Put on it: your fee, whether you have current availability, the format (in-person, video, or both), the population and concerns you actually work with, one clear way to reach you, and how quickly you reply.

Leave off: your home address, your personal cell number, a list of every modality you have ever trained in, and anything that will be wrong in three months unless you remember to update it.

The single highest-value item on that list is the fee. Every hour you spend on inquiries from people for whom your fee is impossible is an hour you did not spend on the ones it works for, and neither of you enjoyed the phone call. The same applies to "not currently accepting new clients" — say it, and turn it off again when it changes.

The second highest-value item is the response-time sentence. "I reply to messages within two business days" costs you nothing, sets an expectation you can meet, and quietly filters out people who needed someone today — which is a kindness to them, not a loss to you.

What's the trade-off with putting my phone number on it?

Real, and worth knowing before you decide.

Publishing a number on a directory brings you callers, and it brings you spam. Practitioners describe it starting almost immediately after listing: silent five-second voicemails arriving every morning from a different number each day, and short calls that leave nothing. Blocking does nothing because the next one is new.

That is the cost side. The benefit side is the caller who will phone but will not type, and there are more of them than a lot of therapists assume.

Three positions, all defensible:

Publish a work number and let it answer for itself. A greeting that states when you return calls, and something that responds to a missed call, converts the number from a place messages disappear into a channel — without you interrupting sessions.

Publish an email or booking link only. Therapists do this deliberately, and some directories allow removing the number entirely with a warning that it may reduce contacts. One practitioner described exactly that trade and said it was a risk they were willing to take.

Publish a number you never intend to answer live. This is fine as long as the greeting says so and points somewhere. What is not fine is a number that rings forever — it looks like a channel and behaves like a wall.

What none of these should involve is your personal cell.

What about a policy for calls that leave no message?

Have one, and say it out loud in your greeting.

The dilemma is genuine: a missed call with no voicemail could be a prospective client or could be the twentieth spam call of the week, and practitioners describe a blanket no-callback rule while knowing it costs them referrals. There is also a clinical argument against calling back unknown numbers that is worth taking seriously — someone reaching out about abuse or violence may have called from a borrowed phone, and returning that call can land somewhere unsafe.

The workable version is to make the ask explicit rather than leaving it to inference. A greeting that says "leave a message with your name and number, or send a text, and I'll get back to you within X" gives the genuine caller a path and gives you a defensible rule.

What should I leave off for privacy reasons?

Your home address, obviously, if you practise from home — and check whether the directory or any professional registry publishes an address by default.

Beyond that, assume the listing is the first result someone gets when they search your name, and that some of them will keep looking. Therapists who have gone looking at their own footprint are usually unhappy with what they find — one described people-search sites publishing their private number and home address, and another described how cheaply anyone can buy a bundle of personal details. You will not fix that from a directory profile, but you can avoid adding to it.

Practically: no personal cell, no personal email, no photo that identifies where you live, and a deliberate search of your own name before you publish.

What makes a listing actually convert?

Less than people think, and it is not the modality list.

Prospective clients contact several therapists and go with whoever replies first. That is the most consistent observation in every public discussion of this. So the listing's job is narrow: make it obvious that you work with this person's problem, make the fee clear, and make the next step unambiguous.

Then make the reply happen. A profile that generates ten inquiries you cannot return between sessions is worse than one that generates four you can.

The short version

Fee, availability, format, who you work with, one contact route, and a stated response time. Leave off your personal number, your home address, and anything you will have to maintain. Decide before you publish what happens when someone calls and you are in session — because that decision, not the profile copy, is what determines whether the listing works.

About Rivet

Rivet is a Canadian practice line built for therapists — a separate number for calls, texts and voicemail, with video sessions and clinical tools in the same place. Your data stays in Canada, and transcription runs on Rivet's own hardware rather than a third-party AI service.

One plan, $65 CAD a month, everything included. Fourteen-day trial, no card.

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