TTE 48: Lourdes Viado: An Entrepreneur Through and through
This is one of the most inspiring Therapist Experience episodes I’ve ever recorded. Lourdes Viado had the book knowledge, but when it came to business knowledge, she knew she had a lot of learning to do. So, one month after making $600 in her private practice, she invested everything she could into masterminds, coaches, and business education. And how did it work out?
Well, ironically enough, we usually schedule our podcast episode to be published Tuesday morning (with all the editing done Monday afternoon). But I messed up and our audio team didn’t get the file.
Because of this, I was forced to delay publishing the episode. And every morning when I wake up, my first cup of coffee is spent reviewing the previous night’s support tickets. And in that queue was a ticket from Lourdes:
“Hi,
I guess it’s a good thing, but my practice is full :). So I want to turn off the ‘schedule a free consult’ for now since I can’t offer any openings to new clients.”
Lourdes, you are amazing! I am overjoyed with happiness for you and I am so glad that we have been a part of your Therapist Experience. Congratulations!
Best Marketing Move
Relationships have been a cornerstone to all of Lourdes’ marketing.
Previous Episodes Mentioned
Links & Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- Healthcasters
- Stephanie Adams & MYOB
- ZynnyMe’s 1 Hour Trainings
- Business School Bootcamp
- FYLMIT.com
- Most Awesome Conference
- Keri Nola
- Tiffany McLain
- Lourdes’ Website
Thanks to Lourdes for joining me this week. Until next time!
Transcript
Click here to read the TranscriptPerry: In this episode of the therapist of the Therapist experience, I’m speaking with Lourdes Viado from Lourdes Viado MFT. This is The Therapist Experience, episode number 48. 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’m so excited to introduce our guest today Lourdes Viado from Lourdes Viado MFT. Lourdes, are you prepared to share your therapist experience?
Lourdes: Yes I am.
Perry: Fantastic, we’re so glad to have you here Lourdes. I know we’ve trying to get this schedule for a while and I’m just so excited to chat with you and have you share your therapist experience here.
Lourdes: I’m really excited to be here, thank you for having me Perry.
Perry: Absolutely. Let me tell our audience here a little bit more about you then we’ll hop into the show.
Lourdes: Okay.
Perry: Dr. Lourdes Viado is a depth-oriented union therapist with a private practice in Las Vegas, Nevada. She has over 14 years’ experience and specializes working with women specifically creatives, rebels and intuitive in navigating their shadow and shining their light. She’s the host of the woman in-depth podcast which is conversation about the inner lives of women exploring the unknown, uncomfortable and uncertain aspects of a woman’s life. She received her degree from in marriage and family therapy from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and her PhD from Saybrook University in San Francisco completing the union studies portion of her degree at the young center in Houston, Texas. Lourdes, gave a little overview of you there. Why don’t you take a minute, fill in the gaps from the introduction, and tell us a little bit more about you personally and about your practice.
Lourdes: Well, I have been a therapist for some time and when I first came out of my training and the education part of my degree, I realized that I really didn’t know anything. It was really humbling actually to be told that you’re licensed now and you can work with people and it became clear to me that even though I had the book knowledge and I had the diploma that there was a lot of learning that I had as far as my own inner growth and healing and also being taught by my clients and so that was a huge piece of a growth edge for me.
Perry: And how did you go about that? What was that experience like?
Lourdes: I think part of it was stepping into the role of a therapist and seeing clients. I realize that I was trying to use all of these things that teachers had taught me. Well, meaning people had said you know people had said , ” this is a way, this is another way,” and I would try these approaches and sometimes they would work, sometimes they didn’t and what I realized was that I had to find my own way of applying the knowledge and the information. I also had to add my own piece to it and I think the most profound part was that I had to get myself together and work on myself in order to do meaningful work with clients and it reminds of a quote by Uung which is ‘you can only take your clients as far you’ve gone yourself’, and so that was part of the reason why I couldn’t take them very far cause I had to do alot of my own work. It’s like the learning process I understood what happened in families, with couples and individuals and I could explain the cause and effect and these are the symptoms but I had to really experience it myself and so getting into my own therapy, working on myself was very enriching and humbling and helped me to be better as a therapist.
Perry: There was a previous episode with Eddie Reece and we’ll have a link to in this week’s show notes where Eddie says that he encourages all therapist that he speaks with to be in therapy themselves. It really helps to understand and get an understanding of the process. It will you help your patients even more.
Lourdes: Oh absolutely. I am completely proponent of therapist engaging in ongoing therapy. One of the things that I really didn’t understand is kind of an abstract one in the therapeutic world is counter transference and that refers to the feelings that the therapist has about the client and these can be good , bad or in-between and not understanding that the counter-transference , the feelings that you have about your clients reveals so much about the therapist and so even when you think that your client is being resistant which is a common descriptor for clients who are not doing what you think they should do , it’s really an invitation to yourself to look at yourself as therapist and what’s going on with you.
Perry: One thing we’ve really found fascinating here is exploring the ‘why’ with therapist and just like you have to work and explore the why with your clients. We want to hear your story Lourdes and to hear why you got into private practice and why you started focusing specifically on women so, would you mind sharing with our audience how you sort of found that niche and what it’s done for your practice?
Lourdes: Well, I was working with everyone and everything and I began to realize that I was drawn to certain types of concerns with my clients and these tended to be women who were struggling with some type of sexual trauma or women who were in relationships that were not really fulfilling and as I began to work more and more with these women, I began to notice commonalities and threads within their stories and I realized by narrowing my focus and really just gearing my work and my training and energy towards understanding these women being curious , learning from them that it actually made me a better therapist that I enjoyed my work more and that I feel like clients , the women I work with also resonated with that attention to them and that alignment with what they were bringing into therapy and again the things that my clients bring to therapy are things that I have also worked through and done my own inner healing with.
Perry: Lourdes, let’s go back to a point in your career that as a therapist where you’re just , you’re tired , you’re ready to call it quits cause we’ve all been there as entrepreneurs and it’s such a hard journey but so rewarding, I’d love to hear about that moment in time where your back was up against the wall and you’re just ready to throw in the towel and can you share with our audience what that moment was like and then more importantly how you overcome that adversity and persevered through it?
Lourdes: So it was a really humbling moment and it was about a month after I graduated with my PhD and so I’m looking at all these student loans and that month after I graduated my practice pulled a grand total of 600$.
Perry: That’s tough.
Lourdes: It was just devastating and I didn’t know how I was going to cover anything and really demoralizing especially in this light of this graduation and this debt that I had and so I think that I was just depressed for maybe a day or two and crying and then I did something kind of seemed a little crazy I guess, I invested everything I could. I borrowed money. I put stuff on credit cards into coaching, training, promo videos, masterminds and so took advantage of all the great free practice building stuff that’s out there, I mean, there’s so much. You don’t have to spend a lot of money but that’s what I did. It seemed almost counter-intuitive, like why would you do this now but it was almost like, you know what, I need to do something really, really, big and drastic.
Perry: So the month after your private practice made a total of 600$, you took every penny that you could possibly have and invested it into yourself and into your business.
Lourdes: Yes, and I also borrowed money.
Perry: And you borrowed money. Did you go into credit debt or borrow money from friends and family? Do you mind just elaborating on that?
Lourdes: Both.
Perry: That is tough. Lourdes, that is so brave and courageous of you and so… I bet- you made 600$ bucks and you’re like, wow, I need to do something. I need to do something crazy to make this work or not necessarily crazy but revolutionary.
Lourdes: I did. Yeah.
Perry: And you did and what happened?
Lourdes: Well, the first thing that happened as I began to connect with amazing in the practice building field and that was the first thing was building these great relationships and those relationships were what help give me support. They also were the one that help me connect with more people and help me to broaden my vision of how to do this private practice building thing because, I’m not a business person. I’m not a tech person, no, I’m a therapist and I think it was also recognizing that part of the reason that this isn’t working is because you’re trying to figure this out on your own and you need expertise, you need people to guide you and show you the way and you need support.
Perry: And so what kind of people did you connect with? Who did you hire for coaching and what did that look like?
Lourdes: So, the first thing I did is I….. the first person, I connected with was Stephanie Adams and actually she was the one who led me to you through- she spoke highly about Brighter Vision but I did her own minding your business private practice online like webinar conference and that’s I also got connected with Kelly and Miranda from Zynnyme and I took advantage of like all of the free one hour training and then it just kind of started from there. I decided to invest in the boot camp which I did. I think I did the October boot camp and then I also decided to invest in doing some promo videos with Ernesto Segismundo from fylmit.com. I also invested in the MAT conference and then began working with Keri Nola as my business coach. So those are my initial expenses , my initial investments and then around January last year , I go this crazy idea that I should shoot a podcast and so, that’s when I did more research and invested Melvin Varghese’s’ Health casters course which has been one of the best things I’ve done.
Perry: Fantastic. There’s so much there Lourdes that I want to dive into here so you connected with all the best. You got Stephanie Adams from MYOB, I forgot that Stephanie introduced the two of us and I’m so glad that she did.
Lourdes: Yeah.
Perry: And then Kelly and Miranda from Zynnyme for anyone that doesn’t know it well, have a link to everything mentioned here in this week show notes at brightervision.com/session48/. So, Zynnyme has a ton of great one hour trainings. They are all completely free for you to watch and learn how to build a business. Ernest Segismundo from fylmit.com does video promotions. Most awesome conference was two years in a row. The most awesome conference we helped sponsor it and it basically teaches you how to build a business and make your private practice into a business. Tell us more about the health casters course from Melvin Varghese as well.
Lourdes: Health casters is a course for health professionals and Melvin just takes you step by step from the idea of “I think I want to have a podcast, all the way to launching your podcast and monetizing your podcast. It’s not just creating the podcast. It’s the whole beginning process of what will my podcast be about, who’s my ideal listener and what I really loved about it is that he really breaks it down into really digestible chunks. It’s not overwhelming at all and he also has really good recommendations as far as your equipment and getting started without having to spend a lot of money and then the support in that community is incredible so that has been just a really wonderful opportunity and I forgot to mention, I’ve also most recently have invested in doing the mastermind with Melvin and so that has a been a wonderful experience as well.
Perry: What were some the concrete results that you found that came of all this investment in yourself and your practice?
Lourdes: So as far as my practice, what it’s created is I’m able to not fear not having clients. I’ve been able to depend on a steady stream of people who are interested in therapy so that has been just for the basic level. You know, while you could pay your bills and stay afloat and actually begin which I’ve just invested back into the business so that’s been the first concrete thing. The second part would be, again, just the relationships and the network that has expanded because of my investing in my business and also the relationships that have come and then as far as the podcast right now she is at I think 25,000 something downloads in 90 countries and she just turned 7 months old so it’s doing really well.
Perry: I like that you refer to as a pronoun and everything, I was like she- you pod… it took me a second catch but that’s great. Congratulations Lourdes.
Lourdes: Thank you.
Perry: And so you’re profitable now, you’re clearly making more than just 600$ dollars a month and so all this investment in yourself has paid off. We see therapist in private practice struggle with this alot, the idea of needing to invest in yourself and to understanding business into understanding how to build a private practice and there a plenty of free resources, there’s us out here, this podcast that we are doing. There’s the one hour training at Zynnyme but there’s practical practice, there’s so much out there but sometimes you have to take that plunge in and invest capital, invest your money into it. You’re gonna get even more out of it, would you agree with that?
Lourdes: Absolutely. Absolutely. The free stuff is wonderful to kind of get your feet wet and make some changes and start to make that movement on your own but to really go deeper, you need a guide, you need someone to show you how and kind of let you know what to look for and I think that personal attendant is really what- at least what I needed to move forward with building my practice.
Perry: So Lourdes, you’ve come such a long way from there. Something that we often see therapist struggle with from the early days is with pricing themselves well. Would you mind sharing with our audience what your current session rate is to see clients and what you journey to that rate has been like?
Lourdes: Okay, so my current rate right now is clients pay me between 160$-180$ so that’s my range. When I first began this journey, the rate is 120$. However, I had a lot of people of at a sliding scale and not everyone was paying that rate of 120$ so the process of getting where I am now with my fee, alot of it is taking advantage of what was available online so for example, Stephanie Adams has this amazing spreadsheet which is a private practice blueprint which helped me to see how much I actually needed to make because it was one of this basic things I had to know my overhead, I had to know my bills, I had to know those numbers but it was kind of scary and overwhelming so she creates this free template , you can go to her website and download it, you plug in you numbers. If you say, “I wanna make after taxes 80000$, then this how much you’re gonna need to make with taking out all your expenses and that at the bottom, there was this-my favorite part was okay, if I see 5 clients at 150$, this is how much I’ll make. If I see 6 clients at 130$, and you really could see how those numbers change and how much change and how it affected you bottom line and so I began look at my fee as in term of what is it that I need to make so that I am profitable and I am covering my expenses and that’s what the formula was and so I knew I had a range and I needed to see a certain number of clients at a certain rate , I know that this much I can fly down if I want to see clients at a gross rate and so that was kind of like the first part of it, the nuts and bolts of it and then Kelly and Miranda had a free training again on setting rates and one of the things that really just grab my attention that 10$ makes a big difference so basically, if you see a 20 clients and you work 50 weeks a year, every 10$ dollar change in your fee equates to a difference of 10,000$ dollars in your annual gross fee , so if you slide your fee down to 20$ per client, you’re losing 20,000$ and so that really made me more mindful and aware when I would talk fee with a client about . I had to remember where am I? Am I to do this? What does this mean? And so that change the whole way of viewing fees as well I feel bad because you know cause, they really can’t afford me and maybe I’m charging too much. That took that all out of the picture and it just made it really about what my bills were and what I needed to be profitable. So, that’s kind of like the external part but even though I had that part figured out, I still had troubles sticking to my fee and that part I had to address my own money blocks and my own inner issues about self -worth. Am I worthy of this fee? Am I an impostor? Would people come see me and think that I am a fraud and a lot of this was helped with Tiffany McLain who’s done a lot of stuff around money issues for therapist and she’s even been on selling the couch for a couple of episodes with Melvin.
Perry: Lourdes, thank you so much for that in-depth journey. I know I can speak for everybody listening here, I’m sure everybody really appreciated that and sharing that journey with us and in Mental Health industry, the impostor syndrome, having trouble sticking to that fee, it happens so regularly it seems and – but the mental health industry is not alone with that. Any entrepreneur is going to feel that impostor syndrome.
Lourdes: Yeah.
Perry: I know that I felt it with Brighter Vision. When we had like 500 clients, like, oh my god, what are we doing? Like this crazy, like I don’t know what I’m doing. Why is like- you don’t feel worthy. You don’t feel like you should be having that success and its common with almost every entrepreneur. It’s a common feeling to have even today, we still sometimes feel that but you know, entrepreneurs, successful entrepreneurs do is they understand that feeling, they recognize it and they push forward and they push past it and you’ve done that so successfully Lourdes with every element of your business here.
Lourdes: Yeah, you know that fear of abundance is surprising one, isn’t it. Like you would think that as you are growing; that you would be excited and like, “wow, this what I’ve been trying to do and it’s happening but then it’s almost like this trepidation like, “oh no!”
Perry: Or you’ll have that excitement, you’ll feel like you’ll be at the top but then an hour later you’ll be at the bottom, like , oh my god, what, what, no, this crazy, what’s going on? No, I can’t do this, oh my God!
Lourdes: Right, right.
Perry: That’s just the roller coaster of an entrepreneur.
Lourdes: Yeah, exactly. I was talking to Melvin the other and he was saying how the entrepreneur roller-coaster in entrepreneur is kind of like your download in Libsyn.
Perry: For this who aren’t familiar, Libsyn, is a podcast hosting platform that both Lourdes uses here in her podcast and that we use here at Brighter Vision with our therapist experience podcast but yeah, I know, I definitely see that peaks and valleys. Lately, the peaks have been higher and higher which is fantastic.
Lourdes: Yeah.
Perry: We took a month of from podcasting and publishing anything. When we start publishing again and we’re like double from where we were before. It’s awesome.
Lourdes: Isn’t that amazing, I did the same thing. I took weeks off in December and then it was my highest month.
Perry: Well, I guess thank you for everybody listening for allowing us to get those high downloads. You know we…. it’s a testament to the work you’re doing Lourdes with your podcast and the value you’re providing and I hope it’s a testament to the work we’re doing here and the value we’re providing too as I get a little bit of that impostor syndrome creeping in here. Lourdes, let’s move on to a subject that is sort related to podcasting and it’s something that therapist really struggle with in building their private practice and that’s related to marketing and sales, but, as you know, you can’t build a thriving private practice without marketing. What was the single best marketing move that you made for your private practice and why do you feel like it’s worked so well for you?
Lourdes: Wow, this is kind of- I don’t if there’s just one answer for this, so I think my single best marketing move is a combination of things. One of them again was building relationships because the relationships I built really helped me to get the podcast out there, get my name out there. Connect me with other people who also shared my podcast and my practice with other people so I’m gonna go again back to relationships as a corner stone of marketing. The next thing I would say; would have to be the website and the website and with that putting promo videos on the website because the website is really my business card, it’s my intro to the world of who I am. What I do. What my practice is about and I would say that’s the single most important thing I did. There’s tweaks to that, like I said , it was getting promo video put on to that website and then also, working on the copy in that first page and as you know, I’m kind of dial-in on the website. I think I started with one theme and then a little bit later asked you about switching to something different because I really wanted it to reflect my practice and who I am as therapist.
Perry: And you’ve done such a great job with that, you know, we see that, I reference your website all the time as just a website that is clearly speaking to a target audience, has a fantastic theme and fantastic fuel to it. The language is perfect. You’ve done such a great job with that Lourdes and I’m so glad that we’ve been able to help you with that.
Lourdes: Yeah, I been really happy with all the support and you know just going back again to investing in myself and my practice. You know, that was another investment is not having to having to worry about website things, tweaks and changes. Adding , evening putting the podcast on the website that was something you guys were all able to help me with and it’s something that I’m really glad that I don’t have to do and I’m able to focus on the things I enjoy and the things that are my strengths.
Perry: Thank you for showing us there. You know that’s exactly what we do here at Brighter Vision. We want you to be able to focus on the things that are you’re strengths while we handle all that back-end for you.
Lourdes: Yeah, absolutely.
Perry: Alright Lourdes, now we’re going to move into the final part of our interview, the part that we like to refer to as brighter insights and I really love about this part cause we’re able to distilled down your advice into quick little sound bites and answers that our audience can use to inspire, motivate and excite them in growing their practice. Are you ready?
Lourdes: Okay, I’m ready.
Perry: What or whom inspired you to become a mental health professional?
Lourdes: I would say my family experiences.
Perry: What is it that you do to clear your head and get a fresh start in your day?
Lourdes: Solitude and silence. I have to unplug and get away from any stimulation, anyone and just have time for me.
Perry: 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 assets for you?
Lourdes: Using an EHR, so I use counsel to handle intakes. There’s a client portal to schedule reminder. Scheduled reminders payments. I used Acuity for scheduling podcast guest and for potential clients to schedule a consultation through the podcast creating free meaningful content for listeners which builds relationships with experts and other therapist who I otherwise might never have connected with and also, generates clients and then one of my favorites is text-expander, which is an amazing software that helps you to recreate the emails that you write over and over again with like two or three keystrokes.
Perry: Awesome. That’s called text-expander?
Lourdes: Yes, it’s amazing.
Perry: Alright, I have to check that out. I love that idea. What a quote that you hold near and dear something that’s helped formulated your perspective on life or provided guidance for you?
Lourdes: It’s a quote by Allan Alda, you have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful, what you’ll discover is yourself.
Perry: I love that.
Lourdes: Yeah, it’s one of my favorites.
Perry: If you could recommend one book to our audience, what would that book be?
Lourdes: It’s the one thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan and I love that book because it just talks as entrepreneurs and as individuals, the need to focus on the one thing today that will make tomorrow easier and more comfortable and even the things that you have to do the next day even possible unnecessary.
Perry: Alright Lourdes, 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$ to start a new private practice. What is it that you would do on your very first day?
Lourdes: I would some kind of free website going even it’s just I can the one that I really want. I would definitely do that. I would find all the free information I could online on practice building and then I would join my local therapist community either meetup in person or on Facebook.
Perry: Wonderful, Love it Lourdes. Any parting advice for our listeners.
Lourdes: I think be open to learning and definitely take advantage of the expertise that other have to offer you, at the same time don’t lose sight of yourself and what really resonates with you so if something not working for you and it works for someone else and some experts say it’s amazing. Its okay, it’s just not for you so just find your own way through it all.
Perry: I love that Lourdes, and thank you Lourdes, we’ll have links to all of the great resources you mentioned, your website and your wonderful podcast all in this week show notes at brightervision.com/session48/. Lourdes, thank you so much for being so generous with your time, your expertise and your knowledge. I know that I can speak for our entire audience when I say we appreciate all the time and the therapist experience that you have shared. Thank you again.
Lourdes: Thanks. Thanks so much Perry.
Perry: Thanks so much for tuning in today. If have a questions for us you can email it to us at [email protected] and of course, if you’re interested in launching a website, reach out to us. Brighter Vision is the worldwide leader in the custom therapist website design. For less than a cost of a single coffee, every single day, you’ll get a website that’s as unique as your practice, unlimited tech support and complementary SEO so people can find you online. Head on over to Brightervision.com and drop us a line through one of our contact forms and we’ll love to see in we’re a good fit to work together. That does it for today, thanks again for listening and we’ll see you next week.
Lourdes says
Such an honor to be included. Thank you Perry for this opportunity and for the wonderful website support!
Valerie D. Wise says
I listened to this and realized that my experience is not unique:, i.e., going through client “deserts” and wondering what to do to get things going. Lourdes let me know that it takes a singular focus, commitment to my vision and investment to get from others who have made private practice work. Sticking to the vision is what is key. Also, she gave me an idea about doing a podcast!
Thanks Lourdes!
Perry Rosenbloom says
Thank you so much for your comment, Valerie! And I am so glad that this episode helped you :).