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Special Episode: Modern Therapist’s Consumer Guide on Mulberry Web Design

Curt and Katie talk with Kat Valentine, owner of Mulberry, a web design company specializing in custom websites for private practice therapists.

This is the Modern Therapist Consumer Guide, a series of special episodes to help modern therapists navigate products and services specifically designed for therapists and their clients. We dig deeply into the companies, the people, and the products and services so you can make smart decisions in building your practice and serving your clients.

Transcript

Click here to scroll to the podcast transcript.

Interview with Kat Valentine of Mulberry

Photo ID: Logo for Mulberry Web DesignMulberry is a U.S. based company providing a broad range of website-related services to marketing departments, small businesses, and private practices in California, Washington, and many other States that extend to the East Coast.

We support busy marketing departments with long-term web marketing strategies and daily online marketing activities. And we keep up with the busiest marketing departments, providing business day turn-around on various routine daily web development requests.

We also offer website design & development services to small businesses and those in private practice. We have established many rewarding relationships working directly with business owners who serve their local communities.

In this podcast episode we talk about web design (and website rescue) with Mulberry

Interview with Kat Valentine, Mulberry

1:14 What do therapists get wrong when putting together their websites?

6:23 What is Mulberry Web Design and where did that name come from?

14:32 What is the process you go through when you start with a new client?

19:15 What is the rescue process like?

23:12 What makes you different from other web developers?

Curt and Katie Chat – Our review of Mulberry

27:37 What do you see as the deciding factors when deciding whether to hire Kat and Mulberry Web Design (or not)?

A Special Offer for the listeners of Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide podcast from Mulberry

Mention Therapy Reimagined and receive a 10% discount (up to $250!) on any service we provide.

Relevant Links:

Mulberry Web Design website

Who we are:

Picture of Curt Widhalm, LMFT, co-host of the Modern Therapist's Survival Guide podcast; a nice young man with a glorious beard.Curt Widhalm, LMFT

Curt Widhalm is in private practice in the Los Angeles area. He is the cofounder of the Therapy Reimagined conference, an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University and CSUN, a former Subject Matter Expert for the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, former CFO of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, and a loving husband and father. He is 1/2 great person, 1/2 provocateur, and 1/2 geek, in that order. He dabbles in the dark art of making “dad jokes” and usually has a half-empty cup of coffee somewhere nearby. Learn more at: http://www.curtwidhalm.com

Picture of Katie Vernoy, LMFT, co-host of the Modern Therapist's Survival Guide podcastKatie Vernoy, LMFT

Katie Vernoy is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, coach, and consultant supporting leaders, visionaries, executives, and helping professionals to create sustainable careers. Katie, with Curt, has developed workshops and a conference, Therapy Reimagined, to support therapists navigating through the modern challenges of this profession. Katie is also a former President of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. In her spare time, Katie is secretly siphoning off Curt’s youthful energy, so that she can take over the world. Learn more at: http://www.katievernoy.com

A Quick Note:

Our opinions are our own. We are only speaking for ourselves – except when we speak for each other, or over each other. We’re working on it.

Our guests are also only speaking for themselves and have their own opinions. We aren’t trying to take their voice, and no one speaks for us either. Mostly because they don’t want to, but hey.

Stay in Touch with Curt, Katie, and the whole Therapy Reimagined #TherapyMovement:

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Consultation services with Curt Widhalm or Katie Vernoy:

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Connect with the Modern Therapist Community:

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Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide Creative Credits:

Voice Over by DW McCann https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/

Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano https://groomsymusic.com/

Transcript for this episode of the Modern Therapist’s Consumer Guide podcast (Autogenerated):

Curt Widhalm  00:01

This is the Modern Therapist’s Consumer Guide, a series of special episodes to help modern therapists navigate products and services specifically designed for therapists and their clients.

Katie Vernoy  00:11

We dig deeply into the companies, the people, and the products and services so you can make smart decisions in building your practice and serving your clients.

Announcer  00:21

You’re listening to the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide, where therapists live, breathe, and practice as human beings. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, here are your hosts, Curt Widhalm, and Katie Vernoy.

Curt Widhalm  00:36

Hey, modern therapists. Welcome back to the Modern Therapist’s Consumer Guide. In this part of our series, we are looking at the ins and outs of how to make a fantastic website and part of your marketing plan. We are joined by the very, very wonderful Kat Valentine, who helped create our websites over at therapyreimagined.com. And we have enjoyed our experience so much with Kat, and are so happy to give a platform here to talk about really good quality websites and marketing work.

Katie Vernoy  01:09

So Kat we always start with who are you? And what are you putting out into the world?

Kat Valentine  01:14

Well, since you’ve already introduced me by name, I think that probably the question has to do with who am I as a person. I’m a web developer that has been doing this for a very long time been doing this since 1998. Before, there were images on websites. So I saw the very first image, the browser was able to display an image and it was all very exciting. So I’ve been doing it for a long time. And I’ve grown up in the industry. And now I’m helping therapists, in private practice, do custom websites to help them in their business. But that’s just my product, I think what I put out is more of a vibe than anything. And that’s, that’s actually what I tend to do is involve the person who’s asking us to develop a website. Involve them in the process, so that they’re 100% comfortable with what they’re purchasing and what they end up with. And I focus a lot on knowledge and education.

Curt Widhalm  02:18

One of the things that we like to do is to help therapists avoid making mistakes. And if other therapists have made these kinds of mistakes before, we’d love to help our audience not have to go through that same learning process. What do you see that therapists often get wrong when putting together their websites and their marketing plans?

Kat Valentine  02:41

I would say the absolute most important thing that they get wrong is being afraid of their lack of knowledge. And just telling the designer or developer, just tell me what I need to do and I’ll do it. Because you’re placing the responsibility for your entire business presence onto that developer. And the reality is, you don’t have the skill set or expertise to evaluate who you’re hiring. But you have years of education, and you have a private practice, and you’ve worked through everything that that involves. So you just have to be brave enough to trust your own intelligence, and do a little bit of legwork. And try to understand what you’re asking for. And just know that you can educate yourself. And I know that’s not a clean answer, like oh, just make sure you have the color palette picked out before you. Because it really isn’t those kinds of things will come naturally through the process, as your marketing plan will, what you plan to do with social media and search engines. But you need to be able to determine who you’re going to hire to do the best job for you. And that’s where I see the most problem.

Katie Vernoy  03:54

Tell us a little bit more about the most problem in hiring the wrong person or hiring the wrong company to do a website.

Kat Valentine  04:02

There are no guarantees. But if you approach a website developer with absolutely no knowledge of what goes into building your business presence, the odds of something going wrong are really high because you don’t know how to evaluate what they’re telling you. And then there’s also this other concept, the marketing behind the platforms like WordPress, Weebly, Squarespace and a few other ones. They’re all marketed as Oh, yes, you know, the average business owner can just pop in, you know, purchase our product and build their company’s website in a weekend. And that’s just not true. The sense that I get from people who approached me who already have a website is that they felt that it was just a clean swap of time.That they could do this themselves. They just didn’t have the time to do it. Sort of like hiring a gardener or a dog walker and I’m not diminishing the value of those services. But the reality is you can walk your own dog, you don’t have the time so you hire someone else to do it. And the marketing kind of team values, the knowledge and experience and expertise of someone who really knows how to do a great website. And so they tend to hire developers or designers based on the price because they don’t understand the value of the talent involved in doing this website for you.

Curt Widhalm  05:27

Tell us about that value. How does that translate especially to our therapists, as far as what a potential consumer of their practice might be seeing as far as what that investment actually looks like?

Kat Valentine  05:42

When people first come to me, the top question is: what can you do for me? After about an hour and a half conversation, they start to understand that it’s not really about that. Because I spend the time to learn about them and their needs, what their current situation is. And as we’re talking about this, I’m asking them questions like, where’s your domain name hosted? Or where’s your current website hosted? Are you doing social media, search engine, do you edit your own website? And it just comes through the natural flow of the conversation, but they start to understand that there’s a lot of value in my experience, because I’m guiding them through the process. I’m not just saying, oh, okay, I so, you know, in there, there’s nothing wrong with this. But I sell a Squarespace package, you get five webpages, and 10 pictures, I think for a lot of people, that’s perfectly fine. But my value comes in understanding what you’re trying to do, and customizing the end product to accomplish that.

Katie Vernoy  06:46

So it’s going beyond just having some words and some pictures on a website. It’s actually understanding the process and recognizing that there’s a larger goal than just quote unquote, having a website. It’s actually understanding the marketing behind it. But before we dig in too far, like there’s, there’s still an introductory question I want to ask because you recently rebranded and your company is Mulberry Web Design. And so where did Mulberry come from? What what is Mulberry Web Design? Like who, who is the company? Or what is the company that we’re we’re talking about today?

Kat Valentine  07:26

That’s a really fair question, because we’ve known each other for a long time. So you knew me inmy first life. In my first life I was doing the same thing, but just for different people. I was working for corporations, I had a staff of 13, it was super fun, it was really engaging and busy. And there was a lot of stress and a lot of things to manage. But at the end of the day, towards the end of my 20 years, it was getting less and less rewarding. And I found that I wanted to work more directly with the individual that was hiring me and would be benefiting from what I did for them. And the only way to do that is to work directly with the company owner. So this isn’t the only reason I closed the corporation and went in a different direction. But the direction I took was to evaluate what gave me more fulfillment out of my business than what I had previously had. And so, and you were instrumental in this, you sent some therapists my way, and I got to work. I got to work directly with them and go through the process of understanding what they wanted to convey on their website, how they wanted to market themselves and developed their site for them. And I found myself really enjoying it. And so I just made the decision. This is who I’m working with now. This is what I want to do. And so I rebranded, I didn’t want to use my old domain name or my old marketing material, because I didn’t want to work with who I was working with before. And I’m totally focused now on private practice. It’s not exclusively for therapists. I might work with a dentist, for example, but it’s all the individual private practice arena for me now and it’s, like, incredibly rewarding.

Katie Vernoy  09:17

I’m still curious about Mulberry.

Kat Valentine  09:22

Why is the name? Okay, well I decided I decided to go in this direction. The pandemic kind of sold me out for a couple of months, but along about October, I was completely committed to this and I had acquired another domain name and built out my website. And I just felt it didn’t connect with people in a way that I wanted to. And so I went looking for another domain name and like all business owners who do this, it’s a horrible process. It’s like looking for seven, seven needles in a haystack. I mean, you have to make sure the domain name is up available, that you’re not infringing on anyone’s trademark, that you can get something simpler for all your social media channels, that you can trademark the name yourself. And so I worked through all of that. And I like to name Mulberry, it just sounded warm and personal to me. And all of those other factors fell into place. So that was my new business name.

Curt Widhalm  10:24

You tell us a little bit about what guides you? What’s your mission and values that help you through your decision processes and how you go about? Like, help us understand why you’re good people.

Kat Valentine  10:40

I don’t have a formal mission statement, and I need one. But the reason I don’t is because I’ve been the same person for the past 25 years, whether it was in my corporation, or now with my new client base. And my mission is, and always has been to make sure people really understand what they’re purchasing, so that they’re not afraid of what they did purchase. So I am really focused on education and knowledge, in addition to getting them the best end product I can possibly provide and that they’re 100% happy. But that’s what drives me is I don’t sell widgets, I sell something that helps people in their business. And I can’t do that if I don’t understand them. And they don’t understand what they’re asking from me. And as far as my personal battle view, it’s my sound a little bit syrupy. But honestly, it’s honesty, I live by the rule, like, always tell the truth, or at least never lie. And that sounds like it would be easy to do, right up until the point where being honest creates an uncomfortable situation. And I’m still honest. So that is just one of my primary values, even if it risks not being the right fit for clients. So they don’t hire me. And that’s actually never happened. As far as I know, I find that being honest, even when it’s uncomfortable, builds trust.

Katie Vernoy  12:12

That really resonates for me, because that’s been exactly how I see you. And that’s why I’ve referred so many people to you. I think in our first interactions, it was kind of both of us. were working as consultants on other things, and we were able to connect and identify ways that you could support folks. And then I started working with you too. And it just, it kind of kept, you know, kind of the dominoes kept falling. But for me, the thing that just really stands out is you’ll be very direct, you’ll be kind but very direct around ‘Well, this website is not helping you. Katie, we need to fix this.’ Or…

Kat Valentine  12:51

You know just how I put it.

Curt Widhalm  12:53

…the dumpster fire that you’re bringing me and here’s what I can turn it into.

Kat Valentine  12:57

That’s more my bedside manner.

Katie Vernoy  12:57

But…

Katie Vernoy  13:03

Yes, yes. But it was something where you’re very direct. And you’re very honest. And I think to me, that felt like such a relief, because then if I, I wasn’t guessing, like, are you just trying to get my business. It was more, oh my gosh, like I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And now you’re helping me to identify what I need to do to have a secure website, to have a website that converts, to have a website that actually makes sense together that it’s not cobbled together with just random ideas from my brain. Like, to me, it seems like what I think about when someone comes to me and says, like, I’ve got, you know, I need to go from a cookie cutter website to a customized website or my web developer bailed on me, and I have this mess of a website. Like for me, invariably, the first question, I think, can Kat help with this person? Will they be able to sit with the honesty and most of my folks can, which is great.

Kat Valentine  13:59

I noticed that.

Katie Vernoy  13:59

Because I think they need to be able to sit and say, do they actually want to fix this? Or do they want to be soothed and said, No, you’re fine, I’ll do this little bit of a fix, and you’ll be done. It’s like, No, you want to actually make sure it’s going to work, and that it’s going to follow good business principles, and that it’s going to reach to their audience. So to me, I just I just had to kind of amplify that part of what you were saying, because I truly see that it’s honesty. I think there’s a kindness behind it. Maybe your bedside manner is more ‘you have a dumpster fire, let’s fix it.’

Kat Valentine  14:32

Well, I really appreciate that. But I want to expand on a little bit as well. If you’re the dumpster fire kind of honest with people that gives them the freedom to be honest with you. So if I’m doing something that isn’t in line with what they felt they wanted or what they communicated to me. And a lot of times because I’m in tech, and I kind of know a lot, it’s intimidating. And so people are afraid to tell people who know a lot about a specific thing that I don’t really like what you did. And so the way I communicate with them, it provides them the freedom to say, Yeah, you know, that wasn’t quite what I was looking for. And I want that, so that I can fix the problem.

Katie Vernoy  15:15

Yes, I think that’s really important. So I know this process, because I’ve gone through it myself, as well as referred a lot of people to go through this process. But maybe you could just describe the process that you go through when you start with a new client.

Kat Valentine  15:31

Well, there’s two kinds of new clients. There’s the new client that’s just approaching me for a new website, they’ve got potentially a website that’s just not working for them, marketing wise. And then there’s the rescue clients, where they’re like, everything is a dumpster fire, I need help. They actually recognize the dumpster. But we’ll start with a new client first, because that’s actually pretty fun, is I spend an initial amount of time with them learning about them and their business and what they’re trying to achieve. I learn a little bit about what they’ve done in the past, what did and didn’t work for them, and what specifics they already know about that they want in place for their new online presence. And then I’ll go away, and I’ll do a proposal, a cost estimate for them. And I’ll present them with the proposal. And I genuinely like to go over that so that they understand what they’re reading. And if they decide to engage me, then the fun begins. And we start with what the design process is. And that’s like creating your Sitemap. So we talk about exactly what kinds of content that you want on your website, I do mood boards. And I can tell you that people love this process. That’s where we’re going through deciding on your color palette, what kinds of images are going to work on your website to present you as the business. And oddly enough, I find a lot of people change their mind about how they want to present themselves going through that process. In fact, one client of mine told me that she wanted to be high energy, bright pinks, and yellows. And so I provided a mood board with that, and also two other choices. And she really felt the other, one of the other choices was actually who she was. She’s like, this is way more appropriate for what I’m trying to do. So it’s an important process that helps you re-find who you are, as well. And then after those elements are done, we move on to wireframing, which is which elements appear on which page, how are you going to use your real estate, which of your primary marketing messages are going to appear higher up above the fold or lower down the fold. And that’s usually about a week long process depending on the scope of the project, you get four or five wireframes. By the time that’s done, you really have a firm grasp on your content needs. So it makes it a lot easier for you to sit down and write your content. Because you have the sitemap, you know what you’re going to be writing. You have how it’s going to be displayed on your website. So you know when you need really good headlines and short, snappy little sections put on your homepage. So it goes through that content process. When that’s done, you actually don’t see me for about four weeks, I go into production. And then we enter into a review and evaluation process with you. So did we get everything right? Do you love what we did? What did we miss? What can we change that we might have missed to make it more perfect for you. And when the website is completely done, you’re 100% satisfied with it, then we move it to the hosting package on the host environment that you have chosen. And then we proceed to be available for anything else you might need.

Katie Vernoy  18:58

And I just want to make one clarification there. Because you said we move it to the hosting package. You use a development site that’s password protected so that nobody is seeing the website until your clients are completely satisfied with it. You only upload it once they’re totally satisfied with it. So it’s not public view yet.

Kat Valentine  19:17

100% It’s not publicly viewable. During the first couple of weeks of production we don’t share that with the client. Seeing their website blown up makes them nervous. But, but by the time we like, oh gosh, does she really know what she’s doing? But by the time we get to the point where there’s like, we’re not sure about this little piece or that little piece on an individual page, the client can then come in and start reviewing the website to get a real sense of how the navigation flows, how the information that we had decided upon in the wireframing process, how that flows now that it’s in an actual web page. And they can take a look at the responsiveness so they can compare it on their mobile phone, on a tablet, on a variety of different appliances if they have. Just make sure that everything is a okay, and then we enter into the review and revision process at that point.

Curt Widhalm  20:15

So, that sounds like, you know, I’m remembering back to my days of first setting up my initial websites, and it sounds like it would have been so helpful to have that kind of process there.

Katie Vernoy  20:27

Yes.

Kat Valentine  20:28

Yes.

Curt Widhalm  20:29

Or those of us who might be in that rescue process sort of thing. What kind of a process does that look like with you? If I was to come to you now and kind of have a a dumpster that is in various forms of fire at its time?

Kat Valentine  20:48

Nobody ever comes to me for a rescue that doesn’t have their dumpster on fire. Like, otherwise, you know, what are we talking about here? Right? It is a little bit different. I still have same initial conversation with them. But it isn’t about what they need. It’s about what predicament are you really in? And sometimes that might be very easy to resolve, maybe their current developer has ghosted them for whatever reason, I don’t know. Maybe it’s their website doesn’t work. On the back end, they can’t edit it. There’s, they’ve been hacked. I, it would take us an hour to go through every problem that’s ever presented to you. But I try to understand the situation. And then I offer them two choices. I’m relatively experienced at this. So I can tell upfront whether or not I’m going to be able to help them. If I feel I can help them, then my next step is to see how much time involved will there be. And so I offer this service, it’s called a technical evaluation. It’s a set cost, and it’s not refundable. I download a back up of your website, and I install it on a development server. And then I proceeded to test it. And for example, a client that I’m currently working on, can’t edit her site, and I don’t, I can believe that. She has 37 plugins installed. Many of them are conflicting, she needs seven. Many of them are conflicting she’s. This happens more often than you know is that developers will try to solve a problem by installing a plugin. It doesn’t work. Okay, I’m going to try installing another plug in. Oh, that one works, but they never get rid of the other one. So we don’t really know what we can delete to safely save the functionality that still needed. By having it in a development environment, I’m able to do that. So I can go through and test all the functionality, delete what I think needs to be deleted, if it breaks anything. And then I can provide a cost estimate for doing this on a live website. The reason why I do this this way, and that the technical evaluation is not refundable, is because it provides some nice break point. Potentially, the cost to fix the website is not going to bring them a return on investment. It’s going to maybe even cost more than the original development. So this is a no harm, no foul. It’s like, Thank you for the information. But I don’t want to proceed. And that’s fair. So then we can talk about would you like to have a new website and go through the fun process? Or potentially they want to, if it’s a WordPress site, they want to move to Squarespace or something that’s just a little bit more restricted environment where they can’t get themselves into so much trouble. But otherwise, I would be guessing at what it would take to fix this website without that technical evaluation. And that can go horribly wrong. I might get halfway through it, and think, oh, you know, I’ve only estimated half the time I need. So then you start to get into budget problems and you lose the confidence of the person you’re working with. Well, why didn’t you know that before? So that’s why I insist on the technical evaluation. So when I come back to them, I actually know what I’m talking about.

Katie Vernoy  24:02

I didn’t realize that that whole process happened. I know you’ve rescued a few websites that I’ve been, you know, either directly or loosely connected to and it just is something where my experience of you is that you have you’ll jump to the process. And if if it’s something that feels very urgent, you even go above and beyond and make sure that something can happen quickly. Obviously, that’s not always the case. But if you have if you have the bandwidth, you will jump immediately to a rescue and help someone keep their presence going if it’s at all possible. So to me that’s, that’s a huge benefit. Because there’s a lot of people that just don’t understand what’s going on and will try to just sell a new website and you’re actually trying to see what’s the best cost benefit.

Kat Valentine  24:43

Right. This particular client that I’m working on her initial investment was $12,000.

Katie Vernoy  24:48

Whoa.

Kat Valentine  24:49

Our focus, my focus is not to sell her another website. It looks fabulous. She’s got a great visual design. It’s got a lot of content. So for us, the focus is how can I rescue my investment? I’ve had people come to me where they’ve spent $1,200 on a website, they’re not going to spend $1,500 to fix it.

Katie Vernoy  25:11

Exactly. Very good point. What makes you different from other web developers, would you say?

Kat Valentine  25:18

I think there’s a lot of really good web developers out there. I think that what makes me different is I engage with you on a personal level. So that might be a different experience from who you worked with in the past. If you can imagine you call GoDaddy, you get a tech. He doesn’t know if you have three kids or two dogs, you know, or that you’re about to go on vacation and something is really a high priority, like my well, you know, that’s too bad for you. Whereas I tend to get to really know the individuals that I’m working with. And so I can help them they, they’re free to tell me, it’s like, I’ve really messed up, I’m leaving in two days, I need help. And because we have this very personal relationship, I can juggle my schedule around and help them and I want to help them in that way. So I think that might make me a little bit different than a lot of people that you might encounter in tech.

Curt Widhalm  26:14

Not everybody might appreciate the approach that you take to this. Is there anybody who might not as you identify it’s be people that should work with you.

Kat Valentine  26:26

I think that’s a fair question. People who don’t want to be involved in the process, that they are absolutely convinced that a website is a product that they purchase and that’s the end of it. The end of the relationship with the person who built it, and the end of the transaction. I’ll do that, for sure. But oftentimes, those kinds of website, the people who need them gravitate towards services like Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, these more structured environments, and that would not be a good fit with, that’s primarily because I don’t do that. But also, they might not see the value in what I do provide, which is this interpersonal relationship that goes on for years. Perhaps like the difference, you take your dog to an emergency clinic, you’re very happy that those people are there, and they’re going to save your dog. But that’s the end of the transaction. It’s different than going to your regular veterinarian who wants to know about your dog so that, you know he he’ll give you a call, okay, it’s time for your dog bloodwork to make sure his medication is still working. So people need to want that to appreciate what I’m offering.

Katie Vernoy  27:37

And I think for me, what I’ve seen is that, and I don’t know that, that there’s like, as far as my decision making point, I think there are different needs. And the the folks who I send to you oftentimes are ready to work on the process, they’re ready to have a customized website. And they know that they are going to want to have someone they can trust to update or observe your the website over time, and you have the ability, at least, correct me if I’m wrong, to pop in and continue to have that relationship. And and you’re very fair with with how you charge for that. How you set that up. And I feel like the expectations are very clear. If someone wants either very transactional or a website that that kind of just lives and doesn’t need any of that tender loving care, so to speak, I think they may be okay with other folks. But I think you’re for the individuals who are really dedicated to their business, want a customized website and having support that expert support when it’s needed, not just constant.

Kat Valentine  28:46

Correct. Yep. Yeah, that’s a really good way of putting it. Although I will do a website and I have a few websites, where the client just needs this brochure site and doesn’t want to pay too much attention to it. I’m just a better fit for you if you’re looking for that other stuff. That you know, will you be there to support me, as I develop my business, and it’s represented in my website, then we’re an ideal set.

Katie Vernoy  29:17

So how do people get in touch with you?

Kat Valentine  29:21

They can visit the website, mulberrywebdesign.com, all of the contact information is there. You can reach us by phone, by text, by email, or through the contact form.

Katie Vernoy  29:32

And you said you had a special offer for our audience? Which is extremely generous.

Kat Valentine  29:37

We are providing for listeners of this podcast 10% off any and all of our services up to $250. And so that would apply to our technical evaluation, if you’re a rescue client, if it doesn’t go through the entire $250 the rest of the discount is applied to the cost estimate. It would apply to new web sight, and any consultation you might hire us to do.

Katie Vernoy  30:04

Thank you so much. That’s amazing.

Kat Valentine  30:06

Well, thank you for having me Katie and Curt it’s been fun.

Katie Vernoy  30:08

So as we do an all modern therapists consumer guide episodes, and I guess all meaning this one, and then the last one, and then the ones we’re planning to do, we’d like to do just a quick review of our own, what do you see as the deciding factors that someone should either go to Kat and Mulberry Web Design or not?

Curt Widhalm  30:34

I think a lot of it boils down to What do you want out of your website? And, you know, having the experience myself of working with Kat with our stuff, and seeing just a lot of the depth and the knowledge that she has, and how things work and being able to explain to us why the things are the way that they are, has been very beneficial. And I feel completely overwhelmed sometimes in those conversations of like, there’s just so much that I don’t know. And on the other hand, you know, sometimes there’s, you know, a little bit more of kind of that, do it yourself sort of feel that other people may be drawn to. But this is something where to have goals with your website, before you set out and start just doing stuff is really worth that deep thought process. And is something that working with somebody like Kat, if you do want the depth of the website, if you want to not have to have that responsibility yourself. She is a phenomenal person that we have worked with. And I’ve really enjoyed her work on…yeah, a little shameless plug for mtsgpodcast.com.

Katie Vernoy  31:45

Well, and I think that the thing that differentiates Kat for me is that there are, there are folks who either help you do it yourself or kind of create cookie cutter websites or create custom websites, but on a platform that has a little bit more of the do it yourself vibe afterwards. And then there are folks kind of on the other end that do custom websites. And then and you’re almost not even involved in the process. Kat’s like right in the middle, she’ll teach you the stuff that she knows that you can do, so that you can get into your website and do stuff. She will, you know, kind of handle stuff and do things very quickly if you have if you need her to do the updates. And during the whole process she’s really she’s sitting in the role of expert, but you’re very involved. And so I think it’s for folks like me where I know enough of the technical stuff to get myself in trouble. So Kat is safeguarding against me doing it myself at times, but then also allows for and helps us to be very skilled to do it. I think for anyone that has something that that is a little bit more complex, like a podcast, or products or different things, there are some some things that you can do on your own that are not too hard. But if you want it to look really sophisticated, designed, and it has some of these extra pieces, Kat’s the person that you really should go to because she can make sure that the plugins aren’t going to conflict, she can make sure that your website works smoothly and understands all of it from a very technical perspective. I think for a straight ahead website, if you want a really great customized one, definitely go to Kat but there are other options if you don’t need some of that extra functionality. And, and or want to try to do that functionality on your own, which, you know, for me is hours and hours of time. So I’d rather give it to Kat. I think the other piece and and jump in here, Curt, if you have other ideas. But I think it’s this is not for folks who don’t want to invest in their website yet, or want or aren’t really, it’s just like, I need to have a website, I don’t care what it looks like kind of thing. Like I think, especially when people are first starting out some of these cookie cutter website places or are creating, you know, kind of one pages attached to whether it’s platforms or directories or whatever, I think oftentimes that can get you started. But when you’re really ready to have like a solid practice website, because you’re wanting to uplevel or add people to your practice or whatever, I think you need that to, to, to have something more customized.

Curt Widhalm  34:16

Yeah, and again, this comes back to Do what your goals set out for you. And you know, have a you don’t have to have like the exact idea but being able to, you know, if you want a really robust website, if you’re really relying on a good strong web presence, you know, online therapy practice for everybody, you’re going to want to represent yourself well and that’s going to be where some of that investment is worthwhile. And having kind of this just be a plan like you know, if you’re first looking at starting out your practice and looking at where you’re going to spend those dollars, like people are going to look you up online and if you really want to put that best foot forward as far as here is a really robust website that represents how I practice. Do it.

Katie Vernoy  35:06

Yeah. Yeah. So we won’t belabor it too far. But I think if you are looking at this kind of website, get on Kat’s calendar and see if you if you mesh with her. Because she is a really great web developer. And she’s very, she’s very specific on how she works. And so you want to make sure that that works for you. It works great for me, I love working with Kat. Whenever I have a project with Kat, it makes me super happy. And I always am satisfied with what is turned out. Like she doesn’t stop working on it until it’s what I would like to see and happens to be able to bring together the vision that I have for what we want to light. So can’t recommend Kat more and yeah, glad to have been able to do this interview with her.

Curt Widhalm  35:55

Until next time, this is the ModernTherapist’s Consumer Guide with Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy.

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