File: PoP 288 Kate and Katie Talk about SM5
Duration: 0:40:44:19

[START]
Joe Sanok: Whether you are just getting started or you are scaling a million dollar practice, we have resources for you over at www.practiceofthepractice.com/resources. Over there we have checklist galore, e-books, all sorts of other things that we are developing and we are actually going to be developing some courses that are going to be totally free that are going to be all about how to rank in Google, how to improve your Google My Business, Psychology Today and Facebook business page. So we want you to head on over to www.practiceofthepractice.com/resources because we are going to be updating that every week with new resources that are totally free for you. www.practiceofthepractice.com/resources.

[MUSIC]

Joe Sanok: This is the Practice of the Practice Podcast with Joe Sanok session #288.

[MUSIC]

[INTRODUCTION AND KATE-KATIE STORY]
Joe Sanok: I am Joe Sanok your host and I am so glad you are here. Over the next couple of weeks, we are going to talking more about marketing, and I am going to have a clip of next week’s interview at the end of this interview as well. So stay tuned for that. We have a lady named Pia who is going to be talking with us next week, can’t wait to share that with you. But things are going well in Practice of the Practice. We are [00:01:20.17] here in the Radio Center Two Building. My coffee is still hot in my thermos mug. [00:01:26.00] clean canteen and they just like burn my face off, but I love it, It stays hot all day long. And so today we are going to be talking about Kate and Katie. I did this interview with them in late last year and just with the different launches we are doing and we did that five fierce females last month. Why don’t you make sure that we had kind of some marketing stuff that we could put together. So today, we are going to be talking all about S&M or sales and marketing and it’s going to be an incredible discussion, and without any further ado, I give you Kate and Katie.

[MUSIC]

Joe Sanok: Today, on the practice of the practice podcast, we have Kate and Katie who are from the private practice startup. Most of my listeners already know you ladies. So we are just going to dive right in. How you are doing today?

Kate and Katie: We are awesome (Kate). We are excited to be here (Katie).

Joe Sanok: Yeah, well, Katie how has your morning been?

Katie: [00:02:25.07] My morning has been all right from a stressful day yesterday. So today, we are so far smooth sailing.

Joe Sanok: Yeah. You guys are little bit of refugees with the hurricanes and by the time this goes live, hurricaine season will hopefully be over by December [LAUGH]

Ladies: My goodness. Yeah, it ends on November 30th which can’t come faster enough. I actually spent my morning at my private practice which is still lot of power and we have been out for two weeks now. So hopefully we will be able to move back in by Monday fingers crossed.

Joe Sanok: Well, and I think we were talking before we starting rolling about the importance of having the option of doing online counseling and you know even moving states for a little bit to get out of the way of a hurricaine. Maybe Katie, can you talk a little about kind of that process for you?

Katie: [00:03:12.28] When we evacuate it?

Joe Sanok: Well, I guess, yeah. The process, but even just the importance of setting all that up before we dive into kind of our main topic. Like you know just maybe some quicker things to consider when you want to add that to your practice.

Katie: Yeah, that’s a great question and I think… you know I’m a person who looks at life and things happening in life as always an opportunity. Right? Even though there might be like devastation or destruction, I always look for the opportunity and those things happen in life like a hurricane coming. And what’s interesting about the State of Florida, unfortunately the islands are totally different story, but at least we have somewhere to go. But it was only North and the whole hurricane was ascending on our State completely. So it wasn’t likely to go east or west. Everyone was headed north. And it took a long time to get out, but when I was out, yeah, I had power that was great. But it really just made me realize the importance of an online company, because when you have an online company, you can number one, work from anywhere that you have power and if you are serving the globe or the nation, your business keeps running. And it has been hard. I mean we are in private practice, you are in private practice and when your sole income or the majority of your income is from private practice and you cannot work, it’s a little bit difficult. So you know whether we are doing online counseling or you’ve created a book and you have passive income, you know, some type of passive income or some type of global market is really, really important. So for those of you who are thinking about, you know other means or other revenue, I really highly encourage you guys to take a good look at that to support you and your family, whether anything happens or whether you want to take 3 months vacation, you know you deserve it.

Joe Sanok: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well Kate, take us through your story of you and Katie coming together to make the private practice start up.

Kate: [00:04:54.01] Yeah, so that’s an interesting story. Katie and I actually met in 2006 in our licensure supervision down here at South Florida and we did that for two years and then our supervisor at the time twisted our arms and convinced us to resurrect the Broward Association for Marriage and Family Therapy down here and she didn’t have to twist our arms too hard because we were really ambitious and wanting to be connected to the community. And so I was President. Katie was Vice-President. We resurrected the chapter which became a thriving chapter and still is today. And Katie and I realized wow, we work so well together and really just play off of each strengths and we collaborate so well and we are really visionaries and love being entrepreneurs, and so we decided to get into business together and we got into business together to do trainings initially and it’s really grown and evolved from there and well, Katie has a successful private practice at Coral Springs and mine is on East Fort Lauderdale, and we both attracted other [00:05:59.01] health professionals who wanted to know how are you doing what are you doing? How are you growing such a successful practice because we didn’t get the business and marketing tools in school and so we started organically attracting people and coaching them through private practice and just loved it and really decided that that was going to be our niche and our area that we really… because we are most passionate about that and the need is there too.

[PARTNERSHIP TIPS AND ADVICE]
Joe Sanok: So I know a lot of people try to start partnerships whether that’s in starting a practice or doing consulting and, you know the Kelly and Miranda, they are some folks who do it also… what are some things as you were exploring doing a partnership together that maybe you learned along the way, were failures along the way… what did you set up because that’s different then when it’s just like me and I’m like I am going to do a bunch of podcast, I am going to do, like I don’t have to check in with anybody, and there’s some benefits to that. But there is also like, like today my website was down and I’m like… crap… like I got on the phone with my IT guy. So what were some initial things that when you started that partnership that you guys considered, that you made sure that you are on the same page, just to have, I guess, no more stress than you need to have in a partnership.

Katie: One of the things that I think was really helpful is I have a very good friend who is a family law attorney and she said, Katie you need to treat your business as if it’s a marriage and you actually need to talk about divorce first. And she goes, you and Kate need to talk about if you are going to end the business relationship what does that look like. So really starting… I mean it might sound like brave, but starting with the end in mind because then you can work backwards and get really clear. Kate and I are very transparent in our communication. We have systems and even so sometimes we are so ambitious we kind of… it’s interesting because we share the same email and for some reason when it doesn’t refresh, like we both respond to the same person and then realize that. But there is like little things like that that happen, but it’s just a constant conversation and being able to talk about things and I think, you know, the thing that’s really important is we don’t take each other personally. We know that when I am stressed it’s just I am stressed or Kate is stressed, and we vocalizes that and we don’t really put on the person. Instead we utilize each as a sounding board, but also a way to decrease stress and also be able to hand things off. Like Kate was down here during Hurricaine, like she had to worry about six different properties, right? And I said not a problem. I am evacuating. I’ll have power. Don’t worry about the business. So it’s just really awesome to be able to have that support and I think we just do that naturally and I think our relationship was more, it started off as a business relationship and then grew into a friendship, while I think sometimes people are friends and then they want to do business. It’s kind of like, I don’t know, maybe rooming with your best friend and then you realize like, ooh [00:08:42.19] [CROSSTALK]…

Joe Sanok: They are really dirty.

Kate: [LAUGH]

Katie: Yeah, networking, but we started off as a business relationship which I think has helped and then evolved more into a friendship.

Joe Sanok: That’s awesome. well, so, I mean I think about if I were in a partnership I would either feel like man, this person is not keeping up with me at my pace and come on, like, pick it up a notch. Or I would feel like, man, I am not keeping up. Like it seems like I would always feel this sense of am I working hard enough and am I working too much. How do you guys handle that because I just know my personality would have hard time with that?

Kate: We are both so driven, we really are. And we had a taste of what it was like to work together for three years on the Board of the Broward Association of Marriage and Family Therapy. So we knew that we were really driven. We are hard workers and we also give our best and when we have something that might be going on our personal life like a hurricane or situations that are out of our control, we are just open with each other and communicate. We pick up each others. Neither one of us are ever slackers. So if someone needs to step back a little bit, the other person kind of picks up. So it’s just a really good team scenario and it really does all boil down to the communication.

Joe Sanok: Awesome, awesome. Well… please go ahead…

Katie: And I think, the other thing is we have different strengths. I am very much the systems person and like the law and legal and Kate has had it up a lot of our technology, even though she doesn’t love that. But there’s different strengths that we have that really correlate with each other, but also then we… you know, we outsource and we hire people. When we started, we had a team of volunteers which we are so grateful for. So really building team and culture was really important and giving back to them.

Joe Sanok: Do you guys separate out who does what? Like there is one area that Kate does and another area that Katie does or is it kind of what each chunks of other each.

Kate: It’s a little bit of both. Yeah, it’s really a little bit of both. I handle the majority of the tech stuff which is a lot. I build our websites and handle a lot of the other the online aspects of things and then Katie will take care of other aspects of the business and sometimes we share. We just kind of chunk it out. We are using Trello now to communicate, organizing. So we are kind of like navigating a whole new world without which is really cool. We were using Slack before. We have tried Asana but didn’t love it. But Trello is pretty cool so far.

Joe Sanok: Yeah. That’s what I use with all my virtual assistants and all my consulting clients. So… awesome. Well, I know we are talking S&M today. So [APPLAUSE]… S&M, where do we start?

Katie: So where do we start? I think we should kick it off with a few questions to the listeners and I know that we are not going to get the answers, but you guys are going to answer them in your head. And so… well, you guys are either… some of you are already in practice or some of you are aspiring to be. And so as you go down through the list of the things that you need for your practice, I am going to guess them. One of those things was like an office. Right?…

Joe Sanok: Or give me [00:11:42.02] what the S and the M is before we dive into that?

Katie: We are going to get to it…

[LAUGHTER]

Joe Sanok: Okay, all right.

Katie: [00:11:49.25] It’s kind of like the [00:11:50.17]… before we make up…

Joe Sanok: Build the suspense?

Katie: Exactly.

Joe Sanok: All right. Okay.

[WHAT IS S&M]
Katie: I’m trying to [00:11:54.00] topic. So we think about most often getting an office and maybe some paperwork and I don’t know probably some business cards and a logo and a website. But most often we don’t think about the essential of S&M. So what is S&M. S&M is Sales and Marketing. And now you guys… mine is in the gutter or something like that over there… but really it’s about sales and marketing. And when we get into business, it doesn’t matter what business it is. S&M is really like one of the number one things that we need to spend our time, energy and money in. And a lot of times people will want to either rent or buy an office and fill it with $10,000 worth of furniture, but what we really need to look at it is where is our budget for sales and marketing. Where is our education around sales and marketing because ultimately sales and marketing is the thing that’s going to bring people into the practice. I know when I first started off, I didn’t know anything about business and I definitely did not put… Number one, I didn’t have a monetory plan to bring clients into the business. And I didn’t have a plan around sales and marketing, nor did I really know much about that and I was very, I would say, very salesy in the beginning which nobody likes. That feels really uncomfortable. So that is what S&M is and that’s what we are going to be talking about today.

Joe Sanok: Sweet. So what else should people consider as part of their S&M plan?

[TIPS AND ADVICE AROUND SALES AND MARKETING]
Katie: Right. So it might be helpful to jump into our six tips about S&M.

Joe Sanok: Go, what’s number one?

Katie: Well, before we jump in there I wanted to acknowledge the stigma, and for those of you listening if you think in your mind when you hear the two words sales and marketing, what do you [00:13:30.23] as comes to mind? What do you feel? Do you get am X-factor or does it feel sleezy or uncomfortable, and if so you are not alone. A lot of therapists kind of have that, like freak out moment… What I got to sell myself now?… because most therapists go to school, they learn to be great clinicians. They don’t have the business or marketing or sales background. If they are lucky now-a-days, maybe they get one class in that. But when I went through school, there were certainly no training for anything like that. So we want to offer you guys a different way to think about it before we even get into our tips. And the reframe is really… it’s about building relationships. It’s about an organic process of buiding relationships, nurturing those relationships and really having a conversation and communicating with your ideal client and potential referral sources, letting them know that you are going to be the person. You are going to be the person to help with their problems and achieve their goals. And when marketing is done the right way, you honestly don’t even have to sell yourself because people will realize through the conversations that you have had online, through what they’re reading, through what they’re seeing. You know, maybe they are watching videos or blogs or vlogs, and it’s going to help you naturally converts your leads into clients. So when you start yourself up and you do marketing the right way from the get go, you really don’t have to be that sleezy sales person because people know when they are calling you that you are going to be the person to help them achieve their goals.

Joe Sanok: Yeah, I totally agree. I know that when I was in almost in college I sold vacuum cleaners door to door. And so when I talked about like sales and marketing for the longest time I had this X-factor because I was selling someting I didn’t want to sell. I had no relationship with these people and I didn’t believe in the product itself. But hopefully you believe in your product. Hopefully you aren’t just kind of throwing your business cards everywhere. It’s actually part of a relationship stratergy where people just learn when you are a good fit as a therapist.

Katie: Exactly. So the number one thing that we talked about is really knowing your ideal clients. So “know thy ideal client” is really essential. And I think sometimes the mistake that we make and I have sure made this mistake and we’ve made this mistake is we feel like we have to prove ourselves through our credentials, our philosophies, our beliefs and really it’s completely the opposite. Really knowing who your ideal client is and we talk about the demographics, the psychographics, the geographic. Also knowing your clients external and internal pain points is really essential because just like when I work with my couples and I show them the Brene Brown video on empathy versus sympathy. It’s really about feeling with people and it’s about getting people. People want to be known and people want to feel [00:16:19.12]. So the more that you are able to connect with and be with your ideal client experience then and then actually put that into copy or put that into image, your ideal client’s automatically going to go, ooh, gosh, have they going to [00:16:34.15] my head? Have they been like hanging out with me because this is exactly how I feel. This is what I struggle. These are my problems and these are the results that I want.

Joe Sanok: Awesome. So what’s number two for the Sales and marketing?

Katie: Number two is to have a budget for marketing and that’s something that… that was the mistake that I made when I first started private practice in 2006. I tried to do a bunch of things for free. So I would attend free networking, I built my own website, and… of course, we know time is money, but if I had started from the get go and I knew how to invest my money in the smart way, I would have a greater ROI, greater return on my investment there. So really the majority of your income – you know, anywhere between 40 and 60 percent – especially in the beginning should be going towards sales and marketing. And you know it’s just so important to have a clear budget and a financial plan when you are getting into private practice and if you already into private practicel it’s okay, you can create that plan now.

Joe Sanok: So how did you guys come up with 40 to 60 percent?

Katie: Great question. So I was actually… I took a week of guerrilla business school…

Joe Sanok: Mm-hmm, yeah?

Katie: Yea. so we were talking about the triangle about customers or product, the sales and markeing aspect… and I am blinking on the third aspect… but what they talk about is it’s not only just towards the sales and marketing but also you’re educationally rounded. So that’s where I came up with the 40 to 60 percent. So not only the website or actually paying for sales, but whether it’s learning how to write a good copy. So taking that amount of money. And obviously it decreases over a time as you kind of get that cruising attitude with your business and your kind of driving with the things that work. But I know for all the people I do well in business and all successful people, they are constantly investing in education. I know that Joe you are saying you just hired a new coach. I know I have just spent probably like 15 grand by May in education and training and we’re constantly investing in that. So whether that’s learning to – and this kind of goes into number three when we talk about strategies, is really identifying three to five strageties that really you align with. I think sometimes I felt this very overwhelming. Initially it’s kind of like, oh well, here’s a LinkedIn stratergy. Okay, should I be doing that? Oh, well, here’s the stratergy to, okay, people are doing Facebook ads. Okay, should I do that? Here’s Instagram. But I am on Instagram. I might be doing that. You know, so really just sitting with yourself and getting present, and what do you align with? Do you love like… I don’t know, do you like to take pictures, do you like the imagery stuff? Do you like to write? Are you afraid of video? And the other thing is try things out. You never know what you’re like. I know when I started doing video, it actually reminded me of my years between first grade and tenth grade and this is probably a little known fact that most people don’t know about me is I used to do drama. And I love doing drama and being in front of video is kind of just like having fun for me. So I kind of fell in love with being on video and being a little humorous and silly. So trying things out. Identifying three to five strategies that you might want to try out. Some people are great in the community. Awesome. If you want to create a networking or do networking. Cool. It’s just really understanding what aligns with you, trying those three to five things out, and then you know we are going talk a little bit about tracking and analyzing to see…

Joe Sanok: What I think is so easy to listen to a podcast like yours or ours, and it’s like, you know, you hear, oh, be on Facebook, be on Pinterest, do these things, and if you take it all in, like I am not doing every single thing that I interview somebody on, and for a while I thought that the podcast [00:20:07.21] I listen to that they were taking action on every single inteview, but they are not. And even thinking about a Facebook group, for a long time, I felt really guiltyl like I should have a Facebook group. Like all these other consultants that are kind of in our space had these thriving Facebook groups with thousand of people. But then I realized I don’t want to be managing a Facebook group. I don’t want to be spending all that time doing a Facebook group. And it’s just not where my people hang out, but when I have been doing the world changers challenge a couple of times a year where we have a very focused intentional time together. So right now we are now in the midst in September where we all are writing an e-book together, we each writing our own e-books, and to have a month that I am super active in that Facebook group, doing Facebook lives, seeing that energy just come out I am into that. I am not into managing a Facebook group for a year. So instead of having thousands of people, yeah, I have 700 people or so in that group, but they are superactive for short period of time. Then they take a break. They go kind of implement and then they come back for the next World Changers Challenge. And so for me that works and for you guys something like that might not work. And or someone else it might be that they have a Facebook group or they are not even on Facebook. And so really paring down where you spend that time I think allows you to continue to level up beyond where you at. So I love that stratergy and especially kind of giving people permission to cut back on everything they need to be doing.

Katie: Right, I am glad that you [00:21:32.17] that speaks to you being aligned with what feels right to you and it’s so true and now I think about [00:21:41.03] one thing and I know that Kate and I have been really learning a lot about online marketing this year like ridiculous amount, and for me what I am doing now is like finding [00:21:49.25] and then just like geeking out on every thing that they have. Right? Like I don’t need to then jump over here and jump over there, it’s just like let me follow this system in understanding and see if that works and if it’s creating results and it feels in alignment to me, awesome.

Joe Sanok: Yeah. So is the guerrilla marketing is that where you’re kind of spending your time learning or was that kind of past thing that you did?

Katie: So guerrilla business school I went to at the beginning of this year. I actually went to a free seminar called the millionaire mind intensive and I purchased the Quantam leap program which is like five different prograns, you know like workshops and things like that, and so guerrilla business was part of that. But Kate and I have been really geeking out on [00:22:29.21] story…

Joe Sanok: Oh, yeah, he is great.

Katie: Yeah, Russell Brunson of course. We read a [00:22:35.27], I don’t know if that was earlier this year or last year. But those things have been really inspiring a lot of our work online. And then Amy Crane and her Facebook ads. so that’s been really supportive to what we are doing and we are getting really good results with that.

Joe Sanok: Well, I love that idea that you said in S&M number two of having a budget and having education be part of that. So often, especially people that are under that 100,000, they bootstrap it. And partially rightfully so. But it limits how fast that can grow, especially if people have created a group practice, why not consult with them or join a mastermind group. Why not pay for the course, you know the individual consulting to learn how to do that. Just this morning I was talking to a consulting client who signed up for consulting with me. And she is like, you know, you have done this before. Why would I waste my time when my hourly is so high for counseling. If I save an hour of just googling around, you know I have paid for part of that consulting. And so we often times have that bootstrap mentality and to really get to that next level over and over we see that the most successful practices are the ones that say I need to stop doing what got me here and really shift to taking hats off and oursourcing things, bringing in people that are experts in that area or finding technology that can just can automate a lot of that.

Katie: Amen to that. [00:23:56.13] [LAUGH].

Joe Sanok: Yeah, exactly.

Kate: Very true.

Katie: Yeah.

Joe Sanok: So what’s your next tip there.

Kate: Yeah, so we are talking a little bit about playing on your marketing strengths which is important and also thinking about which of those marketing stratergies are going to be a good fit for your ideal client and so that was number three. Number four is really finding a clear system, actually finding clear systems that’s plural. You really need to be doing your research. We have talked about the importance of attending trainings and learning and growing, and you know if there’s different aspects of the business that are not your passion and they are not your strength. Find somebody else who can either take it over for you, find the training that you can learn about it and be able to work out the systems that way. That’s something that’s really really important, and it needs to be results based because if you are finding that you are wasting a ton of time in a certain area, you have got to change that system and stratergy. You want things to be streamlined. You want things to flow for you. You want things to work for you. And there is a lot of resources out there in private practice so that you can systematize things. Like what are some of the resources out there that you guys like. Well, obviously there is things like Calendly for scheduling. You can automate. There is like simple practice, practice management type systems that you can use. There is… we have used Slack for communicating with our team. Trello. There is different ways to get on searching through a million emails. Things like that. Katie anything you want to add?

Katie: Well I think just in regards to marketing and sales specifically. I know that Grant Cardone, [00:25:37.27] sales. He is real estate moghul down here in Miami and that the other people that we have mentioned like Russell Brunson. Kate and I transitioned our complete platform from… we have [00:25:48.06] oh my gosh like three things going on. We have like constant contact and then we were using lead pages and we had something else., So we transitioned our system in to get response which we also do webinars on all our e-mail marketing. So things like that. I know that when we wanted to go ahead and launch a webinar that’s when we looked at Jeff Walker’s system. So being very intentional about what is it that I am doing and what results do I want, and who in the industry. Is it really the top person? That’s kind of like my go to, like who is the top in the industry, let’s just go straight there. Like you said, Joe. It’s a lot [00:26:20.28] wheel.

Joe Sanok: Yeah, totally, totally. So after systems what’s the next S&M?

Katie: Super important it is to check and analyze. A lot of times, people don’t check and analyze and why is that important? It is important because we can’t change or improve that we do not measure. And this is where we really like to implement the 80-20 rule. So really checking and analyzing whatever you are doing for a period of 3 to 6 months and analyzing the data. I know when I was doing pay type referrals, online directories, ad words as I would keep track of where all my referrals are coming from and then I apply the 80-20 rule. I looked at the top 2 things that were generating clients and I got rid of the rest. So that’s also very important in whatever type of S&M we are doing. Right? Is that you want to know what’s working so you can place your money there and then remove your money from places that aren’t working.

Joe Sanok: Look, what gets in the way of tracking and analyzing for therapists because I think that’s one of the tips that is hardest for therapists. Katie what have you seen?

Katie: I think one of the things is when you go into business and the EMF talks about this, right? Being the technician as you are trying to do the job of many. So a lot of times as kind of feeling people or therapists, we are not all so crazy about the numbers. I mean there is someone less that really like the numbers, but most of us are like feeling people and connecting. So that gets in the way. But when you have a good, again, system that tracks things like that that’s really essential. So for me, you know, people are either contacting me through my website which automatically populates an excel document or as they call, I’m just entering it in the form myself, so at the end of the month I can track and measure. I know for me very early on. I have used Google Adwords, that’s been a great help for my business and I hired a company. I am not the one looking at the analytics. They sent me a report. We talk about it once a month. We talk about where we need to do this or change this or do that, and I let them do the work. They are the experts in that. So again Joe that goes back to your comment about, you know, hiring someone even if you are in the bootstrap phase, is looking at where you can outsource and that really goes back to having the plan.

Joe Sanok: I am really glad you bring up Adwords as an example. John Clarke has the private practice marketing workshop podcast, he just launched unconditional media. I don’t know if you have guys has heard about it, but it’s basically about a therapist that’s running google Adwords and he filled up within I think two weeks after coming to slowdown school and now has a wait list for it. But to have somebody that you can trust, that you can say, okay, I shouldn’t be spending my time first learning Google Adwords, second then navigating how to set it up correctly which you are probably going to do incorrect, and third like looking at that data. In the some way, we have a renovation going on with this house we bought. I knew that I could do the demo phase. Like, I can tear walls out, like it’s nobody’s business now and throw sledgehammer. But building a wall that’s straight, doing electrical, like I would do it wrong and then have to pay someone to undo my work and redo it right. And so I am going to outsource that all day long because I don’t want to learn that stuff. That’s not my thing that I want to be doing with my time, and so I think there’s so many of those areas that when we were tracking and analyzing we feel like we are bad business people if we don’t spend the time doing it ourselves, but it’s just not a good use of your time usually,

Katie: Right, and with Google and Facebook and things like that, oh my gosh, they are looking at ways to change every day. There is no way unless we are spending 40 hours of our work week learning about that. We should have to do that unless we just really love it. I mean if you are a geek in numbers and you love all that stuff, right on, you know. But if you are not, like you said Joe, just outsource it.

Joe Sanok: Well, Kate, I don’t know what you think about this, but even if you are a geek with numbers like I am or I love art and design and all… so making the images for the podcast I love to doing but I realized if I go into Canvas, spend an hour making this beautiful image and can find someone that will do that for 15 bucks an hour, that’s just not a good use of my time even if I love it when I am doing it. What do you think?

Kate: Yeah, I mean I really agree with what you guys are saying. It’s important to find, to know what your passions are and to really follow through with engaging yourself in that because otherwise you are going to burn out and when you try be all things to everybody and try to manage all aspects of your business it’s not realistic. It’s too much work. As an entrepreneur you can work 24 x 7 and that’s just not sustainable obviously. And so being able to track and measure. You know, I am not a numbers person. I am like just… you know, was never born a numbers person. I struggle with numbers It’s not my strength. But I do have systems for tracking and measuring things and they are very easy to set up, you know just having a Google forum and being able to input or have your assistant input your information of all the potential leads and then who is converting and where they are coming from, and it’s so easy to be able to just pull that [00:31:25.26] automatically populates. You can just pull that up, you can see everything very easily and you know there is a lot of systems to help support your tracking and measuring. But I’m glad you said that Joe. It’s funny because I just saw someone post on Facebook and I made my own little sign. And my [00:31:43.03] is that worth a $165, $400 plus an hour? And it says, no, I didn’t think so. Get back to making money. Do it [00:31:54.07]. So that’s a reminders we do as entrepreneurs need to identify where our time is best spent and where we can outsource things. So I am glad that you shared about.

Joe Sanok: Yeah, even this week upgrading our hosting because we kept crash… the website kept crashing because of downloads of the podcast and other things. You know some people would say, well I don’t want to spend extra 70 bucks a month, but I was on IT. I think I spent probably 4 hours of the last week after having my assistant on the phone. So I tried to get it solved with my assistant. That didn’t work and then I had my IT support and all this, and you know there’s just a time when you just say I am going to pay the money. I don’t care like. I need to be doing the things that I need to be doing and that’s spending my time on this. So I think that’s the mindset that those top practices that are really ready to scale where they go from that six figures to that multi six figures.

Kate: [00:32:47.18] Yeah, we kind of had a similar thing without website, our website has been running really slow, I have tried to outsource on Fiverr and Upwork and people are like I can fix that, I can fix that. We can fix it and we paid money and it was still running slow and then finally got on the phone with Google or GoDaddy yesterday and they were like okay, here’s the fee. What is going to cost to fix that, and it was basically all of our images are too large and if I was going to fix there and resize all of the images on every single page of our website. That will take me days and days and days. So to be able to outsource stuff like that, it’s just so important.

Joe Sanok: All right. So what’s next ?

Katie: Okay, so the last tip, number six of S & M would be KISS. [LAUGH] So “Keep It Super Simple.” When we first started, we went way too wide and this happens with a lot private practitioners as well. They want to be [00:33:37.11]. They don’t want to leave anybody out. They enjoy working with different populations and for us with our marketing because we didn’t have a strategy, because [00:33:46.17] and we were tracking and measuring. It was like throwing spaghetti and meatballs . That’s the other S & M, against the wall, trying to see what sticks and you [CROSSTALK]…

Joe Sanok: A bonus S & M.

Kate: [LAUGH]

Katie: A bonus S & M. Yes, so don’t throw the Spaghetti and meat balls, S & M. KISS instead. Right?

Joe Sanok: I like the super simple instead of the old one was simple stupid. And I am like… I always felt like, don’t call me stupid.

[LAUGHTER]

Joe Sanok: “To keep it super simple.” I agree. I think that often times we make it overly complex and really don’t think about what is it that we want our potential clients to do on our [00:34:24.08] websites for example. And so I have so many people that you know you go to the main website. You click on their contact us page. That person is about to schedule an appointment, and they have a popup – download my e-book. It’s like this person is about to give you a $150-$200 an hour over 10 sessions and you are going to give them a-book. Like that is distracting from what you are supposed to be doing. Now if you are on blog post and you want to build value and expertise, like moving them towards scheduling that appointment. But even just keeping it simple for a the leads that are coming in, asking yourself am I moving them step by step closer to picking up that phone or clicking that online scheduling or dropping an email to us to schedule an appointment. That’s the reason you have a counseling website. Schedule a freaking appointment. I think it distracts from that, removes you away from that, is not keeping it super simple.

Katie: Aye man, yeah. Couldn’t agree more. Even having your social media [00:35:23.04] from media legacy. You don’t want to be driving people away from your website. You want have people staying on your website, follow your call actions and making it very clear.

Joe Sanok: I’m a big fan of having only three or four menu buttons on our counseling practive to just have kind of an about us specialties and then contact us. You know, you can have your blogs, kind of down below somewhere. I want you to read my blog post, to subscribe to our blog, recent blog post. Your blogging mostly for SEO. You can connect with your clients for share through it, but you know, that’s your big call to action. I think people lose clients too. So keep it super simple., So the six ways to scale with S & M. You have ideal client budget for it, three to four strategies that you align with, systems, track and analyze, and KISS. Holy cow Kate and Katie, you guys rock.

Kate [00:36:14.02]: Ah, thank you.

Joe Sanok: If every counselor, counseling practice owner were listening right now you know worldwide, what would you want them to know? Why don’t we start with Kate?

Kate: [00:36:25.00]: I would just want them to know that sales and marketing shouldn’t be intimidating. It’s all about building a connection and having a conversation and nurturing those relationships over time, and it can be done so organically and so naturally, it doesn’t matter if you are an extrovert or an introvert. Just plan your strengths and start small, start with one first step that you can do and it’s totally manageable and possible to have to practice your dreams.

Joe Sanok: Mm-hmm. Katie what about you?

Katie: What I would say is I think a lot of what Kate would say, but what’s most important is that you just kind of stay in line with what’s really important to. And one of the things that I tell my interns all the time. I go the great thing about being a therapist is you actually already have sales and marketing skills. You just think that they exist within the four walls or online or whatever, and you guys are already naturally good, engaging people and connecting with people and asking questions, and that’s really all what sales and marketing is essentially in the beginning, but it is more obviously and really identifying ways to take your skills and transfer them into other context is really important, and I know [00:37:32.21] get to talk about the sales part so much, but when we talk about really setting up your marketing the right way, like Kate said the sales becomes easy. Now we could probably for another podcast of having that initial call, but it’s the same thing that you do on your initial call [00:37:47.16] with your marketing is your asking question, your positioning yourself as the expert and the guide and helping people get results. Bottom line, that doesn’t matter if you want to lose 10 pounds, if you want to I don’t know be able to shoot a bow and arrow and hit the target every time. Ultimately people want results. Right? If you can help people understand that you can get them the results that they want, and connect with them in a genuine way, it’s a win-win.

Joe Sanok: When we are at Slow Down school, [00:38:12.12] did a session about how to talk about the video and I just love how simple they framed it. They said, okay, what’s the struggle people are dealing with, what’s the plan that you come with and what’s the outcome that they get and if you just have your first sentence of your psychology today of your website, of other things have those components, people connect with that, it shows them some hope and they are ready to schedule.

Katie: Exactly, we make it too complex because we like to go into our psycho babble about I do cognitive behavioral therapy in EMGR and it’s going to help you release the trauma in the past and people are like what?

Joe Sanok: Yeah.

Katie: No?

Joe Sanok: No. Yeah. If we do EMGR that’s important work, but nobody means what that means outside the vast [00:38:52.27], so it’s like…

Katie: Exactly.

Joe Sanok: … are you having a hard time falling asleep because of the trauma in your life. I have this plan where I use this approach called EMGR, so that you can go back to sleep [LAUGH].

Katie: Yeah. Of course I get some rest.

Joe Sanok: Awesome. Well Kate and Katie, thank you so much for being on the practice of the practice podcast.

Kate: Thanks for having [00:39:11.26] awesome.

Joe Sanok: Yeah, stay safe down there in the hurricane zone.

[MUSIC]

Joe Sanok: Well, next week [00:39:20.26], we are going to be talking Pia Silva. Let me just share a short clip from that interview.

[CLIP STARTS]

“Identifying the specific problems that certain people are having, I mean it depends on your level of comfort, but I think the more specific you are, the more badass you are.”

[CLIP ENDS]

Joe Sanok: So next week Pia Silva will be talking all about marketing and how to have a badass company, and if you need resources, would you all do, that’s why you are listening to this podcast. Pick it up the notch man, take up it the notch woman. That sounds really weird woman, like that just [00:39:51.15]. I should edit that out but I want you to know that I am aware enough that I should not say that. If you want to take it up a notch, I want you to go over to www.practiceofthepractice.com/resources. We are putting all of our resources. They are free. They are so many things that we want to help you with. Please head on over there and thanks for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have an awesome week. See you.

[MUSIC]

This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It’s given with the understanding that neither the host, or the publisher, or the guest are rendering any legal, accounting, clinical or other professional information. If you need a professional, you should find one.

[END OF PODCAST] [00:40:43.23]