[ALISON]
You are listening to the Grow a Group Practice podcast. Whether you were thinking about starting a group practice or in the beginning stages, or want to learn how to scale up your already existing group practice, you are in the right place. I’m Alison Pidgeon, your host, a serial entrepreneur with four businesses, one of which is a large group practice that I started in 2015. Each week, I feature a guest or topic that is relevant to group practice owners. Let’s get started.

Hi, I’m so glad you joined us today on the podcast, and I hope you are enjoying your summer. We are doing a series right now called What’s Next, that was inspired by group practice owners who maybe have scaled up their practice and are thinking about starting another business, starting a side hustle, stepping away from clinical work and doing other things. So today I am interviewing Marissa Lawton. She is a trained therapist, but she has developed a whole business around helping people figure out how to create an online business, specifically a one to many type business model, and she is also passionate about slow living, actively cultivating more peace, ease and joy in her life. She loves helping fellow therapists do the same by redefining the work that they do.

Her mission is to guide clinicians, to repurpose and repackage their clinical skills into digital courses, group coaching programs, and membership sites. She also has her own podcast called Empathy Rising, which is amazing. If you are interested in this subject, definitely go check out her podcast. And it was so great talking to Marissa about the work that she’s done with clinicians, the businesses they started, yes, it was fascinating to hear the work that she’s doing. So I hope you enjoy this interview with Marissa Lawton.
[ALISON]
Hi Marissa welcome. Happy to have you here.
[MARISSA LAWTON]
Hey. Thanks for having me. I’m so happy to be here.
[ALISON]
Yes. So for anybody who might not be familiar with you, could you take a minute to introduce yourself?
[MARISSA]
Yes. So I’m Marissa Lawton. I am a counselor, although I am not practicing right now because I moved fully into the online space and the coaching space. About six years ago, I had a couple of pivots in there and then I had a second baby in there. So it hasn’t been a solid six years, but I’ve been really familiar with the online space for about six years now. So what I help clinicians do is to add on a secondary income stream in this online space, be it coaching, be it courses, be it membership sites. I really feel like my specialty is one to many. I think one-to-one coaching is great. However, it starts to replicate some of the issues we have when we are doing one-on-one therapy. So I really want to help people set up scalable income streams in a one-to-many aspect. That’s really what my jam is.
[ALISON]
Very cool. And that’s actually why I asked you to come on the podcast because I know a lot of, especially established group practice owners get to the point where they scale up the business and then a good chunk of their income is coming from the clinical work the other therapists are doing and so then they start thinking like, “Ooh, maybe I could do coaching or maybe I can…” They have the time and the bandwidth, because they’re not like a brand new group practice owner anymore to consider things like that. So maybe you could sort of walk us through like what is that process like for people? Or like what are the options or how did they decide?
[MARISSA]
Yes. Oh, there’s so much there. So I love that you’re mentioning people who already have the established group practice and then they find themselves with some time. But I also work with people on the other end of the spectrum where it’s like, they might not be fully set up yet. Sometimes that can be a benefit as well, because I think when you’re adding on clinicians, when you’re bringing on employees, when you’re making the decision to do like W2 versus contractor and all of that stuff, like that’s when you’re in the thick of it. And then it’s like, you work, you work, you work and then all of a sudden you’re on the other side of like, “Oh, it’s finally set up, but it’s finally, I can finally pursue something else.” But sometimes adding a second income stream before that, that’s when you also have time and energy and effort.

So a lot of people are like, “I’m not ready yet. I’m not ready yet. When I reach this level, I’ll be ready.” And I just kind of like to tease out there that sometimes you might be ready sooner than you think. But going with the established group practice owner, and there’s lots of different ways that you can kind of step beyond the therapy room, and when you have that established group practice, you’ve already sort of done that. You’ve stepped into more of a managerial role. You might still be seeing some clients. But the goal is to see less clients. So you’ve already learned how to free up your time. You’ve already learned how to step into a different skillset. So moving into online income really isn’t much of a stretch at all once you’ve already got your group practice up and running.
[ALISON]
Cool. So what do you see people opting for in terms of what they’re actually going to create? I know you mentioned membership communities versus all those kinds of things.
[MARISSA]
Yes. So there’s a couple of different, like online offers, I like to think of them as on a spectrum. So we have high touch offers all the way down to low or no touch offers. And what I found it’s really interesting because clinicians usually have high touch in their case loads. They are working one to one with other people, like face to face one-to-one with someone else. So it really doesn’t get higher touch than that. So a lot of therapists are really attracted to no touch, “passive income” that we’ve all kind of heard about. And then when we start unpacking that and taking a look at what that actually means, they usually actually end up somewhere in the medium or even medium high touch range. And there’s a few reasons for that.

Lower touch offers like eBooks or passive courses or sometimes just like trainings or these kinds of digital products, so to speak, those are the ones that don’t require much presence from you. However, they’re also very low priced. So you have to sell a lot of them, do a lot of marketing and build up a big audience in order to make any kind of substantial revenue from those. Then when we move up into the mid category, like mid touch. That’s when we’re looking at things like membership sites, or we might be looking at a course that has you do like maybe one monthly coaching call, or maybe you have a course and then you also have a Facebook group with it. So there’s still like a little bit of you involved, a little bit of touch there. Those are more the medium level and those have again, a medium price tag on it. So you’re not doing as much marketing. You’re not needing as high a volume as with those no touch offers. So you’re kind of splitting the difference.

Then we can look at things like group programs, group coaching programs, or one-on-one coaching programs, which are much, much higher touch, but demand a premium price. So the trade off there is more of you involved in the program, but you have to make less sales, you need a smaller audience and things like that. So once we kind of conceptualize that they fall in a line there, we can start to think, “Okay, what feels like the right fit?”
[ALISON]
Yes. I’m so glad you explained it that way because I seen all of those things, but I just never thought about how they kind of fall on a spectrum and how it affects obviously how much time you’re putting into it versus how much money you’re making all of that kind of stuff. So that was super helpful.
[MARISSA]
100%. I mean, everybody wants the passive income. Everybody wants to make money when they’re sleeping and everything like that. And it’s great. And I’m actually just now in my business, starting to build some of that, some of those “evergreen products” that do sell kind of on their own. However, what people don’t talk about is you’re taking the out of like that face-to-face deliveries, so you don’t have as much delivery time, but you then replace that delivery time with marketing time and audience building time. Like that doesn’t go away. So it’s still a chunk of time, the way I like to think of it as like a pie chart. When you’re in a passive income, you might have a very tiny sliver of the pie that’s actually going to the delivery time, but all that other time is going to your marketing whereas if you’re on the group program or one-on-one coaching, it’s the opposite almost. Like a much bigger chunk of the pie is face to face, but then that means that a lot smaller piece of the pie is in marketing and audience building. But you’ve got a pie, nonetheless. It’s just, how does it split up?
[ALISON]
Right. Yes, that’s a good way of thinking about it. I’m just curious about, you were talking about sort of those prerecorded, maybe lower priced type offers. Like have you seen any specifics with products like those that have actually been successful? Like is there any sort of tricks of the trade to make something like that successful?
[MARISSA]
Yes. That’s a great question. So I think anytime that you can mix in different media elements, you’re going to have higher success. So most people know now what an eBook is, but a lot of people don’t want to sit there and read an 80 page eBook. Even if it’s beautifully designed, even if you’ve got lots of images and lots of graphics, the way that things are moving now is much more to a mixed media. So before you sold an eBook, I would consider selling an audio series, where it’s four or five, maybe six, 10 or 15 minute audio clips that you’ve kind of compiled. Like you can think of it like an audio book instead of an eBook, where it’s like, maybe it’s still the same sections you would do in that eBook, but instead of somebody having to read them, they can then listen to them, like listening to chapters of an audio book.

That is something that would probably sell more, like have higher sales than an eBook because it fits into people’s lifestyles. We are talking on a podcast, so we know the power of audio. People can be listening to those on a jog. People can be listening to those on a commute, when you’re sitting in the car line, waiting to pick their kids up from school, whatever. So audio tends to be more in demand than something that would be read. And we can think about that concept as well as video. So if you’re comfortable being on video or if it’s something that you would be willing to push yourself out of your comfort zone for doing a video series, so six videos instead of six audios, that could also be a good seller. And I think a video series, you could actually price at a higher price point than an eBook because there is almost a level of touch. Even though that touches prerecorded, it’s still them getting to see you, hear you, interact with you a bit.
[ALISON]
That’s really interesting. So do you have any specific like software that you use to record, just like your voice is more of an audio book?
[ALISON]
I’m super simple. I just use Zoom. Even for my own podcast, I use Zoom because when you record in Zoom, and most of us now that we’ve all been kind of forced online are at least familiar with Zoom. When you record a file what pops up at the end of the zoom call is the video file and then it also gives you an audio-only file. So you don’t even have to like go through the processes of like stripping the audio out or anything like that. Zoom gives you an audio-only file. Some other easy to record in software are like Google Meets. But I don’t know if Google Meets gives that audio only file like Zoom does.
[ALISON]
Yes. That’s great.
[MARISSA]
And Zoom, you can use to record. If you’re going to do a video series, same thing, you would just record yourself on camera in Zoom. So that software works really great for a lot of online income stuff. And there’s a free option up to 40 minutes, which I would encourage you if you’re going to do these audios that they would be under 10 minutes each or these videos under 10 minutes each. So you could probably even use the free version of Zoom. But if you do need to upgrade for over 40 minutes for any reason, it’s still a really affordable option.
[ALISON]
Yes. That’s awesome. A question that I get a lot actually from people is when they’re looking at kind of transitioning into more of a going from a therapist the traditional kind of outpatient therapy model, and then maybe going over to coaching or creating maybe an e-course or something like that that maybe is usually in their area of expertise but at the same time, you have to walk that fine line between like, you’re not, you’re selling this product, but you don’t want to be this person’s therapist because that’s kind of not your intent. So how do you kind of teach people through your business, like how to sort of separate all of that out or kind of just how to do it in an ethical way, I guess that’s my question?
[MARISSA]
Yes. So going back to the idea of offers on a spectrum, like different online programs on a spectrum where this starts to come up, like in an eBook or an audio series or something like that, obviously you are not having any interaction with the customer, so you don’t have to worry about it at all. Where it starts to come up is in those middle tier or highest touch offers where you are directly interacting with a customer. And the most concern is obviously in one-on-one coaching because it is really the exact same business model as one-on-one therapy; you’re just fulfilling a slightly different role and it gets real gray real fast. But what I help people see, like if you’re doing a course, you are in the role of a teacher.

So think back to grad school, undergrad, high school, all these experiences that we have had with educators of our own and how can you emulate an educator role. An educator teaches material, answers questions, and they may even stay after class with you and help you practice or help you “coach” you through the math problem or coach you through writing your essay or whatever, but they’re not like processing the emotions around, like how does it feel to be struggling with Algebra right now? So they’re really just like teaching you, helping you practice, and so that would be like an educator role. So if you can really just kind of put a box around, like, what are you actually doing, I think that can be really helpful.

And the same thing when you are in like a membership site. In a membership site, there’s kind of two roles there, again, that educator role that comes up and also a community like a liaison or a connector; people who are really good at hosting membership sites or people who really enjoy being with and connecting other people. So this is kind of a therapy skill, but like linking and joining. So, “Oh, Sally, you talked about that on Monday. Kelly has the same question. You guys should meet.” That linking and joining stuff, that would be a great skill for a membership site.

Again, it’s not processing, it’s not going deep into how is that experience for you? What’s coming up for you? What emotions, thoughts, actions, behaviors, whatever, what is that triggering for you? We’re not going to go there, but we can definitely tell Sally and Kelly that they have something in common and that they should be friends. That’s totally within ethical parameters. It’s totally allowed. And it also helps us lean on these therapy skills. That’s one of the things that I’m really passionate about is our skills. We can feel pigeonholed. Like we went to school for so long just to be a clinician, but our skills have value in the therapy room, but they also have really great value outside of the therapy room as well.
[ALISON]
Yes. I totally agree. Especially with owning a business just in general, I feel like my therapy skills, just my ability to like read people and kind of understand what motivates people pretty quickly, I feel like it’s also helpful.
[MARISSA]
Yes.
[ALISON]
Yes. That’s a really helpful explanation. And I assume as well, you would probably put some kind of disclaimer on that. Like I am a licensed therapist, but I’m not, this is not psychotherapy or is not a substitute for a psychotherapy kind of thing.
[MARISSA]
100%. We need to think about it both ways. So if you’re going to be practicing clinically and doing online income at the same time, like to bonafide income streams, we want to have something in our informed consent for clients that says something along the lines of so and so provides products and services beyond the therapy room or that are not considered therapy. Clients of this practice are under no obligation to purchase or participate in those programs or whatever, something that acknowledges that you act in a different capacity other than a therapist and that they’re not obligated to make those purchases. Because that’s where we get in trouble with dual relationships and then abuse of power. So if we’re obligating our clients, like, “You won’t have a reduction in your anxiety, unless you also buy my book.” That’s not okay.

So we have to make that clear. And then from the coaching side or from the online income side, making sure that it’s very clear that you will not be acting as a therapist. Having some standard operating procedures is also why is right. If I’m in a membership site and I’m doing a hot seat, like a Q&A call with somebody, and I’m starting to see this person is triggered or this person’s having an emotional response or something, what would be my operating procedure there; making sure that I’m referring them out to a clinician in their area, also making sure, like having a criteria that is, can they continue to participate in your program and see a therapist at the same time, or do they need to be removed from your program, refunded money or whatever to make that part right and then they need to continue with a therapist before they can come back into your program? There’s kind of things that you’d want to look at.
[ALISON]
What I’m gathering is just that you have all of this stuff kind of documented and figured out ahead of time.
[MARISSA]
100%. And then another thing, this is going to be dependent on your license, like your state board, as well as your code of ethics is some of ethics when it comes to marketing, if you market yourself with your license, then that business is beholden to your license. So for instance, if you have a coaching practice, like you’re doing coaching on the side and you’re marketing yourself, advertising yourself as a licensed therapist who also does coaching, then that means you have to document, you can’t do testimonials, you have to abide by confidentiality, all of the things under your therapy license. And most of the people who are looking at this are actually looking to get into a little less regulated field.

So instead of saying I am a licensed clinical social worker and a coach, you can say things like my master’s in social work. You can lean on your degree instead of your license. You can say like as a licensed therapist or as a professional therapist, because there’s not actually a professional therapist license. So using terms that say that you’re from the mental health field, or you have experience in the mental health field, but not actually using your license, that’s what allows you to kind of imply to clients and use that as a differentiating factor, a bonus in your business that you are experienced in mental health, but you’re not then beholden to your license in terms of confidentiality and those other things.
[ALISON]
Great advice. Thank you. I’m curious about how you help people figure out what they want to do in terms of another stream of income. I’m sure you get a lot of people who are like, “I want to do something, but I have no idea what.”
[MARISSA]
Yes. So it’s the same kind of questions that we’ve been talking about. The first thing is how high touch do you want to be? What level of touch do you want to have?” And then we contrast that with how much marketing do you want to do and how much money do you want to make and when we answer those questions, then we can kind of see where you fall on that spectrum. So if you told me, I want to be really low touch, but you told me that you don’t like to market and that you want to make a hundred thousand dollars from it, then we’re kind of at odds.
[ALISON]
Right. That’s not going to work.
[MARISSA]
Right. And it’s not that it’s not going to work. It’s that, okay, we really got to like figure this out and figure out what kind of strategy is going to work for you. Especially the other thing to think of is timeframe. If you’re like, “I don’t want to be high touch. I don’t like to market. I want to make a hundred thousand dollars and I want to make that in 12 months,” then we’ve really got some things we got to work on. But if your timeframe is longer, like a hundred thousand dollars over the next five years, okay. Then that’s really only actually 20 grand a year and we can put a good plan in place. So one thing I like to ask people is what’s your intention with this? Some people that I work with their intention is only to pay off their student loans. Like, “In the next five years, I want to buy a house, but I’ve got these crazy student loans. So I’d really like to get those paid way down or paid off.” All right. That’s a totally different plan than I want to leave therapy altogether and I want to replace or exceed a full-time income and I want to do it in a year. Those require two very different strategies.
[ALISON]
Yes. I’m curious if you could give us any examples of people who have created an online income stream for themselves and like what exactly their business was or what they offered and that kind of thing. Because I think that it’s sometimes hard for people to conceptualize like, well, what are people actually doing that’s working?
[MARISSA]
So we kind of have two categories. We have B2B, which is business to business and then we have B2C, which is business to consumer. Business to business would be something like I want to help other therapists. I have a student right now in side hustle, her name’s Tia. She’s crafting a program to help other clinicians track all the metrics in their business. So track revenue metrics, but also track like when treatment plans need to come up for review and all of like, just everything that you need to kind of have a beat on in your business in your practice, that’s what Tia is helping with. So she is like a B2B offer. She’s direct, her offer directly impacts another clinician’s business.

So she’s setting that up as a group program. So over eight weeks you’ll learn from her, but you’ll also have like calls with her. So there’s coaching involved. So it puts it in that higher touch end of the spectrum. So it’s more of a higher price program, but it’s very high touch. Her intention is to get like into your practice with you, help you build spreadsheets, help you build trackers, all of these things. So she really like gets in there up to the elbows with you in your practice. Most clinicians I work with though, they’re more on that B2C range, business to consumer which is more like personal programs, which is very similar to what we already do in therapy. And it feels kind of like a natural transition.

A student I had in side hustle, I think it was two years ago now, she has set up a membership site for parents of kids with brain-based differences. So it’s kids on the spectrum, kids with ADHD, kids with like ODD, anything that can be considered like a brain-based behavioral difference. So she takes this model, this brain-based behavioral model and instead of doing therapy, because she was doing therapy with the kiddos and now her membership site is for the parents of those kiddos and she teaches this model and how they can use it at home so that when their kids come to therapy, they’re doing the deep therapy with a therapist, but then they’re also getting the support at home that they need. So that’s a really good example of like a B2C .

Another example of a membership site like this is a student of mine, her name is Lisa, a very similar kind of story with Eileen. In her practice, Lisa sees geriatric clients and clients with dementia. So then she created a membership site for the caregivers and loved ones of these people with dementia, so their spouses, their kids, that kind of stuff. So they could kind of come to grips with what is happening with their loved one, their partner or their parent. So she’s educating them about what is dementia? How does this happen? And then with the membership site, so for Eileen and Lisa, community is a big piece of this. So connecting them with other people in a similar situation.
[ALISON]
Yes. Those are great examples. Thank you for sharing. I feel like there’s so many times where there’s just obvious gaps that sometimes you see, because you do the work every day and you’re like, oh wait, I really need to refer them for this. Oh, there’s no one to refer them. And then it’s like that could become a whole nother business.
[MARISSA]
Right. And these people don’t always need therapy. Sometimes they just need, I think education is a big piece and how many of us are not doing psycho-ed in our sessions anyway? I mean, it’s a big piece of what we do anyway. So it’s really just, again, the therapy skills in and out of the therapy room, it’s really just taking the skill set that we’ve already done and already know how to do very well and just putting it in a different container.
[ALISON]
Yes, absolutely. I’m curious, Marissa, if you can kind of explain your program to us where you kind of lead people through this process, and really this is mostly for my own benefit, but I’m sure other people will be interested in it as well.
[MARISSA]
So here’s another thing that you can do. We call this, there’s a lot of different terms in the online space. Some people call it a value ladder. Some people have what I call it as an ascension model. So I actually have three programs and they nest inside of each other really nicely. So you start with one and then once you’ve finished that one, you can climb up the ladder to the next one and when you finish that one, you can climb up to the next one. So I have what’s called a mini course. It’s $47. It’s super, super cheap, but I think it’s actually really effective. It’s called side hustle schedule and it’s really just this five step system that helps you find how much time do you actually have for this thing. Like we’ve kind of been talking about this pie chart. We were talking about, it takes time regardless.

Where do you want that time to go? Well, first we have to find the pie. First. We have to find how many hours do you actually have for this thing? So that’s my first offer. My second offer goes into what’s called space holder. A space holder is really related to what we’ve been talking about here. It helps you come up with what is this offer? So the first module of space holder is all different kinds of offers from coaching to memberships, to group programs, to VIP days, to workshops, like all kinds of things. So it helps you decide, oh, which one of these am I leaning toward? And then once you pick one, the program helps you to find the person, the problem, the promise and the price. So once you have your type of program and then you have these other four P’s, you’re ready to take that to market.

Now my big program, which is called Side Hustle Support Group, is that act of taking it to market. We go all the way from idea to income coming in. It’s a nine month program. We build your entire business within these nine months. So it’s an intense, in-depth group, but we’re getting real work done. And the majority of my students make money within that nine months, not even not only after they’ve finished, but they’re making money within the program as well.
[ALISON]
That’s awesome.
[MARISSA]
Yes. So when you’re thinking about coming up with your offers, starting with one and just getting your feet wet and getting revenue from it is the first step, of course, but then there’s also ways that you can continue to help the same people down the road. And then you’re able to retain a customer, you’re able to continue to see that person along their journey, which is something we don’t always get in therapy. They come to us, they maybe reduce their symptoms, they’re feeling good, they go out and we’re not able to really maintain that relationship with them and see their growth beyond. But if you have an ascension model set up, you can work with people in the beginning stage and intermediate stage, and then all the way at the top stage. So it’s kind of cool to be able to continue that relationship.
[ALISON]
Yes, that’s really smart. I know you said you had a giveaway for our listeners, correct?
[MARISSA]
Yes. So I have a quiz it’s at marissalawton.com/quiz. So it’s super easy and it’s 10 questions and basically what these questions do is help you figure out where on this spectrum you fall. So they’re asking questions about, do you enjoy marketing? If not then go here. Do you want to be high touch? If not go here. So it’s really helping you figure out where you fall on the spectrum and then at the end of the quiz, you get a result such as coaching group programs, retreats, membership sites, courses, and the info products, the eBooks, and the info products that we’re kind of talking about. It helps you see what is a good next step for you? What’s a program that feels like it might sit where you’re at with your life, with your preferences, with your time, all that kind of stuff?
[ALISON]
Very cool. Thank you. So if folks want to get a hold of you, what’s the best way for them to contact you?
[MARISSA]
The easiest place to go is just my website. It’s my name, marissalawton.com. That’s where you’ll find the quiz, you’ll find information about my other programs, and you’ll be able to see if going beyond group practice with an online income stream feels like the right thing for you to do.
[ALISON]
Awesome. Well, Marissa, this has been super helpful. I feel like I learned a bunch of new things.
[MARISSA]
Cool. Good.
[ALISON]
I’m sure other people have as well. So I really appreciate your time today.
[MARISSA]
Yes, no problem. It’s been fun.
[ALISON]
Thanks so much for joining us for our What’s Next? Series. If you have not yet taken time to rate and review this podcast, I’d really appreciate it if you did. Wherever you listen whether it’s on iTunes or another platform take a couple minutes and leave us a rating and review. We would really appreciate it.

This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, Practice of the Practice, or the guests are providing legal, mental health, or other professional information. If you need a professional, you should find one.