce your workload or spend more time doing things outside work.

But it isn't what everyone wants.

Perhaps the question isn't when you should retire, but what you want your working life to look like as you get older.

Maybe you want to see fewer clients, concentrate on the parts of your practice you enjoy most or develop a different way of working.

Perhaps you'd like to move into teaching, supervision or mentoring other therapists.

Or perhaps you want to keep building something new.

You get to decide whether slowing down is something you actually want, rather than something you're simply expected to do.

Running a Hypnotherapy Practice Over 50: What Happens Next?

Running a hypnotherapy practice later in life brings challenges, but it also brings opportunities.

You have experiences to draw on, a clearer understanding of what matters to you and perhaps a greater willingness to question what other people expect.

You might want to build a thriving practice, develop a new specialism, create something entirely different or simply continue doing work that you love.

And you might want to retire in five years, fifteen years or not at all.

The important thing is that those decisions reflect what you want and what works for your circumstances, rather than assumptions about what someone your age should be doing.

As for me, I'll probably continue having the occasional existential panic.

But when it happens, I'll remind myself that I still have things I want to create, people I want to learn from and ideas I want to explore. And take it from there...