Welcome to The Ask Juliet and Clinton Show where you can get the answers to your most pressing marketing questions. Take your therapy or natural health business to the next level with these expert tips. Now, here are your host, Juliet Austin and Clinton Power. Hello and welcome to episode 46 of The Ask Juliet and Clinton Show. I m here with my lovely co-host Juliet Austin. Hello, Juliet. How are you? I m doing good, Clinton. How are you doing today? I m great. I should say happy holidays. We are just one week before Christmas. Can you believe it? It s only, actually, it s not even a week. It s a few days. That s true. Three days and counting. Three days and counting. On the countdown. On the countdown. What are you doing for the holidays? Do you have something you normally do? Yeah, my parents are visiting. My parents have just come over from Western Australia which is going to be lovely to spend time. I haven t seen them for the last year. We re all going to Tasmania for a week. I m looking forward to that in a few days. It s going to be a great trip. I ve never been to Tasmania. Those people who don t know where Tasmania is. It s that little island right at the bottom of Australia. It s very beautiful. We re going for a taste of Tasmania. It s going to be amazing food and wine. I m sure I m I ll put on lots of weight eating delicious food. That s where the Tasmanian devil comes from. Exactly. You ve heard of the Tasmanian devil. I actually saw lots of them when I was in Australia at some of the wildlife reserves but they all have this disease apparently. It s like a cancer, very sad. Very sad. There was that cartoon when I was a child. You re a bit younger than me. It was, I can t remember. It was in Bugs Bunny, the Tasmanian Devil. I can t remember but there was a cartoon character. I just don t remember which show it was. What are you doing for the holidays? I m going over to Bunker Island where my parents reside. www.askjulietandclinton.com 1
Fantastic. That would be beautiful for sure. Would there be snow this time of the year? Probably not. We don t usually get snow in the winter. If we do get snow, it s really, really heavy and it melts almost overnight. Rarely does it stay longer than a day or two. Sometimes it s just melting as it hits the ground. Last year, I don t even think, we might had one light snow fall that, we get lots of rain. Rain. The rest of Canada gets snow and we get rain. Now, what s your fact about Canada? My fact about Canada is that in late October, I haven t talked about this so I just thought I would share this. We had a new prime minister here in Canada after 10 years. People say you re not supposed to talk about politics in business but I just don t buy that because I think everything in the world is political whether you want it to be or not. He s more progressive than our other one. Our other one was more negative and had more extreme policies that weren t as friendly to people in need and things like that. It s been an interesting journey and it feels like the light, the energy of Canada has been lifted so far. I m sure he s going to make mistakes. We ll be making mistakes as all people do and nothing is perfect. It s very interesting how We usually have more liberal, progressive governments here and we had the most extreme non-progressive ever for the last 10 years. It s quite interesting and feels quite liberating. That s very exciting. I m going to say to you, it s such a strange parallel because we got a new prime minister only a little bit before yours. Yours is elected as is came in by throwing the other one out but very similar, Australia did. It does come up positive incentive. The news and media cycle has radically changed. It s incredible how quickly it s changed to more positive stories really. That s been a really fascinating shift. Your new one is still the same party as the old one. Same party but it has made a really big difference to how people feel about the direction of the country. Yeah, I m excited to where it s going for Canada and Australia. Very good. Let s get started with our questions. Our first question is from Renee Burke. Q1: She asked, if I have $4,000 to spend on a website setup, my business setup cost plus business consultations, would you recommend to someone just entering the job market and looking to attract cash-paying clients that I spend www.askjulietandclinton.com 2
$800 on consultations and $2,800 on a website or $700 on a website and $1,600 on guidance. That question finally had made you think, didn t it? Basically the question is should I put up the majority of my money on the website or consultations? I think this is going to be it depends. It really is an it depends question because people are different levels of needing support and guidance. Someone who s very self-motivated, is willing to do a lot of self-learning and teaching and educating, they may not need as much guidance as someone who s really feeling quite overwhelmed and lost and needs a lot of hand holding. Look, I think, also, in terms of website, $2,800 on a website or $700 on a website, they re going to be quite vastly different in terms of quality. Personally, I am a fan of investing more than less in your website because I really believe it s the professional face of your business online. It really makes such a difference when people arrive on your website. It can have a huge impact for many years to come in terms of your ability to convert people coming to your website into a cash paying clients. I don t know. I m interested to know your thoughts on this Juliet but I would be leaning towards depending on, we don t have enough information about her specific situation but I would want her to spend a little bit more on the website than maybe $700 to start with. What do you think? Yeah. It s like apples and oranges. Without knowing the context, it s really hard to advice like you said. Yeah, $700, it depends, you might get lucky. I don t know who your Yes, she was talking about hiring Kat Love. I think it s probably going to cost more than that to hire Kat. Kat is someone we ve recommended here before and she s in a lot of the show notes. I think what you said is right about if somebody does a lot of self-learning. They may not need as much guidance when they re starting. On the other hand, doing a lot of self-learning takes time and you got to weed through a bunch of stuff. It doesn t happen overnight. Having some paid guidance could really help you excel and help you learn on your own as well because they ll know where to guide you until they do that learning. It s really a very difficult situation. It s a difficult decision to make. If I had to make that decision, I probably agree with you that I d spend more than $700 on the website probably. It s just really hard to say. You could always put down in the middle of 3,000 on the website, 2,000 on consultations. Yes. That s also what I was wondering. That might be a better option depending on what you get for that. There s so many things in marketing and I think what people don t realize, some people, is that everything depends. Should I do this or that? It depends. I was, for those of you or the therapists, I say, it s like if your client comes in and says, I have depression. Should I take medication? I have depression. I can t do this. Should I do this or this? There s not simple answers to these things. They re complicated and they depend on many, many factors. www.askjulietandclinton.com 3
Maybe one solution is to book that initial consultation with your coach or mentor and then discuss where you should best, in your particular situation, how to best allocate your budget. What s the next question, Juliet? Our next question comes from Louise White. She s at awakenhypnosis.com and that s in Tasmania where you re going. How do you pronounce that, Lawnston? It s Launceston. Launceston. I see. Are you going there when you go away? No. That s at the top of Tasmania. I m going to Hobart which is at the bottom. Okay. Q2: Louise says is there a new or different way to use stock photos on websites? Do you have any examples of websites doing this well? Even high-quality shots look a bit the same to me. I m also wondering if photos should be inspirational i.e. girl with arms spread wide in grassy meadow. I ve seen a lot of those out there or should they address the pain of the client, girl sobbing into a box of chocolates. What s your belief on whether images must include people or whether interesting objects are okay? It s three questions here. Let s leave the examples one first. Let s talk about the types of photos. Clinton and I were talking before and the one site that has, it s worth getting on a website, in particular, getting really high-quality photos, number one because it s your website and you wanted to look the best. A lot of these stock photo sites have photos of people that are quite cheesy looking. They look like stock photos and they just don t look very good. One of the sites is Stocksy. Is that S-T-O-C-K-S-Y dot com, I think? Clinton, right? That s right. It s about $10 a photo. You re going to pay a lot more for your website, you may want not always do that for your blog but they re really nice photos. They re better quality. They just don t look so cheesy as a lot of the people photos. People photos can work very, very well because people do relate to faces. Couple of tips on those, personally, the girl with the arms spread wide in a grassy meadow. That, to me, that s just to cliché. For me, personally, it may fit you and it may be appropriate for some sites but for me those things just don t do anything for me. They re too over the top for me personally. The one thing that you re doing if you re using photos, the photo where you re placing it should be matching and congruent with the text around it. You re asking if you should have the arm spread, a happy, free feeling or somebody crying into the box of chocolates. If you re writing something that says, I can help you feel better and enjoy your life again and you have a picture of a girl www.askjulietandclinton.com 4
crying into her chocolates, you re giving them a mixed message there. Make it match. If you re talking about the pain of the client then you can put a photo of illustrating that pain. I wouldn t be too heavy with the photos. You can show sadness without going over the top. If you re talking about positive things then you should put a positive photo there. I m a big advocate of having relevant photos on your sites. Beautiful sunsets and mountains, those are way too cliché for my taste. They just don t really mean anything. Yes, they can invoke inspiration and positive feelings but they re not necessarily relevant to the site. I think they re overused. Way too many therapists do that. There s nothing unique about those. Clinton, do you want to say anything else about that? Yes. I know Louise is asking do we have any examples of websites doing this well. Actually, I think the photos of Stocksy are beautiful. They are much more expensive. The smallest photo start at $10 US and you re probably do need a large, for your website to get the high-resolution. You could be looking at the $50 a photo but checkout Stocksy. A site that is using, I think with their photos, they use Stocksy and that is mindbodygreen.com, a hugely successful online health blog. Their photos are always gorgeous. You get a feel of what they re doing there. Funny story, Juliet, I was just consulting with one of my newest Australia counseling members yesterday. She showed me her website to have a look at it. Her website was about grief and lost and trauma. The most prominent photo of a huge photo taking up about two-thirds of the homepage was a photo of some kind of plant green and purple plant. This was the exactly the situation she s talking about. I said to her, what is the meaning of that plant? What is the meaning? How does that relate to grief, lost and trauma? She said, I just like the photo. You need to think. You might like the photo but if it doesn t have a meaning for your ideal client, it really is quite irrelevant plus it was just taking up a huge amount of real estate on their homepage which I think would have been better served with a good copy. Yeah, I recommend that she take it down. Don t overdo the photos either. You don t need photos plastered everywhere. One or two per page should be fine if for most sites. In terms of examples, I d have to really think about that and look at some, maybe we could put some in the notes. We ll put some links in the show notes. Clinton. Our final question is from Jodie Gale who s at jodiegale that s J-O-D-I-E-G-A-L-E dot com. She says, hi, Juliet and Clinton. www.askjulietandclinton.com 5
Q3: My practice is being full for nearly two years. When clients email, they often open up and share their stories so I felt the most ethical thing to do was to put a sign on my homepage and booking page as follows. This sign says, please note that my counseling and psychotherapy practice is currently full for 2015 with long-term clients. Join my mailing list to be notified of any upcoming session availability and my upcoming women s workshops. You can check out my Saturday afternoon soul sessions and she gives details about that and you can contact me for a list of therapists I currently are referring to. Jodie said I stopped taking a wait list as such as I only offer longterm and weekly clients. I have recently had a session space open up for the first time in over a year. This is a problem a lot of therapists would like to have. I currently have emails from clients from almost two years ago where they have said, please contact me in the future if a space becomes available. My first question is how long is too long? The second questions is, is it ethical to email a potential client from say, early 2014? I think in my book this is a pretty answer. I think if someone has joined at least to be notified when a space comes up even if it s two years later. I think the ethical thing to do is you offer the people on that list. I m guessing you ve kept an order. Most people want to have a wait list for keeping order and the people at the top of the wait list will be offered the sessions first and then you work down that wait list. I think that s what I would do. It s likely they ve moved on since then but if that s what you said you ll do, I think that s the thing to do. Just want to say as well, this is a really lovely problem to have. I think one of the things I know, a little bit about Jodie s practice is that she works in a very structured way and she does have a wait list. I think one of the ways she structures her practice is very interesting. She has a very structured way of organizing her business so that she sees clients on a regular basis and she doesn t change session times. She has the same session time for every client. It s very much a really strong commitment to therapy and she creates a lot of demand. I think any business that does well often has a very good systems in place to create demand and urgency so people will wait for your services. Juliet do you have any thoughts about this question? No. I agree with you. The ethical thing to do is to contact the person if that s what you said you were going to do. They may have moved on or they may say, hey, great. I ve been waiting for you for two years. I know people that have done that they see another therapists in the mean time and there s some reason that they have heard about your or like you or have seen you before, sometimes people want to go back and see you. Exactly. I think the other thing which is raises to me is, I see this a lot with therapists is that particularly when they re starting out and I can relate to it. They re being so desperate for clients and taking any client that was available but a lot of therapists I see, I m very good at setting really good, strong www.askjulietandclinton.com 6
boundaries around how they work. I m probably touching more here on practice management but it does tie into marketing because it is about positioning yourself and your business in the market in a certain way. One of the things Jodie has done very well is she s created a high-demand practice and it s very structured. The people are aware from the moment they contact her, this is a high-demand practice and you need to fit in with the way she works and many people are willing to wait for that. I think this is an area a lot of therapists can do better with. It s just getting much clearer. Maybe you can come down to terms and conditions and the informed consent. Getting very clear about how you work your cancellation policy. This is something I ve been doing recently in my own practice, really tidying things up and I m really feeling the benefits of it now. I m so glad I ve done this recently. I m giving much less leeway to clients even to change appointments or reschedule. I got rid of the entire ability to even I don t even have a cancellation policy anymore. People need to enroll on a time. That s your time until you tell me enrollment is up. I m really enjoying that new system. I think this is something therapists might want to consider for their own business as well. Exactly. That s the end of another episode. For those of you who are not in our membership program, our free membership program, you might want to go and sign up at askjulietandclinton.com/membership. We ve got lots of free information over there and a very active and growing private Facebook group for our members. Come on over there and join us if you re not already there and we ll see you next time. See you next time. Bye. Thanks for listening to The Ask Juliet and Clinton Show. To get access to transcripts of every show plus other members-only benefit, sign up for our free membership program at askjulietandclinton.com/membership. That s askjulietandclinton.com/membership. If you have a marketing question that you d like featured on one of our shows, click here. www.askjulietandclinton.com 7