The Most Important Marketing Strategy (It Doesn’t Require Social Media)
Release Date: 04/16/2024
Rebel Therapist
This podcast is changing because my work is changing! I’m still offering business coaching, and you can find out how I help therapists and healers with their businesses at . AND I’ve stepped back into working with clients as a healer. I have been on a HUGE healing journey of my own that started with a guided psychedelic journey in January of 2023. I then received Brainspotting, first from my friend, Alicia Taverner. Hire her if you can. She’s at .* Then I received some parts work. I have gotten so much help from these modalities. They really get to the root of my trauma in a way that...
info_outlineRebel Therapist
My 2 guests today created and will co-facilitate The Hour Before Dawn A Program for Inheritors of Wealth with Family Ties to the Nazi Regime who want to take ancestral responsibility and create a more just world. () Iris Brilliant is a money coach based in Berlin, Germany. She guides wealthy people who are confused or conflicted about what to do with their money to create a deeply liberating vision and plan for their wealth. She has recently shaped her career to fight fascism globally. Justine Epstein is a facilitator and mentor for people with inherited wealth who want to examine the...
info_outlineRebel Therapist
I’ve been regularly creating content to build and nurture my audience for 10 years now. This strategy has worked really well for me. It’s been a huge part of how I’ve drawn people to my work and built their trust. My content has also helped thousands of people who I’ll never have the pleasure of meeting. AND…creating content week after week can be overwhelming. Daniel Fava had me on his podcast, Private Practice Elevation, and we dug into all of my insights about how to create content that matters. I realized this conversation includes a lot of things I haven’t shared with you, and...
info_outlineRebel Therapist
When you engage in your own healing, how does your work change? Today I’m talking to Judy Hu. They’ve created a group process to alchemize generational trauma, and in this episode she talks all about her own path to healing and finding this way of working. They also guide me through an unexpected and powerful process during the interview. Judy Hu is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor turned Boundary Coach based in Massachusetts. Judy is the author of bestselling book, The Boundary Revolution: Decolonize Your Relationships and Discover a New Path to Joy, which documents the framework Judy...
info_outlineRebel Therapist
Before I share the replay of this open coaching call I want to tell you… Wednesday, April 2nd is the last day to sign up for in 2025. Do you have a sense of what having your own course or program could do for your career? If you’ve been sitting on an idea for a while, I want to invite you to create your program with me. This is the process where you take your incredible strengths as a therapist or healer and you create a signature program so that you can serve more people, make more money, and get your best ideas out of your head and into a unique container you’ll be able to offer over...
info_outlineRebel Therapist
Got shame? When shame shows up, it’s overwhelming and contagious. My guest has created a process to help therapists transform shame with their clients. You’re about to hear how she created her program, how her process works, and how she transformed her own shame in the process of building her business. Tatra De La Rosa is a therapist and educator with a private practice in Northern California where she provides supervision and training to associate therapists, and teaches graduate students on the path to becoming therapists. She’s been working with clients in her private practice to heal...
info_outlineRebel Therapist
Sometimes you have to unexpectedly step away from your business. When you return, it’s really helpful to have a program you’ve created that you can dive back into. Having your own program separate from your private practice gives you a way to serve people and make money from anywhere, and you don’t lose that branch of your business, even if you move to a different part of the world. That’s the story of this week’s guest. Kate Ahl is a therapist and coach with over 20 years' experience of working with writers, researchers and academics, in the UK and the US. For many years she was an...
info_outlineRebel Therapist
Pivoting to work beyond private practice usually means getting more visible. And getting more visible can bring up a lot of vulnerability for people, especially people who are therapists. Today’s guest is putting himself out there in new ways, and finding that while he grows his audience, he also finds there’s a way it is contributing to his own healing. Jose Aleman is a therapist-turned-coach with over 20 years of experience. As the creator of Loving Your Awkward Self, Jose offers confidence-boosting content tailored to queer, first-generation, and BIPOC individuals, while welcoming all....
info_outlineRebel Therapist
Here’s a really cool idea: create a program that helps your write your book. When you create a program you get to take your best ideas, turn them into a clear process, AND help a group of people in real time. You get feedback and make adjustments along the way so that your process gets even better. Then you write your book knowing that you’re writing something that really helps people. Both your program and your book allow you to help more people and get known for your work. That’s what today’s guest, Dr. Christen Mullane has been up to. She’s a clinical psychologist and certified...
info_outlineRebel Therapist
We’re out of balance with how much of our brain energy we give to certain numbers. Like when this happens in my brain: “How many likes did I get for that post?” A few minutes later…”How about now?” Not useful. I want the numbers I track and encourage my clients and listeners to track to be highly meaningful and helpful in making real business decisions. I never want those numbers to make us feel bad or to help us assess our worthiness. Fuck that. Useful numbers help us make decisions and pay attention to what we care about. Less useful numbers stress us out and distract us from...
info_outlineToday I’m talking about the most effective way to fill a signature program beyond private practice:
Creating and nurturing Ideal Referral Partnerships.
If I were to coach my clients to do only ONE kind of marketing, this would be it.
Another word for this is networking.
You’re probably already doing this, but you might not be doing it very strategically.
When I meet someone who says they don’t do any marketing, but they’ve got customers or clients, I know they HAVE been marketing. They just didn’t see their behavior as marketing.
I often find out that the marketing they’ve been doing has been networking.
If you have relationships with people who refer to you, even if you don’t do any of it on purpose, you’ve been marketing.
Maybe you’ve been networking with colleagues you met at trainings, at agencies you worked at, or from working with the same client at some point. You hit it off with these folks.
Some of these people have referred clients to you or introduced you to other people who referred clients to you.
If you're an extrovert, you might have experienced a TON of this with very little conscious effort.
It’s time to get strategic because your time is limited.
Michelle Warner teaches a course called Networking That Pays. She points out that we can each only maintain a finite number of meaningful relationships (between 100 to 250, according to British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, author of How Many Friends Does One Person Need).
We need to be strategic about WHO we spend our limited networking time and energy with.
You’ll also need to be more strategic when you’re selling a signature program because you’ll probably be serving MORE new people each year than you do in your private practice.
If you do long term work, you may only need 10 new clients a year to keep your practice full, or even less in some cases.
To keep a signature program full, on the other hand, you might need 30 or 100 or more new participants each year.
The math is a bit different, so the networking will be a bit more strategic.
I just peeked at my own statistics. This year, over half of my participants have come through my referral partners, NOT by stumbling upon my podcast or finding me through IG or google or paid ads.
But let’s look for a moment at the OTHER kinds of marketing activities I do and you might do too:
Sending out a weekly or biweekly email.
Creating a podcast episode.
Delivering a free live event.
Updating my website.
Creating a new lead magnet.
Setting up an ad funnel.
Posting on social.
Some of these things do help people find me, and I love that I can do these things in relative isolation.
AND… It’s a really bad idea to leave relationships out of our marketing practices. Networking will help to amplify the effectiveness of those other activities.
Dialing down your time spent on solo digital marketing activities and dialing UP your time and energy spent with ideal referral partners is going to grow your business WAY more quickly and more reliably.
Why is this kind of strategic networking so effective?
LOTS of your future participants are already in someone else’s audience.
The people who created those audiences are your Ideal Referral Partners.
By PLACE I mean things like:
a podcast, a free online community, a paid community, an email newsletter list, or a paid small group program.
When the person who leads and curates that gathering place invites you in and vouches for you and the work you do, you’re MUCH more likely to have the trust of members of that community.
Compare that to the trust that you can establish in a video on IG that is 60 seconds long.
I created a step-by-step process for this activity, not because it comes easily to me. Rather I created it because it is very important and does NOT come easily to me.
Here’s a quick summary of that process.
First, you figure out: Who are my Ideal Referral Partners?
They serve your niche
They probably serve your niche in a different way than you do.
(If you don’t know what your niche is, that’s your task before you can find your Ideal Referral Partners).
You have aligned enough values
You don’t have to agree on everything, but you resonate with the way this person works and you feel that they have integrity.
They have an audience
They do NOT need to have a huge audience. A very small audience of people who are highly engaged and in your niche is better than a big audience of folks not in your niche
That means they’ve already gathered a group of your potential participants.
(It’s OK to spend time networking with people who just work with folks 1:1. But your growth will happen a lot faster if they have at least a small audience.)
They may be open to sharing their audience with you in some way
How this sharing happens may become clear right away or later on.
Then, once you’ve identified an Ideal Referral Partner:
Step one: Find where their audience is gathered.
(A podcast, a community, a newsletter, a paid program, for example.)
Step two: Observe.
(Listen to the podcast, hang out in the group, or read the emails.)
Step three: Approach them with specific praise or observations and invite connection.
(If there’s any way to get an introduction, ask for it!)
Step four: Meet
(Come with a back pocket idea, but be open to their idea, a different idea, or NO idea happening.)
Step five: Try it
(Be a guest on their podcast, guest teach in their course, or share each other’s work.)
Step six: Check in
(Get in touch in from time to time and collaborate again.)
When you meet, you’ll start with an open ended conversation. You won’t rush in and say: “I want access to your group.”
They are as protective of the time, energy and well-being of their participants as you will be of yours.
Plant the seed for collaboration with no pressure. Make it easy to say no.
Think about what might be in it for them. Maybe you’re offering access to your audience if that would serve your audience. If you have no audience yet, what’s in it for them is simply your willingness to serve their folks.
You’re not there to extract value. You want to build trust both with the person who gathered those folks, AND with the people in that community.
Be open to giving more than you get. Be unattached to the particular outcome of you serving their audience.
Embrace some emotional discomfort!
You might feel tempted NOT to do any of this strategic networking stuff.
You might think:
What if they ignore my invitation?
What if the person I reach out to doesn’t like me?
What if I don’t enjoy my time with them?
What if it stays completely awkward?
I mean, have you ever had a horrible networking date? Those feel bad.
I get it.
I’m introverted. I find small talk exhausting. I don’t say that because I think I’m above small talk. I understand that small talk is a way to test easy topics and start building a bit of trust.
Small talk tires me out because I don’t understand it well, and meeting new people in an unstructured way is a bit painful for me.
And that’s what networking dates ARE. I KNOW.
Some of the time this process might not go well. But I promise you, some of the time it WILL go well, and it is TOTALLY worth it.
Resources Discussed:
Michelle Warner (https://www.themichellewarner.com/
Shownotes at: https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/223