Untitled project from SquadCast
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[00:00:30] James Marland: All right. So, uh, welcome to the Scaling Therapy Practice. This is James Marlin, your host. Uh, this is the show where we encourage you to take intentional steps towards sustainable growth. Today I am joined with, uh, my co-host, Steve Biso,
[00:00:45] Steve Bisson: Uh, but, uh, I'm a, my licensed mental health counselor, happy to be here.
[00:00:49] James Marland: Uh, we have our special guest, Laura Long,
[00:00:52] Laura Long: What's up?
[00:00:53] James Marland: and Laura, uh, is your badass therapy practice. Right. And, uh, some other things. Why don't you give us a little introduction to yourself.
[00:01:02] Laura Long: Man, that's why I wrote it out
[00:01:03] James Marland: Oh, do you. want me to read it? I
[00:01:05] Laura Long: I don't know where it went.
[00:01:08] James Marland: I, I, so this is a thing. I don't like reading it. Like, I don't like when I hear people read it, I'm like, oh, I know they're reading it. So
[00:01:17] James Marland: that's why I
[00:01:18] Laura Long: and when I wrote it I was like, oh, this sounds so pretentious. Back to Steve
[00:01:24] James Marland: Well, this
[00:01:24] James Marland: is my introduction.
[00:01:25] Laura Long: to you.
[00:01:26] James Marland: I've watched you. This is my introduction. I've watched you from afar. I've admired your Your attitude and like your ability to market. And then we met at a conference just recently and we had a conversation. forget what it was, but it was really good. Like, hmm. It, it was a meaningful conversation to me in the hall about something marketing or something that was going on at the conference, and I asked you to be on the show and you graciously agreed.
[00:01:53] James Marland: And I'm like, awesome. Uh, I get to talk to somebody that I've been admiring for a while. So that's my introduction. Do you got anything to add?
[00:02:01] Laura Long: That's splendid. No, I think it, it adds to the fact that, that that quote of people don't really remember what you say,
[00:02:08] James Marland: Mm.
[00:02:09] Laura Long: they definitely remember how you made them feel. So I too don't remember the content of our conversation, but I remember leaving that being like, I wanna get to know this James kid. A little bit more
[00:02:18] Laura Long: kid.
[00:02:19] Laura Long: Even though you're like, double my height,
[00:02:21] James Marland: I, I am, I'm about six two. So, uh,
[00:02:25] Laura Long: I just remember feeling like I was talking upward a lot.
[00:02:29] James Marland: it was just a brief meeting, but it made it, it left an impression. So. All right. So
[00:02:36] James Marland: we're gonna talk. Oh, well,
[00:02:38] James Marland: thank you.
[00:02:38] Laura Long: your, you're just like my, my cold, icy heart. You know, you're warming it up today.
[00:02:43] James Marland: So this, this, uh, the topic of today's show is gonna be marketing your services or your products and services, like not your, necessarily your therapy services, but services like business to business type services. So Laura has some of those and she's gonna talk to us about it. But our first segment is gonna be on a tool tip or tech of the week. And Laura, uh, has that, uh, Laura has that for us today. So what do you got?
[00:03:10] Laura Long: So I have a YouTube video interview between one of my favorite humans, Seth Godin and Marie Forleo on her show, and it's about a 30 minute interview, but it has really transformed the way that I think about many things related to my business, not just marketing. But I wanted to share that with your audience.
[00:03:28] Laura Long: Uh, he also has an amazing quote that he says at the end that I think we'll get to at some point soon, but that's my, sort of, my tool is a video.
[00:03:36] James Marland: All right. And what, what, if you could sum it up, what was important about that video to you?
[00:03:41] Laura Long: Awesome. So much. Um, I would say the way that he really encourages people to show up and to do it messy and to not care so much about doing it. The perfect way or the right way, and that we have a duty to show up and to be seen and to serve. So just the way that he does it is so encouraging. Whereas my New Yorker might come out and be a bit more pushy,
[00:04:06] James Marland: Awesome.
[00:04:06] Laura Long: but yeah, just to go like, forget the fear that you have about it. Sure. It might not work out and it might fail miserably and you still need to get back up and keep trying and to do it a different way and stop letting fear get in the way.
[00:04:20] James Marland: Great. Uh, yeah, I started watching it before the episode. Uh, before we're talking I'm definitely gonna finish watching it 'cause Seth is so wise and like, just so, there's just so much, so much there, just in
[00:04:33] James Marland: 30 minutes. So thank you for sharing that with us.
[00:04:35] Laura Long: Yeah, no problem.
[00:04:36] James Marland: So we're gonna get into our main topic, which is, you know, marketing your services and your products. Uh, and uh, I wanted to ask the panel here. You, you already had a business, right? you already had one business where you're, you're you, you went to school for it. you, you, you spent eight, 10, I don't know how many years, more than four years going to school and then doing your internship. Like it's a long, long process.
[00:05:03] James Marland: It's one of the reasons why I didn't wanna be a therapist is 'cause I worked in a place where there were all these interns coming through. And I'm like, how do you live You know,
[00:05:12] James Marland: how, how
[00:05:13] James Marland: are you living without getting paid for this? You know, you're given, I, I don't know. It was just a lot of work. Um, and so, you know, I, that's why when I got my business degree, less internship there, but, uh, so you already, you're already running a business. You already have eight years or more of schooling, and then you decide to branch out. And offer some sort of course or a service, uh, physical content, like what goes through your mind? Why did you start offering another service besides therapy services?
[00:05:50] Laura Long: I do feel like I, I collect businesses the way that some people might collect business cards. So at this point it's just
[00:05:58] James Marland: I.
[00:05:59] Laura Long: how many more can I keep adding? Um, but I guess the more serious answer to your question is if, if I could give you the most socially desirable answer right now, I would talk about the importance of and wanting to really expand my reach. And ultimately that is partly true. And now that I've been in this business long enough, I see that as my, my primary purpose for continuing on. But what I will say is that my initial, uh, motivating factor was that I had a shit ton of student loan debt and I needed to pay it off and I couldn't pay it off by seeing more clients because I was already seeing as many clients as I could see. So I wanna be Real and honest about my initial intentions for creating courses. It, it was less to do with like, what is this amazing community that I could build? I just didn't even know it was out there. My goal was how can I somehow put together something that's gonna be valuable enough to where I can ease my family's financial burden? Um, so that, that was the initial driving force behind your badass therapy practice.
[00:07:06] James Marland: what about you, Steve? Why did you get started in offering? I know you said you out of a course. What, what, uh, what Get you started?
[00:07:14] Steve Bisson: I mean, you know, I wanted to be a therapist since age 16 and, um, you know, luckily it's cheaper to go to school in Canada than it is in the United States, so I didn't have the debt. But one of the, the bad things about. My attention span is that I worked for an agency for 15 years, and I think I had 16 titles during that time, and that's no word of exaggeration.
[00:07:39] Steve Bisson: Literally, I counted them one day. I get bored easily doing the same thing over and over again. So, you know, when I did doing therapy, you know, mastering my private practice was one thing, but then I was like, okay, then what? I mean, I, I joke around with some people that the worst day of my life was when I got full in my private practice, because that was the goal.
[00:07:59] Steve Bisson: I got there and then I'm like, ah, crap, what? Now what? So for me, it became the now what question that I had to answer constantly. And that led to a book and that led to a course and that led to the podcast and leading to a group practice right now and leading to being on another podcast with a guy called James.
[00:08:19] Steve Bisson: I don't know if you know him,
[00:08:21] James Marland: you couldn't say no.
[00:08:24] Steve Bisson: But I, I think it's because it's, it, call it, you know, I know that this, uh, a attention deficit for adults is big right now. I think it's attention deficit for me. It's just like, I like to be out there and try diff different things. There's other stuff that I've tried that had not work out at all. That doesn't mean they're bad, it just didn't work out for me.
[00:08:42] Steve Bisson: But I ultimately need that stimulation just so that. , I can see what I'm good at and also be able to offer the most that I can of myself. Um, I, I, I just don't think that, uh, being. You know, being a therapist is important for me. It's not the end all. The be all. Doing a podcast is important, but it's not an end all the be all.
[00:09:02] Steve Bisson: Right. Now I'm leading to another project when I'm working with, uh, a couple of people to co-author a book with them because they have trouble doing a book. So like, oh, you know how to do it Steve, and I'm helping. It's on subjects that I enjoy. I'll keep that to myself for now, but ultimately it's outta boredom for me and keeping myself going.
[00:09:26] James Marland: So, and, and I just like, I'm not a therapist, but I offer courses and one of the reasons I was offering courses is because I see a lot of therapists who have great ideas, but they struggle with the technical side. So I've grown up doing the technical side. I love audio visual, PowerPoint, the Kajabi, you know, learning management tools. And so I thought that was something that I could do to. Help the world, but also help, you know, earn going back, earn a living, and also get some good information out there. So, um, there's a lot of reasons why people would do it. I think expanding the impact and reach was, uh, was one of the things that. once.
[00:10:12] James Marland: Once you're, once you have a full schedule, what do you do? You know what? Do you just stay there or do you keep going? What? Um, if, somebody was listening to the show and they're thinking, right. I, I'm, I'm thinking about offering a service, but I'm not sure where to start or what to do. Do, do either of you have advice on like, how to get started offering something besides therapy services? Like how did you, what was the first thing you offered?
[00:10:45] Laura Long: Yeah, so I'll go, um, I would say to this person to maybe come up with a more robust or comprehensive list of any skillset they have, any challenge that they've overcome in their life. Um, and, and try not to box themselves in necessarily, like, let's say they're a therapist and they work with anxiety, and now they're thinking, well, maybe I wanna create a course on anxiety because that's what I do day in and day out my therapy practice. Well, that very well could, you know, when they go down the rabbit hole of, of market research, they might realize that oh yeah, there's definitely a need for a course on anxiety for a particular type of person. So I'm not saying that they shouldn't do that. But also maybe look at some other skill sets that this person might have that they could potentially package as an informational product. Because I'm not a huge fan of these like fly by night operations where they're just like gonna dump a bunch of strategy and say, Hey, like this is what you need to do to create a course, and this is gonna be like your six figure side hustle or something like that. I find that more often than not, it doesn't really work in the long run.
[00:11:43] Laura Long: You really need to build something that's gonna be sustainable for you and also sustainable for the community. That you're trying to serve in a meaningful way. So I would say first step, make this robust list of anything that you're good at, anything you've overcome, a challenge that you've had, uh, a personal experience that really changed you in some way that you could then bring to somebody else to help change their life in some way, whether it's mental health related or not. Um. From there, probably picking one or two of those topics and doing a little bit of, I call it rabbit hole research, where you're literally looking through where do these communities of people hang out. So whether you're wanting to work with other therapists, which is what I've done, there are, there are communities online where these people are hanging out, where they're congregating and sharing some of the challenges that they're having. So in my business school, we called, uh, when people would create a product and then walk around trying to sell it to people. We call that assist. Which is short for solution in search of a problem.
[00:12:42] James Marland: Yeah.
[00:12:43] Laura Long: And um, and I think that that is something that people can sometimes get caught up in because they think, oh, well I talk about this topic day in and day out in the therapy room, so now I wanna package it into a course. So then they jump ahead and they create what they think is going to be this amazing course for people on this topic. Then they end up going out into these. Communities online trying to sell it. And that ultimately becomes a cis because what they didn't do is go to the people first. Go to the people whose lives they wanna change and say, what are the, the challenges that you're having around this topic? And really learning, diving deep, going down the rabbit hole of what it is this community is really looking for. And then only then do you begin to build out a solution for them. Based on the challenges they're actually having, not the ones you think they're having. So those would be some of the tools that I would say.
[00:13:30] Laura Long: Just to start off, if you're wanting to build a course.
[00:13:35] James Marland: Steve, do you got anything to add to that
[00:13:37] Steve Bisson: I mean, she, that was a really complete response. But, uh, one thing that you mentioned is about meaning meaningful, and I think that that's the very big key for anyone who's gonna create a course or go on a podcast or what have you, you have it to be meaningful to yourself because you wanna pursue it constantly.
[00:13:55] Steve Bisson: You know, I, I don't mind talking about anxiety as a therapist. If you told me there's a need for anxiety, anxiety treatment or group or whatever, I'd be like, that's freaking great. I have no passion whatsoever for that stuff. Um, so for me, it wouldn't be something that I would do, but uh, people who have heard me hear or heard me on my own podcast and they know
[00:14:15] Steve Bisson: I do a lot of work with first responders and that is an absolute passion of mine that would, has not waned in 10 to 15 years, if not more. And that will continue the part of the projects. I'm gonna break a little wall here and say that part of the project is something about first responders, but I'm doing something like you said that is very important.
[00:14:36] Steve Bisson: Oh, they have a need. Let me write a 250 page book. No, no, no, no, no. I actually have a survey going out to a lot of first responders and saying, here, here's some ideas of what we think is needed. Because I know they don't want to just talk about trauma. I know that from my experience, but what else do they talk about?
[00:14:53] Steve Bisson: I think I know what they want, but until they tell me what they want, I'm not gonna assume the answer. And I think that part of it that I want to add is if you create an idea, . surveys are the best thing tool that we have in order to see what people need. If I say to Laura, Laura, I think you need a hat, Laura's gonna be like, where did that come from?
[00:15:13] Steve Bisson: Well, yeah, no, it's just 'cause I'm trying to sell a hat. If, if Laura says, you know what, I could really use a hat. Guess what? I have a business selling hats. Uh, it says Long Island on it. Uh, but at the end of the day, . All joking aside, is it, it's really about surveying the people in order to get what they want and get a feel.
[00:15:31] Steve Bisson: That's how I did my book. Um, I got a lot of ideas from what clients felt was helpful in my treatment, not, I didn't tell 'em this is helpful for your treatment, and there's a difference between dictating versus receiving the info and working off of that.
[00:15:47] James Marland: one of my coaches said it this way. It's like, um, who before? How, you know, who, who are the people that you can help the most to help the quickest help the best? Who, Who, who, do you wanna work with? You know, who are you passionate about? You know, Steve, I bet you would write that. You would, you would continue to work on first responder stuff, whether you got paid or not. 'cause that's just, that's just you. It fires you up. It gets you excited, it gets you, it keeps you motivated. You feel your most success there. So part of your answer is who? Who do I work with first responders. And, and people like that. It's not necessarily, you know, trauma or anxiety. It's like the who of the people. And because, um, I loved how Laura was like a solution in search of a problem. That's the how, like
[00:16:40] James Marland: if you start with the how first, like, how am I gonna sell this? How am I gonna reach these people? You're, you've started one, one or two or three steps too far. You, you're, you're just too far into it. So find those things that energize you. Uh, both of you just did a really good job of explaining that for the person who is thinking, you know, I, I, I have a itch to expand my, my influence. I have an itch to do more. Uh, maybe it's, uh, I don't wanna sit behind the desk for, uh, you know, 30 hours a week or whatever that you're doing. So, um. That's a great place to start. So that kind of leads us into this quote you sent me, Laura. Um, let me pull it up here. Uh, let's talk about this quote for a second. It's from the video you sent, and it's from Seth. Seth says, our goal isn't to touch everyone. goal is to touch someone, to change someone, just one person. If you get good at that. Do five, then do a hundred, but stop worrying about everyone, everyone doesn't matter. Uh, can you unpack that, what you sent it to us as, uh, can you unpack that quote? Like what does that mean
[00:17:56] James Marland: to you?
[00:17:57] Laura Long: Oh, it means so much. I would say that when I'm working with a therapist who is wanting to expand their therapy practice and do something different, whether it's courses or they wanna provide some coaching or consultation, something that we have to wrap our brains around is the fact that we can't be everything to everyone and we can't We can't really provide a message that's gonna be helpful and meaningful if we're gonna water it down to apply to everyone. And so I could get really caught up in trying to create something that's going to serve every single therapist in private practice. And still I would have to water down my message in order to up authentically and to really say something that matters. So what I think this quote is saying is that Everyone doesn't matter. Not only the seven plus billion people on the planet don't matter, but even within your target demographic, not everyone matters. Instead, focus on the one person whose life you wanna change. So in Steve's case, with first responders, Steve doesn't apply to all first responders.
[00:19:03] Laura Long: He, he applies to a very specific segment of first responders who gravitate towards his message and what he has to say. So it's in their best interest as well as his, that he's serving the right First responders so that he can build a community around those people and what it is that they want to feel connected to one another.
[00:19:22] Laura Long: So I guess if I were to unpack that quote, it's really like the onion layers down to the real core of whose life do you wanna change. And if you could really distill it down to just one to five people, is it about them that you feel so connected with and how can you create Services and products to solve a very real problem just for those people, and not worry so much about everyone else in that, that industry or in that corner of the proverbial sandbox.
[00:19:54] James Marland: Great. I'm writing it down. like, so serve one real problem or solve one real problem. And I, I, uh. I identify these people as dream clients. Like who's your, who's the one that you, you, you dream about serving and they dream about you? Like what is the one problem or what, what are they looking for? What's that one problem, um, that you can serve? Um, and it's, it's almost like a journey. Uh, I've, I've talked about this before, but if you're, if you're a bus company and you're, you start in Massachusetts and you're taking people to Florida. know, all all, everybody who's going to Florida could get on your bus. But what you really wanna do is take people, if you wanna go to Disneyland or Disney World, you just wanna take the people who wanna go straight to Disney World or they wanna take that trip to Disney World.
[00:20:47] James Marland: They don't wanna go to, I. What is else is out there, universal or SeaWorld or something. The people you can help, the best and the quickest are the people who not only wanna get on that bus with you and go to Florida, but they wanna go directly to where you can take them. And that's what your product does.
[00:21:04] James Marland: Like it's taking them, it's solving their problem, and you're solving the Disneyland problem for some people. So what is your, know, what's your Disneyland problem?
[00:21:13] Steve Bisson: Right.
[00:21:14] James Marland: who
[00:21:14] Laura Long: Yeah. Well, and if I could just for a second continue with you on that analogy. What I love so much about it is that it's not just about you and the people. Because by you putting this busload of people together who all want to go to the very same destination, you've now created this community essentially on this proverbial bus where they now get to communicate and share with each other. So you've like set the stage, you've created the platform. Hey, I only want people on this bus who wanna go to this very specific location, and they're all on there, and now they get to connect with one another. And I think that's the beauty of building something online that I didn't realize in the very beginning when I cared so much about paying off these student loans. Like only now I'm looking into this going, wow, how amazing is it that that technology allows us to build a platform, put a bunch of people in that platform who share one very but common challenge, and then create a culture around that where people can support one another. And it's not necessarily about. You being okay. I have all the answers to solve this problem for you,
[00:22:24] James Marland: Hmm.
[00:22:24] Laura Long: saying, Hey, I, I can serve as a guide and a support. And also here are 3000 of your closest friends who can help you too.
[00:22:32] James Marland: And it's more fun to do it together. There's like less, if you're all heading in the same direction, it's more fun. more engagement and it's less, um, like the, the person who wanted to go to, uh, uh, I don't know what's in Ohio, that has a, uh, if, if they head to a theme park in Ohio, Cedar Rapids or something, those people who wanna go there are not happy. Sure. They, they're going to an amusement park or they're going. Down, but they're not happy because they're going in a different direction. They got on the bus, but they're heading in the wrong place. And so that community aspect is really important because if you can harness like, Hey, we're all going to Disney World.
[00:23:12] James Marland: Oh man, what a, what a party. That bus would be
[00:23:16] James Marland: like going down. Um,
[00:23:18] Steve Bisson: Well, and I.
[00:23:19] James Marland: do you got?
[00:23:20] Steve Bisson: I, the only thing I want to add is that Ohio, by the way, it's the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame you wanna go to, let's go there first. Number two, it's also realizing, what I liked about what you said is it's, it goes a little bit of a niche type of thing that we talked about before on this show.
[00:23:34] Steve Bisson: And what I was gonna say is that, how about a bust that goes down to Florida from Massachusetts? But it will also stop in South Carolina to go see Lisa and Laura. And again, that might be a smaller bus, but it's still the people we wanna serve, so to speak. And I know I'm making a bigger analogy of what you're saying.
[00:23:51] Steve Bisson: Ultimately, it's realizing that niching yourself, even to the right population is much more important than saying, I'm appealable to every single human being.
[00:23:59] James Marland: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome.
[00:24:02] Laura Long: You're creating a legacy, you know, because what you're building is gonna live far beyond you. Hopefully, if you do it well. And if you care most about the people that you're serving, and also their problems are gonna change over time. Uh, you know, Steve was talking earlier about like he gets bored and I think that that resonates with me.
[00:24:20] Laura Long: I'm sure a lot of entrepreneurial therapists feel that same way. We may identify as therapists, we may love continuing to do therapy, but there's also this part of us that wants to explore interests and other things that, that extend beyond
[00:24:34] James Marland: Mm-Hmm.
[00:24:35] Laura Long: as therapists, and so if we can build a community, and a lot of these communities are gonna be online, but they certainly don't have to be. But if we can build something online and it's valuable to people and they can't help but talk about it to others, you know, to me that's community-based marketing. That's been my number one marketing strategy for the better part of eight years, is building something that's so good that people can't help but share it with others who are also on that bus, making those same stops, going to that same location. So, yeah, I think you're leaving a legacy by doing it that way and focusing on the people more than just the topic.
[00:25:11] James Marland: Great. Uh, so let's, let's get into a few stories if we have a little bit of time here to do a couple stories. Uh, Laura or Steve, what are some of your successes that you've had? With, uh, launching new products or doing things and or, you know, maybe the more relatable thing. what's some of the failures or struggles that you've had to overcome? Um, who wants to go first?
[00:25:41] Steve Bisson: Oh, that to me, you're pointing to James, but I'll go. Um, you know, one of the things that I've, I kind of wanna remind everyone who's gonna be entrepreneur entrepreneurial is that you are gonna have to fail in order to succeed.
[00:25:55] James Marland: Mm-Hmm.
[00:25:56] Steve Bisson: gonna be the first thing I'm gonna say. You know, I, I, I'm gonna move from our job, but it is relatable to what we do as a work.
[00:26:04] Steve Bisson: When I coach my, um, I, I coach my, uh, daughter's team and there's 18 year old girls that I, they're 12 and 13, and they get upset after one mistake. And I'm like, look, if I don't make 10 mistakes in a day, I've had a pretty good day. And when I've done my launches, you know, like I've done, um, I've tried to start an emotional management coaching, which was not worked out properly because I didn't identify the right, um,
[00:26:30] Steve Bisson: Population I wanted to surf again. That was way too big. And that's what brought me my failure. And I've, you know, is it something that I'm proud of? In some ways, I am, because I learned from that failure and instead of like beating myself up, which I've done plenty of that in my life, so that's good. But I also know that it's learning to, what did I do and what can I do to change it?
[00:26:53] Steve Bisson: And it doesn't mean that you, . Go after the same product and over and over again, but maybe thinking about it in a different way. That's how I got successful in my how to build a private practice. I'm up to a point where if you want the course, I do it every six months live, but every six months it's recorded.
[00:27:09] Steve Bisson: So if someone says, oh, I missed it. Um, you know, and I charge the charge an amount extra. And the reason why is that I've niched myself into, oh, and you get a 30 minute conversation with me about whatever you want to have about starting your own private practice. So. Ultimately, it's also looking at what you do well and then expanding on it if you can.
[00:27:31] Steve Bisson: So my success stories come really from experience. 'cause when I did the first time I said, oh yeah, well I guess we can talk 30 minutes afterwards. Like people bought more of that course just because I offered that extra 30 minutes of personalized setting. So it's learning to know what your audience is gonna be too, and knowing from your failures as much as you have from your successes.
[00:27:55] Laura Long: I would say for me, in preparation of this call, I actually keep data on all of my live launches, so I checked that out. That was fun. But just seeing over the course of six plus years, every single launch, how it performed and kind of thinking along the. The lines of what was going on in the background.
[00:28:14] Laura Long: And I would say my most successful launches were during times when I was already very active in building this community and I was showing up consistently. Um, and I was also showing up in a way that I would've hoped someone would show up for me when I needed that same support. So I was just in it. I was, I was showing up every single day. I wasn't getting caught up in vanity metrics or Allowing fear to drive my decisions, but my failures, and I've definitely had some, my biggest failure of a launch was immediately following my most successful launch. Isn't that interesting?
[00:28:55] James Marland: How, how does that work?
[00:28:57] Laura Long: launch and then let me see the date of it. Uh, my most successful launch was Summer of 2020. and my biggest failure was winter of 2021, so probably six months later. And if I could go back and look at what was going on during that time, I rested on my laurels. I was like, man, that was a badass launch. And I saw the last few launches had been going in this upward trajectory. So I made this false assumption that the rest of the launches, you know, my next one's obviously gonna be better than the last because my launches kept going up and up, and my sales were increasing. The number of students who are enrolling was increasing. It was a beautiful thing. Um, but then I started getting caught up in those numbers. 'cause once you start tracking numbers, you pay really close attention to numbers, which can be both a blessing and a curse. And for me, I got really caught up in those numbers and focused so much of my attention on making those numbers go in the direction I wanted them to go. In that, I think over time I started to forget about the importance of why I built this thing in the first place. So I stopped showing up as consistently. Another thing is that, and this doesn't get talked about very much, but when you start experiencing some amount of success, there's a bar, and I don't know if it exists only internally or if there's an external bar, maybe a little bit of both, but as you experience success publicly, the bar begins to raise. And with that bar getting raised, I, at least this is my story, but I started feeling a lot more internal pressure that everything I put out, whether it's Facebook post or a blog or an email to my newsletter had to be better than the last one I sent. So yeah, I think I was getting caught up in numbers.
[00:30:35] Laura Long: I was getting caught up in making sure that everything I was doing was better than the last thing I did. And under that pressure, I stopped showing up as consistently and as authentically, and it showed 'cause that next launch was the worst launch I ever did.
[00:30:49] James Marland: I, I have a question about numbers then. You mentioned vanity metrics a couple
[00:30:53] James Marland: times. What are the numbers that people would get caught up in and what are the, if there's a vanity number, what's the opposite of a vanity number? Like a, a meaningful number,
[00:31:02] James Marland: I don't
[00:31:02] Laura Long: key performance indicator,
[00:31:04] James Marland: key .Uh, that's a business term anyway. K, K, KPI. But, uh, yeah. What's, what's a vanity metric and what's a key number that
[00:31:14] James Marland: you would.
[00:31:14] Laura Long: so might vary by industry, but I'll say for mine. So in the practice building industry, how many people like your posts does not matter? Um,
[00:31:25] James Marland: Hmm.
[00:31:25] Laura Long: it, might be helpful for like brand awareness, but if you're talking about a, a launch, the only number that matters is how many people bought
[00:31:31] Steve Bisson: Mm-Hmm.
[00:31:32] Laura Long: Um, it doesn't matter how many people are on your email list, what matters is how many people are opening up those emails. So, um, you know, people will reach out to me and say, oh, how do I get my email list to a thousand? Now what I wanna know is how, what percentage of people that are on your list are actually opening it. Because I can give you some ways to get your email list to a thousand, but you might have a 1% open rate and that's not really gonna do you a whole lot of service when you're trying to launch a product. So open rate matters, but the number of people on your actual email list don't matter. Um, 'cause my email list has grown and has continued to grow. Maybe not at a, an exponential rate, but it has grown consistently. But my launch Numbers don't necessarily reflect that
[00:32:16] James Marland: Yeah.
[00:32:16] Laura Long: matters is people engaging with what you're putting out there.
[00:32:19] Laura Long: So like, likes, follows, um, how many Instagram followers do you have? These, to me are all vanity metrics.
[00:32:27] James Marland: podcast downloads,
[00:32:29] Laura Long: Yeah. You know, it's,
[00:32:31] James Marland: it makes me feel good.
[00:32:32] Steve Bisson: Right.
[00:32:33] Laura Long: and I'm not saying that those numbers don't matter whatsoever,
[00:32:37] James Marland: Yeah.
[00:32:37] James Marland: Yeah.
[00:32:38] Laura Long: you're trying to sell a product, I guess it could be somewhat informative how many people have downloaded and listened to your podcast. But what I wanna know is how many people are sending you emails after an email or after a podcast saying, wow, this latest one
[00:32:51] James Marland: Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm.
[00:32:52] Laura Long: That, to me, matters a whole lot more. Than how many people just downloaded it. I'd also, I don't know if you have access to these sorts of, of stats, but how many times did someone maybe share it or forward it?
[00:33:03] Laura Long: That would matter to me as well, because it means that something you said in that episode resonated enough to where they felt compelled to show, share it with someone else. So.
[00:33:13] Steve Bisson: And I re and I remember a quote from The Simpsons, um, statistics, statistics. Fi they can may make, you can make them mean anything. 57% of people know that. Um, and I always like that quote because that's exactly what people sometimes pursue. I can tell you from experience that I get more podcasts downloads than likes on my social media for that promotion of that podcast.
[00:33:40] Steve Bisson: And I'd like to think that downloading my podcast and actually listening to, it's a lot more important than you liking a picture of me talking like on a . Instagram posts or Facebook posts? Um, I think I agree a hundred percent that you gotta remember, as you called it, uh, the key metrics. But I also think that meaningful, maybe on the, maybe more on a touchy feely therapy approach, the meaningful one numbers versus the not so meaningful, having 1200 emails, uh, email lists, but only having 4% open.
[00:34:12] Steve Bisson: It means nothing. If you have 460% open it.
[00:34:17] James Marland: Hmm
[00:34:17] Laura Long: I'd much rather have 400 people on my email list and have 60% of them actually opening and engaging and responding to those messages because it means that I've found the right bus going to the right destination and making the right stops along the way. But if I have 10,000 people on my email list and only 10 of 'em are opening my emails, then
[00:34:37] Laura Long: I, I don't have enough people to pay gas
[00:34:39] Steve Bisson: right.
[00:34:40] James Marland: Yeah.
[00:34:40] Laura Long: the destination, you know?
[00:34:43] James Marland: Great. Uh, we could probably go on on that a little bit, but, uh, let's, let's go to wrapping up. I guess that's, that's the end. That's the end. Uh, Steve, do you wanna give us, uh, one thing you want the audience to remember about the show?
[00:35:03] Steve Bisson: Um. I think that one of the things that Laura said, if you are a therapist and you're doing something that, we talked about niche, we talked about social media, we talked about email. Remember, this is your legacy, and this is what really meant a lot in what you said, Laura. I really touched me personally actually, because it is the legacy that you leave behind.
[00:35:24] Steve Bisson: That's a lot more meaningful than, I had 200,000 do downloads on my podcast. That's great. Doesn't mean people listen to it, nor do they remember what the hell you said. Um, so I think that the legacy part is what is the takeaway, the main takeaway for me today. Cool.
[00:35:42] James Marland: Um, I'll let Laura wrap us up, but my, my takeaway is, um, I like the, the example of the solution in search of a problem. Like that's the wrong way to, to do this. Don't create the solution. Uh, look for the people who you can help the most. That, that energizes you. That you get, um, that you, you, you can help the quickest, fastest, best and serve those people. And that goes to the quote that Laura said, like the one, you know, help that one person get good at that help. Then you can help five, then you can move on And, and, uh. That's, that's one of the things I want people to take away. Like where, where, who are the people you wanna help? Laura, what's uh, one thing that you want people to remember from this episode?
[00:36:33] Laura Long: Yeah, I would say maybe just if I could like combine both of your thoughts into like this beautiful child, I would, aside from that, I would say go about doing the hard work to find The exact people whose lives you want to change and then
[00:36:49] Laura Long: give your knowledge generously and freely because you'll never run out of amazing ideas to serve your audience.
[00:36:59] James Marland: Great. So Laura, uh, where can people find you on the internet?
[00:37:03] Laura Long: on the worldwide
[00:37:04] James Marland: On the web? Yeah.
[00:37:07] Laura Long: You can find me at your badass therapy practice.com, and then I'm also on Facebook. Super easy to find me. You just go facebook.com/your badass therapy practice. I'm right there.
[00:37:17] James Marland: Great. And I'll have that in the show notes. So, uh, both of you, thank you so much for being on the show, Steve and Laura, this was really good. I mean, I really, really enjoyed talking about these things with you. I'm so glad you had stuff to share. Uh, thanks for being on the show.
[00:37:32] Laura Long: Yeah, thanks for having us.
[00:37:34] Laura Long: And thanks. It was good to meet you, Steve.
[00:37:36] Steve Bisson: Nice to meet you too.
[00:37:39] James Marland: All right. Thanks for listening. This is the show where we ask you to take small steps towards sustainable growth. We'll see you next time
