Welcome to the Online Counselling Podcast. Exploring the practice of counselling through technology. Here’s your host, Clay Cockrell.
Clay Cockrell: Hello welcome to the Online Counselling Podcast. The show where we get to explore the world of online therapy by talking to therapists who are actually doing it and talking to the experts in the field on how to do it correctly. Thank you so much for joining us, and thank you for the great comments that keep coming in. I can’t tell you how encouraging it is to hear from all of you. Each little compliment and question, give me a real boost of energy to keep doing this and I have really appreciate it. Keep those cards and letters coming in.
It’s a great day in New York today. Everybody seems to be letting out of sigh of relief because at one point of the weekend they thought we’re going to get hit by a Hurricane Hermione. Am I saying that right? Hermione. But she stayed out to sea and it was and an amazing weekend here. A bit gunshot when it comes to bad weather. Several years ago, we got hit by Hurricane Irene and then I think it was just the very next year the Superstorm Sandy came to town. Bringing eight feet of water into my house. Still having nightmares about that. I was very happy to see this hurricane decide not to come to town. But, my heart goes out to all those folks in Florida and the Mid-Atlantic states that did get hit. We’ll be thinking about you as you dry out. Not fun and lots of work.
Today’s is guest is a favorite of mine. He is my coach. All entrepreneurs should have a great coach in their corner and I could not have picked a better one. He is the one and only Joe Sanok. I speak from personal experience that if you are looking to talk to someone about starting a private practice or growing a private practice, Joe is your guy. He’s smart as a whip, incredibly knowledgeable about the ins and out about growing a practice. He is a founder of—and we’re having a huge fight outside apparently, the sounds of New York. Sometimes I think that people must feel like they’re tuning into an episode of Law and Order. All the sirens and horns. Anyway, I think it was relatively quiet when we actually did the interviews. There’s that. Anyway, back to Joe. He is the founder of Practice of the Practice which is his consulting arm where he works with individual therapists to grow their business. But he’s also the owner of a multi therapist practice in Traverse City, Michigan. He’s the biggest cheerleader for this town that you could ever imagine. I’ve never heard of it. And now, I can’t wait to go there one day. Apparently, it’s heaven on earth or something. He loves it so maybe one day.
But that aside, Joe is just a dynamo. It was almost a year ago I found him online. Gave him a call saying “Okay, I need to increase traffic to my website. Oh by the way, I’ve got this idea of helping therapists begin working online and maybe creating a directory, I don’t know.” Well, he took that little comment and here we are today. This whole podcast idea was Joe’s. He gets the credit or the blame. Not sure which. Here we are. I’ve got a directory up and running with over a hundred therapists all over the country and world. I have a podcast. This is our 27th episode. I’ve been able to talk to the leaders in the industry all through the guidance of Joe Sanok who takes ideas and really makes them take off.
Anyway, I’m just thrilled to have him on the show. He’s done so much to change improved my life. Yes, this is a podcast for therapists in general not just online therapists. But we talk a bit about online counseling. Hopefully he’ll be able to bring some golden nuggets your way too. One quick note, I recorded this podcast several weeks ago and have been waiting for just the right time to release it. At the end of the interview, we talked about his event that was up and coming at that time, Pino and Practice, where he was to combine wine tasting and private practice seminars. Well, unfortunately that event has already passed. But, from the pictures I saw online, it was a huge success and I’m sure he’s going to do it again. Be sure to go on a site, sign up for his mailing list, about upcoming events. He’s always got something cooking up his sleeve. Here’s Joe.
Clay: Hello and welcome to the Online Counselling Podcast. Today I’m thrilled to have with me Joe Sanok of Practice of the Practice. Welcome, Joe.
Joe Sanok: Thank you so much, Clay. Glad to be here.
Clay: Absolutely. Full disclosure. We’ve been working together for several months now and I’m just a big fan. I thought you coming on and talking a little about what you bring to the table as a private practice consultant could really help our list. We’ll touch on some online counseling stuff too. But, tell me a little bit about how you go from a counselor to private practice consultant?
Joe: Yeah. It was 2012 and I decided i was going get my feet into blogging a little bit. I was really inspired by Pat Flynn’s smart passive income podcast and thought really getting some of the stuffs I was learning about business just out onto the web would be worth testing. I think a lot of times when we have ideas, just test it. Throw some things out there. See if people buy at it and then see if you like doing it. And so, what I did is I really enjoyed blogging about business and really took the approach that I’m not the expert. I’m just a co-learner. I’m reading this book and here’s what I discovered from my practice. Pretty quickly, I started getting a quite the audience following. And then in 2013, decided to launch the Practice of the Practice podcast and again kind of dipped my toes in that. I was doing one to three podcasts a month. It was not always regular. So I had kind of had a decent following. And then in 2014, really amped it up and decided to do weekly podcasts or more. Trying to get larger kind of known people on the podcast and that’s really when things started to explode. And then, in 2015, launched the most awesome conference with Kelly and Miranda from Zynnyme and Julie Hanks. And then this year, did that again. It just seems like what’s the next reasonable step to take. In 2015 I left my full time job to do this all the time.
Clay: Wow! Incredible. Now, did you have a business background or just a curious mind?
Joe: You know the closest thing to any business training is the summer after my freshmen year of college, I sold vacuum cleaners door to door.
Clay: Really?
Joe: I sold two and a half vacuums and I sold one to my parents, one to my parent’s friends and then I got so sick of going door to door that I asked a friend of mine, “Will you just come sell vacuums with me? Just keep me company.” She and I sold one vacuum to this one couple so I got half the commission for that one. I hated it. I hated it so much. It was a decent vacuum. But I mean, trying to convince people to a two grand vacuum was worth their investment and. It just that’s what I thought business was. That’s what I thought sales was. Was having something that you didn’t believe and in trying to convince somebody against their own kind of better judgment that they should spend money at it. For me, business was always kind of like slimy. All the guys that were business students seemed like they always hi-five each other and they just seemed like not the kind of people I wanted to be. I have nothing against hi-fives once in a while. But they just always were hi-fiving. I didn’t have a good taste in my mouth regarding business. And then in counseling, the people that make lots of money are always like the bad guys. They’re the people that are oppressing people. They’re finding ways to take advantage of people. For a long time that’s what I thought business was. But really I think when I discovered that money just amplifies what’s already there. If you’re a terrible person and you have more money, you’re going to do more charitable things. If you’re a great person that’s trying to help the world to make it better and you have money, you’re probably going to do more of that.
Clay: I knew a guy back in college that did the vacuum cleaner thing. And he was this huge fan of Zig Ziglar. And he would get hyped up on Zig Ziglar before heading out to this kind of con this people into this vacuum cleaner. So you were that guy.
Joe: I was there like for a month. And then I’m like I can’t do this anymore. My friends got in really deep. I mean, this one friend and I had this ethical conversation about how they were going into trailer parks, convincing people that they could make money by spending two grand on a credit card to buy this vacuum. It didn’t sit well with him and he was like “I can’t believe I’m making money off of this” and led to a lot of those deep kind of conversations you had in college about what kind of person you want to become.
Clay: It’s interesting that you’re working with a lot of mental health professionals. Growing their practice. I am as well from a different stand point. I’m seeing that many of our colleagues and the professionals are uncomfortable with the money aspect. Are you seeing that as well? Is that part of what you do is first get them comfortable, it’s okay to make money doing what you do and then teach them how to make money? Or they’re already kind of comfortable with making money by the time they get to you?
Joe: I think by the time people want one on one consulting, especially knowing what my rates are, they usually have to be pretty okay with making money. And they’ve made that decision. So usually people have listened to the podcast for a while. They’ve read the blog. They may have some sort of mental shift. But, really I think that a lot of that comes through the content they’re taking in.
Just last night I had my supervision group. I supervised newly licensed counselors and we, for our supervision, went out sailing for four hours and did it right on the boat. And yes, not a bad way to spend supervision time. I asked them what’s one expected thing in your career that kind of bumps you out? Because I want it to be a safe place for counselors to, can I hash through like, I didn’t expect this in our field and I don’t know what to do with this and it’s a safe place to be vulnerable. One lady she said, “I feel like there’s a spectrum where one side, there’s like you get money, you take advantage of people, you raise your rates, and then on the other side there’s like Mother Teresa where you’re like kind of just give everything away and you just a have a sliding fee scale. We had this great conversation between kind of the Grinch and Mother Teresa and how do we all figure that out in our own lives. To me, that’s an ongoing thing. As I make more money, my wife and I have different kinds of conversations about the impact we want to have in the world and whether that comes through doing more sliding fees through my practice, whether it comes through outside donations, starting up a family foundation, donating to non profits we care about or going and serving in other countries. I think we have to have those conversations of how do we make the world a better place But have also be authentic to ourselves. But then not affect too much of our bottomline. Like we need to sustain over the lifetime of our careers. Because if we go out of business, then we’re not going to be serving people if we burn out.
Clay: Absolutely. Now, you bring up a point. You have a group practice of your own as well as being a private practice consultant helping other therapist grow their practices, right?
Joe: I do. I have a nine person private practice here in downtown Traverse City. It started out where I was just doing on the side to help pay out student loans and couldn’t get out insurance panels. I said you know I’ll just rent a place and so I rented an office as a percentage of what I brought in. The owner was fine with that. And then I added someone else to it. And then added the third person and then the fourth person and then it was time to upgrade to a much bigger office. Now we have a four office suite, overlooking the water. It’s really amazing to see how we’ve just taken small steps and made sense that weren’t going to be too much risk but enough that it was going to help us grow.
Clay: Yeah. I’ve heard you talked about bootstrapping that you go slowly to what you can afford at that point and it kind of teaches you which direction to go versus putting a lot of money into something and hope and pray.
Joe: Right. Right. To me, I don’t want my business to ever be something that negatively affects my family. Or I want to do my best to make that the case. I mean, we can’t ever guarantee that we’re going to be successful. But we can kind of improve the statistical advantage to ourselves. So, since the first month, I’ve made a profit. I’ve never been in debt with my business. So from the very beginning, I structured it so that we will always make money. My rent was based on a percentage of what I brought in, which a lot of counselors out there have offices that they’ve rented and you may be able to say, “Hey can I just rent Thursday nights. I’m testing out private practice.” Or if you’re an online counselor, you don’t even have to worry about that which is definitely a distinct advantage of going online counseling.
Clay: Absolutely.
Joe: When you set it up so that you’ll have a very low cost to test it out whether that’s with your private practice or maybe you have an idea for an e-course, don’t invest a ton of time or time of money into the product until you know there’s market there. For example, if someone said, “Hey I have this idea for this huge website that I want to make for people that are dealing with anxiety,” I would probably say, “Why don’t you set-up a e-course through AWeber. Maybe it’s like a seven day e-course or fourteen day e-course about anxiety, have an opt in that you pay for on Facebook, so maybe it’s like fifty bucks or a hundred bucks on Facebook ads. And see if you can get some people that opt in. And then if nobody opts in, you might want to tweak what you’re doing and then you’ve only lost fifty or hundred bucks on Facebook tried this kind of opt in email versus building out an entire website and then having it affect your family.”
Clay: Oh! Fascinating. Kind of go slow and learn as you go. I love your perspective of co-learning because I love picking the brains of experts and sharing, this is what we can learn together. Tell me a little bit about who you are working with in private practice, the spectrum. Is it the right out of grad school, I’m licensed, I want to start versus I’ve been in practice for 40 years and need up my game or all across the spectrum?
Joe: So the people I tend to work with in regards to my consulting is to all across the spectrum. So I have people that are starting a practice and they say, “I’m going to invest a few dollars in the consulting and I know it’s going to spend up my process.” So maybe they’ve saved up, maybe they’ve decided they’re going to ask a family member to help them launch it. So I have those folks all the way to wow I’ve been in practice for 30 years and I really have no idea how to be in this brand new technological age and I need some help with social media, optimizing my website, and finding my ideal client. And then in my own counseling clinical work, I’ve been working mostly with angry teenagers, their parents and then often times couples that are distant from each other. And then I have people that they cover the whole spectrum, all the way from in-utero and people that are pregnant all the way up to empty nesters. There’s not too many people that we can’t serve here.
Clay: Yeah. It’s incredible how much the field is changing. I was talking to somebody the other day that it’s seems like lately there are more options and more services for therapists who are growing their practice. There’s more consultants out there. It used to be Casey Truffo and maybe a couple other people. Now, there’s this whole really supportive community to help us learn to go to the next level. You’ve see that it’s kind of recent phenomenon, don’t you think?
Joe: Absolutely. Even when I jumped in in 2012, there weren’t a ton of people that were doing it. There are still some and I actually didn’t do any market research ahead of time. I probably should’ve. I would have been really intimidated actually because there’s some amazing people like Kelly and Miranda and Julie Hanks and Tamara Suttle. These people that came out around the same time I did. Or maybe a little bit before. They’re doing an amazing work and I’m actually really glad that I didn’t look what they’re doing. But I do think that a lot of people see what we’re doing and say, “I could do that too. I can tell people how to run a practice” and then often under estimate what all it takes to become an effective consultant. So, if you’re looking for consulting, it’s really important to really understand the background of the people that you’re working with or inviting to help you on your journey and making sure they line up on what your goals are. Like the people that would work like Kelly and Miranda or Julie or Tamara or myself, we each have different skills. So, if someone has a group practice that they want to grow or they want to build their blogging, they might work with me. Where as if they were looking at sales funnels, they might work with Kelly and Miranda. If you have W2 employees, Julie Hanks will be the right one to work with. Really knowing kind of what’s the specialty or the niche of each consultant are really important to you. And that’s true, in your own practice too. Setting yourself apart from all the other online counselors out there so that you standout as someone that really can help in a distinct area is going to help you get more clients quickly.
Clay: Absolutely. Tell me a little bit about your thoughts of online counseling. Are you working with people that are coming to you saying “I’m an online therapist. I want to grow my practice.” What’s your experience in this space?
Joe: I would say that most people are saying “I haven’t established to practice and I want to add this component to it.” I have a handful consulting clients that want to do exclusively online counseling. I do think there are some challenges and there’s some advantages to online counseling. Some of the challenges are that the kind of in person networking is a lot harder. So you have to really understand how people create relationships when it’s not in person.
One thing that I often teach is, when I think back to my wife and I, when we first met. It was a friend of mine introduced us and said “I know this girl. We’re in high school. She’ll drive us to go snowboarding and she can get us cheap snowboarding tickets.” So there was a certain awareness where I went from I didn’t know Christina existed and to now she exists and she can get me cheap snowboarding tickets. That’s awesome. And as high school boys often are, would she buy us dinner too? So then over the next seven years, we built trust. So we dated in high school. She ended up falling in love with my best friend Phil. We broke up and we stayed friends. We go out for coffee whenever we’re home from college, she’d be dating someone or I’d be dating someone else and it never just lined up but we just kind of hang out and we got to know each other’s families. And then there’s this point when we were at the movie and we held hands and it went from just building trust to this could be something beyond that. Four months later we got engaged then four months later we got married because we had that level of trust.
The DNA of human relationships whether it’s an online counselor trying to build their business or a brick and mortar private practice or even just how friendships work is exactly the same. We first have that phase of awareness. I didn’t know that person existed and now I know they exist. And then the next phase is building trust. There’s fewer people that go from I now you exist, I trust you, so you’re going to lose people and that’s okay. The next phase is going to be I want to partner with you. So that could be people that join your practice, it could be that people that want to see you in your online practice. There’s going to be fewer people at every single stage and that’s okay. People get freaked out when maybe they have a thousand website clicks but only 32 read a blog post. That’s okay. That’s the 32 that want to build the trust. So how do you move them from just building trust to now partnering. So every phase, what you want to do is say, “How do I just move them up a level? How do I get them from they don’t know I exist to some awareness?” Okay now, they have awareness, how do I move to them from that to a little bit of trust and then from trust to partnership?
Clay: Absolutely. So, that is certainly one of the challenges that networking and building trust online. What is some the advantages you’ve seen?
Joe: Yeah. I think that the advantage is from a start up standpoint, there’s so little start up cost for you. A couple of the essentials would be having your profile on onlinecounselling.com, Clay, on your site. I think. I got to say that I mean you guys are the Psychology Today of online counseling. And so, being on Psychology Today, also I think is a good one, but making sure you say that you don’t have an in-person practice if you don’t so that people are clear that you’re an online practice, which is why onlinecounselling.com I think would be definitely one that you’d want to be on. Your website, making sure that it looks great so that it might be you have built it through brighter vision. You build it yourself. I have a tutorial over at website roundtable.com that shows you exactly how to build your own website. Really, there is not that many other costs that are ongoing, and so you’re looking at between all of that less than a hundred bucks a month. So if you get one client, you’ve paid for your business. So the advantage compared to even just rent or a phone system or all these other things, it’s just amazing how quickly you can start up. And then you also look at the market. There’s so many people outside of the United States and inside the United States that want to have counseling and maybe live in the area they don’t have quality counselors, they don’t have counselor that focuses on their specialty. Of course you have to locate your own ethics and licensing especially cross-state online counseling. But looking outside the US, Clay, you told me some of the numbers in regards to just India. I mean that shocked me. I didn’t know that until you told me about …
Clay: It’s incredible.
Joe: Ratio of counselors to people there.
Clay: One in four hundred thousand people.
Joe: I mean that’s nuts.
Clay: Like crazy.
Joe: That’s a crazy huge market. So, finding that you now don’t have to just be limited to like for example I live in a small northern Michigan town called Traverse City. It’s a great town but there’s only like forty thousand permanent residents in the actual city. Outside of it, there’s maybe a hundred thousand. How many those need counseling versus the entire world now being part of who I can serve?
Clay: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, you can have your pulse on the field, on the profession. Do you feel like this is the direction it’s going and what you’re hearing from people you’re talking to?
Joe: So when I think about any trend in counseling, I often looked outside of counseling, and so I asked what’s going on in the business world, what’s going on in other medical communities. And then usually it trickles down into counseling. Let’s start with the business world. For years, online meetings have been replacing the in-person meetings. You’ve been think about the movie that was Up in the Air with George Clooney. There was all about it like you know firing people over Skype versus in person. As soon as that came out, the business world was on it.
Clay: Yeah.
Joe: And so that’s where it usually emerges the trends that then trickle down. You look into medicine now so some of the larger cities, some of the larger states have a lot of kind of online urgent care. I have friends in larger cities. I’m sure that you could do it in New York. You’re going to see those things like the pop-up where it’s online doctors. We don’t have that yet in northern Michigan. But it’s starting to grow. The state of Michigan is partnering with some universities to offer more telemedicines. We see that happening. I think what we’re starting to see emerge now is that very early adopter phase of counselors and what’s great about early adopter is you can say we’re the longest serving online counseling practice in Minnesota. If you’re the first one, you can always say that. If you’re in a state that doesn’t have any online counselors, you can be the very first one that is an online counseling.com, it’s on your website, all these different things when you’re the early adopter. You always have that status. And so, I would say jumping in and then be a part of that conversation and then you can guide that conversation with your state boards, your ethics, you can become the advocate and stand out in a way that you can’t do that with DBT, you can’t do that with anxiety. There’s not whole lot of specialties. You can do that in incounselling. So this is like, I don’t want to say the wild west cause there’s a lot of organization going on. There’s a lot of kind of ethics. But it’s the early stages where there’s tons of opportunity and I think the people that jump in now are going to be the people that really become the pillars of the field in the next five to ten years, and are going to be key noting about what it was like back in 2016.
Clay: Back in the pioneer days.
Joe: Back in the pioneer days of online counseling. When it becomes kind of what people expect rather than what people are surprised by.
Clay: Yeah, I agree. I think that in a few years, we’re not even going to think of it as online. This is just what counseling is. Sometimes you meet face to face. Sometimes you’re online. Certainly going in that direction.
Joe: Yeah, I mean right now if someone has like a today, one of my counselors had a client who got a flat tire. In the future, I would expect that’s it’s going to be, “Hey I just got a flat tire. I’m in the side of the road. Can we do our session over my phone real quick?” Like that’s going to be the norm where as right now, if a counselor were to offer that, most people would be like, I don’t even like what? How? Huh? They will be surprised by it. Or my kid is’ sick or we have snow day. No, we can still do our counseling sessions. You can be in your pajamas if you want.
Clay: Right. Right. I want to put some spotlight on some of the services that you bring. So if someone is wanting an entry level into Practice of the Practice, you’ve got a blog, you’ve got a incredibly popular podcast with tons of information on there. So, how does somebody kind of dip their toe into practice of the practice? What’s the best?
Joe: Sure. So, I think of kind of my audience in three different buckets. One is how to start a practice or you’re kind of just starting to learn. And then the middle one is how you grow a practice. And then people often then start to move into how you become the consultant. So I have different things kind of under each of those. So for starting a practice, there’s a number of different free or cheap things that I offer. If you go to practiceofthepractice.com/start, I have a 28-step checklist of how do you start a practice. As well I have a podcast. I have a blog. I’ve been offering some blogging webinars. Actually, later this afternoon at the time of this recording. That will be in the past when this goes live. I’m doing a blogging webinar. I’m doing something called blogs sprint where I’m going to be doing a webinar everyday in over two weeks. As a community over fourteen days, we’re going to do ten blog posts each. So that’s like 97 bucks. It’s like more community based. It’s going to be in a group setting. I also have my members newsletter that’s 17 bucks to teach you how to launch a practice over a year. So I tried to have a really cheap or free things for people that are just starting out because we’ve been there. You’re fresh out of grad school. You have eighty grand in student loan debt. You are just getting started. You’re dipping your toes in it. You’re not going to drop hundreds and hundreds of dollars every month on to do consulting.
But then kind of that middle group it’s really ready to grow. I do individual consulting packages where I talk to people for half an hour. We sketch out exactly what it is that they want to achieve. I then put together their package while we’re on the phone and tell them exactly how much that cost. So most people select the package that’s going to be around $695 or more per month and that’s going to include a couple consulting sessions, some e-products and different things. And then I’m also offering more group things for folks at that level as well. So I have a mastermind group that has six people in it that we talk once a month. Someone’s on the hot seat where we really go in-depth into their practice. For me, by switching by from just one on one consulting to one the many, I’m serving more people giving them a price point that’s cheaper. But then I can make more hourly.
And then the consultant level, I have something called the consultant school which is an e-course community as wells as the mastermind group for people that want to go beyond just doing private practice. People like yourself that say, “Hey, I have this idea of something I want to launch” or if people wanted to say, “Hey I’ve done crisis work for my whole life. I wonder who else needs help with crisis. I want to focus on helping banks for example.” Learn how to manage crisis. Beyond just kind of individual counseling that helps people spin off into more profitable areas that are beyond just counseling using those skills that they already have.
Clay: That’s incredible. That’s a lot.
Joe: It is. But I didn’t build it overnight. I took time and surveyed my audience as to what they wanted and over time you start adding things and put them together. If you just keep plugging away at it, you’re going to build an empire, my friend.
Clay: Okay. So tell me this. What would be, for our listener today, a tip that you could provide that something that maybe you’ve seen turn around practices more than anything else. Just something a lot of bang for your buck whether it’s blog or social media or Facebook business page. What’s one or two little things that going here to a little gem you can walk away with?
Joe: Yes. So let me address Facebook business page real quick. Facebook now makes you pay for your audience. So putting anytime really into your Facebook page other than just having it out there so that people can go to your website, that’s about all you really need to be putting into your Facebook page at this point just because it’s so hard to reach your audience of people. You only see about ten percent of the people that have liked your page. I wouldn’t even put your time into that. To me, social media should be reflecting what’s going on your hub so on your website. So I would actually work backward that if you’re going to put time into social media, you should be way put more time in your website. So I would start with blogging on a regular basis being really the number thing that I’ve seen help people turn around their practices or grow to new specialties. Really because a blog will do two major things. First thing is it’s going to show Google that you matter, that you’re relevant, you’re creating content that matters. So they’re going to have you rank higher in Google. Most counselors aren’t blogging on a regular basis. So, you’re going to be able to outrank the average counselor in your town or in your specialty if you’re just online. And that’s really important. You want to be ranking high because the top, I think it’s 60 to 70 percent of all clicks go the top three people that rank people that rank for a search term. If you’re not on the top three like you might as well just like not even like matters for that search term. So it does that which is I would say the number reason to blog.
And then the number two is to demonstrate expertise. Going back to that building trust. People are going to poke around on your website to see if you know about the topic that you’re saying you’re an expert in. And so, if you’re doing maternity mental health, talk about like what’s a doula, like what’s a midwife, what’s OB-BYN, how does your work at your local hospital? What are different phases or trimesters people go through. You want to focus on that specialty so that you’re going to be ranking for a number of search terms and also providing that content that builds trust.
Clay: Wow! Yeah but I don’t know if it was you or Julie Hanks or somebody who was talking about when you are blogging on a consistent basis, they get to hear your voice. They get to understand who you are. So by the time they walk in the door or they pop-up on your screen, they know you. They built a relationship and gotten to know your stories, your approach and it’s a way for them to get to know you before they know you.
Joe: Absolutely. I think a lot of people are also focusing on video blogging right now which I think is good. But a lot of people are doing it just terribly. For an online counselor, that would make a lot of sense to add that also. Before video blog, it can’t just be you staring at a screen. You need to have something that’s entertaining. So I just saw one the other day that it was this mom talking about how you’re not supposed to be your kid’s friend. You’re supposed to be a freaking parent and she’s sitting there eating this ice cream while she’s talking to the camera and she’s got a glass of wine next to her and she’s like stirring at the ice cream then she adds chocolate chips to the ice cream and she ends up pouring her wine into the ice cream as she’s saying, “I’m happy that my kids are all mad at me right now because I’m not supposed to be their friend right now. I want them to become people that I want to hang out with when they’re adults.” That’s how video blogging should be done where there’s some entertainment value to it to not just you saying let me talk about anxiety. Let me talk about depression. Like make it interesting if you’re going to do it. So I think getting yourself out there is important but doing it a way that it is both entertaining but also going to show your expertise and help you rank in Google is really important too.
Clay: That’s really good advice. And also to let it be in imperfect I would imagine. I’ve talked to a lot of people that their afraid to step out because it’s not going to be perfect. But be willing to screw it up a little a bit.
Joe: Yeah. For one, you can move faster. And for two, it just makes you more real. So on my podcast, if I leave my coffee across the room, which I feel like I do every freaking episode, I’m like “Hold on, let me grab my coffee real quick.” I want it to be like hanging out in my office looking over Grand Traverse Bay, hanging out together. If it’s highly edited and there’s never any ums or me thinking about something or making fun of myself, it doesn’t feel that same way. For me that personal side is what’s going to really set you apart because nobody can replicate that.
Clay: Actually, I just got an email yesterday from somebody that the listeners would know that I’m across the street from the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. The little doorman comes out and he blows his whistle to let the cabs and taxis know that there’s somebody waiting to be picked up. And so, she was listening to the podcast in her car and her kids were with her and they crack up every time the little whistle goes off. They played this little game of when is the whistle going to happen. I don’t hear it anymore. But I know it can be annoying.
Joe: But you live in New York so like you have all these things going out in your world. If I had a bunch of stuffs going on a background, wait I thought you’re in northern Michigan. But that’s part of who you are. If you paid someone to edit it out for one it would cost money, it would also take like this is Clay’s podcast and I’m having you join me out of it. It wouldn’t be as personal.
Clay: Right. Right. Okay. So what would be a tip for something not to do? Like please don’t do this. It’s a waste of time, it’s not going to help you. You kind of did that with the Facebook tip. But anything else comes to mind as something to avoid.
Joe: I think when people are first starting out, they’re really excited about their businesses. That’ really good you’re excited. But most of your friends are not excited about your business as you are. So, emailing all your friends over and over about your business, spamming them. I mean I think about there’s this counselor that he’s started doing photography and that’s fine. That’s good. But she has posted in all these different groups and about how she’ll do head shots for people. It’s fine to say once in a while like “Hey I’m doing this on the side, and if anyone is interested.” But like, I would’ve contacted you if I wanted it. Like don’t email me and then Facebook me and then post it in groups. It’s great you’re excited about it. But it’s just comes across as super spammy. And then my respect for her as a counselor and how she’s running her photography business on the side like goes down too because it just feels like, well if this is how you treat this, how do you treat potential leads that come to you. Like someone decides they don’t want to come to counseling do you harass them because you need the money? I don’t know. I think it’s really important to just kind of take that, kind of normal just like pace approach which is slower but I’d rather see you email your friends once and say “Hey I’d love to get lunch to talk about what I’m doing in my business” and then just let it be. People contact you if they want to and if they not, they won’t.
Clay: Excellent. Good tip. Okay, so. Let’s highlight on some things that are coming up for you. I know there’s five day blogging event. Tell me about that.
Joe: Yes. I have an ongoing opt in email course. So it’s a five day blogging course. So many of us didn’t learn about the basic of key words, how to write the blog post, how to write a blog post doesn’t take you days to write. Because we really need to think about how much time do we have to put into a blog post to make it work because that’s counseling that you’re not doing. So, if you’re spending five or six hours on a blog post like that’s just not okay. That’s a lot of lost income. And so how do you that quickly, how do you feel less overwhelmed through it, how do you make sure that you’re optimized for Google, internal linking, external linking, how to embed video. It’s a free five day blog course over at practiceofthepractice.com/5dayblog and it’s the number five. I’ve been having a lot of webinars lately. I’ve got the blog sprint coming up. And then I have a whole bunch of different events throughout the country that I’m going to be doing.
Clay: I love this, this part. In Traverse City, you’re doing pino and practice? What is that?
Joe: Yeah. Yes in august. People are flying in. It’s capped out at twelve people. I think I have two spots left. And so, they fly in and for two days we’re going to do group consulting in the morning. You’re going to hang out right where I’m standing here in this corner office of downtown Traverse City. We’re going then walk down to the food trucks and have lunch and then this wine bus who’s going to pick us up. We’re going to go wine tasting. Traverse City over and over is usually voted the top kind of wine town in America outside of California. So we have two beautiful peninsulas with water all around. We’re going to go up old Michigan peninsula one day. There’s one winery we’re going to guys the view of both bays, and then the other day, we’re going to go up the Leelanau peninsula And so, we’re going to drink, we’re going to hang out, and I know some of this substance abuse counselors are going to yell at me they always do. But hey, I love a good glass of wine. So, we’re going to do consulting in the morning and then we’re going to be in a wine bus talking about the practices. Also Jessa Anderson who did headshots for the most awesome conference is going to be hanging with us and taking some vide for the event as well. She’s headshots for my whole team at Mental Illness Counseling the day before. Yes, Pino and Practice in august.
Clay: That just sounds like fun. I’ve never heard of Traverse City. You are like the ambassador for Traverse City.
Joe: I love it here.
Clay: I can’t wait. One day I’m going to get there. Who would’ve ever want to go to Michigan? Oh my god, this sounds incredible.
Joe: I mean we have like every year we have like ten or more wineries open. We have so many famous people summer here. Like Mario Batali’s around downtown. Michael Moore lives here permanently. The Traverse City Film Festival now is bigger than Sundance. We got a couple of things going on here.
Clay: Okay. You sold me.
Joe: I should see if they want to be a sponsor on my podcast because they talked about it so much. Here Michigan.
Clay: Joe, thank you so much for coming on. I can’t thank you enough. Just personally to tell my listeners that you have really changed my approach and I’ve worked with you and you’ve turned around my practice. Really the whole podcast and directory came via your support and help. Thank you so much.
Joe: Thank you so much and thanks for having me on the show. You’re doing such an important work and I know it’s going to continue to grow and explode. It’s awesome to see.
Clay: Thanks, Joe. We’ll talk soon.