Welcome to the Online Counselling Podcast, exploring the practice of counseling through technology. Here’s your host, Clay Cockrell.
Clay Cockrell: Hello. This is Clay Cockrell. Welcome to the Online Counselling Podcast where we peek behind the door, the curtain of private practice practitioners who are working online and using technology to reach clients all over the world, hoping to learn from them, avoid some of the pitfalls and maybe pick up some tips and tricks on how to have successful practice online.
Today is Episode 7. I saved the Episode 7 slot for the incredibly energetic Jo Muirhead, who you will notice is from Australia. She is a ball of energy. She is a career development coach and rehabilitation councilor. She is working globally with clients all over the world and she has a lot of information if you are thinking of having a practice online or have one and want to grow it. She is an incredible resource. Hope you enjoy. Be sure to look at our show notes to learn more about her to catch on her website, jomuirhead.com. If you want to listen to more podcasts, check out onlinecounselling.com/podcasts. That’s Online Counselling spelled with 2 l’s. Be sure to rate us if you get a chance and review because we want to learn what you like, what you don’t like, how we can answer questions so that we can all learn together. Without any more listening to me, enjoy Episode 7, Jo Muirhead.
Hello and welcome to the Online Counselling Podcast. I am Clay Cockrell. This is the place where we learn about therapists who are practicing online or therapists who are hoping to take a practice online. It’s a chance just to talk to those that are doing it and also those that are helping therapists grow their practice, kind of an entrepreneurial spirit and learning from those that go before.
Tonight, I am thrilled to have a wonderful guest all the way from Australia down under. We have Jo Muirhead who is a career development coach having a history in rehabilitation counseling. She is the founder of Purple Co. Welcome to the show, Jo Muirhead. Hi, Jo!
Jo Muirhead: Hi, Clay. Thank you very much for that lovely introduction and reminding me that we are down under.
Clay: You are down under for us. I guess we are down under for you.
Jo: That’s great. I haven’t heard that for a long time so that’s funny.
Clay: Oh really?
Jo: Yeah, yeah. That’s cool.
Clay: My wife is a huge tennis fan, and I know that in a month or so, you’re going to have the Australian Open.
Jo: Open, yes. That’s wonderful because I enjoy tennis. What’s wonderful about summer time in Australia which is happening for us now is we get lots of cricket which I love which I understand no one else on this call will understand. Lots of cricket. When cricket’s not happening, tennis is happening. It’s just lots of time to sit and watch sport. Yay!
Clay: Yay! Absolutely. As many of our callers can hear, Jo has wonderful energy. Tell us a little bit about your experience because you’re doing rehabilitation counseling and then you’re also coaching therapists and other professionals to start a private practice. Just tell us a little bit about you.
Jo: I’m Jo. I have a degree in Rehabilitation Counseling. What rehabilitation counseling is is interesting. It’s actually born from the United States. There was a discipline missing they identified after the Second World War with the repatriation of return service personnel. There were lots of people helping them with the physical therapy or the healing components, the psychological treatment that needed to happen. There was a disconnect for these returning service personnel back into their communities and particularly back into work. The discipline of rehabilitation counseling was born to support the physical therapists and the occupational therapists and the psychologists but also help that client reintegrate back into their community. We’re very much aligned with helping people get their earning capacity back but also managing or maximizing quality of life.
For the last 20 years, I’ve been practicing as a rehabilitation counselor here in Australia. I have done my fair share of burnouts as a rehabilitation counselor. I have a very good burnout story, one that where I triumphed and the hero returns. What broke that cycle for me was actually going into private practice for myself. I’d come out of a particularly horrible experience with yet another employer where I thought I was a great manager of people, and somewhere in my head I decided that I could only be a manager for other people, not for myself.
I saw myself behaving in a way that I really didn’t like and took myself out of the paid workforce and thought about what the heck it was that I wanted to do. I needed cash because you need money to live on. So I started consulting back into some of the companies that I thought I would be interested in being aligned with until I worked out what it was that I wanted to do.
Here we are, eight years later where I have a thriving practice. There’s seven consultants in my practice, seven health professionals. I’m a multi-therapist, allied health professional practice. We focus on quite specific… Our insurance is very different to yours. We worked with what is known as a high-risk, high-cost claimant in an income protection space or disability insurance space, not in health insurance. We also do a lot of work with what’s known as our lifetime care and support authority. These are people who have had very severe road accidents, so brain injury, spinal cord injury, amputation.
The reputation that I’ve built for us is if you think that your claimant or your experience of injury, illness, and disability is difficult, then my guess is we are the right company to help you. Our philosophy is very much “There’s always a way. Don’t tell me it can’t be done.”
Clay: I like that philosophy.
Jo: Yeah.
Clay: That’s wonderful because I think a lot of people listening are either working in maybe a mental health clinic or a hospital and would love to start their own practice. Not only did you do that. You now have a thriving practice and people are working for you.
Jo: Yes, that’s correct. That happens really quickly. That happens within six months.
Clay: Really?
Jo: Yeah, so within the first six. One of the things I want to be able to share with you is, in my experience and what I’ve taught people, you can go from no income to 100 grand revenue in less than 12 months. You don’t have to wait five years to do that. That’s doing the work you love the way you love to do it. You’re not sitting there selling 1000 hours a week because we can’t do that. That’s unsustainable. But it is about learning who you are, who you serve, and how to talk to those people in a way that they can hear you.
One of the frustrations for me in the beginning, I didn’t have a website for two years. I actually went to my first quarter of a million dollars without a website. Yes, it is possible. It’s probably not likely to happen these days, but that was eight years ago. Most of my practice has been built offline. My Purple Co online presence is pretty poor. Please go check it out so you can really tell me how poor it is because people love to do that. That’s www.purpleco.com.au. Please give me a feedback.
Clay: I like your website. I went to it and I thought it was quite good.
Jo: It’s not up to date. It tells people what they need to know. For me, an offline presence has been the way I’ve built that practice, and that’s probably my strength as somebody who helps people build practices. If you can replicate your offline presence online, then you can integrate the two of those things to the betterment. That’s your first point of leverage is stop confusing your audience.
Clay: So have a clear message and certainly either start, but the foundation is offline, its relationships, its connections.
Jo: Absolutely. It is. We are health professionals. We know the basic skills of rapport. This is where I find it quite interesting because as we start moving into a space as private practitioners, we learn that we’ve got to do this thing called marketing and sales. Everyone freaks out because we didn’t go to college to learn how to do marketing and sales. We went to college to learn how to do psychology and behavioral science and therapy and occupational therapy. The whole marketing and sales component is like “Oh my god! That’s really scary. I don’t want to sound like the person who just tried to sell me a car.”
Clay: Right.
Jo: You don’t have to. We are experts in human behavior. I’m sorry, Clay. Just going to say it out now. We are.
Clay: Sure.
Jo: We know how to listen. We know how to attend. We know to build rapport. We actually have the skills and should be the best at a sales conversation or a marketing conversation because we actually get how people behave. It’s not that far remote. It’s tweaking what we do in a therapy session to a marketing audience, and then it becomes easy. It becomes effortless because you’re not using a different skill set. You’re using the same skill set. You’re just using a few different words.
Clay: I haven’t heard it put that way. But it absolutely makes sense. We are good at connecting with other humans as therapists and health professionals. I always talk about with a spirit of service. I am here. How can I help you? These are the different ways. It’s educational.
Jo: Absolutely. One of the best marketing campaigns I’ve ever run for my clinical practice was I went out to some people I wanted as customers. This was ballsy. This was brave or bold of me, but I tend to do bold, brave things because it gets noticed. I said, “What do you hate about working with your current service providers? What annoys you?” People love to tell you and love to give you critique, don’t they? That ended up giving me so much information that I could then go and create a service delivery that spoke right into those pain points because they actually went “Oh, nobody communicates with us. We don’t understand what’s going on. We don’t know what it is that you do. People seem to leave their practices all the time and nobody tells us what’s going on.” I’m like “Wow, that’s actually not hard to be good. We just keep people up to date.”
Clay: Wow. That step alone, going out there and talking, getting your foot into the door of potential customers, how did you do that? You just kind of show up?
Jo: No. No, please don’t do that. Stalking is a thing. I guess who do you know and who do the people you know know. If you draw a circle—and it’s really hard because we’re visually—fill that circle with all the people that we know. We can create a brand new circle for that person and all the people they know. In the beginning, you’ve got to get really clear on who you are and who you serve, and then you go and start talking to the people that you want to serve. You connect.
There’s so many different ways we connect with people. LinkedIn is super powerful for me in my clinical practice. Super powerful. I’m actually about to get rid of my clinical practice Facebook page because it doesn’t serve me. But LinkedIn serves me brilliantly. You can make really good connections with people on LinkedIn. They give you a lot of information about who they are professionally and some information that they give you about who they are personally. Rather than just pressing the Accept button for LinkedIn or Facebook, you actually go and have a look. Who is this person? Do we have anything in common? Is this person someone that I would actually be interested? Can I serve them? Because I know you guys in the States you’ve got state-based legislation that you have to consider.
Clay: Cool.
Jo: Does this person fit my ideal client profile? And then you can just start having a conversation. Pretty quickly that will lead to generating some interests. Similar to you about service, I always come from a spirit of generosity. What can I do to help you? What’s going on? For me, as a clinician, I’ve got lots of other perceived competitors out there wanting to connect with me. It’s like “Hey, I see that you’re for XYZ company. They’re really great. I know they do good work about this stuff. What can I help you with? Is there anything that you need at the moment that I could help you with?” You’d be surprised how many people come back and tell me what I can help them with.
Clay: That’s a great foot in the door.
Jo: Yeah, it’s a great… Once people realize that you’re not… See, I think the mistake that most people make is they get business cut. They spend way too much time agonizing over a logo, number one.
Clay: Oh my god, yes.
Jo: Then they get business cards printed, and then they get flyers printed, and then they spend a heap of money on a website. But then nobody gets to see this stuff. Then they think that’s going and plonking at the medical center’s front desk reception area without having a discussion with the practice manager or the pediatrician or the psychiatrist about how to use this information. I think we’ve got to stop assuming that everybody knows what to do with our marketing stuff, and we actually need to create a conversation for the psychiatrist to have with their patients about who we are.
Clay: It’s about the relationships, isn’t it?
Jo: It really is. The beautiful thing there, Clay, is if it’s just about the relationships, you only need five to 10 people in your world and just massage those relationships and you will have a steady flow, a steady stream of clients coming through your door all the time. Because every time you’ve got space on your client load, you can go “Hey, five people of awesomeness, just wanted to let you know I’ve currently got space. Is there anybody I could help you with at the moment?” I get to do this every couple of months with the five people that I’ve targeted this year, and within two days I’ve got brand new paying clients through my door.
Clay: Wow. Here’s what’s fascinating to me. You have this thriving practice. How did you then make the decision of I want to help others do this and to become a coach?
Jo: I didn’t make that decision. Seriously, I fell into people who asked me.
Clay: Okay.
Jo: I’ve been doing this for five years now, and it really started off as these are the six steps that I took, how about we spend the next 12 weeks because I’m big on planning. I do planning with my clients all the time. It was easy for me to just come up with this is what we can do in 12 weeks, I’m going to meet with you every fortnight. We’re going to talk about these things. Pretty much, it was step by step by step by step. I’m sorry. This comes down really arrogant. But the issue that comes up for people within six weeks of working with me is they’ve got too much work to do. There’s too many clients coming through the door.
Clay: A hold.
Jo: I know. That’s why I was kind of scared about saying it.
Clay: No. Hey, jump right in. I want the confidence. That’s absolutely what people want to hear. Go ahead.
Jo: But you have to do the work. You can’t just sit there and receive training by osmosis. I’m a strong implementer. I don’t like education for the sake of it. I like education to actually make a difference. When people take a hold of the information that I’ve got and apply it the way it’s intended—I teach people and I help people do that—then, they’re going to get the results which is clients through the door, steady stream of referrals, and the confidence that there’s always enough money in the bank. Plus the other thing I make everybody do is take a holiday.
Clay: Oh, no. Not really.
Jo: Yeah, really.
Clay: Yeah, yeah. There’s too many people in this field that don’t really know what a holiday, what we would call in the US a vacation. They just don’t do that. You get burned out so quickly that way.
Jo: You do. I’ve learned that lesson and I’ve learned it really well. I was a single mum when I was learning that lesson. So I don’t ever need to do that again, and I now know how to do it. But that’s self-awareness and we need to practice what we preach around self-awareness because we’ll teach our clients about self-awareness all the time, but we actually need to get good at that and realize that that’s important. One of my key philosophies is if we aren’t healthy and whole when we’re in a session with a client, we’re actually ripping them off.
Clay: Wow. I think I might steal that quote. That’s brilliant. That’s absolutely brilliant. We are not servicing our clients when we are not healthy ourselves.
Jo: I say that in all genuineness because I remember what I was like when I was trying to serve clients and I wasn’t healthy and whole and when I was burned out and when I was worried about which piece of paper had to go where and I was worried about the size of my case list, and I was working 14-hour days. I’ve been there. I’ve done that. I know my clients weren’t getting what they needed from me. They were getting a surface, churn and burn, tick and flick approach. There are people who are traumatized. These are people who have lost limbs. These are people who have lost earning capacity. That was not okay. I will say that in all fairness. That was not okay.
Clay: Sure. I’m not sure where to go next. One of the things you mentioned in our first conversation getting to know one another is that you’ve got all this wonderful information, but it’s not kind of a factory that people come to you and you just churn them through “Here’s my three-step process.” It really is kind of learning about them, what their needs are, and tailoring your approach in development and coaching toward them. Tell me a little bit about that.
Jo: You can’t take the rehab counselor out of me when I become a practice building coach. I don’t have a seven-step system to a thriving practice. I possibly do. I just don’t see it. I guess I’ve built a multi-therapist practice. I’ve built income streams around speaking. I’ve built an income stream around an online presence. I’ve built an income stream about developing programs and delivery online. I’ve done that for both my practice building and also in my practice. I haven’t written a book. My credibility piece is I’ve still got a thriving practice that does all of these things. I’m just trying to remember the question.
Clay: You tailor it.
Jo: Oh, that’s exactly right. In my rehab practice, every person that comes through the door is a unique individual. We don’t say that we tailor our services. We highly customize everything that’s going on. It’s a no-brainer for me to take that into my coaching practice. Not everybody is built to have a multi-therapist practice. There are some people out there who shouldn’t have them.
I’ve actually worked with two very well-known clinical psychologists here in Australia. My work with them was to act actually get rid of their multi-therapist practice and then set them up as expert authors and speakers because that was a better model for them. They didn’t need or want the staffing issues and the recruitment issues. They just wanted to be able to research and speak and write and deliver, and they’re making more money with much greater profitability, and they’re feeling more fulfilled.
Not everyone should be a multi-therapeutic practice and not everybody needs to have an online program. But there’s so much we can do online. Skype is a beautiful tool, and then there are so many other voiceover internet connection tools that we can use to connect with people. The whole border, we can get rid of borders and actually deliver services to people who need them. I think one of the beautiful things is working with people who go “Right, I want to start delivering services rural and remotely to populations where they don’t have services.” I’m like “That’s really cool because that’s why God invented the internet.” If we can have orthopedic surgeons giving advice via the internet into a surgical room in Bangladesh so that surgery can happen, then you and I can provide mental health care to somebody who can’t get to a counselor. Does that make sense?
Clay: Absolutely makes sense. That is so much about what this is about. Tell me a little bit about your experience working online, therapists that are perhaps taking their practice online. What’s your experience with that?
Jo: My experience was I was absolutely terrified of online when it started and when I started and did not understand the power of it and probably didn’t harness it very well for about four years. The thing about online, it’s just so many opportunities. But unfortunately what I see happening with a lot of health professionals is they come to me going “I want to just deliver online. I never want to see a person again. I just wanted to sell programs and products and never see a person again.” That worries me because what they’re telling me is “I’m burnt out, completely burnt out.” If they’re that burnt out, they haven’t got the energy that takes to actually build your online program and presence effectively.
Again, so we have to work on that first and that’s always a bit disappointing because a lot of people still expect that you create a website and build a program and throw it up into the interweb, and then all of a sudden you’re going to get all these referrals. There’s just this expectation. I actually don’t ever remember a time when that happened. But there’s just this bizarre expectation if I put it on this thing called the internet, then I’m going to get referrals.
Helping people understand that Facebook, if Facebook was a country, it is as big or bigger than China or India, like it’s the third largest nation on the planet or something.
Clay: And that’s just Facebook.
Jo: That’s just Facebook. If you throw up a post on Facebook and expect one post to get you all these referrals or you throw up a Facebook fan page and expect it to generate referrals, people, think about it. Helping to spill some of those myths about being online is kind of important. But once you get that online presence sorted and know how to treat your online opportunity, being able to talk to your ideal client in a way that they can hear you is super important.
Most business coaches will get you to work out who your ideal client is. It’s usually an avatar exercise or ideal client exercise. I do that exercise on steroids. So basically you become your ideal client. You know them better than they know themselves so that you can actually create your stories and your language so that they’re attracted to it because we know how the speaking therapists speak.
Clay: Yes. We’re very good with that.
Jo: We are very good at it and we’re very good at the DSM thingy even though we want to laugh at it because we go “Yes, I’m sure I need to tick that box one day.” But we’re very good at therapist speak and we’re very good at clinical therapy speak and we’re very good at clinical notes speak which is useless to a prospective client who just wants to know that “Clay, you’ve heard me. Clay, you get me. Clay, you’re the right person to help me.”
Clay: Right. Once you have that up there in the website, it’s fascinating to me that people will come to me and they have read everything about me that I’ve forgotten was up there, a blog post, every media consulting I ever did. It’s out there. I’ve told a story and they’ve gotten to know me and they picked me.
Jo: Yes.
Clay: So many therapists are like “Okay, I’m just going throw this up with a name and here’s my education” and hoping somebody will pick you and they don’t.
Jo: No, they don’t and that’s where I get a little bit concerned because some people are competing on price and they think that that’s sensible, and that for me opens up a whole conversation about knowing your worth and the valuing of our professions. But you think about your own buying behavior. If you needed to go to an orthopedic surgeon, just say someone said, “I need a knee replacement,” Clay, you need a knee replacement, are you going to go to the orthopedic surgeon who is the cheapest at the general hospital who does orthopedic surgery on every part of the body, or are you going to go and find a person who specializes in knee replacements?
Clay: I’m going to the specialist every time.
Jo: Absolutely. So if you have a concern with a gastro problem, are you going to go to a pediatrician?
Clay: No.
Jo: We, as mental health professionals or any professionals, we need to help our clients, our prospective clients understand who we are, who we serve, what we stand for.
Clay: Yes. Go ahead.
Jo: Sorry, I’m a bit passionate.
Clay: I hear it. You’re working with a lot of people from life coaches, therapists, and those people taking their practice online providing services remotely.
Jo: Yep.
Clay: In your experience in Australia, are there any barriers to that? Because in the US, we are struggling with a lot of licensure issues and insurance issues. What it’s like in Australia?
Jo: We’re a massive, great, big country with not a lot of people in it. We have what I consider to be third-world internet, so it’s awesome to take your business online if you’ve got good internet. I guess one of the themes that I’m seeing in both Australia and in the States is licensure issues. We don’t have state-based licensure here. It’s national or sometimes international. That allows us and me in particular, we in my clinical practice, we get flown all over the country to do work. That’s okay because we don’t have to be state-based to do that. For me, working in the US, there’s no credentialing for what I do. People come to me because of the results. I could spend a whole heap of money and time on become credentialed, but it won’t change my results. I really doubt it will change my results.
I guess for you guys in the States where this is such a big deal, if you’re going to work with people—I’ve got a gorgeous client at the moment from Texas. Now I understand Texas is huge.
Clay: Yes, they’re huge. They’re pretty big.
Jo: Yeah, apparently they’re big. She’s got this massive amount of people in her state that we can target. She doesn’t have to go and travel to them all. She can still do online services because Texas from one end to the other is like a long time. But it’s making really clear in your social media presence, in your website, this is the people I serve. I best serve these people. If you’re in Texas and you’re looking for somebody who is ABC and D, then I’m your girl. That’s the way we make it work.
Clay: There are some therapists out there that are comfortable with saying that “I am educated. I am licensed. I live in Texas, but I feel comfortable doing therapy with somebody in Kentucky or New York.” And they’re okay with that. I think that eventually that’s probably going to be some kind of national licensure down the road. But then there are therapists that are saying “I’m in Texas. I’m only going to treat according to my ethics and standards of my licensure. I can only treat people in Texas.” We’re seeing both I think.
Jo: I think so and I think this is why historically all over the world now we’ve got people moving away from the constraints of licensure and moving into less restrictive practices which is where I think the boom of coaching and mentoring has occurred. I think that’s happening on two levels. One, there’s a ground swell of consumers or clients who are going “I don’t want to go to a therapist because that means they’re going to tell me that I’m borderline personality disorder and schizophrenic” because there is this strong correlation between therapy and a really severe mental health. But then as the therapist, we’ve also got all these rules about who we can treat, how we can treat them, when we can treat them, who’s going to pay us, how they’re going to pay us, when I can sneeze, when I can breathe. Like that’s how it feels to me.
Clay: Yeah.
Jo: I think what we are doing both as consumers and as practitioners is we’re saying these rules and regulations no longer fit the modern world. I think what you do in talking to people who live in basically in non-English speaking countries who need access to therapists and people who live apart who need somebody, that to me I just smile. That is so clever. But that’s going to be cross cultural. That’s going to be cross borders. That’s going to be cross international borders. Do you get a licensure in every state? Is that even possible?
Clay: Yeah, sure it’s possible. But it would take a fortune and a lot of time. In some states you would have to go and retake the tests and submit your educational degree. It would take a lot. But there’s nothing saying that I can’t, sitting in New York, can’t have a session with somebody in Canada or the UK or India. There is a global market out there. There are people that are in pain that are in need of services, and if you’re clear in what you do, I think that there is a practice out there.
Jo: Absolutely. I think because we are taught to be such good risk managers, most of us are dealing with people with, are dealing with people who are incredibly fragile and incredibly vulnerable. All the time, right out of uni even in college or university we’re managing risks. Is this person a risk to themselves or are they a risk to others? Are they at risk at falling? Are they at risk of not being able to walk tomorrow? What happens if they can’t get out of bed? We’re constantly doing this risk management thing. We just do it naturally. It feels second nature to most of us all the time. But we take that second nature into oh, this is what the rules are. If I break the rules, something really bad could happen. If I discharge a patient without doing all the right things, something really bad could happen. We take that into our therapy practice building going “If I don’t do this right, something really bad could happen.” I think that’s where having an entrepreneurial spirit kicks in because true entrepreneurs are going to break the rules.
Clay: Yes, yes.
Jo: We now have this dichotomy where I’m working within the rules, best practice, and what research tells me is safe for this person to do and I want to care for this person and make sure that they are making good choices for their life. And then there’s this other part of me that’s going “So, today, I’m not going to do marketing the way digital marketer tells me to do it or the way some other marketing expert tells me to do it. I’m going to try it this way and see what happens.”
Clay: That is just anathema to so many people. You spend so much time doing the exact opposite. When you’re working with somebody, do you kind of foster that sense of risk, of entrepreneurship, of “Let’s try and see what happens”?
Jo: Yes, I’m really be going “Let’s just be curious.”
Clay: Yes. Let’s be curious. I love that.
Jo: Let’s just be curious. Let’s just take Facebook as an example. I don’t believe everybody needs to be on Facebook for their business. A lot of people come to me going “It’s going to be Facebook, going to be Facebook. Got to make money. It’s going to be Facebook.” I’m like “Okay.” I’m curious to know what makes you think this. Let’s start putting some metrics in place. What would you like to measure? And then of course I tell them what we will be measuring, and then we look at how much time goes into that. We look at how much money goes into that. I’m like “Okay, that’s really cool. Could we just be curious and try the same thing over here on LinkedIn just for a week and see what happens?” And they’re like “Okay, that’s cool. It’s only a week. Let’s do it.” And then I can compare and contrast.
It’s not me being bossy. I can be very bossy. But it’s about I need to help you get comfortable in taking a risk here. That’s a lot of the work that I do right in the beginning is there are some people where I need to rein them in a bit and go “Okay, we’re just going to create something sensible now.” Most people however it’s “Let’s just learn to take a risk” and it’s a small risk because the more you practice your risk-taking behavior, the better you feel about it. In six weeks’ time, this is not going to feel uncomfortable. Can you remember the first time you ever put up a blog post?
Clay: Yes.
Jo: How did you feel?
Clay: How did I feel? I felt exhausted from writing it. I felt incredibly vulnerable, excited that the whole world was going to read it instead of just my mother. Yeah, certainly. But then you do it ten times and it just becomes routine.
Jo: Yeah, it does. You even get to the point, if you’re like me, where you go “Oh, look at that. Another spelling mistake. I can fix that tomorrow.” That’s a really good example because so many people get so caught up and I’ve just got to get my first blog post out and we get caught up in the paralysis that comes with perfectionism. It’s like “Sweetheart, I want you to do this four or five times in the next five weeks because in five weeks’ time, this is going to be so your new normal. It’s going to be ‘Ooh, I haven’t blogged this week. I better get on to it.’ There will be no angst attached to it at all.”
Clay: Is there a client out there, a therapist coach professional that you feel like maybe you can’t work with or is this private practice is just not for them?
Jo: Ooh.
Clay: Be honest.
Jo: Yeah. I’m going to say yes. And now you’re going to ask me to describe them, so that’s going to be tricky.
Clay: Okay.
Jo: I don’t believe private practice is for everybody, and that’s really awesome for those of us who know private practice is excellent for us because now we have employees and staff.
Clay: Yes, right.
Jo: Yeah. People who are incredibly risk-adverse, if you’re the type of person who needs to know that your income is coming into your bank account at the same time every week and it will be exactly the same and the thought of that changing even by $40 makes you want to be sick, then we probably need to have a different discussion about the type like private practice might not be the right place for you. Yeah?
Clay: Yeah.
Jo: I personally think that you need to have your clinical skills well-honed. It’s very difficult. I’ve watched a few people do it and I don’t think it’s smart. I think in the beginning we need to get our clinical skills to the point where that’s our new normal, and then we start adding our business skills to that. I think trying to do both t the same time. Some people are going to do it and do it really well. I just get a bit concerned about what clinically could get missed if you’re focusing on how I do a marketing and sales conversation, and now I have to go and learn how to do my therapy again. That’s a personal opinion. I’m not saying it’s for everyone. I didn’t do that.
I don’t like working with therapists or any health professional who doesn’t have five years experience because I know that there are some stuff that they need to deal with themselves in their own clinical practice that’s going to interrupt their private practice, and I wonder whether it’s fair. That’s my style of working. There are other coaches out there who will say “You can do it! It’s awesome. This is how you do it. That’s how I did it.”
Clay: Yeah, yeah. I want to be cognizant of your time.
Jo: Yeah, it’s fine.
Clay: Maybe some tips out there that somebody listening is like “Oh, that’s a great idea that I should…” either in marketing or in just the logistics. Some people ask that question and they talk about be sure about your camera angle on your laptop so that you’re looking at the camera, which is a really important tip. I’m like I haven’t really thought about that. Is there something you can share?
Jo: When you’re going to start ramping up your online presence, remember that everything you do online is a conversation. Every email sequence you create is a conversation. Most people know what an opt-in is or a free gift. The conversation that you have with this person to get them to take your free gift and give you their email address and the conversation you have with them afterwards needs to be the same conversation. It’s a conversation. Plan the conversation.
On your website, as people they’ll come to individual pages, we know people don’t stay on your website for any long period of time. But your website needs to make sense. It needs to have a conversation. When you go from the home page to the opt-out page to the Work With Me page to the whatever next page, it needs to have the same look and feel. It needs to have the same context. It needs to have the same conversation. I think if we can get clear about the conversations we want to have with our ideal clients and our prospective clients, that just becomes so much easier because we know how to do it when we’re in the therapy room. We know how to have a conversation.
Clay: Sure.
Jo: I was working with a gentleman yesterday, and I said to him, “I want you to change this entire email sequence. Write it as though you’ve gone to the pub, you’re playing pool with people you’ve never met, and you’ve got a beer in your hand.” His conversation came back so much better, and it was so much more engaging, and it got rid of all the clinical speak. He’ll get people responding because he’s talking like a human. He’s not talking like a therapist.
Clay: Absolutely. A human. That’s a good, good tip is that it needs to be authentic and real conversation. From either Facebook post to blog post to About page to emails, people will say, “I just found you online. Can you tell me a little bit about your services?” That’s not the beginning of the conversation. The beginning of the conversation was when they found me online, and so we need to continue that in the email response.
Jo: Correct.
Clay: All the way up to the initial consult so they know what they’re getting.
Jo: I’m so glad that you said that. If they looked at you online, the conversation has been going on for a while. I know there are people out there in the world who have never had a consult with me, who have never bought from me, who know everything about me and everything that I’ve ever said online because they tell me.
Clay: One of my favorite stories is somebody found me five years before they actually called, and they had a sticky with my name and website on their computer, and even when they change offices and cubicles, they took that little sticky. One day, I’m going to call him. They had this five-year relationship with me thinking and getting for the right time to call, and I needed to be consistent with their expectations when they show up on my email list.
Jo: That’s a powerful example.
Clay: Isn’t that just wild?
Jo: Yeah.
Clay: You create these relationships through your blog post, through your public persona, and that needs to be consistent. It can only be consistent if you start out being authentic I think.
Jo: Absolutely. Well, it’s too hard. It’s so much effort to be one person online and a person offline. I don’t have the energy to do that. We’re mental health professionals. We actually help people reintegrate fractured psyches, so let’s not go out there and pretend we’ve got a fractured psyche. One of the biggest compliments I get from people is when they meet me, like “Oh, you’re Jo from Instagram” or “You’re Jo from LinkedIn” or “You write those really cool blog posts.” And then they’ll say, “You’re exactly the same as you are online.”
Clay: And there you are.
Jo: I’m like “Oh, thank goodness. I actually had to relearn how to do that because I thought I had to be very professional online and I had a very corporate picture. I only ever said things with a proper enunciation. And now I’m like “You know what? Today is a kind of sucky day and we all just need to get over it.”
Clay: Right. Jo, you had been incredibly valuable. How can people, let’s say they’re listening to this, they want to work with you. They want to know more. You talked about Purple Co which is purpleco.com.au. Are there other ways that they can get in touch with you?
Jo: If you think you would like to know more about the rehabilitation practice and how we help people return to work following injury, illness, and trauma, then Purple Co is your place. Purple Co is an amalgam of purpose for people in case anyone was interested. That’s my mum’s legacy. She came up with that. That’s pretty cool.
Clay: Very cool.
Jo: If you’re interested in knowing more about how I work with people to help them build a practice, I’m all about success, sustainability, and profitability. I won’t teach you how to work a 60-hour week. I’ll actually stop you from doing that. That website is jomuirhead.com. It’s really that simple. We’re having show notes here?
Clay: We’re going to have show notes. I want to spell, in case somebody’s like in the car or somewhere and they’re going “I don’t know how to spell Muirhead,” it’s J-O, M like Mary, U-I-R-H-E-A-D like dog.com.au.
Jo: No au. I’m all over the world.
Clay: You’re all over the world .com. Alright. That’s how you contact. But it will be in the show notes.
Jo: That’s very cool. I can also send you some links for my LinkedIn and my Facebook page as well. My Facebook page for my practice building is a great community. We talk about lots of interesting stuff. It’s about where you can come and be inspired and motivated and basically learn from what I do on a day-to-day basis, which includes my own rehab at the moment because I’ve got a fairly bad back injury, and that’s been interesting. Talk about being vulnerable. Woo hoo!
Clay: Yeah, wow. I’m sorry to hear that. I hope you’re okay.
Jo: I am doing so much better. I can walk today and that’s awesome.
Clay: It’s the little things, isn’t it, Jo?
Jo: It is.
Clay: Again, thank you so much for coming on. We are going to have all this in the show notes if you want to learn more about her. If you want to learn more about the other podcasts that we have here or anything about online counseling, be sure to go to onlinecounselling.com/podcasts. That’s Online Counselling spelled with 2 l’s. You’ll get all sorts of information there. Jo, thank you so much. Everybody have a great day!