Healers Get Vulnerable

You hear me talk a lot about metrics like gross revenue, hours, number of participants, audience size, and other measurable things. These metrics matter because I want you to make great money and help even more people.

Another metric we need to pay attention to is your joy metric. On our pod in episode 148 , Thea Monyee talked about making business decisions based on what brings joy to her and her team.

One way to bring joy to your business is to set up your signature program in a way that delights you.

As you create an amazing program in which you serve the people you most want to serve and use the methods you really want to use, you've got an opportunity to create something that delights and liberates you.

You can lean into your superpowers and step away from doing things that drain you.

You can ask yourself: What would delight me?

And yet it's too easy to create a program we think people are expecting, based on what we've seen before. It's WAY too easy to create something we don't really love.

We're so used to working in ways that are about settling rather than doing what we find most delightful.

I'm thinking about programs I've been a participant in that helped me see what delight can look and feel like.

A was a participant in Radical Permission this past summer, a program led and created by adrienne marie brown and Sonya Renee Taylor which expanded on their journal: Radical Permission . They insisted on running the program in a way that felt great to them and paid them well.

I'm also thinking about The Freejoy Experience, led and created by Thea Monyeé and EbonyJanice Moore . They questioned absolutely everything about how programs are run and listened to their spirits to create the experience as it moved through them.

Listen to this week's Rebel Therapist Podcast episode to hear about 15 things I do in Create Your Program that delight me. I share them so that you can get your own wheels turning about what you might try in your program. (And certainly so that you can borrow what you also imagine you'd find delightful.)

Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/194

Some of us fit right into the middle of our own niches. We have created the programs we really needed ourselves. That would definitely describe me, and it describes this week's guest.

My guest this week is someone who created a totally unique and expansive program for women with ADHD.

Liz Adams is a neuropsychologist specializing in ADHD. She is also a woman with ADHD. Liz has a huge passion for empowering women with ADHD, and she's excited to bring her novel approach out into the world!

Here's some of what we talked about:

• Providing over 28 neuropsychological evaluations each month
• Discovering that she wanted to create a program for women with ADHD to truly fall in love with their brains and their particular strengths
• Working through fears and getting more and more vocal about being a person with ADHD
• Reframing ADHD as a mismatch between a person's gifts and their environment
• Creating her 6-week small-group program for women with ADHD
• Why she mails a paper copy of the guidebook to each participant rather than just a digital copy
• Preparing for group sessions with yoga and meditation rather than over-planning
• How people are finding her program
• Why sending out her weekly newsletter is fun for her
• Doing webinars to bring people into her program and loving that process more than she thought she would

Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/193

Here's the question I answered from a listener I'll call Susan:

I pretty much constantly have a full caseload. I know that staying full and seeing this many people is burning me out. How do I find time to build a program with a full caseload? I'm really struggling on how to shift slowly out of private practice and into something more sustainable for my own mental health, while also being financially stable. I love my clients but it's exhausting. I hate telling people no, but I'm maxed out and turning multiple people away every week. I've spent the last couple weeks setting schedule boundaries of when I am and am not seeing clients.

Here's some of what I talked about in my answer:

• Get clear on why you want to create a signature program. If you love your reason, it's time to take action sooner rather than later.
• Evaluate your capacity to do this including money, time, energy, health, support and other areas. If you don't have the capacity to start your program, look at some ways to build your capacity.
• Break this process into a short-term project and longer term work flows.
• Mitigate the financial risk with some of the choices you make about your signature program.
• Analyze what helps you get challenging things done.
• A list of different tactics that have worked for me and many of my clients and colleagues.

On seeing more clients than you want to:

"I noticed that a lot of people (and this was absolutely me) feel like: I should be able to do all of this AND all of that because I see someone else doing it…And the thing is, it doesn't matter what someone else's capacity is."

Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/192

Many of us get stuck. We wait to create a program beyond private practice because we want it to be perfect before we launch it. And that can leave us waiting forever.

My guest today is going to help you let go of that idea.

She's letting us in on the many iterations her programs have gone through.

The business she has now is thanks to being willing to get started imperfectly.

Meet Reverend Maureen Cotton, an Interspiritual minister, serving the spiritual-but-not-religious. She's a spiritual wedding coach and officiant with her business The Soulful Wedding, which helps couples experience their wedding as a transformative rite of passage.

Here's some of what we talked about:

• Starting her pilot with just one couple
• Realizing she tried to cover too much material too quickly in the first round and making adjustments to simplify it
• Creating a 2 hour group workshop on vow writing
• Embracing her role and identity as a spiritual guide
• Creating The Soulful Wedding Roadmap, her 1:1 offer for engaged couples
• Using the Marco Polo app for asynchronous communication in her process with couples
• Annie and Maureen's thoughts about what her prices are and what they should be
• How she helps people avoid "performative" weddings
• How Maureen is growing her audience using Instagram
• Starting her weekly newsletter and finding it easier than she thought it would be
• Creating a free offer

Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/191

I thought this episode was going to be titled "A Little Dose Of Healthy Narcissism."

One of my brilliant past clients pointed out that a little dose of healthy narcissism seems to be necessary in order to grow a program beyond private practice and step into the world of marketing.

Their idea was that perhaps you've got to step into a tiny bit of narcissism to have the courage to grow your audience and sell your offer.

Disclaimer: We're not talking about narcissism like what we see in Elon Musk or Donald Trump. We're not talking about a diagnosis either. We're really talking about a bit of bold inner confidence.

I mentioned this concept to a coach I was working with and she said "That's a great podcast episode!"

So I put "A Little Dose Of Healthy Narcissism" in my list of future podcast episodes. And it sat there…and sat there… for a year.

Then I realized that a little dose of healthy narcissism isn't really what I focus on or where my clients, friends or colleagues who are making great money with simple businesses are focusing.

Even that coach who told me it would be a great episode doesn't run on narcissism or bold confidence.

Side note:

If you do have a little dose of healthy narcissism going for you, wonderful! Especially if you're queer, you're a person of color, you're a woman, and/or you hold any marginalized identity, your confidence is a beautiful and radical thing. I love it.

I just don't believe you've got to cultivate bold confidence before you can make your business fly.

You don't need to wait until you feel confident, and you don't need to focus your energy on building your confidence.

For those of us raised as girls, confidence can be extra tricky. We've been taught forever NOT to act too confident.

Confidence is tricky for MANY of us.

So if it isn't about stepping into a little dose of healthy narcissism, what DOES help you feel confident selling your offer?

It's about falling in love with and geeking out on your work, and specifically on your signature offer.

I've had the best year ever in my business. Again. And it's not because I've cracked the code on being super confident.

My confidence goes up and down throughout the day and throughout the seasons.

My confidence depends on what's happening with my hormones, what's going on with my kids, maybe even whether something reminds me of high school when I didn't sit in the lunchroom but instead hid in the library.

But I've got confidence in my offer.

My offer is great at helping therapists create and sell their programs, and I'm getting more and more known for it.

I've totally fallen in love with my own offer.

I created it for people I care about and listened carefully to, based on what I do best. I've then improved it with every iteration. The program also has amazing guest teachers who do things I can't.

I've put my best work and resources into it.

CYP is an amazing process and there's nothing else like it for therapists in private practice to create and sell an offer beyond private practice.

So every time I get ready to talk about my offer as a podcast guest or on my podcast or I run an open house or update my sales page, I think: "Dang this is an amazing offer!"

Putting your best work into your offer is the foundation of having confidence in selling that offer.

Sometimes that confidence might look like a bit of narcissism.

Like…maybe I seem narcissistic right now. 😀

I know some business owners who LOOK like they have a little dose of healthy narcissism. But knowing them behind the scenes…they don't.

Their confidence soars because their offer is working really well.

But what if your offer is new and you can't lean into the results it has already brought people?

You're probably not going feel as confident selling your offer the first time as you will the 3rd time.

AND you still need to fall in love with your pilot offer.

Part of what makes your pilot offer incredibly valuable is that (if you've taken my advice) you're delivering it live in a highly interactive way, you're putting your experience, gifts and personality into it, and you're tuning in and responding to feedback.

A couple of my close entrepreneur friends just launched new offers.

In moments in the process, they faced self doubt.

But as they worked to boost their confidence in selling their offers, they thought about their offers. They reminded themselves about the value of what they'd created.

They reminded themselves about how much love, thought, skill and experience they'd put into creating these offers.

As I'm recording/writing this in November, folks in the current cohort of CYP have just created their pilot programs. They've carefully niched. They've crafted high-quality, high-touch programs filled with so much love and experience and their unique perspectives. They've created the programs only they can create.

Most of them are totally nervous. And that's totally OK. As they go to the next step, which is creating a plan to grow their audiences and to sell their offers, they will remember how much they love their offers.

They've already sold their offers to themselves, so now they'll be able to sell them to others in total integrity.

To sum it all up: How do you grow your confidence in selling?

Focus on who you're creating your offer for, and make that offer highly valuable. Put your best work into it. Make that a positive obsession*

When you fall in love with your own offer, you can share that love and find your bold confidence, even on a bad day.

*Borrowing the phrase "positive obsession" from author Octavia E Butler.

Show notes at http://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/190

How do you create and fill a group program?

How do you navigate a full therapy practice at the same time?

We're about to go behind the scenes and find out exactly how my guest has done it.

Meet Sonya Brewer, a trauma specialist and relationship expert who specializes in creative life and relationship design for overachieving trauma survivors and their partners.

She created Badass Boundaries, a 12-week group mentorship program for overachieving trauma survivors.

Here's some of what we talked about:

• Sonya's framework to help trauma survivors transform their relationship to boundaries
• Creating Badass Boundaries, her 12-week group mentorship program for overachieving trauma survivors
• How Sonya helps people befriend their bodies as they do boundary work
• The benefits of offering 1:1 asynchronous coaching in the program
• How she filled her program
• Sonya's advice about running valuable and joyful free workshops (engage with your participants!)
• How and why Sonya runs her discovery calls
• Navigating building this program while also running a full private practice
• Leaning what works for her as a socially motivated person, including having a coach and scheduling co-working sessions
• Her weekly planning ritual
• Why she chose "mentor" as the name for her role in this program rather than "coach"
• The anxiety provoking process of keeping her two businesses separate

Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/189

People ask me all the time "What should I do now to grow my business?"

Often they say: "I heard….is a good idea. Should l do that?"

Every online business expert is selling their thing to us. (Including me!)

Our friends and colleagues tell us that what they are doing now is THE thing that works.

It's confusing to figure out what to invest our time and money in and what to try.

What should YOU focus on next?

People ask me whether they should:

• Figure out their visual Branding.
• Uplevel their Website design.
• Learn Copywriting skills
• Learn email marketing skills
• Dive into Social media strategy
• Get on Tiktok
• Buy legal templates
• Redesign their curriculum
• Join a high priced mastermind
• Buy another business course
• Learn how to run paid ads
• Start a podcast
• Start being a guest on podcasts
• Create a self-led course
• Hire a virtual assistant or an online business manager
• Invest in a new tech platform to get organized
• Create a monthly membership

How do you figure out what you should do?

I've gotten really clear that before we talk about WHAT you should do, we need to talk WHEN you should do certain things.

If you ask me whether you should hire a social media manager or create a monthly membership or take a copywriting course or really anything…my first question will be:

Where are you in your business right this minute?

I used to be way more agnostic about this. If you worked with me in 2018 you might have heard me say…sure it might not be ideal but…you COULD try a monthly membership as your first thing. I didn't want to take anyone's freedom away.

I got clear pretty fast that doing things in the wrong order sets us up to lose money and feel miserable.

As you're creating a business beyond private practice, and stepping into the world of online services that are not therapy, you can waste a TON of time and money doing things in the wrong order. Even if those are not the wrong things to do.

I sometimes hear very sad stories from people who started with the wrong things.

People tell me they invested in 20K coaching programs as one of their first steps in business beyond private practice. Those programs taught them to use complicated funnels including paid ads and webinars.

I've talked to other folks who started hiring a team as their first thing. They figured since the marketing felt hard, they'd start by hiring someone to "take over all of their marketing."

Other people got advice that they should grow a huge social media following as their first step.

Their businesses were not at the right stage for any of those moves, and their frustration and sadness comes from feeling like they've failed, they've wasted tons of money, and even believing it's their fault.

Any of those moves might make sense at the right time.

I'm not saying coaching programs should never cost 20k. That's not the takeaway.

For some business owners, hiring someone to help you implement your marketing strategy might make sense when you're at a certain stage.

And developing a social media following is still part of a sound strategy for some business owners.

Here's a small tangent on that one. Growing a huge audience as your first step used to work. That's why people keep teaching it.

Tara McMullin, one of my mentors, and my guest in the last episode, wrote a wonderful article titled: You Can't Grow an Audience Like You Used To (and That's Okay)

Tara walks us through the history of online marketing and explains why the strategy of growing a huge audience and THEN starting to sell stuff to them worked in the past and is not working any longer.

If you're thinking…"but that's what Pat Flynn did! That's what Amy Porterfield did!" you might want to read that article.

End of tangent.

You've gotta take steps to create and then grow your business in the right order. Just like you have to build a house in the right order. You shouldn't start with the roof.

So what ARE the first things to do when you're in stage one of a new business?

(Perhaps you've already got a private practice, but we're talking about creating a NEW business beyond private practice. Any new business starts at stage 1.)

Stage one has 3 steps. Those 3 steps are to identify a viable niche, create a highly valuable offer for that niche, and sell that offer.

Let's go through each of those for a moment.

The first step is to identify a viable niche.

If you want to hear me talk through the process of choosing your niche, head to my episode titled The Best Niches Beyond Private Practice.

Sometimes therapists and healers want to skip or rush through this step.

Niche work can feel tedious. It can feel limiting. It can feel…NOT like what you want to do first!

And maybe you know you can serve a whole bunch of different niches really well. Maybe in your private practice you haven't niched and you're very successful.

Well… creating a signature program and a business beyond private practice with a vague or broad niche is VERY difficult and sets you up to feel discouraged and sad.

So go listen to that niching episode to hear examples of viable niches and what makes a great niche.

Step two is to create and a pilot or beta offer for that niche.

Do this quickly so that you find out whether your idea works and so that you can start making money.

Your pilot is going to be highly interactive, and you're going to deliver it 1:1 or to a very small group. You're crafting your pilot for the people in your niche, based on exactly what they need from you and what you're great at delivering.

Sometimes therapists want to skip over this step and create a passive online course or start building a monthly membership.

Don't start there. Because:

1. That only possibly works when you've got a lot of people aware of your work and in your audience.
2. Even if you have a big audience, every offer should start live and interactive. That's how you're gonna build the best offer.
3. If you pre-record videos for your pilot, you're going to be re-recording them for round 2. You might as well save yourself ALL of those hours.

The formats I recommend for a pilot are:

• Small-group coaching
• 1:1 coaching
• Training or consulting package for an organization
• Workshop
• Retreat

Once you've done those first 2 steps, identifying your niche and crafting your pilot offer, you're ready for the next step.

Step 3 is to sell your program.

You'll do this through a relational/soft launch. You're going to tell everyone you know that you've created this pilot, and you're going to invite your first participants.

A relational launch will include reaching out personally to your colleagues, announcing your offer in communities you belong to, sending personal invites to potential participants, offering discovery calls to people who are considering signing up, and maybe running free interactive events like a Q&A or a free workshop over zoom.

If you're not sure whether enough people are aware of your work and ready to make those referrals, you're going to start with a 1:1 offer even if you KNOW you're going to turn it into a group offer soon.

A lot of people ask me how long it takes to move through those 3 steps.

You can go through them in 8 weeks or you can take up to a year.

That length of time depends on:

• your focus
• whether you get led away to other opportunities
• how much time you can dedicate to the process
• whether you try out some vague niches or wrong-fit pilots
• whether the tech involved in these steps trips you up
• your willingness to ask people to spread the word
• your willingness to invite people to your program
• your ability to communicate your understanding of your right fit person's situation
• your ability to communicate the value of your offer

There's one more thing you might want to do in stage one. You're probably going to want to start an email list.

If there's a good chance you're going to stick with this niche, you'll likely regret not having started an email list.

And don't do ANYTHING else until you're through stage one.

Don't focus on branding or naming or Tiktok or anything else.

Those activities will take you away from your first 3 steps. And you won't get much value from those things until you've done those 3 steps.

Any skilled branding expert or web designer or copywriter is going to ask you to tell them about and show them your foundation. Then they can help you amplify it. If you don't have a business, there's nothing to amplify.

But what about tech platforms?

The only tech/platform things you might need or want are:

• A simple, DIY, one or 2 page website for describing and selling your offer
• A simple checkout process so that people can pay you
• The minimal platforms needed to deliver the program (like zoom)

And perhaps you'll want

• Legal templates
• An email marketing service so that interested people can get on your email list

Invest in a working with a business coach in stage one ONLY if you think they will help you get it done faster, you can pay for that help without going into debt, and it costs an amount you can soon make back.

Find a person or program who will help you only focus on those first 3 steps until you've gotten through them.

Once you've served some people with your pilot, you've got a business and you can start discerning what you're going to do next grow your business.

You're in stage 2.

Stage 2 is when you can focus on reaching more people, honing your messaging, and reiterating and improving your offer.

I've got a program for you to get you all the way through those first 3 steps of stage 1 in 8 weeks.

It's called Create Your Program.

I designed CYP to help you start a solid business beyond private practice, whether that's gonna be your main thing or a profitable side hustle.

Some people come to CYP as their first move beyond private practice.

Other folks come to CYP after they've invested in programs where they learned marketing strategies their businesses weren't ready for.

After CYP they're in a much better position to use what they learned in those other programs.

->The waitlist is open now.

Get on it so you hear when I open registration.

In CYP I guide you step-by-step from niching all the way through launching a pilot program. This is a small group experience where you'll get a lot of brave work done in a supportive group of driven and open hearted entrepreneurs like you.

If you're worried about the legal part of this, you are not alone. We have a guest attorney come in to answer your legal questions and recommend your first steps in that area.

The last two times I opened registration, CYP filled early, so do make sure you're on the waitlist so that you hear as soon as it opens.

Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/188

My approach to goal setting and productivity have changed in a big way based on what you're about to hear.

Listener favorite Tara McMullin is back on Rebel Therapist Podcast, talking about a huge pivot she's made in her work life. She's also sharing her new book, What Works, A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting.

A bit more about her:

Tara McMullin is a podcast host, writer, and speaker who's been making business make sense for small business owners for over 12 years. She's the host of What Works, a podcast about entrepreneurship for humans that's been downloaded over 4 million times. She's also the co-founder of YellowHouse.Media, a podcast production agency. Tara brings a unique perspective to business thinking informed by her background in theology, interests in endurance training and critical theory, and strengths as an autistic creator.

Also, Tara was my business coach/strategist for as long as she WAS a business coach/strategist.

Here's some of what we talked about:

• Making a big pivot by leaving her role as the leader of the large and thriving business community she'd built
• Why acknowledging our limits and depleted reserves is powerful
• Leaving behind big-G Goal setting on the path to becoming self-transforming subjects with agency
• Annie's sabbatical and how it set her up perfectly for this book and an overhaul of her goal-setting practices
• How the Positive Thinking movement (Capital P, Capital T) has been harming us and how to resist it
• How to recognize when you're in the Validation Spiral and move out of it
• What Tara's working on now and how she manages her capacity
• One thing you can do to increase your sense of agency starting today

Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/187

People ask me all the time: How can I compete with the big names?

My short answer: Don't.

Your program has the potential to be better than those of the big names, if you lean into providing a high touch, highly intimate experience.

In this episode I share how and why you can ignore what the big names are doing and instead be a valuable disruptor in your field.

"We spend a lot of time and energy trying to mimic the big names and their current programs when really we should be leaning into what is not so easy to scale."

Show notes at http://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/186

If you're wondering what kind of program you should create when you move beyond private practice, keep listening. Our guest has created a totally unique program. She figured out its format by trusting herself. She had to move through the doubt and questions that so many of us deal with.

Is this enough? Am I enough?

Mishara also talks about why she's retired her license. You're going to love her reasons even if you know you're keeping yours.

Introducing the brilliant Mishara D. Winston.

Mishara is a former adventure therapist who is passionate about the power of play. A self proclaimed play historian and cultural healthcare nerd, she helps communities celebrate the mental health care systems within their own cultures and helps health care professionals save their own lives.

Here's some of what we talked about:

• Mishara's realization that people have been healing in community in particular ways for thousands of years, and that she could help facilitate and nurture that process
• Creating Crave, a radically different program for health care executives and caregiving professionals
• Why Crave's application has only one question
• Creating a program that leans into her own learning style
• Creating playful and body honest marketing and onboarding for her program
• How participants find the program
• How she uses Instagram (hint: it's not gross)
• The outline of her program
• Why Mishara retired from being a licensed mental health professional in this current healthcare model

Show notes at http://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/185