TTE 61: People Don’t Pick Their Therapists From the Press w/ Clay Cockrell
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By doing something different, Clay Cockrell’s private practice stood out from hundreds of others in Manhattan. And all of a sudden, he’s walking with JuJu Chang through Central Park on Good Morning America.
You’ll never believe what happens next.
HINT: The title tells it all.
If you want to learn what the greatest benefit of being in the press was for Clay, you’ll have to listen to this episode.
Best Marketing Move for His Practice
- Starting a Podcast. It put him in a position of authority.
Links & Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- Skype
- WeCounsel
- VSee
- Zoom
- DoxyMe
- The Therapist Toolbox
- SnapNames
- GoDaddy Auctions
- How to Choose a Domain Name
- Rob Reinhardt
- Roy Huggins
- World Time Buddy
- VistaPrint
- BNI
- AdWords
- Walk And Talk
- OnlineCounseling.com
- MaritalCounseling.com
Thanks to Clay for joining me this week. Until next time!
Transcript
Click here to read the TranscriptPerry: In this episode of the therapist experience, I’m speaking with Clay Cockrell from onlinecounseling.com. This is the therapist experience, episode number 61. Welcome to the Therapist Experience. The podcast where we interview successful therapists about what it’s really like starting and growing a private practice. I’m Perry Rosenbloom, the founder of Brighter Vision, and I am so excited to introduce our guest today, Clay Cockrell from onlinecounseling.com. Clay, are you prepared to share your therapist experience?
Clay: I am prepared, thanks Perry, good to be here.
Perry: Yes, so glad to have you Clay. Clay and I have known each other a little over a year now and I’m so glad to have you on the show here and allow you to share your expertise and knowledge with the world so thank you for being on Clay.
Clay: Absolutely, it’s good to talk with somebody that has maybe a lower voice than I do normally cause you’ve been recovering.
Perry: Yeah, I mean my voice typically, you know, it’s a little deeper than most but this will be the big base episode I guess.
Clay: That’s it two bases.
Perry: That will be the title of the episode; episode 61, the two bases connect. Well Clay for our audience who don’t know much about here, let me introduce them to you and then we’ll hop into the show.
Clay: Okay.
Perry: Clay Cockrell, LCSW is a therapist based in New York City and is the founder of several counseling oriented endeavors. Most recently, he is the founder of onlinecounseling.com, a listing directory with the mission of helping clients all over the world to find a therapist that will best meet their needs. The site also works through their educational resources and podcast to help counselors work online in an ethical, responsible and legal manner. Majority of the proceeds of the site are donated to non-profit arts. Clay started his career as the creator of walk and talk therapy instead of meeting in a traditional office , he conducts counselling sessions while walking through central park in New York. He’s found that movement when associated with therapy is incredibly effective when allowing the healing and growth process that is so critical to the therapeutic journey. He consults with therapists all over the world to bring this innovative approach to their own practices. Six years ago, Clay began his journey into the online world by the creation of online marital counselling, www.maritalcounseling.com and what an amazing domain name, he works with couples all over the world via online counseling to improve and or salvage their broken relationships. It is incredibly valuable when the couple is living apart or having scheduling issues that prevent them from engaging in traditional couples counseling. Originally from Kentucky, Clay moved to New York City with his wife in 1997. He has been featured on ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN and national public radio as well in New York Times, The WallStreet Journal, WebMD and the times of London. Most recently, he was featured on CBS the Doctors. Clay, gave a brief overview of you there but why don’t you take a minute and fill in the gaps from the introduction and tell us a little bit more about you personally and about your practices?
Clay: Sure my wife and I came here in 1997, she’s an actress, that means that we need to be in New York and we needed to support ourselves and so I started a small private practice and what was happening was that New York was hard to get around, it’s a very small area but it’s hard to go from one place to another. I was talking to Sandy one day about how I had this one guy, he’s a Wall Street executive and he was a hard time getting off work and coming up to have a session and well , she said, “Why don’t you just go to him?”, and I thought, that’s silly , you can’t do that. I couldn’t really explain why that’s not a good idea. I mean, there’s a local park battery park near Wall Street and so I proposed it and so we had the session in Battery Park, just walking around that area and it was incredible. I mean, I had an amazing time. I was more engaged. He was certainly more engaged and I thought maybe I stumbled on this so that’s where walk and talk came from. I started offering it to other people and got a cool domain and we were off to the races.
Perry: That’s so cool, so how long were you in private practice before walk and talk came about?
Clay: Probably, maybe three years. It was a small little practice, we were trying to find a niche and it’s a glutted market here in New York. Everybody got there dog walker and their shrink and their personal trainer so it was hard to stand out and by doing something a little different, it allowed me to be noticed by some media and grow a practice so it’s been very effective.
Perry: So by doing something different you naturally became noticed by media or did you reach out to the media? Tell us about that.
Clay: This is when Google AdWords was just starting and I learnt how to put together a small little Google AdWords campaign walk and talk therapy and it just so happen that this journalist and Wall Street Journal was looking for a quirky story about Mental Health for I think it was their Labor Day edition and she contacted me. Sure, I will talk to the Wall Street Journal so that was a huge spread and then a producer from Good Morning America read it while they were on holiday and so all of a sudden I’m walking through central park with JuJu Chang on Good Morning America and it was like, “this kid from Kentucky going oh my goodness, all my friends from back home are watching me on television, it kind of cool”.
Perry: That’s so awesome. What happened to your business after that? Tell us what the response was like.
Clay: Absolutely nothing.
Perry: What?
Clay: I was so surprised. I had this answering service and I called them and said hey, look, I’m getting ready to be featured on National television, we need to dedicate some more operators to this line and they had lined up and I had paid all this money ,we didn’t get one call.
Perry: Oh my god.
Clay: Yeah and what I’d learned was that people don’t pick their therapist off of morning talk
Shows or after reading something in the newspaper, they just don’t. That’s not where our audience is but the value was is that I got incredible from the Wall Street journal and Good Morning America which lead to the New York Times and CNN and those links help my little website skyrocket to the top of Google and that is where my audience was finding me. They were just googling NYC therapist and I would pop up number 1.
Perry: Yeah, I mean if you’re getting links from all these publications, I mean that huge in terms of SEO and just for our who are not familiar with it, you know, Search engine optimization or SEO, there’s two kinds of things you can do; you can do what’s called onsite which writing title tags and descriptions and blogging and doing all the good stuff on your website but ultimately, what Google also looks for are votes and by a vote, that’s a link so by you being on Good Morning America, by the wall Street Journal , by the New York Times writing about you and linking back to you, it’s like those websites , those publications are voting and getting a vote from The New York times is immensely valuable. I mean you can’t even like put a true value on it but certainly a lot more valuable than getting a link from you know, perrycakeshop.com for example. It’s about as valuable as it gets so that really helped your SEO and that helped drive more business to you. Is that still happening today, are you still ranking really well or has that sort of tapered off?
Clay: Well, I got lazy because it’s so easy, I mean I really didn’t have to do that alot and about what was it three or four years ago, Google changed some of their algorithms and because I didn’t keep up with some of the onsite stuff on my website and I had some bad links on there, I started to fall in the rankings and so now, its learning what does Google want now and how can I clean up that site. I still am ranking really high and I’ve created a lot of other networking relationships so the practice is doing well but I’ve noticed that you have to really stay on top of the changes that Google is doing to their algorithm to make sure that you continue to rank well.
Perry: Yeah and most definitely but brought up a really great point there; in that you were ranking really well and that allowed you to get a lot of clients, you had a really unique niche which allowed you stand out from the crowd both with potential clients and in the media which gave you links , which helped you with your seo and by getting all those clients , you started building networks and I’d imagine you started getting more word-of-mouth referrals and so I would image that seo overtime was less and less important to you and that’s why you sort of let it fall by the way side. Is that a fair assumption?
Clay: Yeah, absolutely. I just did not. It’s about being a good business person and I was not. I did not make sure that my online presence was staying up-to-date and my website got stale because it was just not important, I didn’t need it and then all of sudden go why isn’t the phone ringing lately? And the oh, oh , I’ve got to play some catch up.
Perry: So when you’re talking about walk and talk and having this unique niche of doing therapy by walking through central park. How do people respond to that when a potential client contacts you? Tell us what that looks like.
Clay: Well it’s interesting. I think that they contact me and they already know what I’m doing because of the domain name because of the website or word-of-mouth. They realize that this is a little different and do I attract people that are already think outside the box or perhaps are little reluctant to go into a traditional therapist office. There’s a few people that may contact me through Psychology Today or Yelp and then I kind of have to give a heads up, I do things a little different, it’s just like that you would expect a therapy experience but instead of meeting in an office with a couch or two chairs , we’re gonna meet here at Columbus Circle and we’re gonna walk so wear some comfortable shoes and I always give the options like if the weather is bad or you just prefer a more traditional experience, I do have an office cause it gets pretty cold here in New York in January and February.
Perry: Yeah, that was gonna be my next question there. You know the weather in New York isn’t always the most ideal. I grew up in New York and you get freezing rain and its cold and you have hurricanes now.
Clay: Absolutely, yes we have as many we do so there’s been times I’ve been outside and it’s been nine degrees and my client just says, “come on, we’ll soldier on.” No, just no. That’s ridiculous.
Perry: That’s says something about the style of therapy though that a client wants to go out in a nine degree weather and soldier on through that because they enjoy that type of therapy so much.
Clay: Absolutely, the people that are drawn to this, they are very reluctant to go back into the office because it’s a very different, I think it’s very effective but it’s a very different session and once they’ve experienced being outside and being able to get some fresh air and the thing about New Yorkers is we all live in these small little boxes and then we get in a box called the subway and we go to our box cubicle the office and then we do the reverse at five o’ clock so we don’t get outside a lot and I think that it’s so effective to the therapeutic process. People are reluctant to go back in the office once they’ve experienced it.
Perry: Do you see more people sort of imitating the success that you’ve had and in doing more walk and talk type of therapy, outdoor therapy, what do you see in terms of the trends?
Clay: Yeah, probably in the last 5 years , 3 or 4 years, I’ve been contacted more about people cause I’ve doing it so long, I think when I started I was the only person that offered this in the world maybe and I rank pretty high so when they go hey, is there somebody else doing it , they find me and then they say , can you give me some tips so I get maybe once or twice a month somebody emailing me from somewhere in the world saying, I like what you do, can you give me some ideas on how you started and so I’ve been offering some consulting services to other therapists who want to bring and walking to their practices but yeah, it seems to be a growing trend.
Perry: So Clay, what made you decide to move on, I know you still do walk and talk but what made you decide to start opening other endeavors? You know after walk and talk at some point you opened maritalcounseling.com, is that correct in your career progression?
Clay: Right, right about six or so years ago. The thing is as a private practice therapist if you’re not seeing clients, you’re not making money. It’s really trading time for dollars and went on vacation, I wasn’t having an income and my wife and I love to travel so I thought, if I could figure out how to do the online counselling practice, I could potentially be able to travel and take my clients with me for an extended period and so now, we’ve gone to Rome a couple years ago for six weeks and I was able to work from our Airbnb apartment and then go out in the evening and see the sights. Couple years ago we went to London for a month and so I’m able to now travel and take my clients with me and work from a distance and it’s been really incredible.
Perry: So why did you decide to open maritalcounseling.com as oppose to sort offering that as addendum unto walkandtalk.com?
Clay: I do a lot of couples counseling, of course, I don’t do that while walking. That’s complicated, three people walking, that’s not gonna work. I mean that part of my practice was growing and started contact people who were in long distance relationships or they met online or their husband was deployed or was working on a contract in the middle east somewhere and there was really no way to participate in a face to face counseling session so I saw that the need was there and I really wanted to separate out my online practice with my face to face local New York practice and so I got the domain name and started develop that practice really separate from the brand for the lack of a better word that I had with walk and talk.
Perry: And what kind of marketing did you do for that? How did you start building that business up?
Clay: Well, I was naive , I just thought that , hey, I’ll get this great domain name and develop a website and they will come and they didn’t but I had develop some relationships with some people who were in the media , I think is really important for us as therapist to know who is writing about wellness, mental health, tele-health, if that’s your interest and every time an article comes out , just contact them and say, “hey, that’s a great article, I appreciate your work,” and just to build a relationship so that when you have something that might be newsworthy so you’ve built a relationship with someone and so I use those relationships and contacts to say hey, this is something new , I’m offering a couples counseling online and I got some media attention, not as much as walk and talk but I got some media attention but I also did the Google AdWords and some seo and blogging and everything else that you have to do to build a practice?
Perry: And are alot of your clients for maritalcounseling.com, are they local, or in New York or are they across the country, what does that look like?
Clay: They are across New York State and they are across the World. It’s interesting I’ve got couples here in Manhattan that are just too busy to come into my office and so we meet online but I’ve been pretty open about the fact that when I start doing online counselling, I did it completely wrong just doing everything wrong. I used Skype instead of HIPAA complaint platform. I went across state line without realizing I’m only licensed in New York, it’s not like a driver’s license that work in somebody in Kansas and so it really was a learning curve and then I made alot of mistakes.
Perry: As we all do with business right? Especially five or six years ago. I mean online counseling from what I see is really starting to catch on in the last year, year and a half or so. Five, six years ago nobody was really doing it or thinking about. You were so what do use now then? Which online counseling tool so you prefer?
Clay: I go back and forth. I’m a big fan of Harrison and WeCounsel. I’ve had used VSee in the past and I’m hearing really good things about Zoom and DoxyMe so I play around a lot especially now that I’ve created this educational format for other therapist on how to that. What I want to do is create some tutorials with kind of examining the bells and whistles and HIPAA compliance levels of different platforms out there so kinda help therapist pick.
Perry: So for therapist who are listening to this and are like, “wow, I love what clay is doing, his business models are just so unique but I really want to get into this online counseling stuff. What’ some advice and guidance that you would give to them to help them avoid the same pitfalls and same mistakes that you made five, six years ago?
Clay: Well, I think that we put alot of educational information on the directory. The online counseling.com. There’s a page on there that’s called the therapist toolbox and on there , there are some guidelines on what they need to consider such as we can’t use face-time and Skype but here are some other platforms like I just listed that are affordable and have a great connection and then really design for therapist, there’s also, I talked to a law firm on my podcast, it’s called Becker and Green in DC and they went to every state in the United States and look at the regulations for Tele-mental health and put this incredible sic hundred page document together and they’ve allowed us to host that on our website so a therapist can go on there and say, “Alright, I’m living in Kentucky, what are my regulations?” or I just contacted from somebody in Pennsylvania, what are the regulations there because some states had yet to put a regulations around their citizens and who can work with them but the rule of thumb is that you need to work with a patient who is in a state that you are licensed in and some people have multiple licenses alot of people go back and forth from New York to Florida and they have both licenses or maybe they live new jersey and they also have the New Jersey License. You don’t have to be in that state, you just have to be licensed by that state so it’s just a few small little things to consider and you can begin an online practice and what it does is that it really expands the people that you could reach and it expands your market
Perry: Great points and to everybody listening who wants to see all these great resources that Clay is mentioning, we’ll have links to all of them in this week show notes which you can always access at brightervision.com/session61. So Clay, question for your here, it’s more of a personal one, you have three phenomenal domain names; you have maritalcounseling.com, you have onlinecounseling.com with a single L and onlinecounselling.com with a double L, how’d you get those?
Clay: Oh, I’m a GoDaddy addict, I learn really with walk and talk that domain names is really important and that it’s less important than it was then so I’m kinda stuck in the past here, I think that you can overcome a bad domain name but when you have a good one, it really sets you up well.
Perry: Yes.
Clay: So I’m always on an auction sites for old domain names likes snapnames.com and I put in a list of like dream names, for maritalcounseling.com, I think I contacted the guy, he just bought this domain name and sat on it and I purchased it from it for a pretty penny, you know, I also monitored online counselling with 2 L’s , the way spell it in Canada and the UK , “counselling” that is and I contact him and said, “Would you be willing to get rid of this?” and he was and he had just been sitting on it for ten years and did nothing with it but online counseling spelled like we do here in the US , that was something that I’m gonna be paying off for a very long time.
Perry: I would imagine so. You brought some really great points there so used GoDaddy auctions as well, that what you said learned it, okay. An interesting factoid about me and Brighter Vision, we actually helped fund Brighter Vision and keep it going early days by doing some of this domaining, buying and reselling domains. You know, but low sell high, kind of stuff. What you said was really important there in that you know the value of a domain name and you can overcome the challenges bad domain name but its alot easier if you have a good domain name.
Clay: Right.
Perry: For somebody listening today who does not want to go out and spend a few hundred to a few thousand dollars on a domain name, what would be some advice on to terminate a good domain name for them.
Clay: I think that you have to look at your keywords. What are you going after? What are your clients; googling. I looked at alot of therapist websites just because I’m trying to reach out to therapist that are doing an online counseling and advertising, let them know about the directory and you know, Sam Jones, living in Denver, if he got samjones.com, nobody is looking for Sam Jones. They’re not going to go and say hand me the therapist. They’re going to put in Denver Therapy or psychotherapy Colorado or counsel in Denver so play around with the different location and the different services. You know, is it autism, is it alcohol recovery and then put those-see what is available out there and try to find a domain name that is going to be helpful in your search engine optimization and that people are going to, you know, it also gives you a bit of authority when you are counsellingdenver.com and who knows maybe there’s a person out there counselingdenver.com but it does give you a bit of authority.
Perry: Yeah, actually it’s owned by domain re-seller, I just went there right now for 3000$ dollars, is what they’re offering to sell it for.
Clay: Wow
Perry: And that’s a pretty penny right there but in terms of actual marketing expenses, if you were- I think that’s a little high on the higher end personally but you know, that can be a very good investment for you, there’s a few ways that you can utilize a really good domain name, You know one is, it helps with you SEO, two is that it helps with any paid traffic campaigns you’re doing. If you were to use counseliingdenever.com as your domain name in Google AdWords, you gonna see a higher click-through rate. A higher click-through rate is going to make what’s called your quality score go higher which mean that you’re actually gonna be paying less per click because Google is saying, “hey, these users are really find this valuable so a lot there, I know we’re sort of taking a different path in out typically interviews but I’m really enjoying it and I think out audience is really gonna live it too but I do want to get to one standard question that we always ask and I want to know about your marketing. We talked alot about marketing here Clay, but I’d love to know what do you feel was the greatest marketing move that you made for your businesses and why do you feel like it worked so well? There’s domains, there’s media, there’s seo, there’s great websites. What do you think was the best one for you?
Clay: I lot experience doing the wrong thing. I wasted a lot of money on Google AdWords, although sometimes, it’s been effective. I wasted some money on Yelp although sometimes it’s effective. It’s just kind of playing around but I think the best thing I ever did was starting a podcast and what it did, this is for the online counseling directory. What it did was that it put me in a position of authority because I’m just the guy asking the questions and I think people assume that the guy asking the questions has some of the answers and I didn’t , I just was going to the ones that did have answers, partially like I said, I was doing everything wrong so you know when I contacted Rob Ryan-Hart or Roy Huggins who are leaders out there on technology and therapists, sometimes they wouldn’t want to talk to me because they, I don’t know if it is Roy or Rob didn’t return my email because he went to my website and it said therapy via Skype and he’s like, this guy doesn’t know way too much, I’m not gonna talk to him.” I bugged him and he said, “I’ll do this but you gotta take the Skype logo of your website because you’re not supposed to be using Skype. He was one of my first people and I was like what and I went what, I didn’t know that so I was learning along with my audience but I think that by doing a podcast, podcasting is growing, it allows therapists to listen to some valuable information on the way or at lunchtime and I try to make it entertaining and I think what you’re doing is exactly that is trying to add a lot of value and so that puts is a position of authority. I think that was the best thing I did.
Perry: Great. I agree, podcasting to people listening, you are our audience here who we value so much, they’re getting to know us more. Hearing my voice, hearing your voice the double -base episode or whatever it was you were going to call it. The people on the end here, I hope you guys are getting a ton of value. We have about 10,000 downloads a month right now so I’d imagine you guys are and we appreciate you so much and it allows you to consume media as opposed to reading a blog post here, you’re able to listen like I said on your commute , in the subway, while you start going for a run or have some tie to kill and hearing our voices and hearing a podcast , it lends itself to that authority level, just like a domain name , a really great domain name make you more authoritative ; just like being covered by the media makes you more authoritative . A podcast or a book for that matter, it really helps you cut through the noise of other marketing initiatives and podcasting is becoming pretty crowded you know even in our space of helping private practices succeed , it seems like there’s a new podcast popping up every month here but it just help build those connections which is so crucial in any business.
Clay: Absolutely.
Perry: Which is just so crucial in any business. So Clay, we’re gonna move into the final part of our interview here and I really love this part because it allows us to distilled down your answers and your advice into quick little sound bites that our audience can use to inspire motivate and excite them in growing their private practice? Are you ready?
Clay: I’m ready.
Perry: What or whom inspired you to become a mental health professional?
Clay: My grandmother and her sisters. They were always telling these great stories and I’ve always been captivated by stories.
Perry: Were they in Mental Health as well?
Clay: No, they were just these crazy old ladies that I would listen to as a kid and they’re great storytellers so I got to be a good listener from when I was a kid.
Perry: I love that answer. What do you do to clear your head and get a fresh start in your day?
Clay: I work-out in the morning. I jog and I lift weights and I drink about a liter of water as soon as I get up.
Perry: Love it. What are some tools you’ve used to leverage the power of technology in your private practice so that technology is no longer a hurdle but instead an asset for you?
Clay: One of my great online tools is Worldtimebuddy.com.
Perry: I love that one.
Clay: Good. I’m a huge advocate of them. It allows people in different time zones since I’m working with people from all over the world to figure out what time zone they’re in, where I am and we’re able so I don’t miss an appointment which I used to do alot cause I couldn’t do the calculations.
Perry: A little known factoid here is back when Brighter Vision was doing wasn’t really Brighter Vision we’re just doing SEO campaigns. One of our clients was a clothing company, a custom clothing company based off Hong Kong and so I’d have to take these calls with Hong Kong and I’d always use world time buddy to sort of help me to pick a time that would work and it was either super early in our morning or super late at night I believe and this is was when I had you know, a three month old son who when I was working out of my house and so you know the calls were regularly interrupted in various ways.
Clay: I can imagine.
Perry: What’s a quote you’ve hold near and dear, something that’s help formulate your perspective on life something that has inspired or motivated you?
Clay: I have two. Can I do two?
Perry: Yes, please do.
Clay: One is Perfection is boring. For us OCD folks, that’s helpful and the other one is repetition breeds belief and I just have to be careful about that internal dialogue and what that repetition is.
Perry: Why is that?
Clay: I think whatever you’re telling yourself, you begin to believe and if I’m saying, I can’t do this, this is too much. I’m a crazy person. I’m a failure. You begin to believe that but you begin to say, I got this. This is gonna be great. I’m gonna figure this out. I begin to believe that.
Perry: My mother-in-law has a great quote that’s along those lines of the universe the rearranges itself to accommodate your fixture if reality. It’s something that’s help guide me as an entrepreneur because it’s really tough as an entrepreneur every day, you’re getting up, it’s like, “man, can I really do this today? Am I a crazy person? I’m building a business where gonna charge 2$ bucks a day to build a custom website that normal company would charge a few thousand dollars for. Are you crazy? I’m gonna build an online counselling directory, like it tough work being an entrepreneur or I’m going to go out and build a private practice. I’m gonna convince people to come in and I’m not gonna take insurance and I’m gonna charge 170$ because that’s what the math works out to be to make it a sustainable business. Its tough work.
Clay: Tough Work. It’s the mental game. You gotta be on top of the mental game.
Perry: There’s another quote speaking of quotes something about success is just showing up every day might be a Woody Allen quote.
Clay: I like that. Success is like something percent just showing up. Showing up is 90% of success. Something like that. I’ve heard that before.
Perry: Yeah, something to that effect.
Clay: I think so.
Perry: So moving off from quotes, well, I guess it’s not moving on too much from quotes but if you could recommend one book to our audience, what would that book be?
Clay: The answer. The answer by John Assaraf and Murray Smith and its….we’ve all heard the secret about four, five years ago. They were part of the development of that project but what they’ve done is that they’ve looked at in a more scientific less woo woo, pie in the sky approach and again it’s all about that mental dialogue that you have with yourself and your belief system.
Perry: Alright Clay, last question. If you move to a new city tomorrow, you don’t know anybody there and all that you had with you was your computer and 100$ dollars to start a new private practice. What is it that you would do on your very first day?
Clay: Well, if I did not have a website, I’d call Perry ate Brighter Vision cause I believe in what you guys do, I think it’s incredible and just a small plug; I look at alot of websites and every time I see one that’s really impressive and went, “this is nice,” I’ll scroll down to the bottom, nine times out of ten, it’s a website by Brighter Vision so there’s that. Then what I would do is I would probably get some free business cards from vista print and look online for BNI. BNI is Business Networking International and it’s a reputable group and you can go and visit a local chapter and its all small business owners as one person per profession so in my group, you have one lawyer, one mover, one dentist etc. and the entire point to refer to one another. Now today, we’ve talked about domain names and marketing and Google AdWords and all that’s great but it really comes down to in any business it’s who do you know and who knows you. It’s networking. It’s personal and with a networking group is BNI which I’ve been in for 8-9 years. It’s really grown my practice so much because people know me and they pass my name and they trust me because they’ve had breakfast with me once a week for the last eight years. It’s a big comment but if I’m a new city, I want to meet the movers and shakers in that city and that’s the best way I can think to do it.
Perry: I endorse that wholeheartedly. When I first started my business and left my full-time job, one of the first things I did is seek out a group similar, it was a different but the same fees and mentalities. It was cheaper because it wasn’t apart of the BNI brands but it had that same community , that same networking and that building those relationships that know, like and trust and you know, that got my search engine optimization company off the ground.
Clay: Wow.
Perry: I still great relationships with alot of the people that I met in that group today. My oldest son is in preschool with a member’s son as well so….
Clay: It’s the gift that keeps on giving…
Perry: It absolutely is. Tell us a little more about online counseling and if anybody is interested, what they should know about that and where they can find out more and who it’s for ideally.
Clay: Yeah, ideally it’s for the therapist who either is online and has a practice or they’re thinking about it and they want to maybe , they’ve got some open hours and I thought maybe I could fill some of these hours by going online and its essentially modeled after Psychology Today and their directory in that a person could go there and say, I’m looking for a female therapist that speaks English and specialized in depression and works with the LGBT community, there’s all sort of filters and the directory will spit out names and you don’t see the person on the directory, it’s just like Psychology Today when you go, you have the freedom to choose whatever platform you want to use but you do a lot of education on how to do that but we charge a little cheaper than psychology. I think its 24.95$ right now but we just a ….this 24.95$ a month but we just started a membership that people are taking advantage of. I think I might need to take it down so but for right now the memberships is brings it down to like 12.47$ dollars a month if you purchase a yearlong membership which is like a 140 something dollars. My hope is that with just one client, you’ll be able pay for an entire year of membership and you get all the information and the guidelines and the podcast and all that too so we’re hoping to make it valuable for folks.
Perry: Absolutely and that’s a killer deal there. 149.64$ is what I see right there per year. Yeah really, if you get one client out of it and they only see for one session, you break even. It’s a pretty good marketing cost right there but you know, let’s say that your average client sees you for ten sessions and let’s say that you charge 150$ dollars a session; well right there, that’s a nice ROI and I think anybody who’s considering it should really take advantage of that. You know, 150$ bucks a year has to at least test to see like hey, can this send clients my way? You know first off of course, you have want to do online counselling and if you do, hey, is thus really gonna work for me, is this gonna send clients my way? 150$ to test out a new marketing initiative that could result in one client seeing 10 times, if you get one of those a year, that’s fantastic, that’s really phenomenal ROI, that I think any business should want to do and should want to invest in.
Clay: I hope so and I think people are also drawn that I’m a therapist myself and I think Psychology Today, they are anchored in the Cayman Islands and their corporation. This is a guy in New York that is trying to help the field to improve and again, we are donating a majority of our proceeds to non-profit arts. We’re good people and we want to help.
Perry: I like good people. I think everybody listening to this podcast. I hope everybody listening to this podcast likes good people. Well Clay, thank you so much for being on today and to everyone listening as a reminder again, you can see all the great resources that are mentioned and there were a ton. I got a list of over like a dozen here over at brightervision.com/session61/. Clay thanks again for being so generous with your time, your expertise and your knowledge. I know I speak for our entire audience here when we say we appreciate the great advice that you’ve provided and the therapist experience that you have shared.
Clay: It’s my pleasure, thank you Perry.
Perry: Thank you guys for tuning in today, without you we wouldn’t be here. I want to say how much we appreciate you as our audience for tuning in each week and for lending us your time. Thank you so much for being here and of course, if you’re interested in launching a website, we’d love to help you. Brighter Vision is the worldwide leader in custom therapist website design, for less than 2$ bucks a day, we’ll build you a website that’s as unique as your practice, provide you with unlimited tech support so that you don’t have to deal with any of headaches and we’ll also do your seo so people can find you online. To learn more, head on over to brightervision.com and drop us a line through one of our contact forms. That does it for today, thanks again for listening. We’ll see you next week.
Clay Cockrell says
I’ve been a guest on a lot of podcasts but I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun or been more inspired that my time with Perry. Thank you for the chance to talk about the things that are passionate to me – hopefully they are helpful to your listeners!
Perry Rosenbloom says
Thank YOU, Clay! I’m so glad we got that episode recorded. It was so much fun getting to know you and your Therapist Experience better. Keep up the great work with all you do in our community!
Deborah E Barile says
Perry,
You had contacted me in the past to move from Therapysites to your Brighter vision.
Perry Rosenbloom says
Hi Deborah,
Good to hear from you 🙂 We’d still love to welcome you to the Brighter Vision family 🙂