[JOE]:
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[KIM]:
Doing well. Hey, thanks for the opportunity to get together today.

[JOE]:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, before we got a recording, we were talking a little bit about your question but then I, as you were asking, I thought oh my gosh, I just want to have you ask this live. So why don’t you kind of put forth your question, and then we’ll just dive right in.

[KIM]:
Yeah, so I have gotten into career counseling for folks with, you know, autism, Asperger’s, ADHD, depression, anxiety, because I worked at a university and I saw a lot of folks graduate. But, because I saw that you needed a niche, I created a pretty specific niche when I got together. And now I’m wondering if I’ve niched down too much because I don’t, although people that call me are my ideal client, I’m still not seeing the volume that I’d need to get going for getting a group practice started eventually.

[JOE]:
Yeah, well, tell me a little bit about kind of the networking you’ve done. And honest, you know, right in the middle of COVID, that’s kind of difficult to talk about. But you know, how have you reached out to people that have your ideal client around you, because that’ll help me kind of understand what you’ve already tried?

[KIM]:
Sure, there’s a couple of local Facebook groups that have great counselors, networks in them and so I’ve been active in those. I network with a couple of larger group practices that do assessments for college students and for adults. I’ve also, you know, just done some general directory, we’ve got a local one Mental Health Match that I really love. And couple of others, like Therapy [inaudible], Psychology Today, but I think the big networking is just trying to help clients that are a little reticent, which folks on the spectrum are not easy to get to reach out.

[JOE]:
Yeah. And tell me how you’ve connected with people that are on the spectrum, their adult like their, I’m assuming from what you’re saying that, are these mostly young adults that you’re servicing?

[KIM]:
Yes, so I’ve had a couple of referrals from parents of college students that I’ve worked with prior. I’ve also had a couple of groups of adults that get together. But there is a developing culture, like deaf culture that is similar in autistic culture. And so I’ve tried to be respectful of not saying, I’m the only one that can help but really try and network with other autistic adults. And that’s just been very slow going.

[JOE]:
Yeah, so kind of what comes to mind, and this is true in almost any practice is figuring out who is the decision maker really in somebody’s life. And so sometimes, you know, there’ll be an adult that lives independently and they make their own decisions, and they are the decision maker. Other times, it may be an adult, a guardian or a parent, or someone who is involved in their life. And so, I would say one thing to think through is are you targeting the individual client through your website and all of your marketing efforts? Or are you targeting the parent of an adult? And so, when you do that, you may want to look into talking to college counselors, even, you know, getting into kind of some of the high school counselors as people are transitioning earlier on. But, you know, I think your question about, you know, is this too specific? There are some communities where you can be too specific with your niche. And so I’d love to brainstorm with you, what are some areas that for you, you really feel like you would enjoy working that still is kind of in that same river of kind of work you’re already doing?

[KIM]:
So, I think that’s a great question. I think, for me, working with, you know, some of the comorbid conditions like anxiety and depression that adults have, in general, not just autistic adults, has brought in some folks that I work with, and I do enjoy working with adults on anxiety a little bit more. And so I’ve written some content, working with Jessica Tappana, to try and get some SEO built for that, get more organic ranking for that. But it’ll be a little bit before that pays off.

[JOE]:
Yeah. And right now, kind of which type of client is the easiest type of client to get in the door?

[KIM]:
Right now, clients with anxiety.

[JOE]:
Okay. And so sometimes we want to just step back and say, yeah, we picked this niche, and I enjoy working with, you know, people that are on the spectrum but, you know, that whole idea of the 80/20 rule, what’s the 20% that’s getting you 80% of the results? I would continue to build some content around that, continue to work with Jessica in regards to SEO, but then also saying, you know, where is there overlap here? And so making sure that your website is very clear that you’re helping young adults transitioning into adulthood, and so, but then maybe you have a sub line that says, you know, whether it’s anxiety, being on the autism spectrum, or just early life decisions, you know, we’re here to help through counseling or something along those lines, that then kind of gives you a bit of a blanket statement, but then also saying, we’re helping families that have a young person that is struggling to launch. And so that really can be a good talking point when you when we’re kind of back to talking, you know, to parent groups, or to college counselors to say like, what, why do young adults fail to launch? Because that’s a big topic right now, you know, millennials, and you know, kind of young millennials, like why are they failing to launch? And how does COVID match with that? How do expectations of adults and being able to really be the expert on failure to launch. That then kind of goes along the lines of helping students that have autism, but then also it opens you up to a much broader population.

[KIM]:
No, you’re so right, because I hadn’t worked with parents for a while and I did see kind of a drop off of some of the referrals I was getting, because I wanted to be respectful of the autistic adult culture. But you’re right, I am seeing fewer college students and quite a few more late life diagnoses. So that’s definitely an area that I could refocus on.

[JOE]:
Well, and then, you know, say you wanted to go down that path of kind of failure to launch like, you know, students in their 20s. And then maybe you also have people later in life that get later diagnoses, to even just say, “Well, I’m going to be doing a webinar about how to help 20 somethings during COVID.” These are really relevant things you could get, then get some local news around it, you could reach out to locals, doctors, offices, local counselors, local parenting groups, to say I’m offering this, you know, a month out and doing the registration, and then it’s just free content, maybe an hour to a 90 minute talk, where you really put together some pretty slides, bring together research and you know, what are the top reasons that students often don’t launch? And then you can talk through a lot of the pain points you see over and over, it may be something like, you know, undiagnosed, you know, being on the autism spectrum or undiagnosed anxiety or parental expectations were too high or too low, and being able to talk through kind of those issues you cover in counseling. And then towards the end of the talk, you could even say something like, you know, “Here’s some things that you can do, but here’s when you really should ask for some help. If you say yes to any of these five questions, it is worth scheduling an appointment with me to talk through whether or not I can help you and your son or daughter, or to help you as an individual.” So then you have a great piece of content if you do that once, as a webinar online, that then that can live on your website. You can have it transcribed, you can build extra blog posts or opt-ins outside of that. And that’s where we go beyond just having the insurance companies refer and people locally refer. But now we’re building some good SEO and some good content that lives on outside of your own time.

[KIM]:
No, that’s fantastic. In fact, I was smiling as you were saying that because my coach and I were working on trying to do some course content, but I forgot the power of doing something like a webinar, especially during COVID. So I really appreciate how you approached, hey, reach out to some college counselors, high school counselors, and just get the word out there that this might be some information that people could use? And definitely, you know, I’ve got some great sources for helping answer some of those questions.

[JOE]:
Yeah, and I think, you know, making a course is great if you already kind of have an audience, or if your clients are saying, hey, do you have any extra info I can work on in between sessions? But usually, at least what we teach in Podcast Launch School, is you want to really kind of build up that audience so they’re saying, here’s the kind, of course that we want before you spend all the time and money to create a course. And so I would say, just keep track of all the pains that people are kind of bringing to you and then you can eventually create a course, kind of out of that. Now, where do you see other areas that maybe you’re struggling with the practice and being able to launch it faster?

[KIM]:
I think the biggest thing is just making sure I’ve got a pretty solid running rate of clients calling to get people in the door. I’ve been working to try and get a virtual assistant signed up, she’ll be starting in January, and then a couple other things that I’ve delegated. But I agree with you that building that audience is something that I’ve seen as a stopping point in moving some other things forward. You know, and just making sure that I’m doing enough marketing to get enough calls.

[JOE]:
Yeah, have you done any kind of keyword research other than working with Jessica, for SEO in regards to what people are searching in your area?

[KIM]:
I have a little bit I’ve been trying to decide the best tools and stuff like that, in fact, I’m going to be going through their training so that I can kind of do more of my own SEO and stuff like that. But it does depend on the area, you’re right. And it does depend on what people are searching for, whether they’re adults, or college students who, you know, their parents might be the primary source of contacts.

[JOE]:
Yeah, I mean, one really simple way to do is to just go to Google, limit your search to your area or your state, and just type in for you, it would be just type in “anxiety” and see what comes up. And so if I do that, just generally right now, after anxiety comes up anxiety attack, anxiety symptoms, anxiety medication, anxiety disorder, anxiety definition and anxiety test. So if you had a blog post about each one of those things, and then use the anchor text to redirect to other blogs that you’ve written, to kind of boost that SEO score for, say, anxiety test, I mean, you can take just any of those anxiety tests that are public, and write a blog post about why it’s important. And here’s, you know, a basic anxiety test. And here’s what to do if you score above this amount, you kind of give your own point of view on it. And then to optimize that, so that you’re ranking on the first page for anxiety test locally. Oftentimes, Google will prioritize local people’s blog posts over some national blog post if it seems more relevant to somebody. And so, I doubt many people in your area are taking the time to really do that level of SEO, which makes it really easy to kind of move up the ranks within Google.

[KIM]:
No, that’s fantastic. Because I think that I might have seen a suggestion given it to me similarly, and no, but I really do use the GAD7. So I think I could do a blog post around that. That’s a great idea. Awesome.

[JOE]:
Yeah. And we actually have a whole course in Next Level Practice on blogging and blog ideas. And so when you look at writing, say 26, blog posts and spending a day or two to really just say, Okay, I’m gonna do a series on anxiety, I’m going to do a series on the autism spectrum. And then, you know, schedule those to go out weekly, and then once a month, once every other month, kind of go back and re hyperlink between all of those to each other for keywords. I mean, that’s half a year of content that you get together in just a few days. And so, people often overthink it and think they have to be all creative and have some crazy backstory and all this stuff. But the reality is, most people they just want the basics of like, what’s anxiety, what do I do, what can I do with medication, what can I do without and of course, you put disclaimers on there saying this isn’t, you know, a replacement for therapy. But then, then you have this whole body of content. And I would suggest also not having the dates of those being published on there. Because you know, if someone sees it in four years, they’re gonna say, Oh, this was written back in 2020. Well, that doesn’t matter really. You know, I mean, anxiety doesn’t change that much in four years. And so usually I recommend with blog posts that you remove the dates from it as well.

[KIM]:
No, fantastic I think you, and you’re right, I could sit down and just generate you know, several blogs back to back and get them ready to schedule to post.

[JOE]:
And the great thing about that is then you can put together those blog posts if it’s long enough into an E-book or into a print-on-demand book. That’s what I did with the book Mental Wellness Parenting, you know, I had the practice Mental Wellness Counseling, I brought together a bunch of blog posts, and then a bunch of kind of talks I’d done on the radio and kind of build those out a little bit to make a short 100-page book on parenting. But then that was something that I could hand out to my clients, or if you’re doing it online, you can have it mailed to them, they cost under $2 per book to have printed. So it’s like a giant business card, that then is seen as a huge value add, especially if your private pay, then you can definitely raise your rates because people see it as wow, you already wrote a book, and there’s all this extra content in there. And then if they Google your name, they see that you have a book on Amazon, and that builds tremendous credibility as well.

[KIM]:
No, that’s so true, and you’re right, I’m getting excited thinking about how to take some of the content and actually string it together and be able to use it. I love the webinar idea. I think that’s something that could get a lot of traction in our area, especially during these times.

[JOE]:
Yeah, no, Kim kind of in the last few minutes. One question I often ask my consulting clients or in Next Level Practice is what’s gonna stand in the way of you getting these things done? Because it’s one thing for us to talk about it and feel inspired and leave this podcast, going yeah, I’m gonna take it out in the world. And then the reality is, you’re in your office or in your home office, and there’s laundry, and there’s things going on in life that get in the way of us doing this big work, like what’s gonna stand in the way? And how are we going to make sure that you overcome those things that stand in the way?

[KIM]:
No, I think those are a great point. I think two things that would stand in the way is not setting aside time to actually do it and making sure that I actually get some quiet environment to do some of these, you know, because writing is is fairly straightforward for me, getting on video though and doing a webinar, that would be a lot more anxiety producing for me. So, I think if I could do a series of blog articles first, and then just keep recording until I’m happy with it.

[JOE]:
Great, yeah. So I, what I want you to do, right when we’re done with this recording, is to pull out your phone or your computer and set aside that time, you know, make sure you look at when your brains gonna be best, I often talk about protecting your brain before you go into this work. So, you know, when I was working on my book, I really made sure that I didn’t read the news, I didn’t check email, I didn’t even look at my texts that morning, because I didn’t want something to hit me and then it’s like, oh, man, I have this fire to put out. Most fires are going to be fine if you set aside from eight till noon in the morning. If you wait till 12:30, after you have some lunch, then you’re probably going to be fine. And so, I’d set aside that time, I’d also talk to the people that are in your life about this is going to be a writing day, don’t talk to me, I’m going to get my food and go work. However you need to structure that day for the support you need, I’d suggest that as well. And yeah, I love that you said quiet and kind of time, those are two things that I think are really essential to getting this work done. Around the webinar, one mindset thing that I’ve noticed is that if you kind of make slides and then go through it three or four times, you know, time it out, does it take you 40 minutes to tear through all your slides in 15 minutes, like that’s not an hour webinar, if it takes 15 minutes so you probably need to slow down a little bit, give some case examples, give some real life examples, you may find examples from the news. The best way to structure a webinar for this sort of thing that I found is to have a couple slides on who you are, don’t assume people know who you are, then have maybe five to seven slides of common misconceptions or myths. And so what are the myths around launching? Well, you know, as soon as you turn 21, you should be able to pretty much go out in the world and do what you need to do but the reality is, if you weren’t trained in how to be an adult, how the heck would you know, so kind of walking you through some of those myths. And then I would walk people through kind of what are the big truths. So what are the kind of five pillars of adulthood that, you know, young people need to master and help them be successful. So you might have socialization, and then you pull from some Harvard study that talks about socialization and the ability to speak well with others and talk a little bit about the history of socialization. And you know, maybe pull from different books that you like, and then move on to the next pillar, you know, maybe that is money and being able to understand how keeping a job is going to keep you afloat as an adult. So that would bring you to about the 30 minute mark, or so. And then you usually want to have some sort of call to action around the 35 minute mark. And so that could be to sign up to do counseling with you or to at least do a pre-counseling phone call with you. And then, I’d say the last 20 minutes or so, you know, take questions. And if you don’t have, you know, this kind of topic, oftentimes people are a little reluctant to say, my son or my daughter, I’m dealing with these things, give them permission to kind of make it up or fictionalize it a little bit to say, if you don’t feel comfortable sharing all the details of yourself, that’s totally fine, just talk about a friend and then you can add things in just to get the basic question out there. Or, if you want to send a direct message to me, here’s how you do that privately and I’ll just answer the question that way. So that you kind of recognize people may want to keep some things confidential. And then I mean, you’re pretty much at the 60 minute mark. I mean, these are all things that when you realize that you have these skills inside of you, it’s gonna be so much easier to do because you’re gonna go through these webinars and you’re gonna realize, oh my gosh, like, I totally can nail this. This isn’t a big deal. I talk about this stuff all the time. How does that sound?

[KIM]:
No, that’s fantastic. It’s gold, because I was trying to figure out how I would prattle on for a period of time. But with the structure like that, you know, and it hadn’t even occurred to me to do the 30 minute call to action. I think that’s, you know, going to be great, because I know that there are a lot of folks out there that it isn’t the autism that stops young adults from launching, it’s all the common things that you just need to know to be functional in society these days.

[JOE]:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Kim, thank you so much for being a part of Next Level Practice and Group Practice Boss, and I know that you’re continuing to grow your practice. And it’s just been so great to have you a part of this community. Those of you who are listening right now, if you are interested in Next Level Practice, we are launching another cohort soon if you go over to practiceofthepractice.com/invite, you’ll be able to read all about Next Level Practice. It’s a vibrant community of people growing their practice just like Kim. Head on over to practiceofthepractice.com/invite. And Kim, thank you so much for being on the Practice of the Practice podcast.

[KIM]:
Thank you very much, it was a great opportunity.

[JOE]:
If you don’t absolutely love your website, you’ve got to do an update. And doing an update can be complex, it can be frustrating, but Brighter Vision makes it so easy. Head on over to brightervision.com/Joe and they’ve got a deal that is going to help you be able to maximize the image that you have for yourself, connect with your ideal clients, and be able to really make a difference in your community. If you don’t love your website, there’s no reason to keep it. So switch over to a Brighter Vision website today over at brightervision.com/Joe. Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music. We really like it and this podcast is designed to provide accurate authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It 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.