STP #18 | Dissapointment In Scaling
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James Marland: Welcome to the Scaling Therapy Practice. This is James Marlon with Dr. David Hall. Hello David. Hey James. This week we're gonna talk about disappointment and scaling. Maybe when things aren't going as expected, it's gonna be a great episode. But first, let's talk about our tool, tech or tip of the week.
Uh, David, what is your,
David Hall: well, you know, I wanted to share, um, You know, as we're doing the podcast, most people that do podcasts listen to podcast, I would assume. Uh, I certainly do. And there, there several that I particularly enjoy. Probably my favorite, particularly in the way of business, is, uh, the online course show with Jacque Hopkins.
It's a great shout out. It's a show. Yeah. Shout out to Jacques if you might catch this at any point. But I wanna share about his latest, which is episode 1 93. Uh, and he's interviewing this guy, uh, Matt Ronins. Or which his nickname's Rudd, who has an online course about book writing. And the reason I wanted to share this, it, it's a great episode.
There's a lot of great episodes, but he shares about having an online course, one online course that did 3 million in sales in 2022. That's a lot. It is a lot. Uh, no, it's not 3 million to profit. He ended up spending like, I think half a million dollars in. Yeah. But, but his profit was over a million I think.
Yeah. Um, which is again, a significant amount. And, um, cool story. But the reason I wanted to share about it and, and relates to our topic for today is he shares in this podcast episode the first time he launched his course, which first time he launched it, put a lot of work into it. A lot, and he put it out in the world and he.
One copy. And not only that, that person a few days later asked for a refund. So he had that first time putting out, he, no one bought it, who kept it. It's devastating, I feel, for the guy. It relates to disappointment and relates to, you know, and I think that's a significant thing cuz that was the beginning of his journey and later to have a course that he, he made over a million dollars in profit in one year.
Is a significant change, but it does relate to dealing with disappointment. In the starting process. So that's why I wanna share it. But Great. Uh, uh, podcast and that's episode 1 93. I'll be in the show notes. I know James has just copied it into there. Yep. As we're reporting. And he said 1 93 online course, and he too much,
James Marland: from what I remember from the episode, he didn't change a whole lot about his course.
David Hall: He didn't change hardly anything about his course. He changed his se selling process. Like the branding and selling? Yeah, the branding. But the course itself was the same, but it went from, again, nothing. That's incredible. Always. It's worse than nothing to have one person buy and you're hoping for a lot more.
And then that one person ask for a refund. Oh man. It's hugely deflating. Yeah.
James Marland: But, but that's part of the process and we'll be talking about that a little bit later in the show. My, my, uh, my tip is, uh, a tech tip. It's kind of, Uh, if you're watching the YouTube channel, I have this Yeti Yeti blue microphone on a con on, on an arm.
I think I bought it for, I like to buy things on sale. I think on new, it's like 180 9 on sale. On Amazon, it's like 1 39, 1 49 for Christmas. You could probably get it a little cheaper, but it just makes life easier and it makes. Me sound a little better than just the onboard microphones. It has some cool features where if I had a guest in here, we could both use the microphone.
Uh, just some sound settings. Not a super technical guy, but there are like four settings for it. Uh, it's on an arm so I can, you know, I can move it in and out of the screen, uh, off my screen. It has, um, Rubber bands on it so that if I tap, I'm always tapping, like I have trouble not moving or tapping my desk.
So when I'm recording, uh, the rubber bands absorb the shock and so the mic doesn't get any, uh, of that sound that happens with it. Um, I bought it. Uh, to do recordings and when, um, you know, when Covid came out, you know, like you don't, there was like lots and lots and lots of remote meetings. Mm-hmm. So my tip I guess is if you're, if you're still doing remote meetings and you're fighting with your technology, just spend a hundred dollars to buy a great mic.
David Hall: A good mic. And it, it makes it like for anyone doing telehealth, and I think most people are doing this,
James Marland: some telehealth. Yeah. Most people are gonna do some sort of remote meeting.
David Hall: Yeah, and having good equipment for it. I mean, I'm looking at it, you know, I'll probably buy it. Um, I mean, it is cuz I'm, I'm wanting to change some microphone.
I, I use a, I have a Samsung that I use that's pretty basic and, uh, which is fine, you know, it's good enough. But I, I like the look of that and I like setup for the, again, for those who are checking out the YouTube video, you could see it. But, uh, but even if you're not just, you know, check out the link. It,
James Marland: it, I don't have to worry about it and it makes my life easier.
And it was, it was more, you spend a little money and you kind of get what you pay for. Like last episode we talked about cars. You kind of get what you pay for. Yeah, same thing.
David Hall: I, I think there's a risk we run in being too frug. There's definitely risk of me. I run that again. Risk all the time. Yeah. Yeah.
But there's a risk of being too frugal. We can create new headaches for ourself and our desire to save a few dollars. Yeah.
James Marland: Uh, All. Alright. Side sidebar. Yeah. You remember I worked for a virtual assistant company for several years and one of the things therapists used to do is they would have six systems to run one thing because they didn't want to get, uh, uh, pay the money to the E H R company or something.
Mm-hmm. And they ended up spending, like, some people were spending, they were, they, they actually had to like hire somebody to do some of their insurance. That added complexity and human error instead of paying the few pennies or whatever, I, I know it's expensive, but instead of like buying the internal system that did it automatically mm-hmm.
They would hire a staff at 20, $30 an hour to do what the computer could do without error. Cuz humans are, have some error and they, they saved themselves maybe a dollar and created this massive system. That was, was infuriating. The assistants are like, why are they doing it this way? It's making my job harder and it's costing them more money.
But they were trying to save a nickel somewhere. Anyways, Pennywise
David Hall: and dollar foolish,
James Marland: ugh. I'll get off my soapbox because then it came back to me to, for management and like training and they made it. You know, they, people would complain about the hours you're using, but you're using the hours cuz your system is just not optimized.
You're trying to save a nickel here and you added three systems.
David Hall: Like I have, you know, one of the things I I talk about in this is cuz I have a course on, um, creating. Mental health trainings and online trainings, in person trainings and, yeah. Yeah. Uh, the course is, you know, just under a thousand dollars.
Sometimes we'll do sales related to webinars and things like that, but it, but even then, it's, it's still a, a significant investment for people. And, but one of the things I tell people is, if you're gonna spend all your money just to buy the course and you don't have anything left, you don't need to buy the course yet.
Cause in the course, I, I tell people, I, I do try to direct people in ways to economic. Startup. Sure. But there are, um, softwares and subscriptions and things like that to really do it well. You need to do, and I wanna give people guides of how to do it as cheaply as possible, but I see people try to duct tape metaphorically their way into it, and they end up creating these really complex systems.
And I, I, for example, I had one person. Who was trying to solve, doing online courses without investing in a, uh, an L M s A learning management system. That's,
James Marland: oh, a hosting place like
David Hall: Teachable, Cajabi, Punjabi, think and there's so many now. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, there,
James Marland: yeah, there's a lot of good ones. Anyways, go
David Hall: ahead.
Yeah, there are a lot of good ones, but they were trying to figure out like how to do it, how to do it without doing it. And so what they ended up doing was creating a password protected, um, Page on their Squarespace site. Yeah. And then like embedding a YouTube video. Yeah. And it was, it was all this stuff.
Mm-hmm. And, but they, what they had to do is like, people would buy the course on PayPal, and then they would, and then the therapist would get a notification and then they would have to email this person. They created more work for themselves. Yeah. You
James Marland: had to every time you had to look for the The email.
Yeah. Then you had to send the password. If they lost the password, you had to change it. If you changed
David Hall: or they ran into like this person was sharing the password with other people and they didn't have a way around that, or like somebody was sharing it, and so there were people that were taking it and then like once the person finished, they had an email to get the post test for it to do the, anyway.
It was the, I'm
James Marland: rubbing my head, like, if you're not watching the video, I'm rubbing my head about how the all this
David Hall: work is, and at the time it, it's, anyway, but being being economical is usually wise to a point. Yeah. And, but we digress. So we're gonna talk about Disapp.
James Marland: Yeah, so this, this came up, I think, because we both listened to that, the episode from the online course show about the, the, the person who released the, the, the course and what, how, how devastating it felt like he said.
I sold one course and the guy asked for a refund, and we, we were talking about how that the process is of the, the passive income and the online courses is not an overnight success because the, the, the title of the episode was something like, I earned $3 million. Let me just pull it up. Uh, 3 million from one Simple course in 2022.
Wow. Featuring Matt Rodinsky. Mm. And, and we're like, like, we're like, oh, wow. That's like, awesome. How do we get that? But his story talks a lot about like perseverance and disappointment and, and some of the stages of scaling when you're doing something new. So we were gonna, you know Yeah. Talk
David Hall: about that.
We're in the first few weeks of this podcast being live too. And part of what prompted this, we were talking about like, well, what's, what are our downloads been like? And like we appreciate for those who are in January, 2020, Uh, listening to it, we appreciate it. But, um, you know, it's trying to look at where the number's at, where do we want them to be, how to grow them.
And there is a sense, regardless of sometimes of how we wanna posture ourselves. Whenever you, when you start any endeavor, you want it to go well and you want for sure. Yeah. If you're selling something or you're putting something out into the world, you want people to respond. And even if you have modest expectations, it doesn't change the, the different disappointments we have to grapple with.
Particularly when you feel you've done a lot of effort. Yeah.
James Marland: There, there's, uh, there's your expectations and then there's reality, and then there's managing your thoughts when your expectations don't always meet the reality.
David Hall: James, for, for you, you've done, you know, you're, you've journeyed in quite a few different places professionally.
Do you have any like particular anecdote that comes to mind about kind of managing a moment of disappointment in something you were trying to scale?
James Marland: Uh, yes. So, well, let's, let's talk about my current one and then I'll, I'm sure I have some other things as I was running the virtual assistant business, um, Well, yeah, so, uh, I'm doing a, I am doing, um, the beginner's Guide to Knowledge Income, which is, it's sort of like teaching therapists how to turn their expert knowledge into, uh, passive income.
I saw as I, as we talked about before, I hesitate to use the word passive income cuz there's work involved. Mm-hmm. And. The idea when I presented it, there were there was some interest and I've run a pilot course and I've actually had a paid pilot course, which is. Awesome. Where I pre-sold some shows or pre-sold some courses and ran it through.
And I thank you for those who took it. Thank you. Because as I teach in the course, you have to run your worst course to run your best course. Yes. And uh, uh, the experience in their feedback was invaluable for creating a better course. Uh, so I'm in the process of running. But I've, I've only been doing like this online course stuff since September, maybe 20, 22.
Mm-hmm. So I'm like six months in and I post, I post on YouTube regularly. Maybe once, once or once a week. I post on social media. I post, um, I have blogs. Once a week. Um, we are, we're now starting the podcast, right? Mm-hmm. To talk about scaling and growing. I've been on other people's podcasts and so. My, my hope wa would be my, my like, uh, email list would be growing because as, mm-hmm.
As you know, uh, social media is spectators and email lists are warm. You know, they're interested in what you want. They actually signed up to get something from you. Mm-hmm. And so my, my disappointment right now is I wish my email list was larger because I'm getting ready to launch. After I did the pilot course, took my lumps, learned some mistakes, I'm rerecording it all, and breaking it into like 10 minute, 15 minute segments with an action step rather than one hour sessions with like six action steps, which was way too much.
So I'm investing all this time, but I'm also seeing, uh, I'm investing in, in, uh, marketing type efforts. Mm-hmm. And the numbers are growing, but not, not exactly where I would like them to be. So that is where, uh, as David, as we've talked, sometimes disappointment creeps in because mm-hmm. Then, then you think you start comparing like there's, there's comparison to what other people are doing.
Mm-hmm. And somebody's. You know, I, I sign up for webinars myself and somebody's, like, one of the, one of the course creators is like, oh, there's like 10,000 people signed up for this webinar, and, and I'm like, oh my word. How am I gonna ever compete with somebody who can get 10,000 people in a Facebook webinar and, and I, and I can get 10 people to join my mailing list Like it.
It is a, uh, there is a little bit of discouragement or disappointment that comes when you're not scaling as fast. Mm-hmm. Um, but you've, you've had some journeys like that, and you're kind of on the other, you're, you're not on the other side. You, you, you have more experience in that. Did you experience some of that when you were
David Hall: starving?
Yes. And at at different times, and it hits in different ways. Um, part of it, you know, I, as I've, I shared in an earlier episode about a startup process of starting a psychiatry practice, and I had to really learn there was some marketing disappointment in that early on. Mm-hmm. I, I didn't really realize how much I needed to really, you know, drum up work and really, uh, uh, Kind of put out the call to get clients to come in.
Right. And, and so there was a lot of slowness in that, and I was hitting it every day. I was, you know, every day I was making phone calls, I was visiting people's offices. I was, you know, and I, I, I appreciate what I learned it, and I learned a lot of persistence and, and I think success oftentimes, we, we see people and we ascribe success sometimes to maybe brilliance.
There's something particularly special or innovative about this person? Oh yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And sometimes there is, but we'll diminish the importance of perseverance. And I can tell you that perseverance is, is a, a much bigger thing. And every once in a while you'll hear a story or you're ex, you will experience something that it feels like, or it seems like something is very successful at the very beginning.
And that does. It's more the exception, but it does happen. But here's what I can reflect on the other side of that. Whenever that does happen for somebody in the long run, it's not usually a net positive. And here's why.
James Marland: Oh, the they grow really fast. Like they release one thing and they
David Hall: Yeah, and it just hits.
But, but here's, you know, why I would say it's not usually a net positive. It's, it's that they typically learn nothing. Mm. And they go to the next thing thinking that it will happen again and it doesn't. And they have no clue how to fix it or address it. Mm-hmm. I was doing consulting a few years ago with somebody who was quite frustrating to talk to, and one of it was is this was a person who had led a startup that had been successful and had been bought out, and this was their second startup and it was in an industry I had expertise in.
And so they had hired me as a consultant. Mm-hmm. And they were very uncoachable. Because they had success. They had success the first
James Marland: time they, but they were inoculated to advice.
David Hall: Yes. They assumed they were much smarter than they were. I had a lot of evidence based on just our conversations for their ignorance.
Mm-hmm. But they assumed they were much smarter than they were because there's an ex, there's an idiom in, um, American English. Oh, that is perfect. Yeah. There's an idiom in American English. Uh, born on third thought he hit a triple. Yeah. And for those who don't know baseball, what that means is this idea of, of you assume that you just land somewhere and that it was because of your skill that you got there and mm-hmm.
It's not necessarily, sometimes just circumstances play out a certain way, but that's not, there's no virtue. Yeah. Inculcated in that and perseverance is, is part of it. So I'll, I'll give a practical example. I started a teaching business in 2000. And built it for a number of years, and I, I, but that was all in person and how much I worked in it was, uh, variable of different years.
The first few years I did a lot more in it. 2012, 2013, 14, I was doing a lot. 2015 was a very big year and the amount of activities I was doing. But at the end of 2015, I begun a new startup. And so this business, though it still existed, was very much on the back burner. And so between 2000. Um, 16 to 2018, I was pretty minimal in the business.
And then, um, 2018, I began ramping it up again, and I've begun doing my first online things in 2018 and 2019 really began putting some serious things online. So at this point, 2011, 2019, I'd had this business for eight. And there's a sense of like, I know what's, I know how this works and all that. I was completely ignorant about the idea of transitioning online, about how different of a model it was going to be to do workshops, to get people to sign up, what people expected, what people would pay, all that.
And it was a lot of hard lumps in 2019. I, you know, one of my big struggles was just trying to build up an email list, right? And this was discouraging because I had had a pretty successful in-person business, but I had not really done much to collect email addresses. I would go, I would do in-person workshops, and how that would work is I would go to a city and I would, uh, I was mostly doing marketing through like postcard.
Which at the time was pretty successful for me. Like in, it might still be, I don't know. I have done it in a few years, but, and, but I didn't have a lot of focus in collecting people's email addresses. I would go out and do this mass mailing, and if people signed up, I would sometimes keep their email address.
I was so disappointed of just, I wouldn't be, I, I didn't focus on it, it wasn't part of my business model early on if I had been focused on collecting and keeping email address. I would've been further ahead, but Right. And then all of a sudden I'm focused on how do I build up an email list? And it was a struggle and I had set a goal, um, when.
I, I, the teaching platform I use at the time of recording and probably still amusing, is, uh, teachable. Mm-hmm. And one of the things that's great about Teachable, you sign up, they give you access to their online learning community, and they have a lot of classes online. It's a really good learning system.
Yeah. And all their teaching. Tutorials and stuff. It's really good. Yeah, and it's super helpful. But one of the things they talk about in this idea of launching a course, putting out in the world is they really encourage you to have about a 500 person email list before you launch. And I, I would concur with that.
Um, that you really need, that's kind of a minimum viable number to do a big launch. It's not that you shouldn't do anything but to manage your expectations. I really like the 500 s in a good initial goal to hit. Well, the, uh,
James Marland: the, the stats are you, you sell one to 1.5 to 1.5% to your list. Yeah. I don't know if that's, is that accurate for your
David Hall: Yeah, I'd say, I'd say so.
Yeah. Um, so if you
James Marland: have 500 people, you're selling like five to seven mm-hmm. Eight courses.
David Hall: Yeah. And on
James Marland: average, yeah. Yeah. I know some people who sold like 50%, which was crazy, but that's not typical. It's rare
David Hall: and, and it will be, but like, um, I'm, I'm curious, I'm actually gonna look at some numbers as I'm talking right now.
So,
James Marland: but, uh, while you look, um, yeah, my, my philosophy of selling though is you are, You're niche down far enough that you're inviting people to the destination that they already want to go. Mm-hmm. Like, it's not like when we talk about sales, I'm not a salesy person. I'm more like, how can I help people get to the destination that I know how to get to that they can also achieve?
Mm-hmm. Uh, the, the same results, uh, it's sometimes when you talk about numbers and things, it makes people feel like the product. Mm-hmm. But that's not, that's not my philosophy. Uh mm. There's other people's philosophies. So did you find
David Hall: your Absolutely. And and it's the, um, uh,
am I doing that right? So what's one, what's 1% of 7,000? I'm just trying to figure out 70. Yeah. 70. Yeah. So, so I, I would even say kind of less than that at times. It depends what I'm putting out and kind of, um, if it's a low dollar or, or even a non. Low commitment thing. I can get responses from things. But anyway, I digress.
But here's the, you know, you, you, I spent so long and so much effort trying to build my email list up to hit 500. Cuz I, I, I'd set a goal for that when I was moving things online and I tried some stuff that I thought, okay, this will be great. And, you know, it's, it's crickets. Yeah. And then you try some things and you try more things and the persistence really matters.
You know, one of the things,
James Marland: learning things says you tried, like were, were you picking up skills?
David Hall: Yes. I mean, some of it is figuring out what you, you discover things that are stickier than others. Mm-hmm. And you discover things that are more, I talk about what's conducive to your personality and really kind of lean into that and.
And sometimes you kind of do some drudgery, you do some kind of, one of the things I did was, um, I don't particularly enjoy Facebook in this phase of my life. I, I was an early Facebook person cause I'm of my age. I, Facebook was designed, I got on Facebook back when you had to be a college student to be on Facebook.
Mm-hmm. Like you had to have a.edu, um, email address. And that's when I first joined and it was, I loved it then because it was really just my peer group on there and it was just this kind of way to kind of catch up with people I hadn't seen since high school. Yeah. And see what's going on. Share some things about your life and there's some great literature from people like, um, Jonathan Height, social psychologists we're talking about like, you know, it's the introduction of different algorithm stuff, the like features in the late 2000 aughts 2009 that really kind of made this sort of stuff a dumpster fire.
I do not enjoy. Uh, I'll, I'll do it minimally cuz it is a way that I keep up with certain friends and, and things like that. Sure. But it's not, it's not fun. But I realized that it was a way for me to be able to connect with cold contacts. And so I started a completely separate Facebook profile just for professional purposes and I began systematically joining any kind of mental health professional based community I could.
Um, a lot of 'em were like regional. It'd be like Tampa Bay area mental health professionals, and I would have to give permission to join some of the groups and they would say like, are you in the Tampa Bay area? And I'd be like, no, but I, I offer services for people in the area. And sometimes people would be like, no, this is only four therapists in the area.
And sometimes group administrators would let me join. And I, I would enjoy as many as I. And I was putting out my lead magnet at the time, which was at the time I had a free one hour ethics course. Mm-hmm. Um, that was a way that, and a lead magnet for those aren't familiar. It's, it's something you put out in the world to get email addresses, people opt in.
You. Right.
James Marland: And people don't just hand out their email address. Yeah. They need, they do it for a reason, and the lead magnet is like, oh, this solves a little problem for me. I'm going to give my email address for it. So it might
David Hall: be a download, it might be, and you wanna be careful. I was talking to somebody the other day of.
They were telling me about how they were growing their email list. I'm like, I've got about 500 people. I'm like, oh, congratulations. That's a big number. I'm like, where are you getting them? And like, oh, I went online to the insurance companies. Uh uh, the people credential, the insurance company just loaded their emails.
Oh no. And I'm like, oh, you wanna be careful. I go, that's, people will spam you on that because people have not agreed to be on your email. I go, this is a
dicey
James Marland: thing. There's a reason why there's an opt-in and a double opt-in. Yeah.
David Hall: So anyway, on that, so I was joining these Facebook groups and I was putting this out and I thought, this feels like a no-brainer there.
You know, there'd be, you know, hundreds to thousands of people in different groups. Like, everyone's gonna opt in for this. And it didn't work like that. I got people and it did kind of build a little momentum. And, uh, but it was, it was within, like, I got a few hundred people to sign in, but there are thousands of people in these groups combined, and I got a few hundred people to, to give me their email address.
They're not buying anything yet. This is just them giving me their email address to be able to access this free training, but, Over time and consistently, you know, and I, part of how I've been consistent is I've, one of the things I've learned is I'll do some things that are free, but one of the things I particularly enjoy is I'll do webinars.
I like doing them. And, uh, and a webinar for me is something free. I'll, I'll go live and for an hour teach on something, right? And it's oftentimes connected to a paid product I have, but. I want to give good value for the free thing. I don't want it to be, one of the things I've, I really try to do for my webinars is, um, to, for the time I'm showing up, I want people who never buy anything from me still feel like this is a good thing.
And most of us have done things where we'll do a free download or go to a free event, and it's all pitch, it's all like super sales. And I don't like that. I don't enjoy attending those. I don't, I don't. And I want to be able to share something that's quality for people and, and it's been a consistent thing.
And I'll do 'em in partnerships in other people. And I've, at this point in time and recording, I've got a just short, short of 9,000 people on my email list. Mm-hmm. And I'm quite proud of that. I, I have goals I'd like to see, I, I work with people that have, you know, tens of thousands of people on their email list.
I'd love to get. Yeah. But, um, but in the, in the four or so years time recording that I've been working on it. Um, and, but I will say it wasn't symmetrical. I started in 2022 with about 3000 people on my email list. So it took me, you know, to go from like 200 to 3000 took me three years. Mm-hmm. And then I went from 3000 to 9,000 in one.
And you know, the, so it's not symmetrical and that's part of the thing about growth too. And usually you get the least return for the beginning efforts. So whenever you start anything, uh, your, your returns are gonna be the most minimal. And that's one of the beauty things about scaling is over time, scaling does build its own momentum.
Mm. Mm-hmm. It's not that you don't have to keep working it. You don't have to work as much to get sometimes multiples of the results you get early on when you're putting hours and hours into something.
James Marland: So, uh, we mentioned, um, disappointment. So you're gonna have to weather as it's growing, you're gonna have to weather some of those thoughts and negative thoughts.
I have a, a tip on that and I'm wondering what you think about it and if you have, you know, how do you maintain persistence? And I think, um, one of the other things is when do you know that you need to change tactics? You know? Mm-hmm. You, you, cause from all, from all everything I've read. You know, five, six months is like infancy for this content creating type stuff.
Like you, you, you haven't done it long enough to see if, if it's gonna work or not. Mm-hmm. So here, here's, here's my big tip, and I think this was from a Mike McCullough's book, um, about, uh, negative thoughts. I forget how he frames it. Enabling beliefs, I think is how he, he framed it because in your head, If things go wrong or they're not going, let's say your, your list isn't growing, the negative thought is, nobody, nobody likes my stuff or nobody's gonna buy my stuff.
Or some sort of thought where a disaster, like it's a disaster and I'm never going to sell anything to anybody. But the, he said, write. Write all those thoughts down on one side of the piece of paper, and then on the other side of the paper, reframe it or put some truth into it. Mm-hmm. So the truth is the numbers are small.
And so the, the faults would be, the false thought would be, I'm never gonna sell anything. The truth is everybody, everybody who starts something new, starts at zero. Mm-hmm. Like the truth is like, you are not any different than anybody else who's ever started something or mm-hmm. Gone out on their own. You know, another, another negative might be, um, No, I'm not earning, you know, I'm spending all this time and money and I'm not getting any effort.
And then the, the, the negative thought would be I, um, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, uh, the return I'm investment is gonna be low and, uh, whatever. But the truth is, It's, it's expensive to start. Mm-hmm. And you're starting the flywheel and it's gonna take a lot of effort in the beginning, but the consistency pays off it.
Yes. It's hard, but there you have the goal, so you like take the negative thought, write 'em down, and then reframe it and add truth to it. Mm-hmm. Which allows you to capture your negative thoughts. Mm. Often, if you don't know you have negative thoughts. I don't, I don't know if you, you know about this, you, or this is your experience.
If you don't capture it, you just sit with it and live in that negative thought and, and then it becomes the truth even though it's not the truth. So that's my tip. What do you, what do you think about that? And do you have a I I
David Hall: agree in general, and I, I do have a qualifier.
James Marland: Well, you, you know, you're a psychologist,
David Hall: so Sure, sure.
And so there's qu you, you do this more than I do, so Yeah. Yeah. Here's the qualifier. Sometimes you do need to change tech because I, I will say I've, I've shared before in a startup process, I kept my head down too long and just cause I mm-hmm. Like put more time, put more energy, put more money. Yeah. Yeah.
And in the end, it wasn't a viable concept. Um, at least the way I was doing it, it wasn't viable. Um, it was a viable thing I was doing. The way I was doing it was not viable. Right, right. Um, I believe there are only two teachers in the world. Mm-hmm. Your personal experience of discomfort and pain or somebody else's mm-hmm.
That you get secondhand. That is all lessons throughout history can be reduced to those two things. And you can either learn at your own expense or somebody else's. Mm-hmm. And so here's my, I I would a, I like that exercise, the idea of kind of writing things down, but part of how you test things is whenever you're starting.
Seek out counsel. Mm-hmm. Seek out coaching. Find blogs, find podcasts. There are people that have done that have walked your journey to a certain degree. Maybe not exactly what you're trying to do, but there's somebody out there that's done something. Because in, when you lack your own experience, the only other thing to teach you is somebody else.
And now there is a certain amount of discernment in figuring out like, have I done this long enough? But for example, this idea of, um, someone, let's say you're launching a marketing campaign on Facebook or just meta, so Facebook, Instagram, that's usually it's together and you're trying to decide like, have I let a campaign go enough or have I spent enough on it to get a result?
That's a hard thing to determine if you've never done it. And that's something that if I was seriously looking at that, I would want to talk to other people who have run Facebook campaigns and or read things about it of like, how long does it typically take? What, what are the metrics that I need to set for myself, which is I need to run this for six months, be willing to spend this amount of money, yeah.
To expect this result. Otherwise, we're just kind of feeling our way through it now. But the benefit of that too, it's a way when we realize like, oh, the norm for this is, I've gotta take six months in this process. So it's, it's having persistence and knowing when to pivot, and you often need modeling for that.
But I'll give an example of persistence for me and where this, so 2019. I begin doing things online, and that's the year I started, uh, psych Maven. I, I, uh, I had done teaching under another brand before, but um, I, I began the teaching group. I currently work in Psych Maven as a more collaborative sort of thing with this idea.
Before it was mostly me and Psych Maven was started as I wanted to work with other teachers and, and have a more collaborative process. So I had a new brand kind of out, and one of the people. That had coached me in teaching before was somebody who I do a lot of collaboration with now, bill O'Hanlan, who is a famous psychotherapist, he's, he's retired now, but he's written over 40 books and by far the most famous therapist I knew.
Hmm. And I had, uh, done different things with him in the years leading up to it. And when I, I. Published my things on Psych Maven. I pu published things on LinkedIn and Bill sent me a message, bill, congratulations. I go love to do a collaboration with you. And I'm thinking like, oh my gosh, I would love to do a collaboration with him.
You know, had run successful online courses, had large audience, this is a no-brainer, I wanna do this. And so I began reaching out to Bill about like, Hey, you still want to do something? And I had Bill's cell number, like I'm texting him, I'm trying to call him, I'm emailing him nothing. And I'm having this feeling of like, he doesn't wanna do this.
I'm bothering him. He's just ignoring me. And it was very disappointing. But then I came across something and this is what helped. So I, I, I read about this razor and, uh, it's a, as a conceptual sort of thing. Most people know like Occam's Razor, which is. The simplest is what is AUMs Razor now? Like the,
James Marland: yeah, I think when, when there's no other option.
Uh, the simplest is the answer.
David Hall: Yeah. The simplest is the answer. We kind of in that, so I'll look it up. Finish your story. Yeah. Finish story. So I came across Hanlan's Razor, which I not seen before. So what's significant? I'm talking about Bill O'Hanlan and this is Hanlan's Razor. So no o but still the same name.
And Hanlan's razor states never ascribe to malice. What? Adequately ascribed to ignorance or neglect. Mm-hmm. So I assumed that he was mad at me or irritated with me. I didn't have evidence for that. I, I lacked evidence, but that's what I assumed. And what Halen's Razor says, like, assume he's just not paying attention.
Now I had to take a leap. In that to say. And so I read that and what I said to myself is, I, I'm gonna reach out to him about once every three weeks and I set reminders for it until he responds, until he says, basically buzz off or, yes. And I did it for several more weeks after that. And we, I went into the Christmas holiday in 2019 and he finally responded to, And it was like, oh yeah, I've been meaning to get back to you.
And here's the thing about Bill. You know, bill is a very, he's very A D H D. And when he's focused on something, he's all in that. And in the time 2019, bill was at the beginning stages of his career as a Nashville bass songwriter. And his, he was 100% kind of in that. So this was a late career change for him.
He works as a songwriter now. Wow. Um, And this was just, I was just kind of background noise because I was not in what he was focused on. Yeah, he was absolutely focused on this and he, he, there was no malice intent. He was just being him and I determined to stay with it, and he finally responded. And here's the thing, it was several more months before we got anything going.
He just said like, oh yeah, we'll do it. Honestly, we finally got something going together in collaboration during Covid lockdown. Mm-hmm. It was in March of 2020 where all of a sudden he's stuck at home and can't go out and do songwriting stuff that he's like, we've got stuff going. Yeah. And here's the, now we work pretty regularly together.
We're in a certain rhythm. But it's been a huge impact for me in growing a business cuz I, I. It took me light years ahead in growing, uh, psych maven cuz I, I was able to have an established teachers, a part of the mm-hmm. The collaborative mm-hmm. With an established audience. And we would not have grown to, to the extent if it wasn't for the collaboration with him.
But yeah, that's,
James Marland: that's, that's a great story. But the, there's like the principles of persistence and also the principles of the, the, um, you know, don't ascribe to. Neglect
David Hall: or describe to malice. Malice what, what can be neglectful. Yeah. Most people aren't mean, right? Yeah. On purpose, they're just kind of thoughtless.
James Marland: Yeah. And, and often I think, uh, uh, crucial conversations I think was the book where they talked about. If you don't know something, you, as you make assumptions and if you assume the worst, like it impacts your behavior. Mm-hmm. And so when you're talking about conflict or even like trying to partner with somebody, if you assume the worst, oh, I'm bothering them, or they don't mm-hmm.
They don't wanna be with me or I'm, you know, I, I'm, I don't matter to what they're doing, you're gonna stop reaching out, right? Mm-hmm. And then you're gonna miss out where it could have been something. Well, it was, it was something completely different than what you were thinking
David Hall: about, and it's something that I had, I wanted to quit, but I made a determination not to based on evidence, based on I, I, I didn't have any reason to believe that he didn't like me beyond just his lack of responsiveness.
But I also had reason to believe, like Bill had in his frequently asked questions section on his website, Said, Hey, I sent an email to Bill and he hasn't gave back to me. He goes, ah, Bill's, Bill's pretty disorganized and gets distracted. And like that was honestly, yeah, that is faq. So he'd given me reason to believe that this wasn't malicious.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's funny. And, but we, we get ego fragile and we want, but, um, most things that are rich for us, uh, experientially financially, otherwise take a lot of perseverance.
James Marland: So let's, let's kind of circle back as we wrap up about the, the podcast show, the, the online course show. What happened to the, to the guy?
Like, what was like his journey? To make Oh,
David Hall: for, uh, for, uh, Matt Linsky. Like, well, listen to the episode, episode one, uh, uh, 93 online four. I guess you listened to the episode, but to give, like, he was, part of it was that he was persistent and he, he did, like you look at data, having mm-hmm. Um, KPI and mo a lot of businesses and that would be maybe a In the future indicator.
Yeah. Key performance indicators of you. You wanna have objective measurements that you're looking. And as you learn these over the years, I'll, I'll share a quick one that I, cuz I talk about, I love doing webinars and I learned, I had a, it took me doing, paying for a coach. Mm-hmm. Who knew webinars to be able to help me learn things about doing webinars.
And that was a, it was absolutely worth investing. Um, but I, I ended up, I worked for a year with an online marketing consultant, Andy Ryan, who I, he actually features in one of my webinars cause I talk about my work with him. But he taught me a lot about webinars. I didn't know about the matrix of webinars of what should I be looking for.
Mm-hmm. But here's some key numbers I learned. You get people sign up for a webinar, you want to aim for about a 40% show up rate. And cuz that was a disappointment. I would do a webinar and I was like, I've got, I've got 20 people. And six people would show up. Yeah. And it was so disappointing. Be like, yeah, why don't they like me?
What? And the, the rule is they signed up for something free. And so the, the commitment show up is pretty low. We,
James Marland: we've mentioned like those discouraging thoughts over and over. They're invasive.
David Hall: Yeah. But yeah. But I've learned that like if I get 40% of people who sign up for webinar to show up for a webinar, that's pretty good.
And it's actually gone lower for me over the years. And part of that is, is my, as my email list, gross, I have a lot more people internationally. Mm-hmm. And so doing something live is really timezone. Contingent. Mm-hmm. My early list was disproportionately people in Central and Eastern time in the United States because my, the, all the live events I did for the most part were in.
Right. I, I, I did, I don't think I did a co-sponsored event in Mountain or Pacific Time, so everything I did was in within two time zones. So I would have a much proportionally higher show up rate cuz I'd be doing things live in con in, uh, Effective times for people. But I did a webinar the other week. It was at 4:00 PM and my time was on Eastern Time.
I had people in Australia in it, and they were all, they were talking about it was 7:00 AM for them. Mm-hmm. I was impressed that they showed up, but like the fact I had other people for Australia sign up and that they just wanna catch it in the replay. That's fine. Right. And that's the thing too, if, like, if you offer a replay, often my people will know like, well, I can catch the replay, and they'll, they'll do that.
So 40 percent's a good number. You might be less. And then I was looking, if I'm selling something, if I, if I have 5% of people that are in the event by the thing, that's a good number. Uh, and that's only if I'm selling something. And so you have, you look at these numbers and so you kind of keep on going down and you, you have hundreds of people sign up for something free you're doing, and you only sell a few of your, whatever you're selling.
That's actually not necessarily bad. That's, that's
James Marland: using reality. Like, reality is you're, you're not going to sell, even though you might think, oh, I'm gonna sell a hundred copies. It's, it's much lower, but that doesn't mean it's bad or it's the wrong thing. It's just the, the nature of the, the process.
That's actually a good number. So yeah, what the expectations are, ma matters and just mm-hmm. Being well informed, which can happen when you have a coach or you know, you're, you subscribe to. Somebody that gives you advice can really make a big difference on how you're thinking and feeling about your scaling
David Hall: journey.
Yeah. But, and the, the online course show, you know, he just, you stay persistent. Like he just retooled a lot of things in his pitch. And as, uh, James was alluding to in this particular, he didn't change much about his offering of what it actually was, but he did change about how he put it out in the world.
How he sold it. And you, you try stuff, you take data. Everything though needs to be, um, you wanna do, if you're trying to figure out how to grow, you do need to figure out how to systematize gathering information. Mm-hmm. You figure out, cuz unless you know what's working, it's hard to do more of it.
James Marland: That's a good point.
David Hall: So that's my one tip's, that's my tip is we reach the end or my one takeaway. You cannot know what's working unless you, uh, uh, unless you take any, any information, you can't know what's working, and so be persistent and collect data. Good.
James Marland: Uh, my one thing I want people to know is, uh, there's no win in comparison.
Mm-hmm. Like if you're comparing yourself to, I think Gordon said this, uh, like if you compare yourself to somebody else's, actually, you, you told me this in a previous episode. I'm just saying it over again.
David Hall: Whatever. But it's a good line. I mean, people to catch, but don't compare your beginning to somebody else's.
Yeah, don't
James Marland: compare your beginning to somebody else's middle, and everybody starts at the beginning like you are starting at the beginning and your journey is going to lead you to growth that you need. Instant success is not always a blessing. So no, don't, don't, don't get caught in that comparison trap.
So that, that's my one
David Hall: thing.
James Marland: Absolutely. All right, well, uh, thank you David. Thank you. This is James Marlon with Dr. David Hall. You've been listening to the Scaling Therapy Practice. We'll see you next time. See ya.
