[JOE SANOK]
This is the Practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sanok, bonus episode.

Well, you may have noticed if you’ve listened to the show for very long that we are now doing four episodes a week, four episodes a week. It’s really awesome. We are adding a fourth episode in every single week, so we’re going to be doing some different types of shows. Some shows we are going to be doing is we’re going to be doing some live consulting shows and these aren’t consulting shows, that are the typical counseling type of consulting, helping you with your practice. But it’s actually a spinoff of a new program that we just launched called Audience Building Academy.

So audiencebuilding.academy is where you can read more about that. We’re going to have another cohort after this first cohort gets through. But Ellen is someone who has been in the Practice of the Practice community. She’s been on the show before talking about her practice and really is ready to get to the next level. So we are going to be doing a live consulting show today. Ellen, I thought it would be great to have you just share a little bit about who you are, what you’ve built in the private practice world, and then what you’re maybe seeking to do when it comes to audience building. Then we’ll dive right into some consulting.
[ELLEN GIGLIOTTI]
That’s how great Joe. Thank you so much for having me on this is my third time and it’s always a joy to be here. I’m just really grateful for all of your help. Practice of the practice has been good to me. I wish I had known about you even earlier in my walk. So I am a group practice owner of a seven-therapist counseling center in Shippensburg Pennsylvania, and we have a wonderful group of therapists. I absolutely adore the people that I work with. We have virtual and in-person services at our Shippensburg office and we see the gamut; there’s people that see kids. There’s people that, quite a few of us do couples. That’s the way we started.

We’re called Sanctuary Christian Counseling and under that banner, we have all kinds of good things. One of the things that I’ve done is tease out for myself, a small specialty in doing therapy for therapists, and I’ve really enjoyed. I’ve even gotten some therapy clients through this podcast, which is amazing. I’m licensed in three states, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Maryland. So, I mean in New Jersey, not Maryland, I’m working on Maryland. I’ve gotten some therapy clients that way. That’s been fun because that turned out that that was partially my retirement plan as I moved a little bit out of Sanctuary Christian Counseling and let my partners do some of the other work that I was previously doing couples and some of the other things.

Then it was easy to move into therapy for therapists. However, a lot of people thought that I was completely retired and that’s not the case, but as I look forward towards the next five to 10 years, I do want to do other things. That’s where Audience Building Academy came in for us. My husband and I have been bouncing around the idea of doing a podcast for many years now. We got sidetracked a little bit by some health issues and also by COVID, obviously, everybody’s gotten sidetracked on that. So some of the things that we’ve talked about, we’ve refined a little bit. In fact, we have a better plan than we’ve had, but we’re still at the very beginning stages of this. We’ve changed the concept a little bit. We’ve changed the name of it a little bit. We’ve just been working on what we can do with episodes and so on, but we are just really not quite knowing how to build that audience, what to do with that and how to go with that. So we do have a, I’m sorry, Joe, I didn’t mean to step on you there.
[JOE]
Oh no. I just said, “Yes.”
[ELLEN]
We do have a small, we have a travel blog called Two2Go. It’s twotogo.net and we have a small audience there. And one of the things we do want to talk about in this podcast is travel from our perspective. So that’s one of the things that maybe we can build on a little bit, but the overall podcast is not just travel. We want it to be other things as well. So it’s how do we do this? How do we build this and where do we go with that?
[JOE]
So when we walk through Audience Building Academy, the first month is really specializing in your niche and your specialty. We’re going to be doing all the teachings around that. Then we’re going to build your email course. Then we’re going to do some social media marketing, and then we’re going to really focus on some online things. So oftentimes what I see happen is that people will start a podcast and they haven’t really figured out what they want to talk about. They haven’t had an opt in for people to opt into. So I would say today really drilling into your specialty and clarifying that a little bit is going to make everything else easier for you and for your husband. So for me, I think it’s really important to understand the why also in regards to why build an audience, why build another stream of income. If you were hyper successful with something, what would that look like and how would your life be different as a result of the work we’re doing together?
[ELLEN]
Oh, that’s such a good question and I’m not sure I have good answer. I think that I like working with my husband. Many years ago we were editors together at a newspaper in Huntington, West Virginia and I find him fun to work with. I think as I move towards seeing fewer clients, I’ve gone from seeing about between 20 and 30 clients a week to now seeing between five to 12-ish clients a week. So as I move away from that, I’m not really ready to stop working. I’m not ready to not do something fun. So I think that the opportunity to do like a, I think maybe I’m looking at the podcast as a long speaking gig with multiple parts. We love speaking together. We’re very funny together. My husband is hilarious in my opinion. He certainly is a good foil for me. Like he really pulls out in me what is funny in me as well. I think given our, the way that we are together, the way that we speak together and the way that we maneuver around each other and want to have something fun to do, I want to do it because I think it’ll be fun. I think we can have other people have fun too, with it.
[JOE]
That’s what’s nice to know, is, is it fun? Is it a hobby? Is it, we need to make sure we bring in an extra five grand a month? Is it we just want to cover our expenses? I mean, I think that that’s where starting to like hash out the goals because for example, like a travel podcast where maybe travel’s part of it, your life’s part of it, that’s just harder to monetize than if it’s a very clear say business solution. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do it, but it also means like advertisers won’t pay as much. Those listeners may not necessarily want to subscribe to something that’s a hundred bucks a month, but maybe they will for $19 a month. So just understanding what’s behind it will help us figure out how much of your niche needs to be very business-oriented or fun-oriented, or a combination. When you think about your ideal podcast, say your ideal podcast, you got to do what for you was entertaining and fun; you said travel might be part of it. What else might be a part of that?
[ELLEN]
I think between travel and talking about marriage. I just think I’ve been a marriage therapist for a long time. I think that I love writing about it. I love talking about it. I love helping other people with it. Our original thought, one of our original thoughts and still a driving force behind this podcast is to help people have a long-term, a healthy long-term marriage, because so many people do not. We’re moving onto 44 years of marriage and so I think we’ve, well, our secondary line has the word steps and missteps in it. I think that steps and missteps towards a healthy long-term marriage is where we’re going with this, because I do think that people make a lot of missteps and so did we. But we can help people figure out how to get out of that. I love talking about that and I love helping people with that.
[JOE]
I just want to see if stepsandmisstep.com, let’s just see if, because that just as a name steps and missteps, yes, so stepsandmissteps.com is available. I would just go buy it for the nine bucks a year. This isn’t going to go live for a good month or so. So no one on this is going to end up stealing that from you. But I would just buy steps and missteps because I think that has a general enough name for a podcast, an e-course, something, sort of like Leave to Find. I had that idea for a website, Leave to Find, and I was like, I don’t know what this is going to be. It was five years later that we ended up doing the Leave to Find podcast as a family going on the road and all of that. So I would buy steps and missteps. That could be a solid name. I don’t know that necessarily, that needs to be a subtitle because that captures marriage, that captures travel, that captures a lot of the things that you’re talking about. But I do want to drill into it before we fall in love with that name. But I’d say put on your to-do list, go buy stepsandmissteps.com
[ELLEN]
I already did. I think that’s a great idea. I didn’t even think about it before.
[JOE]
Awesome.
[ELLEN]
See you helped me out to me already.
[JOE]
Boom. Look at us. We’re only nine minutes into the podcast, in the consulting. So, okay, let’s just use that as a working title. It’s nice to sometimes give something a working title, even if that’s not going to be our long-term title, because it makes it feel more real. So imagine you and your husband were doing the steps and missteps podcast, travel might be part of it, marriage might be part of it. What other are things that are maybe, things that you enjoy talking about or things that the two of you are curious about that you’d want to interview people on or that you’d want to just chat together about?
[ELLEN]
That’s a really good question. I wonder, I haven’t given any thought to that at all, Joe. So I’m thinking, we love getting to know people, we love like just now, obviously COVID has curtailed quite a bit of this, especially since we’ve had a couple of health concerns between us in the last couple of years. So we’ve had to do a lot more maybe hungering down than some people have done, but we really do love talking to people and getting to know them and meeting people when we’re out and about on our travels. One of our favorite trips, we met a couple from Australia and we spent the whole time that we were together. We were actually on a cruise and we spent the whole time with them and we just really enjoyed them and we still correspond with them.

Then there’s a couple in Michigan that we’ve done the exact same thing with that. We like understanding other people and maybe I could see this happening that we would talk to other people about what makes their marriage healthy or what makes them make those steps and missteps work for them and maybe what makes them even what they enjoy about travel. We started off thinking about how we might make it somewhat age-related and then we thought that that was a mistake. So we don’t really, we’re both boomers, we’re obviously old, but we don’t want to make it just to boomers because there’s so many people underneath us that don’t know the things that we know. So we thought maybe some of that might be fun even to talk to younger couples. We have couples that we’ve been mentoring for years and talking to maybe them about where do you guys struggle and what are your plans and dreams? So plans and dreams maybe?
[JOE]
Okay. If you guys are on a long car ride together and there’s no one else in the car, what topics are some of the go-to topics for the two of you?
[ELLEN]
So one of the things that we often do is we play some music game where we will listen to our Serious XM. My husband is really good at that. We will play almost like a, I can name that song and two things he’s really good at. So sometimes we play games like that quite frequently. We talk about what our goals are, what we’re planning for the future and where we want to go with that. Sometimes we talk about something crazy. We are big fans of Setter type dogs. We’ve had seven of them. We have one. He’s 18. We’ve chosen not, we’ve said that we’re not going to get another puppy until we’re ready to stop traveling after all this is over. So sometimes we talk about dogs and we’ll talk about the dog that we’ve seen in one of the groups that we’re in. I’m not sure that we do anything really fascinating.
[JOE]
Well, and I think that, but that’s the thing; is that in letting your own things you’re interested in come out, it makes you as a couple more interesting. So even to have a handful of episodes around why Setters are the best dogs in the world according to you. Maybe you have an episode. Right now we’re in the brainstorm phase. We aren’t throwing anything out. It’s just what sticks for you emotionally and then what sticks for an audience and then is there going to be opportunity to monetize it? But first and foremost, if you’re not doing work that you absolutely love people can pick up on that, sniff that out like a Setter. They’ll sniff it out. They’ll say like they’re just dialing it in versus, like right now, I love talking with you. I love doing consulting. I help people.

When I help people say, oh my gosh, I want to buy that website, it lights me up. So that’s going to make a better episode and demonstrate my consulting to people, but it’s not just a consulting. It’s that I genuinely love doing this work. So with your podcast or any work we do in audience building, the more that we can have it be around topics that you absolutely are fascinated by. Then to say that audience of people that want better relationships that also maybe like dogs, really like Setters and like travel and do trivia games when they’re on the road, you may find 5,000 couples that just absolutely love you. It’s like that you’re their couple that they listen to. You don’t actually need that many people to follow you to have a successful podcast or to have a successful stream of income. So we don’t have to worry about getting a hundred thousand or 200,000 people. We just want a couple thousand that just love Ellen and, what’s your husband’s name?
[ELLEN]
Pete.
[JOE]
Ellen and Pete. So it’s one of those things where we’re not looking for hundreds of thousands. We’re looking for a few thousand that just adore you and just are like, oh my gosh we want to hang out with them. We want to learn more from them. That’s all you need.
[GUSTO]
In today’s changing world, taking care of your employees couldn’t be more important. With Gusto, everything you need to hire, pay, manage, and support your hardworking team is in one easy place. Running payroll with Gusto takes just a few clicks. They help with the hard stuff too; filing taxes, compliance, new state tax registration, international contractor payments in 87 countries and counting. On top of that Gusto offers a wide range of health and financial benefits just for our listeners. Gusto’s offering three free months at gusto.com/joe. That’s, gusto.com/joe.
[JOE SANOK]
So, okay, we’re starting to get just some of the basic foundations of who Ellen and Pete are. When you think about doing something around audience building with Pete, how do you feel on the inside? What gets you excited? What gets you amped up?
[ELLEN]
I think I enjoy the writing and the content creation part of anything. I think I already said Pete and I are both former journalists. So we love, we like writing. We like the idea of blogging regularly. We love writing our travel blogs. We absolutely adore doing that. It’s just a lot of fun for us to talk about that and to deal with that. So I think what gets me excited about that is the idea of actually spreading, again, I didn’t say this when you asked the last question, but I think we have a lot of stories and I think sharing those stories with other people turns us on too. I think we enjoy doing that and being able to share those is fun for us.
[JOE]
I would definitely start just, have a note in your phone or a notebook that you leave in your car and just start capturing those stories. You never know when you’re going to need those stories. When I was writing Thursday is the New Friday, I have a note in my phone that whenever I remembered a story or maybe I tell a story to some friends at a dinner party and it’s like, oh, I forgot about that story, I’ll just put it in my notes section. Then when I need a good story for a keynote or something, I just go look through it and say like I have one story about getting locked in a bathroom in Paris when I took my grandma to Paris on a mystery trip that I’ve still never told, and I know somewhere it’s going to fit. It’s a great story, but it’s like, I have no idea when this getting locked in a bathroom story is going to come out.

So just start capturing those because then later on, you’re going to have all this fodder to pull from. Same sort of thing with research. I mean on your phone, if you’re reading the news or anything, and you see something interesting that you don’t even know where it fits, you can have a Trello board and then, I have an iPhone. So there’s probably ways on Samsung or other ones to do it, to just automatically share it to a Trello board. So when I was writing Thursday is the New Friday I’d find research, I’d find a story and I would just share it to that Trello board. I just had a list called research.

Then I had another list called stories. If I thought of one, I’d just drop it in there. I didn’t know, I would say three quarters of the research and stories I put in there I didn’t use at all or even touch, but at least they’re there. At least I’m gathering it over time. So I’d say that’s something you can be doing now that anything you find interesting, just start to drop it into Trello boards that later on, you can organize it a little bit more. Okay, so tell me why you think it’s important for the world that there’s healthy couples.
[ELLEN]
Wow. That’s like the $64,000 question. I just think that that couples are the linchpin of a family. So if you are the healthy couples, generally you have healthy children, not always, but generally you do and of certainly individuals can have healthy children as well. But it does help to have couples. Two people are very helpful in a family situation. I think that couples, I think people were made, I think if the last two years of COVID have shown us anything, they’ve shown us, that people are made for connection. I think the ultimate connection is to find someone with whom you feel safe and loved and cared for, that that person can be home to you in some ways.

I’ll give you an example of that. That isn’t my husband, but I have a friend who’s not a therapist. Her first name is Rosa and one time I had a really serious auto accident and my husband called Rosa and Rosa came to the hospital. I wasn’t dying, but we weren’t sure what was going on with my head. So I was actually going into the MRI machine and Rosa was wore the same hand lotion. Rosa came into the room where I was in the MRI machine. I couldn’t see her and Immediately I was like, oh, there’s Rosa. It was just like, huh. My husband was there too. It isn’t a discussion about my connection and my homeness with him, but it was just another person that’s my support team is here.

It just felt like home. I think that’s important for people. It doesn’t have to be a spouse, but I think that’s a pretty common societal piece to have that spouse be that. When that spouse is scary, instead of being home, I think that’s a problem. So I think it’s helpful to help couples if I can help couples. I’d like to help couples be able to have that connection, that home feeling if they can.
[JOE]
When you think about steps and missteps who naturally do you think would be attracted to these conversations and who do you think naturally isn’t your audience? Because it’s just as important to know who’s out as who’s in.
[ELLEN]
That’s a really good question. My husband and I were talking about that last week, just for a little while. Our original thought was that maybe boomers would be interested in what we have to say, but then we thought maybe that the age range would actually be more like a lower, like a Gen-Z or gen X. I think it’s gen X right underneath us. Maybe people in that age range, I would think between like maybe 30 and 50 in that range. If you get too old, I think people have either come to the place where they’ve just said it’s over. I mean, I’ve just got to live with this or they’ve checked out completely and they don’t care, or they have good marriages because they’ve worked on them for all those years like my husband and myself.
[ELLEN]
I think that it’s probably going to be women. I would not say that men are not interested in marriage or in travel because I think that they are. But I think if you look statistically who actually does listen to podcasts about marriage, it does tend to be women that do that and some men, of course. So I think it’s probably going to be women maybe in that age range. I would think that probably we are not talking to somebody in their teens. Maybe not even, well millennials though, maybe millennials, but nothing younger than that, I would think.
[JOE]
Yes.
[ELLEN]
So maybe that, does that make sense?
[JOE]
Yes. So Ellen, I want you to do some homework between now and our next consulting session and time that we talk. I want you to just post on your favorite social media, whichever one you love. Don’t think about where your ideal client is. Don’t think about it, just which one do you enjoy the most? So post on, which one do you enjoy the most typically?
[ELLEN]
Probably Facebook.
[JOE]
Okay. So post on Facebook, not on your business page, but just on your personal one where your friends and family and people do photographs and just say, Pete and I are considering starting a podcast or a blog. Some things we’re thinking about talking about are travel trivia, Setters. You know me better than anyone else in the world. What would excite you if we did a podcast? Share anything you want in the comments below. Your friends and family and people that know you are going to be super encouraging. They’re going to give you lots of ideas. That’s going to give you a lot of fodder to just work with. At this phase, we’re really looking for a wide, wide net. The great thing about whether it’s podcast or blogs is you have nothing but time to dive into issues.

I mean, we are doing four episodes a week of this now, and it’s like, we can go super deep. There’s very few other platforms that people pay attention for 45 minutes or an hour. So you can have a five episode series on Setters. You could do a 20 episode series on Setters. you could have Setter experts, you could have people that judge them in the Purina blahty blah championship. I mean, if you wanted to go that deep, you could. You could be known as the Setter couple, or maybe that’s just something that, yes, we like Setters, but it’s not going to be our whole podcast. So right now it’s just what would be fun? What would the basic structure, the first 20 or 30 episodes look like? What are the things that people would care about?

Because once you get the podcast going, the next big question we’re going to ask is what do people want that the podcast doesn’t provide? So we’re going to want to have some sort of email course that takes them deeper into one of the subjects that probably has the most opportunity to monetize, but also that you enjoy. So it could be, hey, go over to our long-term marriage or our steps and missteps email course over at stepsandmissteps.com/course. You’re going to get this nine-email sequence that’s going to walk you through date night questions for steps and misstep. And that’s the next phase of our consulting and the teaching with Audience Building Academy.

We’re going to walk through exactly how to build on an email course once you have your specialty. But we want to just right now get stories and ideas and start noticing when you and Pete talk about your marriage, what are the techniques that you actually are implementing? What are the ways that you think about food, going out to eat money, vacation, dogs, travel, like all those millions of different things that we at some point are going to want to say what would Ellen and Pete do in this situation? We can conceptualize the two of you so that those that love you say, “I want to be able to think like Ellen and Pete. They seem like they have a wonderful relationship.” And yes, they have step steps and missteps but they get through those steps and missteps. We want some tools from them.

So you don’t have to worry about creating that e-course yet, but right now it’s just noticing if somebody says what’s next, I want more Ellen and Pete. We want to be able to figure out what that is at some point. That’s what month two of Audience Building Academy we’re going to really dive into. So again, you don’t have to worry about that now, but just start noticing those things. I imagine that as you notice them you’ll say, oh my gosh, we do have an Ellen and Pete methodology here. That’s going to help you then create content in the future in a different way by thinking about that from the front end rather than staring at two microphones and saying, what should we talk about Pete? Oh, I don’t know. Instead you’re going to have 50 ideas and be like, oh my gosh, we have a podcast for four years in front of us.
[ELLEN]
That’s a great idea. That’s really wonderful. We do have about 40 topics that we’ve noted already, but I like broadening it out a little bit and thinking about it in that new way. Thank you.
[JOE]
And the more that you can get your audience starting to be a part of that process. I mean, that’s part of even interviewing you right from the beginning, is saying Ellen’s sorting this out right now. So watching your story emerge through the podcast that’s going to be helpful to other people, but it also then shows you don’t just arrive with a podcast. There’s a lot of backend work that goes into it and figuring it out and bringing that audience along for the whole story from the beginning. That’s what you’re doing by posting on social media, right from the beginning, getting people involved.
[ELLEN]
That’s a great idea. I didn’t think of that and I love that idea. I’ll do that today, right after the website.
[JOE]
At some point, I mean, you’ll probably want to have like a Facebook group that is named the same thing. I wouldn’t worry about that at this point, but you’ll want to be building that social media presence before the podcast launches so you can have the strongest launch possible from the beginning, even maybe being interviewed on other people’s podcast and the lead up to it. Then it’s like, oh my gosh Ellen and Pete came out of nowhere. They’re everywhere. It’s like they’ve been working really hard for three to four months.
[ELLEN]
That’s great.
[JOE]
Then the technical side, I mean that side, we can walk you through all of that. I mean, we have, I think 17 podcasts we manage at this point. We’ve learned a couple things the way.
[ELLEN]
Yes. Well, we’re starting Podcast Launch School too.
[JOE]
Oh, good. That’s going to be super helpful. So the last question I usually will ask with consulting is where do you think you might get stuck? Are there any things that this phase that feel like, oh, I feel a little uncertain. It can even just be worries, apprehensions, self -sabotage. What are you feeling right now? Are there any areas you want to make sure we hit on before we close out the consulting session?
[ELLEN]
Wow, that’s a good question. I think that just the juxtaposition of backing a little bit more, I don’t want to back out therapy completely, because I enjoy, I love it. But the juxtaposition of how to find the time to do this as I back out a little bit more of therapy and still run, of course my group practice. I want to keep Sanctuary Christian Counseling going too. So running the group practice, doing some therapy clients, but then also having time for the podcast and the other things that we need to do in order to get it up and launch correctly and successfully. Those are, I think maybe just the time management maybe of that is probably where I might get stuck.
[JOE]
Sure. So for me, one thing that’s helpful is to think about when do you have the most energy and creativity? So I like to have all of my consulting and work of the week before I dive into something creative. So usually Thursday mornings would be when I feel most creative, I feel relieved. Like not relieved. I don’t hate doing this work at all, but it’s like I have the nuts and bolts that I have to get done on Tuesday and Wednesday done. And Thursday mornings are usually the mornings where I feel like man, the weekends coming and Thursday is the new Friday. So for you, when do you feel like you have the most creativity and energy to work on a project like this?
[ELLEN]
Wow, that’s a good question. I actually think that maybe I might have the most energy to do it. I generally don’t work on, I don’t do therapy generally Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. I actually get a fair amount of other things done during those days. I think maybe that might be my timing, is to worry about the business and doing therapy on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and then leave the other four days to do this thing.
[JOE]
I would definitely block out parts of your weekend that you’re just not working because you can easily have a podcast creep in. So I would really encourage you to take maybe like either a Friday morning or a Monday morning or afternoon, depending on when your energy is highest and just block out three to four hours and say, okay, Fridays from 10 until 1:30 that’s when I work on the podcast or the ideas or the e-courses. And just put that on repeat in your calendar, because if it’s just open ended. One of two things will happen. You’ll work all the time or be thinking about it all the time and then never relax like we need to or other things are going to creep in and be like, oh, I need to do grocery shopping. Oh, I need to do these errands then the back the podcast goes to the back burner.

So we don’t want either of those. We don’t want you to ignore it and we don’t want you to obsess over it. So I’d say I would find a time that it’s just you know you’re at your best. So if Fridays feel like it’s doing some errands day, getting prepped for the weekend, well maybe that’s not the best time to work on the podcast. Maybe on Monday morning it’s best. Whereas other people, if they feel like they’ve landed the week and before they really want to start doing things for the weekend, they want to get the podcast out of the way, so they’re not thinking about it on the weekend then maybe it’s Friday morning. So that’s where, there’s no right answer, but we want to make sure that I would say it’s probably consistent and it’s a very clear time block that you’re working on it.

Then within that, that you’re breaking it up into those 20 to 30 minute sprints where you say, okay, for the next 20 minutes Pete and I are just going to whiteboard. We’re going to put it all out there as many ideas. Let’s just brainstorm. How do we think about intimacy? How do we think about love? How do we think about travel, whatever it is. Then the timer goes off, take a sip of your coffee, recharge, move around a little bit. Don’t jump right back into another 20 to 30 minute sprint. So you’re getting tons done in those couple of hours instead of just dinking along.
[ELLEN]
That’s a really helpful thought. I’ve done that with other things in my practice and so on and that’s been really helpful. I’ll talk to Pete about it because it has to be both of us being at our best. So we’ll have to find the time.
[JOE]
Well, and it may be that you guys divide it up too. I mean, it may be that you brainstorm from a journalistic standpoint, some blogs and maybe he then comes up with some other ideas. Sometimes it’ll be overlapping, sometimes it won’t. That’s where I think you guys can talk about your energy levels. I would also ask yourself, what do I need to prep before entering into those sprints? So for me, if I don’t have my green tea and then my cup of coffee, I am worthless, straight up a caffeine addiction. If I am getting hungry or lunchtime, I need to make sure that either I go eat something or I have a good, healthy, I have these bars called Lala bars that have like four ingredients and I’ll have a green smoothie. So I need to figure those things out that are just the basic biology of Joe so I can be at my best while I’m working. Because I don’t want to waste time. Every minute that I waste working is, I mean, I could have been doing something for the family or being with my kids.
[ELLEN]
Absolutely. Absolutely. I’ll keep all that in mind.
[JOE]
Well, Ellen, you are going to go kill it. I can’t wait to see what you build. I would say really let that name of steps and missteps sit. Make sure you buy that dot.com. I wouldn’t land on that yet. I would also do some exercises around like say stepsandmissteps.com wasn’t available. What else would you name it? Just do as much as you can around just brainstorming at this phase alone and with Pete.
[ELLEN]
Okay, sounds great.
[JOE]
Well, Ellen, I can’t wait to have you in Audience Building Academy. Those of you listening, if you’re interested in reading more about that head on over audiencebuilding.academy. Can’t believe we got that URL. Pretty amazing. There’s more information of that over there. And Ellen, thank you so much for being on the show today.
[ELLEN]
Thank you, Joe. It was great as always.
[JOE]
So go take some action. If you heard something from my interview and consulting with Ellen today take some action. We can do things that go so much further beyond our counseling practices. There’s nothing wrong with having an amazing counseling practice. There’s nothing wrong with saying I just want to do counseling. There should be no shame around that at all. But if you want to build multiple streams of income, oftentimes as higher level thinkers, people that have done grad school and thesis and dissertations, we are really good at doing the research and creating things first. But the very first thing we need to figure out is your specialty and then growing your audience, because your audience will tell you what it is that they want.

That’s actually how audiencebuilding.academy came about, was the Thursday is the New Friday group said, we want something more than this. It was people that all bought at least 10 books. We met every Thursday for six weeks and a handful of people were saying, “Hey, what’s next? I interviewed 14 people.” And Audience Building Academy came out of that. So it’s an audience saying, here’s what I want, here’s what I want to pay and then me saying, well, does that rate line up with what I need for my hourly and my skillset, what my team is? If there’s overlap, great, we have a product. If there’s not, we don’t. So there isn’t any of this, “Oh, I built it and no one bought and I’m so sad. My ego’s all bruised up.” No, it’s just, “Hey, that wasn’t a fit or yes, it was a fit.” So make sure that you go after those big things.

We could not do these podcasts without our sponsors. Gusto is the all in one HR platform and it’s a game changer for growing businesses. From full service payroll and benefits to team management tools and more Gusto makes it easy to support your employees from day one to day 1000. You can get three months totally free over at gusto.com/joe. Again, that’s gusto.com/joe. It is what we use with Practice of the Practice, have used it for years. It helps so much in the tax season with our books and all of that. Again, that’s gusto.com/joe.

Thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. We have a lot of amazing episodes coming up. Whitney and Alison are going to be doing some great interviews with people from Group Practice Launch that have launched group practices and are just killing it. So that is coming up in the coming weeks. Then on the 25th, we have another bonus episode of a consulting call with one of our Audience Building Academy members. So thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a wonderful day. I’ll talk to you soon.

Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music. We really like it. This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.