STP 39 | Scaling Your Therapy Practice With Good Policy
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[00:00:00] James Marland: Hello and welcome to the scaling therapy practice. This is James Marland, your host. This is the show where we encourage you to take small steps towards big growth. I have three things at the top of the show for you today. First I attended the webinar. But Daniel fava on SEO and man. Was I impressed, like I learned things. Um, that I was surprised to learn. Uh, he had some tools in there. Um, Google analytics and Google search console. And I, I took a look at my, my web page. And I could tell, I need to work on my SEO. And it was just pretty amazing too. Get that insight just in a little, a little webinar. So what I learned from that webinar was Daniel fava knows his S E oh, he has a, uh, some, some classes to help you on his webpage. I have that link. In the show notes. Uh, but I was just really impressed with, um, what he, what he knows and his support. So, uh that's he has a course that's starting soon SEO base camp. I think there's a, it's like limited to 10 or 15 people. And cart. Closes Sunday or Monday. So I'm gonna push this episode out a day early. Uh, Sunday, so that. If you are interested, you can take a look and see if they have any seats left. So yeah, head on over to that.
[00:01:37] James Marland: The second announcement is we are changing the format of the show to a panel show. Uh, David Hall, Dr. David Hall is stepping back a little bit. He'll Stevie still be a special guest for some episodes, but we are going to be. Uh, doing a panel show with three different panel members from the psych craft network with four different opinions on scaling and the stories that we have, the mistakes we've made, the lessons we've learned along the way. I am really excited to begin starting that the first. Uh, we're going to do this in seasons. We're going to have 12 episodes on one topic. The first one is marketing for mental health and the, the episodes are going to be things on like social media, going to conferences, webinars, how to get word of mouth and customer reviews. Marketing your therapists, marketing your services. Public speaking. SEO webpages. Yeah, email lists and a few other items. If there's a topic that you're super interested in with marketing, or you have questions. About marketing. Please send them to James. At course creation studio.com. That's [email protected] and I will be sure to respond to those and work them into the show. I really want some audience participation about some real issues, real struggles, real problems, or maybe even a tip that you have that. Really worked out for you. So definitely, uh, [email protected]. And the final thing is I'm going to. As I was re listening to the show. Joe was talking about. Living the life you want to live. And I'm going to put in the show notes, a link to a resource. That is sort of like a journal page where you can ask several questions to yourself to assess your day or assess your week. And then just a place where you can put an action step. Which is, am I, am I going, what am I going to do to move closer to the lifestyle I want to live? And what is one thing I can. Modify delete delegate that is taking me away from the lifestyle I want to live. I really enjoyed that. I was like just a five minute, uh, segment with him. On, um, Living your best life. And it made an impression. And I think we, we do things in our work and our daily life where. W we are just reacting. I'm just reacting to what's going on. And all of a sudden it's like a current that pulls you further away, further and further away from what you want to do. So what are some of the things that I can actively do? Too. Build the life I want to live. Cause I'm the one responsible for it. Right. I'm responsible for building my life and building my business. And, uh, just an example, one of the things. Uh, that I've had intentions of doing to build the life I want to do is, uh, build a stronger relationship with my wife. Our son is 18. Nope, he's 19. And he's working full time. He's out of school. And. Before, you know, it, he's going to be out of the house, whether that's a month. To five years. I don't really know. He's sort of a free spirit that way. But it's going to happen. So what am I going to do intentionally to build the life that I want to live? I want to have a strong relationship with my wife, even after you know, the energy and the craziness of, uh, uh, semi. Semi adult. In the house is living in the house. When he's gone. You know, what, what are we going to focus our attention on? And so I need to intentionally build into build in activities. Uh, that will lead me closer to a two, what I want out of life, which is a strong relationship. Um, It in this new phase of our life. So that's one thing that I'm going to do. I'm going to, um, Make this a resource available on the show notes page. You don't have to subscribe to the newsletter to get it, but if you happen to want to subscribe to the newsletter, I just click one of the links that get you. Get get you, get you a subscription to the newsletter and I'll, I'm going to be trying to put more of those resources in the newsletters as they come up. Every week, there's some awesome note or resource from the, from, from our guests. So, okay. I, so those are the three things. Let's get into our show with Joe. Sanok. Uh, he's going to talk about audience building and the three P method. It is fantastic. I hope you enjoyed the show. Let's get on with it. Thanks for joining us for the scaling therapy practice. This is James Marland. I have a special jet guest, Joe Sanok from practice of the practice among other things. Hello, Joe. How's it going today? Great. I'm very excited to have you on the show today.
[00:07:01] James Marland: We're going to talk among other things audience and audience building, especially for people who are thinking about doing a side hustle or launching a course or a podcast. Joe is an expert at those. We'll get into that. Let me introduce Joe in my own way. He's the author of Thursday's the new Friday, how to work fewer hours, make more money and spend time doing what you want.
[00:07:26] James Marland: He has practice of the practice podcast practice of the practice services. There, there's just so much, so much that he does and is doing. But my story about Joe is I did a, a summit, it was called Scale Up Summit about three or four years ago. And he was a, he was a a speaker and something went wrong with like his housing or like he was supposed to be at a place to.
[00:07:50] James Marland: Podcast to be the presenter and it didn't work out, but instead of canceling, he pulled off to the side of the road and did the, did his speech, you know, did his presentation right there. Which I was so, it was so encouraged and blessed to have him there. Like he's just a friend of the community, a friend of me.
[00:08:13] James Marland: And so that is my, that's my introduction for Joe Sanic.
[00:08:17] Joe Sanok: Oh, thanks so much with that. You know, I forgot about that moment. But now that you say it, it comes back of the the internet went out while we were living on the road during the pandemic. So
[00:08:28] James Marland: I was like, yeah, yeah. I was like but he didn't cancel.
[00:08:32] James Marland: He just made it work. And I'm just so grateful for that. So before we get into our topic, let's do a tool tip or tech. I'll go first and I've been reading this Well, it's audible. I do everything on audible now. The six habits of growth by Brendan Brichard. It's, it's free if you subscribe to their book of the month for audible.
[00:08:54] James Marland: So I just picked it up. And one of the habits that he talks about is motivation. Like you have to have motivation every day to work and get to work and be, to, to stay on target, stay productive. And he just, he recommends some tips and tools on just who are you working for, what are you going for?
[00:09:16] James Marland: It's not just work or money, just what, what is important to you and make that your motivation, but don't just do it, you know, once 1st. Do it daily and have things that remind you habits that remind you of what you're working for, what you're working towards. And I just found that so meaningful because, because working in a business can be such a grind sometimes.
[00:09:40] James Marland: So to stay, to stay motivated, have something, it's basically have something you're working for that is bigger than yourself. And that is my tip. Any comments on that? Joe?
[00:09:50] Joe Sanok: Yeah, I love, I love that. I think that, yeah, when we know our why, when we know like what is enough is enough. I think especially as a business owner, you could always do more therapy.
[00:10:00] Joe Sanok: You could always hire more clinicians. You can always do better SEO. There, there is always something and. You know, to just know, okay, like if I'm doing this to serve my kids or my family, and then I never see my kids and my family that's a bit hypocritical. And so I love that idea of having your why be front and center and knowing when enough is enough.
[00:10:20] Joe Sanok: Awesome.
[00:10:21] James Marland: So, have I what is your tool tip or tech this week?
[00:10:25] Joe Sanok: Yeah. You know, I'm going to, I'm going to dovetail off of what you said, where I've really been loving the waking up app that Sam Harris puts out. And so it's a awesome app that has, you know, meditation and different trainings in it. And I've been really liking the Alan Watts series.
[00:10:42] Joe Sanok: So Alan Watts is a speaker that was really big in the sixties and seventies and has, and he recorded hundreds of hours of teachings. And just yesterday I was on a walk listening to him speak and he was just talking about really. You know, the goal of so many things, whether it's, you know, religion or business or, you know, self development is basically to be present you know, it always points back to just appreciating the present.
[00:11:04] Joe Sanok: And so that idea of, you know, if we're always working and always doing like all these tasks and kind of what you were saying you know, what's the point of it? And so for me, it's really helped me stay grounded and to be like, we get to be human. Billions and trillions of years to get to this point that you and I can be talking on a computer screen to each other on a podcast, like literally for this to happen to quadrillion years.
[00:11:29] Joe Sanok: That's amazing. And to just sit in that amazement and say, we get to do really good work in the world and we get to be human. It's been a great reminder recently for me. When I get stressed out or feel like I'm not enough or whatever the thing is, that is like really Joe, like you get to be human.
[00:11:45] James Marland: Awesome. So it's called the wake
[00:11:46] Joe Sanok: up app. Yeah, it's called the waking up app. They have a daily meditation each day and that's kind of how it started. And then they've added different trainings on top of it. And it's a amazing app. Cool.
[00:11:58] James Marland: That that's one of the that's another habit from the book is wake up and do some meditation or something to center yourself.
[00:12:05] James Marland: From, from the habits book, I would say, all right, before we get into some of the topics what's new with practice of the practice I haven't, I haven't been to a conference in about a year, so I'm a little out of touch. What's, what's new with your podcast or the, the, the business?
[00:12:20] Joe Sanok: Yeah, you know, during the pandemic and afterwards, we were really launching a lot of products and supports to help clinicians and seeing what stuck as the world was really changing.
[00:12:29] Joe Sanok: And I would say the last year, year and a half has really been focused on just operationally cleaning up the business. So we're doing a really big website update in the next month or so. It'll look completely different, but. Way more amazing because we have a full it team now and staff. We're doing a lot more just forward facing types of things.
[00:12:48] Joe Sanok: Something we're working on that has yet to launch, but eventually will is a text course where people are going to get a daily text called 40 days to fall. And so we're developing that where it's just going to be a daily, like work on this and then, you know, five days of really good content around, you know, getting full and then two days, cause we want you to take at least two days off a week of just encouragement around slowing down.
[00:13:12] Joe Sanok: So we're working on that right now. We don't have a landing page or anything for it yet, but you know, the main practice, the practice website, we'll have that there, or we'll be letting all of our email lists know. So yeah, just getting creative, finding ways to kind of increase our operational systems Sam, who's been with us for, I think, five years at this point has moved into an operations role.
[00:13:30] Joe Sanok: And we, I have a new executive assistant who's taken on a ton as well. So it's, it's been exciting to see the behind the scenes get cleaned up so we can just really keep scaling. Yeah. As you
[00:13:42] James Marland: grow, you tend to have policies, procedures, paperwork, or things that just sort of linger. Until you clean it up.
[00:13:51] James Marland: So that's, that's really exciting. I'm looking forward to the new webpage. I thought your webpage was fine, but if it's going to be better, even, even more cool. And then the staff, you know, it sounds like you've been growing your staff too and giving them new responsibilities. All right so my first question before we get into the audience is I did read Thursday's The New Friday and the big takeaway for me is just an awareness of how, you know, grindy work can be and how I just assume this is the way it is, but even after reading it, and maybe, maybe other people have talked about this in the past, I still, I still feel guilty When I don't put in my 8 to 10 hours, or I leave messages for the weekend, or I don't respond to that text at 10 o'clock at night from customers or clients.
[00:14:47] James Marland: Do you have any insight for me on why or why we still feel that way where we know we should slow down? We know we should prioritize even my tip in the beginning, you know, prioritize what's important, but then we, then we still have those feelings of guilt or loss when we were not doing what we think we should be doing.
[00:15:10] James Marland: Do you have any, just a brief comment on that?
[00:15:13] Joe Sanok: Yeah, I mean, I think for one, it's really normal, right? And so let's just normalize it that, you know, James, you're not the freak out there who is having a hard time implementing it. So we just normalize it like a good therapist. But I would say all of those feelings are internal.
[00:15:29] Joe Sanok: It may have come from a parent, it may have come from a school system. It may have come from our religion, but it's still inside of you and you have that control over how you react to it. So thinking about what are we avoiding and what are we seeking in that behavior? And so the whole, I'm, I didn't work, you know, eight to 10 hours today.
[00:15:47] Joe Sanok: Is it avoiding, you know, this fear of, you know, my business is going to fall apart or it's going not have the operations or I. I have such potential I'm seeking. I could see his business just explode, but, and there's so much potential there for it. And I'm really excited about that. Like really figuring out, am I avoiding something that I just need to work on?
[00:16:07] Joe Sanok: Like, you know, maybe I was raised, you know, in a household where, you know, even on the weekend, it was like, we don't sit still, you know, we, we do chores on the weekend and then we go to soccer games and you've been raised in an environment where slowing down genuinely is looked down upon. Okay. Well, that, that then.
[00:16:23] Joe Sanok: Warrants some evaluation. Is that what you want? You know, maybe that is something that someone says, no, I want to live a nonstop 24 7 life. And that's the life I want. I would say most people don't want that. But to just evaluate it and say, like, is the life that I'm creating what I actually want to have some intention around it.
[00:16:39] Joe Sanok: And then in the proactive side, if we really realize, you know, the things that we're proactively trying to create are actually getting created slower, right. Because of the behavior we're doing. So you spending, you know, two or three extra hours on a Friday afternoon or evening, you know, doing email, that's attracting bad clients that expect emails at 6 PM on a Friday, which then is going to attract other bad clients that expect emails at 6 PM on a Friday, which then means you need to have assistance that are going to be responding at 6 PM on a Friday.
[00:17:07] Joe Sanok: And so the behavior that we do is then moving us farther away from the thing we're actually seeking. And so. You know, even just looking at my own staff, you know, I'm taking a bunch of vacations in the summer of 2023. And my staff have said to me, seeing that on your calendar, actually, it helps me feel permission to go take more vacations.
[00:17:26] Joe Sanok: And for me to slow down a little bit and for me to do better work, rather than them feeling like, why aren't you in the office, Joe, I have attracted people that, you know, this past week, Sam, our operations person, she and her family were dealing with a lot of sickness. I hope she didn't feel guilty taking a week off to mend and heal and get better.
[00:17:43] Joe Sanok: So then I'm creating the thing I'm seeking, which is a business that's holistic. It's well rounded. It's, it's good for the people that work with me and for me. And then, you know, hopefully, you know, when things come up, I, I also have the insight to go do my own therapy, do my own work on that stuff. So
[00:18:00] James Marland: you're, you, the question, the question that stuck with me is, are you actively creating the life that you want?
[00:18:08] James Marland: You know, are your behaviors and habits supporting or detracting from who you want to be? And you know, I do, I do recognize that growing up, you know, you worked on Saturday, you didn't waste any time just busy all the time. You know, I have brought that forward into this life. And, you know, is that, is that what I really want?
[00:18:31] James Marland: So great, great insight there. Well, thank you for that. Thanks you for indulging me on that question. So we want to talk about audiences and building audiences. And you have had, you've built many audiences over the years, not just as a therapy practice, but podcast consult, consulting services. The book was an audience, like there's probably more that I'm missing, but all of these audiences.
[00:19:01] James Marland: And I just wanted to talk about that and get, pick your brain a little bit about, you know, what, what. You should do, but, but for the person, you know, I want you to talk to the person who's thinking about launching a podcast or launching a product or doing an online course or doing a CE unit. Why should the entrepreneur want to build an audience?
[00:19:23] James Marland: Shouldn't they just, this is a facetious question. Shouldn't they just release it out there and people will come to it. So why, why should we worry about this?
[00:19:32] Joe Sanok: Yeah. And this is one of the most common things I hear from, you know, whether I'm doing pre consulting calls with someone that's looking at doing consulting with me or folks that want to build passive income, you know, people like you and I are, are highly trained in creating things, you know, all through grad school, it's, you know, you're writing papers, you're, you know, creating hypothetical programs or groups, you know, you're, you're building systems or you're creating things that are Products to foster kids or whoever the audience was in these nonprofits or community mental health.
[00:20:03] Joe Sanok: So we are trained to create products and to be seen as an expert in that area. That's not a bad thing, but that is not at all how the business world works. And if anything, that stands in the way. Of you being successful. And so when you create an e course and you say, okay, here's my trauma e course, and you have no audience.
[00:20:21] Joe Sanok: Every potential audience member you're squeezing into that e course. You're saying, I think you as someone that needs to learn about trauma needs to take my e course. Well, what if that person wants some sort of live feedback? What if they want to have a self paced book that they could read? What if they, you know, aren't a course learner, they're an auditory learner and you've attracted a bunch of people that learn differently than what you've created?
[00:20:42] Joe Sanok: You're going to then be saying to your audience, let me squeeze you into this thing that you don't need. Whereas if we flip it and we say, let's first build an audience, let's have that audience grow. Let's do a very clear process on deciding what that audience wants to purchase, what needs they have, go through that process and then launch a product that that audience tells us they want to buy.
[00:21:03] Joe Sanok: It almost ensures that we're going to sell that product right from the beginning. So
[00:21:12] James Marland: the, the best course in the world doesn't make anything without an audience.
[00:21:18] Joe Sanok: Yeah. I would argue that, you know, there's a few flash in the pans that maybe someone just got, got lucky, you know, they, they create some sort of great course and it gets some buzz and takes off, but that's not the normal story.
[00:21:30] Joe Sanok: You know, a lot of people think, Oh, if I have a podcast, all of a sudden I'm going to get all these sponsors and that's going to be the thing. Or, you know, for me, it was like, you know, if I get a Harper Collins book and a Harvard business review, you know, article, that's going to make it. It's still hard work, you know, it's like, even, you know, that builds credibility.
[00:21:46] Joe Sanok: It gives me access to different audiences, but it still takes hard work to say, is the audience I'm attracting, do I even have products that line up with that? Or do we need to build different things? And so, you know, these, these bullets that we think are going to just be the thing is just not the reality of what it is for most people building a business.
[00:22:03] Joe Sanok: It, it, you
[00:22:04] James Marland: said it takes where it takes work, you know, and there's that I get when I started looking about creating courses and podcasts. Like all these, all these ads in Facebook are popping up, you know, take my 20 course and you have passive income forever and you won't have to work like it was sort of like inundated with.
[00:22:25] James Marland: ads for do this one thing one time and you're gonna, you know, you're gonna be set. But to your point, building a business and building an audience it takes work and the, the, the people who make it with one, you know, one shot doing one thing or going viral, that is, that's not, it's not normal. You got to work at
[00:22:48] Joe Sanok: it.
[00:22:49] Joe Sanok: Yeah, and also you think about if you build a course and you kind of cram everyone into it and then, you know, 80 percent of the people don't even complete the course, and then you don't get any good reviews on the course. You don't have these people saying, oh, my gosh, this was exactly what I needed versus you have an audience.
[00:23:04] Joe Sanok: You listen to that audience. You then build with that audience once and then. They actually want to complete the course that they helped design that they helped be a part of. You're going to get better reviews. You're going to have people say, this is a hundred percent what I needed. Compared to just this way of, I'm going to kind of throw spaghetti at the wall and see what happens and hope that somebody buys it.
[00:23:21] Joe Sanok: Like it's just not, if you actually want to be serious about making money and, you know, impacting the world, you know, going through the audience building first is the way that you ensure that you're making something and not wasting a ton of time and money on making a course that no one buys. Yeah.
[00:23:36] James Marland: So how do you, how do you find and how do you listen to your audience?
[00:23:40] James Marland: Do you have any advice on that?
[00:23:43] Joe Sanok: Yeah. So I'll, I'll go through our three P process. So that's assuming that you already have an audience and then we can always go backward and say, how do you build that audience if you want to go there? So assuming you have an audience, which I define as having at least 500 people on an email list.
[00:23:58] Joe Sanok: And so, you know, just having direct access to an audience we're going to go through some steps with the mindset of we're trying to validate this idea and to kill the idea before we get too far down the road with it. So the first thing is that we set up interviews with at least 20 people. And so we sent an email out that says something like, Hey, you've been on my email list, that's all about parents that are raising anxious teenagers.
[00:24:22] Joe Sanok: And I'm planning to create a course, a community, you know, something this fall, and I'm asking my audience to just meet with me to chat about. You know, this idea this isn't a sales pitch. I'm literally just going to ask you questions about what you would want. And it's going to be 20 to 30 minutes.
[00:24:39] Joe Sanok: You know, would you click this Calendly link to schedule a time to chat with me? And you want to do this over a short period of time, no longer than two weeks. You don't want it to be that you interview one person, you know, at the beginning of the month, another, at the end of the month, you want to have.
[00:24:51] Joe Sanok: All these 20 interviews, minimum of 20, you know, in at least a two week or shorter period of time, you're just full tilt interviewing people like crazy. The reason is then you can start to see trends a lot easier as you're talking to that many people. So first thing is, is your audience engaged? Do you even get 20 people that will talk to you?
[00:25:09] Joe Sanok: If it's no, then you have a disengaged audience and you can kill the idea because if they won't even talk to you for free. To share where they need help. They're probably not going to buy a course or anything else. And so you're ruling out like, okay, they're inactive or you get these 20 people. So what does that call look like?
[00:25:23] Joe Sanok: I recommend a phone call instead of a zoom call so that you can take notes. And you don't have to worry about like eye contact or good lighting. And that you let them know, I'm going to be typing out your answers and in a Google doc to just keep track of it. So the three P's the first P is pain.
[00:25:38] Joe Sanok: So you want to ask them, you know, what's it been like as a parent in this example, a parent that has an anxious teen. And then they, in their words are saying. You know, I just feel like it should be easier than this. They struggle in school. I know they're a smart kid, but now they're so anxious. I wish they would date or like whatever it is that they use to describe that anxiety as a parent.
[00:25:59] Joe Sanok: Then the second P is product. So what would a if there's a magical product that helped you in some way and then you reflect back that pain. So You said that you wish that your son would date, but he just gets so anxious. Like he doesn't even go to parties or, you know, really have many friends. If there was some magical product for you to help coach him or for him what would that look like?
[00:26:19] Joe Sanok: And you just kind of just throw it out there. They may say, you know, if I just had like a weekly support group for parents, that would be so helpful. Or if I had some experts I could talk to, they'll start to tell you the kinds of things they would want in that ideal product. And over time, you're then going to see that there's certain trends that you start to see that do they prefer live?
[00:26:37] Joe Sanok: Do they prefer kind of at their own pace or do they want it to be very, very niche specific, like how to help an anxious teen boy date? Or is it more broad? Like, you know, you know, Anxious parents. And then the last P is, is payment. How much would they pay? So what would the price be for this? So you reflect back again, that pain, you said, this was the pain you then said, this is that magical product.
[00:27:01] Joe Sanok: Imagine I offered all of that. Like, what would you pay for that? You know, they may say 49 one time. They may say a hundred bucks a month. They may say a thousand bucks a month. I did this exact process when I was thinking about launching a podcast school, like an e course. So eventually we did podcast launch school, but I went through this process with a bunch of my consulting clients that had come to slow down school.
[00:27:21] Joe Sanok: They're one on one consulting clients. So they'd invested, you know, 000 already in practice of the practice and developing themselves and went through this whole process with them, thinking that they'd want a self paced e course that I'd charge a thousand bucks for, and at the end, they said, honestly, Joe.
[00:27:38] Joe Sanok: I know, you know, how to do podcasts. We would just love for your team to do all the editing, all the show notes. I just show up and record and I don't have to do anything. And when I got to the price, I thought like, there's no way we can afford to do what they're asking. And I said, how much would you pay if our team did this?
[00:27:55] Joe Sanok: And they almost universally people said, I don't know. 000. And I was like, what, like how many episodes would have to be included? So we walked through that and within two days, I landed four people that had already paid me 20, 000. I mean, 80, 000 in four days. Now I had to hire an audio engineering staff.
[00:28:14] Joe Sanok: I had to hire a show notes coordinator, all of that, but it was, I knew that it was the thing that these people wanted instead of making some course that they would never complete. So then you have the price. So
[00:28:24] James Marland: you took this idea, like this concept. And before you made anything, you sold 80, 000 of stuff just with this very, this simple, it seems simple.
[00:28:38] James Marland: Yeah. What is it? P pain? What's the second P product, product, and then is it price? The third one being price. And just listening, you're just listening to what they want and trying to figure out, you know, what, what is the, what's the, what can I help you with? Like, it's like, what do they want? How do I build it?
[00:29:00] James Marland: What would you pay for it? Type of thing. It's really cool. Right after those
[00:29:05] Joe Sanok: frustration out, it does. And right after those interviews, you know, I then send a summary email to, you know, all 20 people, BCC. You don't want to have everyone's emails in there. Just be respectful. Just say, you know, summary of the interviews.
[00:29:18] Joe Sanok: Like, thanks so much for being a part of these interviews. I've done, you know, 20, some interviews over the last week. Here are the main themes of the pain. Here are the main themes of the product. Here are the main themes of the price. And then say, here's what I'm offering. I'm going to be launching, you know, this done for you podcasting and, you know, it's going to cost 20, 000 eventually, you know, for this group, it's going to be 18 split into two payments.
[00:29:40] Joe Sanok: You know, we're starting with just four people. Here's exactly what's going to be in that. And then if you want to be on the waitlist, or you might even say, if you want to buy right now, click here. And so you decide, are you going to do a waitlist model or are you going to have them buy right then?
[00:29:53] Joe Sanok: And then. If people don't buy that tells you, okay, I just interviewed 20 people that said they want a done for you podcast. But then when it came time to it, I reflected back exactly what they said, but they didn't pull out their credit cards. Good thing. I didn't hire a whole sound engineering team.
[00:30:07] Joe Sanok: Good thing. I didn't hire, you know, someone that would transcribe episodes and all this stuff. So then you can see, okay, now I have 80 grand in the business for this done for you podcasting and to let them know I'm going to be building this team after I have the clients. So here's what that's going to look like over the next nine months.
[00:30:25] Joe Sanok: We're going to be doing these things. By the end, you'll have 26 podcast episodes. It'll be launched. It'll be on iTunes or whatever the thing was, you know, for, for the podcasting done for you.
[00:30:35] James Marland: That's, that's amazing. I think that just speaks to the. To the wisdom of building your audience first, before you build the product, you know, building listening, building, figuring out what their pain is, and then solving that problem.
[00:30:51] James Marland: Cause if you can solve their, their pain, if you can solve that problem, the people will be like, okay, what do I need to pay you for it? It won't be like pulling the money out, you know, pulling the clients out. It's, it's, they are, will, they want it, like, oh, you, you have something I want. That, that's a really important part of launching a, a product
[00:31:15] Joe Sanok: or a service.
[00:31:16] Joe Sanok: I forgot who said it, but I remember hearing nobody likes to be sold to, but everyone likes to buy and just that idea of even just observing our own kind of habits of purchasing, like, I hate being sold to, but, you know, if I'm going to upgrade a system within practice of the practice. Like I want to do it well.
[00:31:35] Joe Sanok: And so, you know, even recently we've been looking at direct mailers, you know, sending postcards in the mail to people to help get to new audiences. And this mailing company that, you know, has lists of that sort, you know, I reached out to them and this guy, Justin was just like, okay, sounds like what you're doing is really cool.
[00:31:52] Joe Sanok: Just let me know if you're ready. And if not, like. That's cool too. Okay. Thanks, dude. It was very simple. No, no high sales. And we'll test it with him. Probably.
[00:32:05] James Marland: It's the customer's journey. Like, sometimes I think people are like, we, we got to get them, you know, we got to get people to buy within 30 days or a week or whatever the algorithm says, because that's their window.
[00:32:17] James Marland: But everybody's journey is a little different. And if you can provide some support, encouragement, and value along the way, if they're a client that you really want, they are they're going to stick around, you know, and when they're ready, they will buy, you don't have to pressure them. That's one of the things.
[00:32:35] James Marland: I like about content marketing, I guess it's called, is you just demonstrate your value, you give, you demonstrate that, you know, what you're talking about, you can help people. And when they're ready to buy, they will be like, Oh yeah, I want, I want a podcast. I want a course I want, you know, this, you know, I want to grow a group practice.
[00:32:54] James Marland: But how do I, how do I sign
[00:32:56] Joe Sanok: up? Yeah. I mean, really like we've shifted so much in the last four years where, you know, people would come to us and say, can you help us, you'll build an e course. Can you help us build this to now people have to go through audience building academy, or they have to show that they already have an audience before we'll even do any of that support, because we know they're not going to be successful.
[00:33:16] Joe Sanok: Sure. They might give us, you know, 10 or 20 K, but it's like, if they don't make that back, that makes me look bad and it makes them look bad. Awesome.
[00:33:24] James Marland: So, turning to like, what. Just some general questions about audience building. You've built a bunch of things just two, two questions. What was the hardest audience to build and what is your, like one of the audiences or products you're proud of?
[00:33:39] James Marland: You're like, oh man, we really did a good job with this. Or it was like, maybe it's not your biggest product, but it's like close to your heart. So what was hard and what is close to your
[00:33:48] Joe Sanok: heart? You know, I, I still feel like getting therapists to sign up for emails and free resources is still so hard. Like when people get into most of our products, we get, you know, really great reviews, really great outcomes, like next level practice, our program for people in solo practice, usually within three months, you know, so 99 bucks a month, so for less than 300 in three months, most people are as full as they want to be.
[00:34:14] Joe Sanok: And it's like, you know, over and over, we see that, that level of success. And it feels like it should just be way easier at this point to make those sales, to get, you know, hundreds of people per cohort. But it's, it's, there's just so many shifts, you know, like a year ago, you know, it seemed like tons of people wanted to be in low cost membership communities.
[00:34:33] Joe Sanok: This last year has been like all one on one consulting, you know, that so many people are like, yeah, I'll give you a thousand bucks a month to do consulting and you're like. Okay. Like we have some great consultants but that's not nearly as scalable as, you know, helping a membership community. So looking at those market trends and, you know, what's shifting and changing to me, it's, it's just it's still hard, you know, people may look at practice the practice and say, oh, it's probably easy for them.
[00:34:58] Joe Sanok: No, it's still really difficult to figure out how to get in front of therapists and to get them to realize the value of, of the content that we make, or you make, or other people make.
[00:35:09] James Marland: I talked with it was maybe a year or 2 ago, Julie Harris. And she was talking about people who, who go and get coaching and consulting to grow their business and people who don't.
[00:35:22] James Marland: And she's, she, you know, it's anecdotally the people who go there, their revenues grow faster and the people who don't. You know, they save the a hundred dollars or whatever, but it doesn't grow. So it just speaks to, even on like, you know, the data driven assessment people who engage in growing and spend money on themselves to grow.
[00:35:44] James Marland: They, they get a big return on it. So,
[00:35:48] Joe Sanok: yeah. I mean, even to that point, I remember when I launched my first slowdown school, I had done all this work to sell the first tickets and I only sold one ticket after all this work on the podcast and everything. And so I hired this lady, Jamie masters, who has the eventual millionaire podcast.
[00:36:04] Joe Sanok: She coached John Lee Dumas and all these other people. And this was when I still had. A full time job, you know, making like 60 K a year, you know, full time at the college practice. The practice was a side gig. I had my counseling practice and she was 2, 000 an hour. And it was like, are you kidding me? Like this better be worth it.
[00:36:23] Joe Sanok: I did. She had a minimum of 10 hours. I was like, okay, I'll do 10, 10 hours with you. I can directly track back to that 20, 000. At least 200 K in sales of things. She taught me of ways to structure things, the ways to think about things, ways to listen and to do it authentically to who I am as well, that it wasn't just these like slimy sales tactics.
[00:36:45] Joe Sanok: And so it's like when you have someone that's a fit. It's like they can really amplify what you're already doing. Awesome.
[00:36:54] James Marland: That's amazing. Do you, so I, I want to dovetail on the, the pro, do you have a product that's close to your heart of service that you're, you're like just
[00:37:05] Joe Sanok: super proud of? Yeah. You know, I think that next level practice, our membership community for solo practitioners, I just love the iterations we've gone through with it.
[00:37:16] Joe Sanok: So it's aimed at people that are in solo practice from that moment, they think to themselves, I want to start a solo practice all the way to that moment that they're like, I want to do a group practice because then we have group practice launch group practice boss, all those other things. And so it really is the beginning of people's journeys.
[00:37:31] Joe Sanok: And you know, we have these small groups that people meet in and, you know, I actually was just down in North Carolina and met up with some of our next level practice people. And they're people that they're in small groups together and they, you know, meet up in person. And it's these communities that.
[00:37:48] Joe Sanok: Are completely outside of me, even though it's within our product that have happened. And then we have all sorts of trainings every month and, you know, just see the experts we've been able to bring in, like Julie Schwartz Gottman, you know, someone that through grad school, I'm like reading her research.
[00:38:01] Joe Sanok: And now I consider a friend, like during my divorce, she's like reached out to me and was like, I'm really sorry. Like, here's some, some books that might be helpful. And. To be able to have these connections with, with leaders in our field and to see people genuinely just growing their practices so quickly in what can often be a very confusing time to build a business, you know, we're not talking, taught this stuff in grad school.
[00:38:23] Joe Sanok: So, you know, to come alongside folks and just have them go from this mindset of, you know, I have to be employed by someone else to whoa, there's a whole world here that I just never even thought existed. And to see those light bulbs go off, like, it's so rewarding personally, but it's really just cool to see the outcomes also people have from from next level practice.
[00:38:41] Joe Sanok: Yeah, that's
[00:38:42] James Marland: got to be really rewarding. To, to build those little communities I get, sometimes I get a little envious, maybe, or jealous. I see all my therapist friends, oh, we went, we met up in our community group, and we had this mastermind, and like this, we saw each other at this conference, and here's all our pictures together.
[00:39:00] James Marland: It's it's just something really special about growing, you're, you're just doing something hard together. Like, there's another book, I can't remember, like, doing things alone is hard, doing things in a pack, or doing things, people, doing hard things in a pack with they call it their wolf pack for some reason, is, it's just much easier.
[00:39:18] James Marland: And You know, that next level practice is just an environment to create, you know, to put some intentionality behind doing some hard things, but doing it with people to get doing it together. Yeah. Yeah. All right. We're kind of wrapping up a little bit. Can you, you have the audience building product.
[00:39:39] James Marland: I looked it up. It looks like it's You're taking names right now, but can you talk about your audience building product?
[00:39:45] Joe Sanok: Yeah, so Audience Building Academy is a six month program, so we do cohorts of it, so that's why we we're taking names for Oh, that's right. All these, yeah. Yeah. So usually it's September and March of each year.
[00:39:56] Joe Sanok: So we're dead center at the time of this recording in one of our cohorts. So, we don't offer it outside of the cohort because it's a mixed model where you watch videos and then come to the live q and a and small group with me. So the way it works is, Over the six months, we have different milestones every single month.
[00:40:12] Joe Sanok: So the first milestone, we look at what's your niche how much have you researched it, who else is in that, who's doing it well you know, are people that maybe are doing it poorly, still successful. Is there no one in that niche bouncing ideas off of, you know, your ideal clients, how do you do that?
[00:40:27] Joe Sanok: And so we really dig into sketching out your niche. Month two, we really focus on building out your email course. So we call it an email course because we have a very kind of clear way that we outline it over a nine part email series so that people have something to point folks to.
[00:40:42] Joe Sanok: There's no point in, you know, going on podcasts like this and getting all this audience. If you don't have a place to capture that audience. If someone. Listens to this and says, I'm interested in next level practice. And, you know, they don't get the URL and they're just left to their own devices. They're probably not gonna get on the waiting list.
[00:40:58] Joe Sanok: And so you want to have that infrastructure built up before you go get a bunch of media. So we help you build out your email course. And we do that in a small group of six people or so that I lead. Then the next phase is getting top media. So how do you respond to help a reporter out? How do you make sure that you have some really good stories that represent different questions and to almost have a playlist of stories similar to musicians that have a playlist where you're not going to tell every single story you have on a podcast or on an interview.
[00:41:26] Joe Sanok: But you know, the three P's thing, that's a question I get, you know, sometimes. And so to be able to walk through that. But then to also give an example of that, you know, with the podcast done for you. Those are the sorts of things that you want to have, you know, readily available, and then we walk through, you know, being on podcast interviews.
[00:41:41] Joe Sanok: We walk through how do you guest blog? And then we land on hosting your first summit or your first webinar. And so the idea is that first six months. People are really getting an idea of all the ways to build an audience. And then once they go through those first six months, they can come back through for free as long as they want.
[00:41:58] Joe Sanok: And so, we have people that come through and say, you know, I got most of my email course finished, but I wanted to come through and just get some more feedback on it or, you know, they'll pop into just the podcasting one. So it's great because that first six months, you're really. Just taking it all in, doing your best to keep up, and then you can always go back through it after that.
[00:42:16] James Marland: That's, that sounds amazing. I like the, the structure of it. I like the, the milestones, like, how do I know if I'm progressing? And then you can come back through to get refreshers. That's also, cause it is overwhelming, especially if you're running a business and hiring people and, you know, doing all the other, doing the family and, you know, going to ballgames and whatever, all that stuff the, it could be overwhelming.
[00:42:41] James Marland: So, coming back through sounds like a great benefit.
[00:42:45] Joe Sanok: Well, even just to get that feedback from other people, other than me, just, just this last week there's this lady Carla, who's building out she has. A great program. She like a mindset of how she helps people whose children are very difficult.
[00:42:58] Joe Sanok: And what we're doing is we're having them practice their origin story. So like, like, why do you care about this? Why do you care about kids with behavior issues? And she told this story that sounded very, you know, And so we stopped the timer and said, okay, here's what questions we all have, you know, we want to know, like, where were you sitting when that tantrum, how old was the kid when that tantrum, and as she told it the second time, she started tearing up and she was apologizing for that.
[00:43:25] Joe Sanok: But we're like, no, like, this is. This is your story. Like the fact that this is how much you care about your son and you're tearing up over it. Like, this is your origin story. And to see how every single person went from a pretty bland, safe story to like a story that all of us were like, Oh my gosh, if we had more than the time that we have, we would love to hear all of that story.
[00:43:46] Joe Sanok: So. It's just so cool to see that transformation as people learn how to tell good stories, how to like really take that professional work and, and put it into something beyond just their counseling practice.
[00:43:59] James Marland: Awesome. That, that sounds cool. It sounds like a really neat experience. And just the feedbacks probably really from the group is probably invaluable.
[00:44:06] James Marland: To kind of craft those things. Yeah. All right. We're going to do our one thing anything before we do our one thing one thing you want people to take away from the episode. You gave me a 28 step checklist to start a private practice. I'll have that link in the show notes. Anything else you want to say about where people can find you or any other thing on your web page?
[00:44:27] Joe Sanok: Yeah, I'll just give the link to those two things that I talked about today. So if people are interested in joining next level practice, our next cohort is in September, it's usually September and March that we open those up each year. So even if you're listening to this in the future, that's the rhythm that we typically have.
[00:44:42] Joe Sanok: So over at practiceofthepractice. com forward slash invite, you can request that invite. Depending on when this goes live summer of 2023, we're allowing people to come to the events for free, just to check it out. So all that information is going to be on practice of the practice. com. And then if you're interested in audience building Academy, audience building dot Academy is where you can sign up for that next cohort interest list.
[00:45:04] Joe Sanok: And you'll, you'll get all the information about that as well. So I'll make it easy to put
[00:45:09] James Marland: those links. Yeah.
[00:45:11] Joe Sanok: Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. And our podcast is called practice of the practice. So we have we're almost to episode 900 of that podcast.
[00:45:20] James Marland: Is it a weekly one
[00:45:22] Joe Sanok: in, in 2022, we did it four times a week and this year we're doing it two times a week.
[00:45:27] Joe Sanok: Okay. I'm just trying
[00:45:28] James Marland: to figure out how many years that is. The wild.
[00:45:32] Joe Sanok: Yeah, it was it was January of 2013. So just over 10 years that, yeah, awesome.
[00:45:39] James Marland: Great. All right. So let's get into our one thing, Joe, if they could only, if the audience here could only remember one thing from the episode, what's the one thing you would want them to take away from our discussion,
[00:45:51] Joe Sanok: I mean, I would say the one thing I would say is that you are unique and have.
[00:46:01] Joe Sanok: So many great ideas and the temptation is to go create things with those ideas. That's not bad that you have the inclination, but if you put a bunch of time and money into something only to have no one by it, I think that's just a hobby. The world needs to hear what you have to say, but they want to be a part of that journey of creation.
[00:46:20] Joe Sanok: And so for you to take the time to build an audience, talk to your audience, have them really. Be a part of creating whatever products, teachings, things you sell is going to help you be so much more successful than if you just stay in your cave and create things all on your own.
[00:46:38] James Marland: And I'm going to go back to the, one of the first points is just listen, you know, listen and figure out what people need.
[00:46:45] James Marland: See if you can help them with it. Like that's the essence of. Creating products that people will actually use. Like they, they, people want, as you said, people, people want to buy, they don't want to be sold to. So listen to them, listen to what their pain points are and see if you have a skill that helps them.
[00:47:04] James Marland: Like that's a pretty, pretty nice way to wrap that up. All right. Well, Joe, thank you for being on the episode. Thanks so much for having me today. This is James with the scaling therapy practice, where we encourage. our audience to take small steps towards big growth. We'll see you next time. So that is, that's the show.
[00:47:28] Joe Sanok: Nice.
[00:50:48] James Marland: Thank you for listening to the scaling therapy practice I hope you enjoyed the show I want to remind you that the content shared today is for general information and entertainment purposes only It shouldn't be considered as legal or tax advice If you need a professional advice in those areas please consult with a licensed attorney or accountant but thank you so much for listening The scaling therapy practice is part of the psych craft network
