What is Working Now in Online Marketing: An interview with Katie Read
Curt and Katie interview Katie Read on how the economy has shifted and what works for marketing has shifted. We look at how things have shifted since the pandemic and what therapists can think about now for their therapy and online businesses. Katie gives us simple strategies and clear insights on what isn’t working anymore and what to do instead.
Click here to scroll to the podcast transcript.Transcript
An Interview with Katie Read
Katie Read spent many years as a therapist, grad school prof, clinical supervisor, and community mental health director before making the switch to coaching and consulting. Katie has run a 7-figure consulting business for the past three years, helping therapists and other entrepreneurs master their marketing and create compelling coaching programs and digital courses. You can find out more at katieread.com.
In this podcast episode, we talk about how therapist marketing must shift post-pandemic
Katie Read has been doing research into what is working in marketing for service providers. We thought we’d ask her back to talk about how the shifting economy is impacting therapists.
How have the shifts in the economy changed business for therapists?
“You might have learned a couple years ago, what was working like crazy back then was a very long, very detailed, very informative webinar. And what we are seeing is it’s not covid anymore, and nobody is sitting through the 90 minute, the two hour webinar. They will not sit through it anymore. They want information quickly. It has to be extremely targeted, extremely direct, and it has to speak very specifically to an acute pain point that they are feeling.” – Katie Read
- After the pandemic, people stopped having time for “personal growth”
- Therapy is seen more as a luxury
- People have lost patience for content marketing (like a very long webinar)
- Potential clients are more likely to pay for services for a specific, acute pain point, rather than non-specific pain points or personal growth
- Big Tech is coming into the space and becoming competitors
- TikTok has changed attention spans, so we must market in shorter, more concise bullet points
What strategies can therapists use to improve their businesses?
“The only way that we actually capture someone’s attention, so that we can go deeper, so that we can do the personal growth work with them, is that we have to capture their attention first by speaking directly to where it hurts. We have to speak directly to the pain point.” – Katie Read
- Assess the market and identify specific niches that are harder to treat by big tech
- Capture attention by speaking directly to where it hurts, in bullet points and visuals
- Identify problematic expectations, for example meeting someone when they are in crisis and then keeping them for personal growth (rather than expecting them to seek out personal growth work)
Do therapists need to have a big social media presence?
- Many people have been successful selling their services without a big social media following
- If you don’t enjoy social media, you don’t need to spend time on it
- If you enjoy social media and have fun creating compelling content, it can be hugely helpful
- If you aren’t interested in doing social media, one option is the static 9 grid on Instagram
How can therapists get a more specific niche?
- Understand that your niche may evolve over time, so go for what you know now
- Look at what lights you up
- Explore you own story to identify what you’ve learned and what you can share
Resources for Modern Therapists mentioned in this Podcast Episode:
We’ve pulled together resources mentioned in this episode and put together some handy-dandy links. Please note that some of the links below may be affiliate links, so if you purchase after clicking below, we may get a little bit of cash in our pockets. We thank you in advance!
Katie’s website: katieread.com
Katie’s Instagram: @heykatieread
Katie’s Business with Haley Burkhead – womeninonlinebusiness.com
Relevant Episodes of MTSG Podcast:
Clinical Marketing, An interview with Katie Read, LMFT
Therapists Shaming Therapists, An Interview with Katie Read, LMFT
Making Sense of Insurance Billing and Client Referral Services for Therapists
Why YOU Shouldn’t Sell Out to BetterHelp: An interview with Jeff Guenther, LPC
Who we are:
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
Katie 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:
Consultation services with Curt Widhalm or Katie Vernoy:
Connect with the Modern Therapist Community:
Our Facebook Group – The Modern Therapists Group
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 Survival Guide podcast (Autogenerated):
Transcripts do not include advertisements just a reference to the advertising break (as such timing does not account for advertisements).
… 0:00
(Opening Advertisement)
Announcer 0:00
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 therapists, here are your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy.
Curt Widhalm 0:12
Welcome back, modern therapists. This is the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide. I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy, and this is the podcast for therapists about the things that are happening in our field, the ways that the world impacts our businesses. And I’ve been hearing from a lot of group practices lately. I’m assuming that this is probably also true for some individual practices, but they’re not talking to me, so you can always reach out to me, let me know what’s going on in your practices, might turn it into a podcast episode someday. But I have been hearing from some of the group practices around me, calls are way down this year. Our Google ad spend is up. Our number of calls is down. Psychology Today seems to be just a another place on the internet for me to put a picture and a description, but it’s not turning into clients. And what is happening. So, to help us, along with this conversation, we are inviting back and having back our good friend Katie Read. She has been a therapists. She has helped people develop their own practices, coaching sort of stuff, and just kind of talking about like, what’s going on in the therapy world where it overlaps with business these days. So thank you very much for joining us once again. Katie Read.
Katie Read 0:12
You’re welcome, Curt and Katie, good to be back.
Katie Vernoy 0:15
We’re so excited to talk with you again. And for anyone who typically listens on one and a half speed, don’t do it for this episode, Katie and I just start talking super fast.
Katie Read 1:46
Katie’s have issues together. Collectively. We were out to dinner not long ago, even our husbands were just trying to keep up. It was a whole thing.
Katie Vernoy 1:55
Yeah. So, so if you’re at one and a half speed, slow it down, maybe 1.25 it will literally give you a headache if you do one and a half. So anyway. I tried…
Katie Read 2:06
Really how I most wanted to be introduced is like this Katie. She talks too fast and it’ll give you a headache.
Katie Vernoy 2:12
Yes, yes, no. I think I was actually talking about this Katie who talks too fast, especially when enticed by another fast speaker. Anyway. So for the folks who don’t know you yet, although why? Why don’t they know you? But let them know who are you. It’s an issue. Who are you and what are you putting out into the world?
Katie Read 2:30
Mostly, I’m just friends with you guys. That’s my biggest claim to fame. Yes, it’s the best. I am a therapist, like I would say, all your listeners and a long time therapists who actually shifted a couple years ago into the entrepreneurial space. I’ve helped a lot of therapists launch coaching businesses, online courses, things like that. I really found that my love of being a therapists translated also into my love of building businesses and helping people build businesses, and doing coaching and all of those things. So, that is where I am at right now in the world. And I am kind of fascinated by the exact things Curt was talking about in the introduction, which is that how we see business shift over time, and these very broad swaths. And so what you might be thinking as a therapists sitting home thinking my calls are down, and it must be me and I must be a loser, and maybe I need a new headshot, or maybe I need to update my bio. Really I think it’s actually very reassuring when you hear, Oh, wait a second, calls are down for everybody? This is affecting the whole industry? I love getting into that and getting into the whys and wherefores of why that might be and why we see that happening, because it’s not just happening for therapists. It is happening for coaches. It is happening for online course creators, for online membership creators, for retreat leaders, for a whole host of the different places that therapists have moved to try to expand their businesses and their marketing into as well. So excited to talk a little bit more about that.
Curt Widhalm 4:03
Is it AI? Is it that AI has taken over and now everybody is just like, I would rather pay $5 for AI therapy than whatever it is that people are charging?
Katie Read 4:16
It’s all the robots. That’s what we’re here to talk about today. The robots have taken over.
Katie Vernoy 4:23
Taking our jobs. Those darn robots.
Katie Read 4:25
Taking our jobs left and right. I actually think being a therapists in the age of AI is probably one of the greatest things you can be, right. To be able to be one of the last bastions of human to human contact, left after the robot revolution comes to town. Oh, that’s such a good question. But, I mean, we can get in a little bit realistically to what we are seeing. So Curt, you mentioned that you’re seeing and you’re hearing from people that calls are down. Just everything seems down from the past couple years where, let’s face it, during covid, everybody was full. Everybody had waiting lists. You know there, but like every client you had had for the past 20 years was suddenly calling you back and trying to get back in. And it was a good time to be a therapist. That’s a weird way to say it. People were in a lot of pain and needed help, but it was a good time to be a therapists, in terms of your business and your practice really growing and booming during that time. And now we’re seeing such a shift. And I think we can all point really obviously, at least in this country, to what we’re seeing in the economy. That people are just feeling like life in general is so much more expensive, and that, unfortunately, therapy, buying online courses, buying online coaching, all of these things very quickly becomes seen as luxury items for great many people. For people that really could still continue to live their life decently enough without the support of their therapist, when they’re feeling that financial pinch, it becomes the luxury item that goes on that budgetary chopping block for their family. And so we’re definitely seeing that. And I think in the run up, as we’re in right now, to yet another contentious election in our country, that also makes people hold a little bit more tightly to their money and to feel a little bit more nervous about what’s coming up and what’s coming up in the budget. So I do think people in the therapy world are seeing that. I think there’s also other pieces of it. I mean, obviously, I think in covid, there was a great deal of true pain that people were really seeking help for. And then, as we’ve emerged from the shadow of all of that, people suddenly went, Oh, you know, I haven’t been on vacation in a couple years. I haven’t gotten to do like, all the fun discretionary spending I would normally do. I’ve got some extra money. I’ve got this cushion because of it. I want to go spend this on fun stuff. You know, suddenly a trip to Europe sounds way more exciting than sitting in Curt’s office telling him your problems every week. I mean, it’s understandable, right? So it’s just one of those things that people started spending on more of the fun stuff that they had missed out on for the past couple years, and just shifting their budget in that direction. And we see that and hear that from a lot of folks. And I do think just that little bit of even for the people who truly are not necessarily that permanently impacted, let’s say, by inflation and by like, somebody who is not, their budget is not truly that impacted if, like, milk is costing $1 more this week. There is still the fear factor of it. There is still the fear mongering of it in the news. There’s all of these things that are making people feel like they’re broke, or like brokeness is just around the horizon, and they need to be really careful with everything. And it’s impacting, it’s impacting what they do, what they purchase, who they sign up with, all that jazz.
Katie Vernoy 4:27
I think a lot of therapists during the pandemic became kind of burnt out, maybe because they were seeing so many therapy clients, because there were so many clients to have. They shifted into this more course or coaching model and those types of things. And people were buying it because there was so much time and discretionary funds to be able to do that personal growth work, or to start this new thing that seemed really exciting. And so to me, I feel like there’s been this big shift from I can take this time to work on myself to Okay, life’s back to normal, and money is going to be tighter, so you have to be really strict with your decision making. How are you suggesting that folks kind of respond to the shift in purchasing decision making?
Katie Read 8:28
I love that, and especially I like that you branch the conversation out into just sort of the online education space in general, because it is booming. It continues to boom. It obviously boomed a lot during covid, but it does continue to boom right now. And what we’re seeing a lot of is the exact same thing that people are seeing in the therapy space. I love that you said personal growth, because that’s so true. When people feel like they have that cushion, that is when they’re looking at the personal growth. That’s when they’re looking at, oh, I have a little extra time. I have a little extra freedom. I’m feeling a little breathing room. Now I really want to go towards self actualization, not just basic survival, getting through the day. But now I’ve got this time that I’m going to take that, you know, whatever it is that you’ve always been a Tarot course, or that, what you know, whatever it is that you’ve always been interested in that like, sounds so fun and curiosity inducing for you. People were jumping into those things, left and right. And then, of course, as we get back feeling a little bit more like we’re in survival mode, we start to cut back on those things. And so what can you do as somebody who is in this space? So recently, I actually have a new business partner now, a woman named Hayley Burkehead. She and I are working together, and we did a marketing lab recently because we were interested in finding out, particularly in the online space. So online course creators, online coaches, online membership service creators, things like that. What were they seeing in the space? And we talked to people from all over, from newer creators up to very established people with multi-million dollar yearly revenue stream type businesses, just to say, what are you seeing? And it was really interesting some of the results of that. So there are certain things that even two or three years ago, people had a lot of patience for, I’ll say, but they don’t have patience for anymore. So for example, if you are a therapists, and maybe you have you’re trying to sell a coaching program as well, or an online course that you’ve created, or anything like that. You might have learned a couple years ago, what was working like crazy back then was a very long, very detailed, very informative webinar. And what we are seeing is it’s not covid anymore, and nobody is sitting through the 90 minute, the two hour webinar. They will not sit through it anymore. They want information quickly. It has to be extremely targeted, extremely direct, and it has to speak very specifically to an acute pain point that they are feeling. One thing we’ve definitely seen, and this is consistently a challenge for therapists moving into coaching or courses, is that people, when they’re not in what Katie talked about, that personal growth space, that sort of self actualization space, they’re not really spending money on programs that are just saying, Oh, I’ll help you find balance. I’ll help you live authentically. They’re not really spending money on those types of things, because it’s not a concrete pain point in their life. Whereas, if you said, you know, if you and your spouse are fighting every single day, I will help you stop fighting. Okay, well, for somebody that is a very acute, concrete pain point in their life. So people are looking for solutions to very acute pain points. And that’s part of, I think what Curt had mentioned, I forget if it was even before we hopped on, but it’s things like, when you have, in your therapists practice or in your coaching business, a very targeted, very specific pain point that you are truly an expert in, that you truly are like, I help with this thing, and people see themselves reflected there. That is where they’re still spending their discretionary income, spending their money willing to invest. Because we’re much more willing to invest to get us out of pain when we know I’ve got to get out of this pain to keep moving forward in my life. We’re very willing to invest in that. We’re less willing, when the purse strings feel tighter to invest in the other stuff that sounds a little more pie in the sky, airy fairy and doesn’t directly address an acute pain point that we’re feeling.
… 12:28
(Advertisement Break)
Curt Widhalm 12:30
Partway through the pandemic. One of my non-therapists friends sent me a meme that was, therapists don’t know when the gravy train is going to end, but it’s going to end. And kind of speaking to everybody who was coming to therapy during the pandemic, kind of things. And I think what you’re talking about is something that we were mentioning before the show, is that, or before we started recording, is that I’m not seeing the same drop off in my practice that some of the other practices that are reaching out to me. And part of it was a decision that I had made within our practice a couple of years ago, which was to listen to all of the advice that Curt and Katie have been putting out for years, and recognizing that people are going to not want all of their therapy online. People are going to want to come into the office. And some of the, you know, the competitors that are taking over the the bigger therapy space; the onlines, the Better Helps, the even some of the larger, you know, Lyra and Headway, kinds of things that are just virtual, kinds of things that we leaned in the opposite direction. Who are the people who absolutely are going to want to be seen in person: things like really difficult family therapy systems, people who really want very, very practical, highly dysregulated skills, kinds of things. So we had made a move a couple of years ago to be this is the space that we want to operate in, and we’ve seen some of the consistency in that. It’s not something that like, Okay, we’re gonna, you know, just pivot on a dime, because that’s what everybody’s, you know, reacting to right now. But some of, I guess, what you’re talking to, that I want to reinforce, is stuff that Katie and I have been talking about for years, which is, in addition to be good at marketing, how about just be really good at what you’re doing?
Katie Read 14:26
I love that. I love how you guys doubled down. You looked at where people were going, and you said, there’s going to be a certain percentage of the population who wants the exact opposite, so let’s go be experts there. I love that. And I think you said you really started this process, like two years ago, and you’re really this summer, reaping the results of that, which is pretty amazing to hear. And I love that. I think anybody who you can truly look for yourself as a clinician, as a person, and say, What do I love? Not just, how can I chase a bug? Where, how can I get that next client call in the door? But what do I love? Like, something I’ve been doing in my own life, in general, as a business owner, but also as a person, I think of it as acting backwards. So figuring out, like, what is the actual goal for me in my life? So what is the actual goal for you in your practice, or in your coaching business, or your course, or whatever it is, what’s the goal? And then really completely breaking that down and acting backwards from that goal. So not just, uh, I’m in a panic today. I’m gonna go change my psych today, and I’ll put up a different picture and see if somebody calls me. But like, okay, let’s really step back and program design our ideal practice, and then act backwards from there. And I think that would be a beautiful thing for all of your listeners who might be struggling a little bit to start putting in place now. And it may be that you start reaping those rewards in six months, but those rewards will be so much greater by the time they get there, because you’ve gone completely in the direction of that ultimate goal, which I love. That’s great, Curt.
Katie Vernoy 16:00
I think the challenge I see for some therapists is that the goal they have is one that may not be realistic. And I think it’s hard to maybe for folks to hear it, but I see folks, and I’m one of these people, and I have a different plan, but I look at Curt’s practice and I absolutely don’t want Curt’s practice. He’s got a lot of high risk teens, families. He’s got stuff that I’ve moved away from in my career. And I think the way that Curt has tapped into this is that he’s been willing to handle high risk, high acuity cases in person with a lot of resources put around it, and he’s really good at it, and don’t get a big head Curt, I know I don’t always tell you this, but you’re really good. And so I think for me, I think looking at some folks, especially, you know, and we have an episode that we’re going to be putting out with a couple of friends around kind of expectations on what it means to be a therapists. But I see folks, whether it’s in their therapy practice or moving into the coaching space, wanting to really lean into that personal growth, airy fairy, pie in the sky kind of ideas. And they build that without a recognition that people are not going to pay for that, or they’re not going to pay that much. That you need to live your life for that. And so to so, to shift the conversation just a little bit. How do we get to a place that we want to give something that people want to buy?
Katie Read 17:32
I love that. That’s such a good question. And this is one thing. So all the therapists that I’ve worked with over the years who have tried to move, let’s say, beyond the practice, beyond the office, and into an online business of whatever kind. This is one of the hardest shifts, and it’s because, I believe it’s because, as therapists, we’re trained to look at the whole person. We’re trained to be strengths based and strengths focused. We’re trained to look at the entire systems around a person’s life. We’re trained to do all these really beautiful things that really are part of healing. And then the truth is, when you have to bring yourself online in today’s market, today’s very crowded, very loud, very chaotic marketplace of the online world, all of that stuff that we’re trained for, all of that very big, airy fairy, like we said, stuff that we’re trained in, but that really is real, like that really has such validity in the room, one on one itself. That though, just becomes part of the noise out in the bigger space of the online world. And the only way that we actually capture someone’s attention, so that we can go deeper, so that we can do the personal growth work with them, is that we have to capture their attention first by speaking directly to where it hurts. We have to speak directly to the pain point. So if Curt’s whole specialty is high risk teenagers, we can all whether you’re a parent or not, imagine the stress of that parent who will do anything, pay anything, tell me how many times a week to show up, please. I just want my son or daughter to feel better. I just want my child to not be in this pain, or to not be behaving in these ways or whatever it is. And so when we speak directly to where it hurts, that is only where we begin to rise above the noise. And so while you might know deep down as a therapists that really what you’re going to do is a whole bunch of personal growth work and a whole bunch of authenticity work and balance work and all these things, that will not get their attention first. So for example, when I’m helping people with marketing and they’re coming to me and saying, Well, I help professional women find balance. What I always say to them is, no, you need to figure out what is this quote, unquote, professional woman saying in her own head at the end of the night that really sucks about her day, every single day. And you need to speak to her about that thing. Whether it’s the jerky boss, whether it’s the stress of trying to parent and be a working mom. You need to figure out what is the inner monolog in her head. I always call it the If only, if only this one thing would get better. Everything in my life would change. Because we all have those, right? Now they’re not necessarily true. It’s not like if only I would get a new boss, everything in my life would change. But man, in the moment when you’re laboring under that boss, you can’t stand it sure feels like it. It sure feels like it. So we look for those, if only buttons with our clients that we are most interested in going deep with them on. Because only from there, only from catching their attention first, with that deeper pain point, do we even get the opportunity to help them find the personal growth and the self actualization and all the deeper things that most of us get really excited to work on. But if you can’t even catch their attention in the first place, you never even get that chance with them, and they never get that chance with you, which is the even sadder part.
Curt Widhalm 20:59
As both of you have been talking, part of what I’ve been thinking about myself in my own practice is I do have a healthy amount of personal growth clients, but it’s because I met them when they were in those really big pain points. I don’t know many people who have successfully gone out and been ‘I want to practice of all very you know, enlightened people who just need like that last one and a half percent. And I am here to have that practice where everybody comes in ready for that last one and a half percent.’ But it’s more of I’ve accumulated people who are ready to finish the journey with me, but they started with needing 30, 40, 50, 80, 90% in order to get there.
Katie Read 21:44
I love that. That’s so well expressed. And then that is the joy of the work. But you had to start at the tougher part to even get them in the door. That’s exactly right. And if we’re just talking about catching their attention online in general, whatever it is, whether it’s on your website, whether it’s on your site today, whether it’s on the website for your coaching program, I really think what is working right now the best is I look at Tiktok and I feel like Tiktok culture has infiltrated all of our attention spans, whether we want to believe it or not. You know, whether you’re even a major consumer of Tiktok or not, it has changed the way that we interact with video, with online spaces, with all of it. It’s significantly changed it. And really, I look at that and I think, Okay, this is the direction that current attention spans are going, so we need to follow that. So along the lines with what I was saying earlier, you know your long, long webinar, nobody’s going to watch it anymore. It’s similar to everything you’re doing your long, long copy on a website or on a sales page. Nobody’s reading it anymore. People want the bullet points. They want fast, quick. They also really want information that is visually represented. And this, to me, is so important in our culture of constant multitasking and constant distractions. Anything we can do to kind of hit people’s attention from multiple points of view, like it used to be that you could just put up some nice copy on a website, and people would sit down and read it and take it in and sign up for your therapy or buy your program or whatever it was. Now it’s not like that so much. Now we kind of need to come from multiple different angles to catch the attention spans and the ways that different people want to take in information differently. And we are a highly visual culture, so obviously we’ve seen short, compelling video works amazingly well. But there’s also other ways to do it. There’s also ways that you could do, say, a very visual representation of what someone’s journey through therapy might look like. Maybe you’re creative, and you can get out there and do something that’s a bit more artistic, a bit more creative, of how they might feel coming in, how they might feel going out, what the process, the ups and downs in the middle might look like. Those little bits, those visual hooks, someone will remember those more than they’ll remember your copy that you labored over for hours and hours. More even than that, maybe reel you put on your professional Instagram page that also took you hours and hours to try to record and edit and get just right. But even just any simple visual graphic, something that jumps off the page a little bit at them, and they go, Oh, I get it now. You just showed me a formula in this visual form. And I remember that, and it stuck with me, and it clicked. Those types of things are really important in the culture today, simply because you’re competing with a busy online marketplace. You’re competing with very highly skilled content creators. So you’re trying to get someone’s attention and say, Hey, you should come to therapy here, or you should come buy my coaching program. But the very next video is going to be some really fascinating video about a new dinosaur bone they found, and that person is going to be sucked right into dinosaur bones on the very next thing on their newsfeed. And you have no control over that, and so it is hard to stand out in that. And you need to kind of honor that you really your goal is to be the best and most compelling thing. And generally, like you were saying Curt, speaking to them at that moment of pain will be the best and most compelling thing. Showing them there’s a way out of that pain will be the best and most compelling thing. And getting really clear for yourself, like you did with your practice and like Katie, like you did with your practice, and saying, I don’t want the super high risk anymore. I did that for years. I’m kind of done with that now. Being really clear about that helps you speak with so much more confidence and so much more authority to what you are most meant to do and who you are most meant to help.
Curt Widhalm 25:39
Are you finding that the people who are creating kind of the shorter form content, the Tiktoks, and spending a lot of this time and energy in that, are they getting the return on investment for that? I mean, it seems like spending a lot of time on social media is a good way to spend a lot of time on social media. And maybe this is just because I’m, you know, more focused on kind of the people who can geographically get to my physical office locations that I don’t see necessarily the return on investment for spending so much time on, you know, anybody in the world who can, who can do this. But are you seeing this actually pay off for people to invest tons and tons of time on kind of the social media content?
Katie Read 26:26
I think it depends on how you define payoff. So, I’m not a big social person. I’ve actually largely taken almost the whole last year off of social. I haven’t posted much at all myself. I also grew my business over a million dollars with very, very little social following. So I’m never, ever, ever one of these people who believes, oh, you’ve got to have 100,000 people on Instagram and anything like, I just don’t believe it. I’ve seen it in my own life and in my clients lives not to be true. So in that way, no, if you don’t like social let it go. Like, let it go. If it is not your thing. Let it go. Now in terms of payoff, I also have clients and friends who love it. It feeds them. It’s exciting to them. It’s a creative outlet. And because they love it, that shows through in their content, they do get clients from it. It really, really they they genuinely thrive in whatever realm of creativity they’re thriving in. I can give you one funny example, though, in terms of a local business where I live in Arizona, I started getting these really hilarious little Tiktoks, I’m not kidding you, from a dentist office. This local, totally local practice, a little dentist office, started putting out really funny little Tiktoks, and I was showing them to my husband because they were cracking me up. And he’s like, that’s it. We’re changing dentists. We’re going there, like, they’re hilarious. And so, I mean, we have a dentist, like, all across the street, it’s so close, but he’s like, I don’t care. I’m driving to these people. They’re so funny that I want to go there. So I do think if you’re one of those people that thrives and you’re creative, or you love putting out that stuff, it can absolutely take off for you. It just but I would say, if it drains you, and I know you guys are kind of like me, like, I think we all find it kind of draining. We’ve talked about that before. It’s not really like our great love in life to have to take out, to have to be like, I’m hanging out with my kids. I should record that for social media. Like that is not my life. I don’t enjoy that. So if it drains you and it makes you kind of miserable, I do not think you need it to grow your business to whatever you want it to be. But if you love it, absolutely, I think it can be huge for a lot of people.
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Katie Vernoy 28:37
I love that feedback, because I think so many folks come into the space and they find their therapists business building coaches on social media, and then they’re taught you have to be on social media, and this is the type of content you should do on social media, and all of those things. And so first off, yay that we don’t need to do it if we don’t want to. But I think the other part, and this is, this is something I’ve seen. And so I wanted your opinion on this as well. It seems like influencers or content creators or folks who are using social media for marketing have shifted their messaging. Have shifted how they talk about themselves, how they talk about their work. And so what are you seeing that works at this point? Right now, you’re saying this dentist was just hilarious, right? And so for folks that are more in this person to person business, whether it’s course, you know, coaching or therapy, what’s actually working to try to connect to potential clients?
Katie Read 29:34
That’s a great question. And I think it comes back similar to what I was saying to Curt. I think it comes back to you and your personality. And so I’m going to be really honest, if you are not bright and bubbly on video, and you’re putting out a bunch of videos of you talking to the camera, you are, people are going to scroll right by. I think we need to look realistically at our strengths. And you might say, Boy, I’m kind of boring on video. I’m going to really make a choice to get better, and I’m going to practice, and this is important to me, and I want to improve it. But if you’re not willing to put in that work, then I think you need to find a different way to create content if you want to that does speak to your strengths. So for example, maybe you’re a great writer. There’s plenty of people out there building entire almost faceless channels based on good writing, yeah, like based on good little bits of copy, or good pieces of information that you can put out there. Or people who are really creative with reels who do put together, like the little clips of their, I remember for a while I hired a social media manager, and she was like, you just need to record and send me like, all these clips of your daily life, like a clip of you putting on your makeup and doing your workout and doing that, I was like, No, I will never go get my camera and my tripod while I put on my like, it’s just not happening, because that’s just not my style of it. But some people are so good at it, and the dumb thing is, as much as I refuse to do it, I will sit there and watch somebody’s freaking clip of putting on their makeup in the morning with like words over it, talking about their day. Like we do consume that stuff, even if we’re not in the space of wanting to create that stuff. So in terms of what should you create? I think the reality is it’s looking at your strengths and what you love to do, and then a lot of it truly is testing. You might need to put out 50 posts over two months and look at which ones actually perform, because that gives you the information about what people want to learn or consume from you. And it might be unexpected. It might not be what you think regarding like the hilarious dental office. I think humor, if you’re funny, goes so far. And there are several examples actually out there of kind of internet famous therapists who have really, I’m thinking of like that guy, a modern therapists, Justin something or other. He’s really, really funny. There’s a lot of people that are great at creating just very funny content. I do think humor is a great way to bridge the gap. It gives people a trust in you. If they know they can share a laugh with you. There’s a certain element of like, oh, I trust you. I like you, like we can laugh together. I think that’s important. And then in terms of what else, quote, unquote is working. One thing I teach people a lot, if you really are, like, I am not gonna be thinking about social media on a weekly basis, I do actually suggest in the program I have right now, I call it low lift social. So if you go to Instagram, it’s like three across and three down. So a typical Instagram grid that fits on one page is the nine grid. I suggest, and I have done, for like, entire years at a time, a totally static nine grid where, if some let’s just say somebody hears about you. Let’s say Curt is trying to fill his local therapy practice. Somebody says, Oh, you gotta check out this guy, Curt. He’s my therapists. He’s really good. They go look you up on Instagram. I want them to find something. So what I want them to find, ideally is a nine grid, and each one can just be a different picture of you, but I want you to answer within those pictures, what are the basic questions that people are going to be curious about when they first come to you? So for example, it Curt might have nine different pictures of himself. Some might be professionals. Some might be casual or with the family or whatever. But you think to yourself, what are people curious about when they first look up me or my practice or my office? What do they want to know? So something might be like one of the questions you might have a picture of yourself and just go onto Canva, go into a free service like Canva, and write words over your picture. And just write like, what is my background? What is my specialty? What do I do in my free time? Like, any questions that you think a new potential client would want answered, so that it kind of helps build that trust between you and this new potential client, enough trust for them to take the next step of making the phone call. So for each of those, I would literally have your picture, the question over it, and then they click on that, and they’re going to get the caption where you’ve written out the answer to that question, hopefully in a compelling way. And you’ve offered them the next step, hey, if you want to book an appointment, call this number. And so just doing that, having that static nine grid where a new person can come and kind of binge their way through your initial introductory questions, you’d be surprised how much business you can create just doing that and not worrying about constantly filling up your grid or your space with new content all the time.
Curt Widhalm 34:35
One of the other things that I’m hearing from, particularly newer clinicians getting into the field, and maybe it’s just that they need to go back and listen to all of the old things that we’ve put out there. But it’s just kind of like that, not knowing who they are, what kind of practice that they want, yet, just knowing that they want to be in private practice. Do you have any advice for kind of getting into okay, you need to do more than just to have a license and a practice place for people to land, as far as getting into the kinds of clients that they want.
Katie Read 35:04
I love that. I think so much of that I don’t know about you guys, at least for me, sometimes in the beginning, what you think will be your niche doesn’t remain your forever niche. And I think that’s so normal, because partly when you’re first starting out, you might think something is definitely your niche. And I strongly encourage you to go towards whatever you think that might be, and then as you evolve as a per I can’t tell you how many people have they’ve had one niche, and then maybe they got married, couldn’t get pregnant, went through IVF, that became a hugely passionate journey, and now they specialize in helping other people going through IVF, or helping other people going through divorce, or some life experience that they had later that really crystallized for them and said, Oh, this is what I meant to do. This is what I’m passionate about, because I’ve now had this life experience. And I love that when I see that, because that is truly what I think is the evolution of our stories and the ways that we do move through the world and use those things. So many therapists are just natural teachers, right? Like we really are the kind of people who take in an experience, metabolize it, and then want to teach other people what we’ve learned along the way. Want to help guide other people through having that similar experience. We want to help other people maybe not have that same level of pain that we went through, if at all possible. And so I think partly for a newer clinician, it’s trust your instinct. Go where you’re going to go first, and don’t force yourself to think you have to be married to it forever by any means. And I do think much of practice building maybe, just like life is a matter of testing, it’s a matter of testing. What are the things that seem to give me the most return for my investment on practice building? Who are the clients that I genuinely feel lit up by? Oh, maybe that’s where I should be looking as my niche. You know, what are the things that seem to give me the most creative excitement when it comes to marketing my practice? Because if you’re trying to force yourself into a marketing box that doesn’t light you up creatively, you will burn out on it, and that’ll be the end of that. So realizing, as you go through just recognizing, taking a step back, looking at your own reactions, maybe you’re the person who goes to a networking event or a networking coffee, and you get out of there and you’re like, Wow, I’m actually lit up. I’m not drained from that. I actually love that. I’m going to double down on networking events or networking coffees. Maybe you’re the person who does edit that reel, and you don’t even care if it doesn’t get a huge response, because you just had so much fun editing that piece of content. So it’s looking and just observing your own responses to things and trusting that, trusting your joy, trusting yourself to go in that direction, that will create that dream practice, little by little as you learn about yourself over time.
Curt Widhalm 37:51
Where can people find out more about you and all the wonderful things that you’re doing?
Katie Read 37:54
Thank you for asking. katieread.com: K-A-T-I-E-R-E-A-D.com. And right now I’m doing a program with my business partner, like I mentioned, which is not specific just to therapists, which is kind of exciting. So it’s all sorts of different people who are growing online coaching programs, online courses, online memberships. And what’s fun about that is getting to learn from people beyond just the crucible of our profession, getting to learn from people in all sorts of different walks of life and different niches. And it’s really, actually very fun. We have several therapists in there, but we also have people who are doing anything and everything, and so it’s fun, and I think you get a much more broad picture of what really does work, and building a funnel in marketing and what you put on a website, you get a much more broad view of all of those things when you get out of the little bubble of just the therapist world, and you actually start making friends and making new acquaintances, even beyond that world, it’s a really it’s a great time.
Curt Widhalm 38:58
And we will include a link to Katie’s site over in our show notes at mtsgpodcast.com. Follow us on our social media. Join our Facebook group the Modern Therapists Group to continue on with the conversation and until next time, I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy and Katie Read.
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Announcer 39:15
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