What 7,700 doctors, therapists, lawyers and advisors say is eating their week
I sorted two years of Reddit posts from doctors, therapists, dentists, lawyers, insurance agents and financial advisors into 18 problems, to see what they complain about when nobody is selling to them.
Getting clients is the most common problem
1,345 of 7,700 posts (17.5%) are about finding new clients. Burnout is a close second at 15%, then money. At the very bottom are online reviews: 101 posts, 1.3%, even though most marketing advice for practices pushes reviews hard.
How it was made
Public posts from 11 subreddits for therapists, psychiatry, medicine, dentistry, physical therapy, chiropractic, insurance agents, financial advisors and law, plus practice owners in r/smallbusiness. Only posts about marketing, clients, admin, burnout, hiring or AI were kept. An AI model sorted all 11,695; 7,700 were written by working professionals. A second AI model checked 2,320 of them and agreed on who wrote the post 83% of the time.
- Getting new clients17.5%
- Burnout and workload15.0%
- Income and cash flow11.9%
- Starting or growing a practice10.1%
- Using AI tools9.1%
- Software and automation8.5%
- Hiring and staffing7.4%
- Compliance and ad rules7.4%
- Directories and vendors6.8%
- Referral sources6.7%
- Worries about AI6.5%
- Social media4.8%
- Website and Google4.3%
- Notes and paperwork3.2%
- Billing and insurance2.9%
- Answering inquiries2.6%
- No-shows and scheduling2.6%
- Online reviews1.3%
Insurance agents and advisors chase clients. Doctors chase paperwork.
Nearly half of insurance agents' posts (533 of 1,104) and 42% of financial advisors' are about finding clients: leads, referrals and marketing. Doctors almost never mention it (22 of 270, 8%). Their problem is admin: 102 of 270 posts (38%), the most of any group. Therapists, dentists and physical therapists talk about admin a little more than marketing.
- Insurance agents1,104 posts48%26%
- Financial advisors853 posts42%29%
- Therapists + psychiatrists1,586 posts30%34%
- Lawyers2,383 posts29%26%
- PT + chiropractors1,102 posts27%29%
- Dentists402 posts24%31%
- Doctors270 posts8%38%
Worry about AI more than tripled in two years
In late 2024, 18 of 714 posts (2.5%) raised a worry about AI. Through 2026 it has been 8.4%. Talk of actually using AI rose more slowly, from 6.0% to a peak of 10.9%, and has dipped since.
Doctors are the most uneasy about AI
- Doctors19% / 17%
- Lawyers11% / 14%
- Therapists + psychiatrists7% / 5%
- Dentists5% / 10%
- Insurance agents3% / 7%
- PT + chiropractors2% / 7%
- Financial advisors2% / 6%
Figures read worried / using. Doctors: 52 worried and 45 using, of 270 posts. Therapists and psychiatrists: 104 and 72, of 1,586. Scale 0 to 20%.
“I feel like I spend more time chasing payments, rescheduling clients, and dealing with inbox chaos than actually treating patients.”
Chiropractor
“Two leads in the same week said they asked ChatGPT for a PI lawyer before calling.”
Law firm, lightly trimmed
“My clients are all starting to discharge and I haven't gotten a referral in over a month.”
Therapist, lightly trimmed
“Is 1000 bucks seriously what it costs for SEO/management of google business account?”
Dentist
“State bar ethics guidance on AI might as well say figure it out yourself good luck.”
Law firm
More clients, fewer hours, and AI they can trust
I build marketing and automation systems for small practices that have to be careful about what they say in public. The top three problems here are clients, burnout and money, and they feed each other: when finding clients takes hours a practice doesn't have, both the pipeline and the people suffer. In healthcare there is a fourth: AI is showing up in their software with no clear guidance on who is responsible. That is the gap I care about most. A practice should be able to use AI for the busywork without patient data ever going near it.
Noah Watson, Watson's Media · plain answers on AI, HIPAA and marketing for practices
Limits worth knowing
Reddit is not a random sample: people post problems, and users skew younger and American. Many posters are employees, not owners. Lawyers post the most, about a third of the 7,700, so compare professions using the per-profession charts. Themes were assigned by AI and checked against a second model, not by hand, so treat a point or two as noise. Busy forums were read from the first days of each month.
Writing about this?
Quote any figure with a link to this page. Method questions: noah@watsonsmedia.com.
Where are you leaving growth on the table?
Send me your site and socials. Within 24 hours I'll send back a personal 3-point teardown: the three highest-impact fixes, ranked, with exactly what to change and why. No pitch. No charge.
I’m taking on a small group of founding clients this quarter, which is why the audit’s free. Real eyes, real fixes, no catch.