The 5 Biggest Mistakes Driving Your Therapy Business into the Ground

Speakers:

Mr Clinton Power Clinical Counsellor and Gestalt Therapistwww. ClintonPower.Com.Au Founder and developer of Australia Counsellingwww.AustraliaCounselling.Com.Au

Ms Casey TruffoMarriage and Family TherapistInternational Therapist Leadership Institute, Founder & CEOwww.TherapistLeadershipInstitute.com

“The 5 Biggest Mistakes Driving Your Therapy Business Into the Ground”

http://www.TherapistLeadershipInstitute.com/

http://www.AustraliaCounselling.Com.Au/

http://www.ClintonPower.Com.Au/

http://clintonpower.com.au/how-i-work

www.AustraliaCounselling.Com.Au

[START OF VIDEO]

Clinton Power: Hello! This is Clinton Power from AustraliaCounselling.Com.Au. It’s my

very great pleasure to be here today with my good friend and colleague, Casey Truffo.

Casey is a Marriage and Family Therapist and an Income Strategist and practice

building coach to therapists and coaches on five continents. She’s the author of “Be a Wealthy

Therapist: Finally You Can Make a Living While Making a Difference. She’s the founder of

International Therapists Leadership Institute, and her mission is to enrich the lives and careers

of therapists worldwide.

Casey has been a huge mentor and inspiration for me from very early on in my career.

I’m very excited to have you on the call, Casey, welcome.

Casey Truffo: Well, I’m so excited to be here and I wish I was there personally in

Australia with all of you guys. But thank you for being here on the call. Clinton, thank you so

much for all you do for therapists. You’re just an amazing mentor for all of us. Thank you.

Clinton: Well, I could say the same thing about you, Casey. Today, we’ve invited you to

speak to the Australia Counselling members, and we’ve titled this talk “The Five Biggest

Mistakes Driving Your Therapy Business Into the Ground” and what to do about them. So this is

a very action-oriented call.

Let’s dive straight in. What are you seeing are the five biggest mistakes? Let’s start with

number one.

The 5 Biggest Mistakes Driving Your Therapy Business Page 2 of 24Into The Ground ©2012 Australia Counselling & Consulting Pty Ltd

Casey: One of the things that is very common, and I understand it, we therapists tend

to be followers. We’re in there with our clients and our clients are talking about things, and

we’re slightly guiding or following them or tracking them very well. That’s part of our strength

as who we are as clinicians.

But the problem is when you think about inviting a client into your practice, we need to

be clear that we are choosing our clients, not the clients are choosing us. Where I find this

most common, Clinton, and you’ll tell me if it’s the same in Australia, it happens a lot in the

original intake conversation.

When a client calls up and says to a therapist, “Are you taking on new clients?” That

therapist says yes, and the therapist may say tell me a little bit about what’s going on, and the

potential client will say, “Well, how much do you charge?” The therapist will just drop in and

answer that question right away. Then the client will say, “Okay, thank you very much”, and

hangs up. What happened? Or the client will say, “How do you work?” The therapist just sort

of a little stunned and comes up with something.

It’s very disconcerting. So what I recommend, and I just wish all therapists would do

this, is have answers to the most commonly asked questions. But more importantly, if you’re

having an intake conversation with a client, take responsibility for that. Listen for what it is you

want and what you don’t want.

Make sure that if a client—you pick up the phone and the client says, “How much do

you charge?” It’s perfectly fine to say, “Well, wait a second, we don’t even know if I’m the right

therapist for you. Let’s take a moment and figure that out and then we can talk about that.”


Take back control of the conversation. You can give this in an intake conversation. You can do

this many times.

But a lot of clients will say, “Well, the only people that will come to see me are the low

paying clients. Well, where are your marketing? Where are you involved? So take charge of

your own practice, your own income, and choose the clients rather than taking a more passive

approach and letting them choose you. Does that make sense at all?

Clinton: Absolutely! That’s great advice, Casey. Something I feel very passionate about

as well is being very intentional about who you’re inviting in to your practice, who are you

working with.

I can certainly relate early on in my career. I just would take anyone that would call,

because I was desperate to start a practice. And I wonder if for many therapists that’s where

this issue kind of come from. That initially we do need to go to practice and we often do take

anyone who’s interested to begin with.

But I think as you build your practice, it’s essential that you get very clear about who you

want to work with and who you don’t want to work with to build a successful and a private

practice that gives you a lot of pleasure over time.

Casey: I think that that is so valuable, what you just said. Because I remember too, if

they fogged the mirror, that was the test. If there were alive, they were my client. You got to

listen to that little voice inside. Sometimes we’re on the phone with somebody, “Hmm, this is

just not the right client for me.” And sometimes it can be very disconcerting because they


might be clients that are willing to pay a lot of money, and we know that and there was this sort

of push-pull between that.

Clinton: Absolutely. Something I’m thinking as well is in terms of the website, that’s a

great place where you can really—I use it as a filter to screen out the clients and attract the

clients you want and actually filter out the ones that you don’t want. Do you have any thoughts

about that?

Casey: Yeah, I think that is really important, and you are a master at this. You taught

me a lot about this. It’s really about on your website being extraordinarily intentional about

talking about what kind of pain you resolve, what kind of hope you have for people, and making

sure that there’s a direct call to action on every page of the website.

A lot of times, as you know, clinicians will begin to talk about their beliefs about therapy,

and how therapy can help make people change. I don’t know about you, but whenever I

needed a therapist, change was not my first desire. I usually came to therapy because

somebody else needed change and I want to help to figure out how to help them change.

So be very intentional about every word on your website. Don’t obsess on it, but get

some help if you need to. But make sure there is some type of call to action on every page of

your website.

Clinton: Maybe let’s define for those that don’t know, what is “a call to action”?

Casey: I’m sorry. Call to action is what is the next step that you want them to take? So

it might be, yes, go to my online scheduler here on my website and make an appointment. It

might be give me a call, I’d love to hear your story. Something like that.


If you sell products and you wanted them to buy a product that might be a call to action.

It might be watch my free video and let me know what you think. But what is their next step to

move them forward in relationship with you.

Clinton: I was amazed that so many therapists don’t have call to actions on their

websites. Sometimes they have lovely content or web copy and you get to the end of the page

and there is no request to do anything. It really is such a simple concept that the research

shows very strongly it makes a huge difference to the number of prospective clients that

actually will take the action that you ask them to.

Casey: One of the things that I love is when people toward the end of a website will say

if they want to be reached by phone they’ll say “call me at” put their phone number right in

there. I love that! I don’t have to go find your Contact Us page. I don’t have to look all over for

it, it’s right there. Love that.

Clinton: Right. Now, I just need to clarify. Was that mistake number two, about not

having a call to action?

Casey: I’m going to look at my notes here. Actually, that was still part of—well, kind of

—mistake number two is not inviting the client step forward and become a client. So one way

is with the website, another way is a story I wanted to tell you if I could.

When I was a fledgling therapist, I remember taking a call from a client that left a

message. Back in those days we had answering machines, so everything got left on the

answering machine. And so I heard this message from this lady and she said that her husband

had just left her. It’s something like—I don’t know—a bunch of children. I’m exaggerating.


Nine children, was freaking out, had no skills, didn’t know what to do, and she really needed to

come in for a session to get some clarity.

But the problem was I didn’t know how to invite her to do that. So she’s telling me the

story and I’m doing that “oh, poor sweetie” stuff, “Oh, I’m so sorry”. She never said “can I

come in for an appointment, may I make an appointment with you?” And I didn’t say that.

I think that it’s really important that we as clinicians use our heart and our mind, and

our intuition and invite somebody to step forward. So it might have gone very well if I would

have said something like this, “Look, you have a lot going on and I recognise that. And I think it

might make sense for us to get together. So would it be all right to make this—does this feel

comfortable to make the session and we can get started looking at this?”

I think that would have given her a sense of structure and calm, and I didn’t offer that.

And I think that there are probably many, many clients that I never got because I didn’t do that.

Clinton: I know you’ve done some great teaching which I found very helpful myself

about actually really creating a script or kind of framework for doing what you’re talking about

on the phone, that first initial contact. I found that enormously helpful. I think that’s what

you’re referring to.

It’s just speaking briefly about how you work but then having a really clear framework

around this is where my office is, these are my available times, which one would you like? And I

know that’s been really helpful. Just giving the clients a choice and then you say “shut up”. It’s

really important to shut up at that point.

Casey: Would the Australian counsellors like to hear that script do you think?


Clinton: Yes, that would be wonderful.

Casey: Okay, this is the script that I use when a client calls you up and some of my

clients actually have laminated this and put this and put this in their phonebook. I’m not

recommending that you memorise it like that, but it can be very helpful.

So if a client calls up and says, “Hi, are you taking on new clients?” You’re not really

sure you want to say yes because this might not be your right client. Any of those questions

that the client calls up I will always say, “Wait, wait, wait. We’re not sure I’m the right therapist

for you, but I do want to hear what you had to say.”

Now, an example of taking of charge of the conversation is to identify that’s going to be

a short conversation. So often I’ll say, “I have a session in just a couple of minutes, but I wanted

to make sure that we have some time to talk. I have about five minutes. I’d love to hear what’s

going on with you. Could you kind of tell me the short version? I apologise that I have

somebody coming.”

What that does is it contains the client. We can avoid flooding and a lot of things like

that. I’m also not doing a therapy session. I’m also qualifying to see if this person can be

contained. For me, an ideal client is somebody that can be contained at some point. I will then

listen to what they had to say.

And Clinton, you know this as a seasoned clinician, too. We start to listen for what we

don’t want. If somebody says, “Well, I would like to get my husband to stop drinking.” No, I’m

not really good at that. So I know that pretty much this is not my client.


So I’m listening for what I don’t want. Then I will say to them at some point after just a

couple of minutes usually about 90 seconds maybe two minutes, I will interrupt them and say,

“Wow! It sounds like you have a lot going on. I’m really thinking it might make sense for us to

work together. So may I tell you how I work?”

Now, Clinton, you and I and other counsellors that are watching this know that probably

most people don’t want to know the in-depth details of how a therapist works. So when I say

may I tell you how I work, what I’m really talking about is how they’re going to get in. And so

when they say yes—by the way, notice the phrase style is a question: “May I tell you how I

work?” If they can’t say yes to that, there’s another issue. They might have trouble being

contained on some point.

So then I’ll say something like this, “Great! Well, my office is located near...” and I’ll give

a landmark. “My sessions are 45 minutes in length. My fee for each session is X number of

dollars, and I have openings Wednesday at noon or Friday at 3:00. Do either of those work for

you?”

And then we shut up, we duct tape our mouths, sit on our hands, sing a Happy Birthday

song in our head. Anything to be quiet, because you’ve just given the client a ton of things to

think about. They’re going to come back to you then with an answer. If they say, “Well, do you

have something on Tuesday?” What that means is they’ve hurdled the money objection and

they’re no longer worried about the money.

But if they say, “Well, I don’t think I can afford that.” Then you want to have answers

for that, if you take the sliding scale, you want to talk about that, sort of maybe a call for


another day we could talk about objections and how to handle those. But that’s a great way I

think to begin to contain the client to take control of the situation and do so in a very kind and

loving way. I hope that was helpful.

Clinton: Yes, absolutely. And I think it’s important not to put the money at the end and

say, “Is that okay?” because in a way I think—

[laughter]

—you’re opening up the possibility and they’ll say, “Well, actually it’s not okay to pay

$150 an hour. I actually want a lesser fee.”

Casey: Right. My client, Judy, did that. She goes, “I don’t know why this isn’t working. I

keep saying this: my office is located in Pasadena, my sessions are 45 minutes in length, I have

openings Wednesday at noon or Friday at 3:00, and my fee is $100. Does that work for you?”

[laughter]

He was saying, actually, what else do you have?

Clinton: That’s right. I had a coaching client recently who was a bit bemused because

she offers a 10-minute free consultation. But what happened is this client, as you mentioned

about very flooded, started talking about her child and all the issues. My client started giving

lots of advice and tips, and after 45-minutes wrapped up the call. But the woman didn’t want

to make an appointment, and she was confused as to why that was.

I said, well, you just gave her a free session. I think that’s where you’re talking about

containment. You’ve really got to keep the prospective client on track and then bring them

down to a choice, yes or no.


Casey: Exactly, very well said.

Clinton: Well, what’s mistake number three?

Casey: Mistake number three is not taking marketing seriously. And I’ve been guilty of

this myself. What we’ve done a lot is what we call “binge marketing”.

So here’s the way it goes: I don’t have any clients, I wonder what everybody else is

doing. I’m going to do what they do. But I don’t really like it, but I’m going to do lot of it, and

I’m going to do it hard and fast and I’m going to be done with it and then maybe they get some

clients out of that.

Then what happens is that we all have—do you find this, Clinton? We all have sort of an

average length of stay? It might be 10 sessions, it might two, it might be a year, but our clients

tend to stay a similar length? Have you ever noticed that?

Then what happens is that after you’ve done all that marketing, brought in 5 or 10 new

clients and then they all leave about the same time were back to this, “Oh, my gosh! No more

clients. What will I do? What’s everybody else is doing? I better do it faster and harder”.

That’s binge marketing. So my idea is that if we have an on-going plan and I say

minimum an hour a day to maintain your current case load and more if you want to grow it,

and that is coming up with a community marketing plan, how are you marketing in the

community and how are you marketing online, and making sure that each day, you’re putting

one step forward in front of the other.

There’s this great book out by Steven Pressfield called “Turning Pro” and it’s actually

about how artists can take their craft and begin to make money at it. It’s not really about how


to do it. It’s about what goes on in our brain when we think, “Oh, my gosh! I’m going to try to

make money.” One of the things that he says the difference between a professional and an

amateur—and I’m really talking here about in marketing, not so much in clinical work—is that

the pro works, the amateur tweets.

Now, I know that we all tweet for business purposes. But you know how it is when

you’re on Facebook and all of a sudden you’re watching somebody you don’t know client’s

daughter’s wedding video. And you’re off and where’s the marketing? So it’s really important

to come up with a marketing plan, and you have an attitude and a habit of sitting down doing

work.

Now, a great idea on marketing is also what we call “batching”. I know you do this a lot.

And that is where okay, I’m going to write five blog posts this week and that’s going to cover me

for the next month. But I do that once a month, so I can sit down and I can write them, and I

can get in that flow and I can do that. That can often save us a lot of time.

But what happens a lot is that therapists have no formal marketing plan and it just—this

is one like the nails on the blackboard things for me, is when people say, I don’t have time for

marketing because I have to get a massage today, tomorrow’s my husband’s birthday, the day

after that is the cat’s appointment at the vet. I’m OK if you want to have a hobby, let’s call it a

hobby. But if you want a professional business, we need to make marketing a professional

activity. And so get the support.

I know that you help a lot of people to do that. I really want to give you a great big

applaud because I think you’re awesome. It’s really important that people make a formal


marketing plan. Now, when I say a formal marketing plan, I don’t mean something that’s

written down with dusty. I’m talking about just 10 steps on a whiteboard. Every day, you pick

up and you put one foot in front of the other. I’d love your comments on that.

Clinton: Yes, I’m smiling as I’m listening to you. I know this may sound a bit harsh,

Casey, but I think if you don’t want to do marketing, don’t be in private practice. You need to

go and work for someone. It’s great that you say it’s a professional activity.

You need to actually approach it as if you’re going to the office and you have a boss, and

you’re sitting down you’re working from 9 to 5. If for two hours or one hour or 30 minutes, you

apply yourself and you implement that marketing plan.

And guess what? I always find staggering. I’ve run coaching groups where we’ve

formulated marketing plans, the therapists have put together a strategy. I follow some of my

ex-clients on Facebook, on social media and check out their blogs and websites. Sometimes

weeks, months, even six months later, they still have not taken the action that they said they

would three months ago. I think that really hurts a lot of therapists and then they don’t know

why they haven’t got clients.

Casey: Yes. And again, it’s cause and effect, right? People say I don’t have any clients.

Well, let’s look at why you might not have clients. If I open a restaurant—I said this to a client

one time, “If you had restaurant, do you know how much marketing you would be doing?

Every day you’d be getting up, you’d be figuring out, all the things about the restaurant itself, all

the equipment, all the menus, all the staffing, plus, how are you going to get clients in there?”

And the lady said to me, “Well, if I want to work that hard, I’d open a restaurant.”


[laughter]

But I agree with what you say, is that there’s no shame in working for other people. And

if you want to be in private practice, you can do that, you can go to somebody who’s pretty full

and who loves marketing and say, “Are you willing to take on an associate in your practice for a

lower fee?” Can you do that in Australia?

Clinton: Yes, you can.

Casey: And figure out a way to be an employee of theirs or however that works from a

government standpoint, a legal standpoint, but the idea being that you’d still be able to do the

work you love doing and you wouldn’t have to do the marketing.

Clinton: Absolutely. So this might be a nice segue into mistake number four as well.

Tell us a bit about what you’re seeing there.

Casey: Before we go to number four, can we tell about the prizes?

Clinton: Yes, please. So there are some prizes for people that are watching this video.

Casey has been incredibly generous to offer one ticket, one pass to each of her home study

courses. The first one is “Start Your Counselling Practice” and the other one is “Attract Clients

With Speaking: How to Turn Audience Members Into Clients.”

I have done this Start Your Counselling Practice course myself and thoroughly

recommend it. So tell us a little bit about those courses so that people know, Casey.

Casey: Yeah, the Start Your Counselling Practice, I think we’ve actually formally titled it

“How to Build Your Full and Rewarding Private”. And that’s for anybody that’s looking on how

to get more clients.


We start with talking about issues about money. Maybe you’ve turned the corner on

money and it’s not an issue for you, for some people it still is, earning a good living and having

that issues of worth that come up. If that’s not an issue to you, you’ve turned a corner and we

moved on and talked about four different marketing personality types.

Because the secret to picking marketing activities that work well for you is making sure

that they feel authentic what everybody else is doing does not matter. It only matters what

feels right and good to you. We talked about four different marketing personality types.

Then we talked about 17 different marketing activities and how you can choose the

ones that work well for you. So that’s the “How to Build Your Full and Rewarding Private

Practice.” I think under this video, you’re going to put the instructions on how they can reach

out for those? Awesome!

The second one is how to build your practice with speaking. One of the things that I

learned is that when everybody moved to the Internet and started marketing on the Internet, it

left a big hole in the community and lots of community organisations are looking for speakers.

Plus, if you have a process to turn audience members into clients and in course we show

you how to do that, if you have that process and you practice that, it’s actually offering a free

consultation but in a very structured way not just a therapy session. Not a 10-minute, it’s a

very structured process. But if you’ll do that, we’ll be able to convert anywhere from 1 to 20%

of the audience members into paying clients.

It’s really, really a fun thing. That’s 16 short little videos, 3 to 9 minutes, so you don’t

have to snuffle through lot of data. You just go to the one that you want. It tells you everything


from how to organise the talk, how to get the speaking engagement, how to organise it, how to

follow-up with members and turn them into clients.

So we got two prizes, one of each. And you know what? Let’s give away two of each,

okay? We’re giving away four practices.

Clinton: Thank you, Casey. That’s so generous. I know that you said even with

speaking, that can actually be one of the most profitable marketing activities if you’re willing to

give it a go.

Casey: Clinton! I did this process. Once I figured it out, I stood in front of a room of 35

people and got 14 clients out of it. Then the next time I did it, I had 43 requests for strategy

sessions, the application, the free consult, and I freaked out and did nothing. Then my coach

made me do the math and show how much money I left on the table by ignoring all of them—

[laughter]

Yeah, it’s a great way. And it’s especially good if you’re an introvert, oddly, we would

think that speaking would be more for extroverts, but the way that we organise the talk, it’s

more like doing a group therapy discussion. I’ll show you how to do that in the videos, and it’s

really, really cool.

Clinton: Yeah, that’s a fantastic thing about the course, Casey, because I know a lot of

therapists the first objective is I can’t stand up in front of people. I have a fear of public

speaking but you really kind of flip the tables on that whole approach. I love what you teach

about just changing your whole mind set about. It’s not about people sitting in a room and


staring at you while you present 60 minutes or 30 minutes. It’s a very different approach that

actually makes it much easier and really enjoyable for you and the audience members.

Casey: Exactly. Then there’s like having a tea party where you get to be in-charge of it.

Clinton: Great. So if anyone’s interested on either of these home study courses, we’re

going to put the links just beneath the video. But if you would like to enter the competition,

and as I said, Casey has very generously offered two passes to each of these products, and we

have four in total, just send us an email to [email protected] before this Friday,

the 27th of July.

We’d like all the entries by 5:00 P.M. Just put in the subject line which course you

would like to enter into. If you want both, you can also enter into both with two separate

emails.

Casey: So one is full “How to Build Your Full and Rewarding Private Practice” that’s for

anybody who’s looking for more clients. And then those who want the nitty gritty on the

speaking the details, that’s “How to Build Your Practice with Speaking.”

Clinton: Great! Fantastic.

Casey: Okay am I OK to go on to number four?

Clinton: Yes, please.

Casey: Okay, I don’t know about you, Clinton, but when I first started, the first summer

hit and all of a sudden the phone was not ringing and my existing clients were going on

vacation. Did that happened to you?

Clinton: Yes, I call that kind of the “post-holiday drought.”


mailto:[email protected]

Casey: Yes, because in Australia, your summer and Christmas are right around the same

time, right?

Clinton: Yes.

Casey: Here in the states, it’s like one is in the middle of the year and one is in at the

end of the year. So I can imagine you have a long drought there.

Clinton: Yeah, generally, December and more particularly January, most therapists

would say it’s a very quiet month for their business.

Casey: One of my mentors said to me years ago, “You know you’ve made it when you

enjoy the lulls.” And I thought that was very powerful experience when I’m freaking out, “I

don’t have any clients!”

One of the things I recommend that you do is think of your job as maybe having nine

months or 10 months out of the year. So each cheque that comes in, put part of it away in a

fund for the lower times, the slower times. One of the things- a formula that I often

recommend is, take however much you need to pay your business and your personal expenses

per week. Figure out what that is, figure out what it is by the year and then divide by 44.

And 44 like why not 52, if you’re trying to figure out how much you need to make per

week, you got an annual amount divided by 44? Well, you got to need two weeks off for

vacation, you’re going to need time off to take continuing education classes, you’re going to

have vacations, you’re going to have sickness, you’re going to have time when the bottom just

falls out of your practice for no reason that you understand.


If you figure that number out, then whenever you make more than that number, you

put it away. You’re always putting it away. You can also do it by taking a certain percentage.

Like, you might say I’m going to take 20% of every cheque that comes in and put it in this extra

fund.

The good part about that is it actually makes you work harder to build your practice.

Because if you’re not thinking about that, and you don’t think, well, actually, I need all this extra

money, we don’t pay attention to marketing quite with the same level of interest and

productivity.

Clinton: That’s a great strategy, Casey. So it’s really about I think we might call that like

a sinking fund as well. Do you have that term in America?

Casey: I call it “freedom fund” or “emergency fund”. Never sinking, but I like that.

Clinton: Yeah, that’s great. I imagine that would also help you feel more secure and

less panicked those times when things are slow because just going back to your point on the

binge marketing, I think a lot of therapists, when they feel that panic or the clients aren’t

coming in will suddenly go into the binge of marketing. I actually don’t think it helps your

business in the long run to work that way.

Casey: No, because marketing under desperation as you and I both know doesn’t work.

If I’m talking to a client on the phone and they hear that they’re my lunch money or my rent

money, they can hear that, they can feel that. That doesn’t feel good, and you’re not going to

make the best choices for your business.

Clinton: That’s right.


Casey: And imagine what you can do? I take off a month at the end of the year. This

year, we’re going to Hawaii over Christmas. I’m very, very excited. But it’s only because we’ve

been able to save out throughout the year so that I can uncover that way.

Clinton: Wonderful, great.

Casey: Although, if you think about going beyond private practice and creating

alternate forms of revenue, you can also use those to fund some of your summer vacation.

Clinton: Well, I think that’s a nice segue. I think you should say something about what

you’re offering to those therapists who do want to go beyond private practice.

Casey: Yes, we have a website called www.BeyondPrivatePractice.Com You can go

there and pick up a free audio if you want, that talks all about how you can create multiple

streams of therapy revenue. It could be anywhere from an online business. It could be

anywhere from coaching, maybe you want to write a book, maybe you want to create retreats

and VIP days, there are so many things.

Also, this is so cool, I’ll give you a link for this later. But we have a live event in

November that is called “More Income For you” and it’s all about how to create more income

for a therapist. Everything from attracting more clients into the practice and paying multiple

streams of revenue. We’ll send you that link, so you can give that to the Australian counsellors

and we’ll make sure. Because we’ll be simulcasting that live around the world while it’s live

here in Huntington Beach, California.

Clinton: Wow! Fantastic! We’ll put all those links underneath the video so people

watching connect them easily. So we’re up to mistake number five, it’s our last one.


http://www.BeyondPrivatePractice.Com/

Casey: Yeah, number five. Clinton, when I first started out, I had a coach who told me

to delegate everything that I was not good at and only spend my time in my zone of genius or

zone of brilliance like Gay Hendrick’s book of the similar name. The problem with that was that

I literally went deep into debt, because there’s a lot that I’m not good at.

So I spent a ton of money hiring lots of different experts to help me with things. And

that was at the time when I had hardly any clients. I think that mistake number five is not

figuring out what you need to learn or need to hire somebody to help you with. This is a

business. And you know in that e-myth it says that you have to work on your business as much

as in your business, and especially when we’re starting out for sure.

The problem is—let me back up—in the beginning, we have more time than money. So

we can learn more about how to put a blog up, we can learn about how to do social media in

ways that work for us. We can learn about content marketing which is one of your specialties,

I can’t wait till you to talk more about that with all of us.

But the problem is that sometimes there comes a point when there’s too much to learn

and there is—for me, sort of a diminishing return on it. I had a client for example, who is now

starting to do really well, and he had to go learn all about how to do blogs, how to do shopping

carts, all those things. And really all he needed was an assistant to help him with that. And

assistant was I think she cost like $20 an hour.

So it’s really important that we realise that you have to put money into marketing, you

have to put money into your business, look at what it make sense for you to learn, but please


don’t be afraid to reach out for help. Your clients have learned so much from you and it’s really

important that you and I stand for the people in this profession and say you need mentors.

Whether do you want to talk about that? I mean…

Clinton: Absolutely! I was just thinking as you’re saying that, when I worked with a

coach four or five years ago, it’s a huge turning point in my business. It really opened up for

me, and put into place many of the things we’re talking about today. Like a marketing plan, like

setting goals, like learning create a website, create a blog, how to write articles, all that stuff.

I’ve also heard you say, Casey, that when you’re starting out it’s a great strategy to

spend every hour that you’re not seeing a client, if you’re not doing a marketing activity to

actually be teaching yourself a new skill that’s going to help you in your business.

Casey: Yes, either you’re—this is great. I’ll say to somebody “How many clients do you

want?” And they’ll say 20 per week, right? I’ll say, “Okay, great. You want to see 20 clients per

week. How many hours are you marketing your practice or leaning about marketing right

now?” Two, why aren’t you spending the other 18? I don’t have time. Well, excuse me.

Where are you going to find the time when you have clients? It makes no sense to me.

It’s a work ethic issue. That said, I do think it’s important to manage our energy in

learning that this time in our lives it’s not about not having enough time. It’s actually not

having enough energy. We need to manage our energies in ways that make sense. So I do

think it’s really important to have good self-care. I really do.


But there are three circles. There is your business-your mission, your business care, and

your self-care. And the sweet spot of where those three venn diagrams interact is where I think

we ought to try to hang out as much as we can.

Clinton: Yeah, absolutely. I also just want to take up your point about outsourcing is

something I certainly had to learn. It’s been a great lesson to learn. Sometimes I still catch

myself doing very time consuming things that I don’t need to do, when actually I can just

outsource them. Then I spend time doing what I really want to do which is maybe developing

myself professionally or working on the bigger picture of my business.

Casey: The watch word we use in my company is “Do you think Oprah would be doing

this?” So I’m checking links in emails, my assistant says to me, “Do you think Oprah would be

doing that, probably not.”

Clinton: Probably not. Well, it’s been so great to talk to you Casey. It’s a blast. I always

love talking to you. As I said, you’ve been a huge inspiration to me and so many therapists

around the world. I hope we can have more conversation so that Australian therapists can get

to know you a little better. Thank you for your time today. I really appreciate it.

Casey: I would love that. If the Australian therapists have questions, Clinton, maybe we

can do this again on some kind of regular basis, I would love that.

Clinton: I would love to do that. And again, for anyone who wants to pick up any of the

four passes that Casey has offered, just send us an email to [email protected]

before 5:00 P.M. this Friday, the 27th of July. And just put the course either Start Your

Counselling Practice or Attract Clients Who Are Speaking in the subject line.


mailto:[email protected]

So thank you, Casey.

[Interposing]

Casey: I love prizes! All right, thank you very much. I love you guys. Bye, Clinton. Bye,

everybody!

Clinton: See you, bye.

[END OF VIDEO]

Visit http://www.AustraliaCounselling.com.au for more resources for therapists and

counsellors.


http://www.AustraliaCounselling.com.au/

Documents

The 5 Biggest Mistakes Driving Your Therapy Business into the Ground