Optimizing Your Psychology Today Profile ft. Bess Curini

Uriah
Hello, Beth. Welcome to the show.

Bess
Hey, Uriah. Thanks for having me.

Uriah
Yeah, it's so good to see you. I'm really happy to talk I'm so glad you reached out to talk about this topic. And we haven't chatted in a while. Right?

Bess
I know. Think we met in person in real life, which is wild. For internet days. It was like 2018 or 2019. It was a while ago, so it...

Uriah
...Was 2018 in Philadelphia at the Get Seen Summit or Therapist summits were like, a really cool thing.

Bess
Yes, I know. I'm so jealous that I have missed out on the most recent one because I have all these children now.

Uriah
There are some good events to attend, but children are very important as well.

Bess
Yes, I know. Since I've had a couple more since I saw you last, I had two more kids.

Uriah
Oh, my goodness. That's great. I would kind of say that we met through Katie to some degree. Right. I think you and her connected before the event, and then we got to meet each other, and that was so cool. And we've been doing some good things in the meantime besides having kids as well, right?

Bess
Yeah. I've been trying to kind of jump back into things because I was out of touch for a little while. Around the time that I saw you, my mom had cancer, and then I ended up losing her, and then I got pregnant with twins, and so life kind of took a wild turn, and I ended up kind of abandoning my practice and my coaching practice altogether. And then now this past year, I've been diving back into it, and I've gotten really into marketing and Psychology Today specifically. It's kind of been like a nerd thing for me. I've been nerding out about the algorithms and stuff like that. I've been doing kind of dabbling in different areas.

Uriah
That's so good. So for the people that don't know you as well as I do, maybe you could just give a quick intro to who is best and what do you do?

Bess
Sure. Yeah. So let's see. I've been in practice for about ten years now, which is wild to say, but I originally was specializing in treating self-harm, and that was my pretty much all of my practice was teens who self harm, and I have a Facebook group that's for treating self harm too, and an online course. And that's how I got hooked up with Katie, actually, was because I was creating an online course through her course creation code, and then I ended up working for her, and then I got really into the marketing side of things. And so I also have a private practice. I'm a therapist, obviously. I'm a social worker. I live in Massachusetts, and I have kind of tried my best. Being a mom of three, I now need to just optimize my practice so it works the best for me, and I'm providing the most awesome therapy in the least amount of time. So Groups was also a big part of my background too. So that was another connection I had with Katie, was running Groups. I'm intensively DBT trained, so I have a lot of irons in the fire in different areas. I know we had talked about doing another podcast, maybe at some point about the ADHD stuff, but that's definitely like, I'm not interested unless I'm in multiple areas. So that's kind of me. I have three daughters, and they're my world really, now. So I try to kind of make my work fit into my life at this point. So optimizing marketing, I think, is like, a really important part of that to make it work for you so that you can make your business make the most money for you in the least amount of time.

Uriah
There's so much to be said for finding the things that you naturally sort of nerd out about and then figuring out how to provide value to other people based on that and of course, the intersection of various things. Right. So moms with ADHD who want to optimize their Psychology Today profile.

Bess
I know, and I actually have gotten on the phone with a bunch who falls into that category, which is so good.

Uriah
That's so good.

Bess
Yeah.

Uriah
So I'm very curious to hear from you about your best tips about optimizing Psychology Today profiles, because I have not been using that platform very much at all for a number of years. I used to in the early days of my solo practice and then for my group practice. At one point, I had a profile for everybody, and then I also had a profile for my counseling group, my group practice, and then now somehow we've gone down to only one that I'm still paying for. So yeah, I'm curious to hear what you think about Psychology Today, as directories in general, as a valid way to market your practice.

Bess
Yeah, I mean, it is a little tough, and one of the things that I say is that Psychology Today has to be like a sliver of the whole big marketing picture. But what it does help with is that actually helps with some of the traffic driven to your website as well. So there's like, some relationship between Psychology Today and their SEO and then your website. So if you have it connected, that's really good, but it has to be one piece of the puzzle. And of course, you're only paying $29 a month. So I always say if you get one client at least, then it pays for itself. But I do think that I've had a love hate relationship with it, to be honest, because I go through these bouts of, like, being on it for a period of time, and then I'll cancel it for a period of time. But recently I've been more like, okay, how can I make this work for myself? And also the people that I'm kind of coaching or doing these reviews with so that we can be attracting more clients that are the right clients. Because we know that all the work life balance stuff that we always are trying to achieve, which is so hard, really has a lot to do with being able to work with people who you really love working with, who you're really good at working with. And I would say that the very first thing that you need to do is have excellent marketing. And because people do primarily search on Psychology Today first, I think when they're looking for a therapist, it doesn't hurt to have a profile up there, and it's really not that expensive. So it's the pros and cons. Sometimes I'll go months without getting a hit or something if I'm not really moving it around. I would say that it's about attracting those clients first and foremost.

Uriah
So it's just one of many marketing channels. You most likely can't rely on it alone for a number of reasons. One being that you're not always going to show up at the top of searches on any given day. It could be different, so you can't rely.

Bess
Right.

Uriah
I always think it's a bad idea to rely on anybody else's platform, whether it's Facebook or Psychology Today for the success of your business. So I like everything that you said. There's better ways to do it and not so good ways. Right?

Bess
Right.

Uriah
And I'll share that just as recently as last week, a couple of weeks ago, I was actually searching on Psychology Today for a therapist for one of my family members and found it, of course, very interesting being on the other side of things. And as I was scrolling through and seeing, of course, I was looking at pictures to see who looks like a nice person that I might want to talk to. And then also, I was just reading the first line of what they wrote, and I could immediately tell, of course I'm a therapist and a marketing person, so that is an advantage. But I was like, no, not you. Okay, this is interesting.

Bess
It's wild. It's almost like I would say none of us were in marketing school to become therapist, so business background is not usually something you see with therapists. So we I mean, you see a lot of, like, clear imposter syndrome that people have that shows up even in that initial line, like, I'm really good, I promise you want to reach out to me. So I've been going through some profiles just to see what is out there. I'd say a good 90% of profiles are really not hitting the mark. So I think that there's also some ways that I've been working on how to actually increase your ranking on the pages, and I can give you some tips for that too. I don't know if we wanted to jump into the review first or if you want me to give you the tips upfront.

Uriah
Let's do tips and then review. Yeah.

Bess
Okay, cool. I actually made some notes. So one of the things that I've been I had kind of said to you about linking your website. So one thing that is really important, I actually read somewhere else, and I should give credit to wherever I read this, but I'm sure you can Google it. But basically if you're connecting your website, you want it to be like, similar copy to whatever your Psychology Today profile is, and you want to link it to the page of whatever therapy client inquiry page would be not your home page necessarily, but you want to make it so that people can have a really short attention span, because most people do, and that they'll click over and that they'll convert pretty quickly on your website or they'll come back to Psychology Today.

Uriah
You're talking about the link on the Psychology Today profile that says website.

Bess
People click on the thing that says website on the web edition. Like on a desktop version, it's right under your picture, like under Send a Message or Share. And then on mobile, it actually is way at the bottom. So you're really going to have to do the work on mobile to get people to get to that point because to scroll all the way down, someone's going to have to really like and pay attention to your profile.

Uriah
Oh, my goodness. That's actually a really good tip because I never thought about sending people to a specific landing page. That's a really good idea. Okay.

Bess
Yeah. And I hadn't either, actually. And I was actually looking at the one that you had sent me and I clicked over to the website and I thought that that was good because it was actually her bio profile. The call to action was right there, which is Get in Touch Now, or something like that. So that's really what you want. You want people to have, like, the call to action right at the top of the page with whatever blurb you want them to be reading. Okay. I actually switch up. This is my second tip, is that I have two to three profile copies geared towards two to three ideal clients. Right now. I have them teens who self harm because that's one of my niches, and then moms who are kind of like burnt out default parenting, like, really doing all the things. So I have those that I interchange. I've considered doing a third one too. I'm working on that. But basically what I do is I change the copy on my website to reflect whatever my Psychology Today profile is being targeted to as well.

Uriah
Is it true or false that Psychology Today will give you points to some degree for making changes and updates to your profile page, kind of like Google does with websites. Is that true?

Bess
That's what they say. They say to just, like, make subtle changes. But what I've been telling people to do is create like, I have a Google Doc that has a bunch of different iterations of my profile, and I just copy and paste because you have the character limits that you have to put. So I just want it to be ready to go. The other thing that I try to do is have all of the stuff that also goes along with it, like your specialties, your issues, your treatments, your age range. You want to make sure you're changing that up so that it's aligned with whatever your copy is. So if I'm targeting teens, it's going to say teens. It's not going to say elders.

Uriah
How often would you recommend changing that?

Bess
I think that weekly would probably be enough, but you could experiment with it too. Again, I nerd out about this stuff, so I'm like, what's making the algorithm put me at the top? What's making people want to convert? I got a call yesterday that was like, wow, your copy really? She didn't say copy. Your profile really spoke to me, and she was like, you made me feel like you were reading my mind. And I'm like, that's exactly what I want. Yeah, exactly. So the other thing, and this is maybe like a little sneaky tip that I love is that everybody's doing telehealth these days. So if you're doing telehealth, you can really be anywhere in your state. So what I did was I went because I'm private pay, and maybe you need people who can pay more. I looked at what the affluent communities were, and then I went and I searched those. And you could do this with anything. It could be like, what's local to you? Because you can add a bunch of locations. So it doesn't have to do with economic status or anything like that. But you could kind of search in the search bar on Psychology Today and then look to see which locations have fewer pages so that you can then rank higher in those search results. So if somebody like, for instance, I'm in Massachusetts, so if I put Boston, I'm going to be on page like 55 or something ridiculous like that, because who am I? And then what I did was I looked at different locations all over the state, which had one page or two pages. So then when you search me in that area, I'm actually like ranking on the first or second page.

Uriah
Okay. So pay attention to the geography, especially if you're open to seeing people outside of your area. And most of us probably are.

Bess
Exactly. Right now, I feel like everybody's kind of flexible. Most are keeping at least a part of their practice telehealth, because it's nice to be able to work from home or wherever you are.

Uriah
Those are great tips.

Bess
Yeah. And those are kind of like I think I had one more. And then the other thing is and we can get into this when we're doing the review. So with COVID, Psychology Today added a couple of sections that were like, if you have a COVID policy, like put it here, or if you have, they also added a section about finances with insurance. You could put like, I'm due out of network benefits, or whatever you want. You can kind of write your own statement. Now, I would recommend taking the opportunity to make that into a marketing, like, a place you can market. So on mine, like, for instance, in the COVID policy, instead of saying, like, I follow the policies in my area and I sanitize all surfaces, or whatever it is that you're going to say, I just say virtual therapy for busy moms in Massachusetts. So it ends up popping up at the top.

Uriah
Okay. Yeah.

Bess
It's like an announcement. It's kind of cool. It highlights it. So you can kind of create more of, like an eye draw.

Uriah
You can really say whatever you want there, probably, right?

Bess
Yeah. You probably could recooking therapy. Exactly. You could probably say anything you want.

Uriah
Okay, I love that.

Bess
But there are a couple of sections like that on my profile. There's a section that was, like, about insurance, and I personally have networks, so I wrote investing in yourself and your wellbeing is an investment in your future self instead of going into, like, insurance lab. And then in the qualification section, there's another one where you can kind of write what you want. And I wrote, as a mom of three girls, my life experience helps me to support other moms managing the mental load of being a parent. So I just took the opportunity to be more personable and straightforward with people about the therapy they're going to be getting.

Uriah
So those are really helpful and partially because, well, they're just good ideas. But somebody like me who hasn't revisited the profile that we have, that we're paying for that's listed, doesn't know I didn't know most of those things. I didn't know I could make the current profile that much better, which of course I'm going to do after this call.

Bess
Okay, cool. I'm excited to see it. Yeah, they've switched things up a decent amount, but I think it's been in the last couple of years that those have been new features.

Uriah
That tells you how long it's been since I looked at it.

Bess
Well, why would you go and peruse that? I'm sure you have a lot of things to do.

Uriah
Those are fantastic. And I know, obviously, focusing on the copy, the words that you write in those various sections really matters a whole lot because you want to stand out and you want to speak directly to the people who you really want to work with. And the examples you gave, actually, of putting words in those various different places, even just what you said was really targeted and really specific to those folks, so that when they get in touch with you, they're like, you're talking to me.

Bess
Right, right. And that's the thing that not only is it like you're attracting ideal clients that will be able to fit in your practice, but then you're also creating a practice that's filled with people you really want to work with and you really feel filled up by. I think people are oftentimes talking about how burnt out they are, and I think this has a lot to do with it. And then also we want all the people to contact us because we want to feel like we're doing all the things right. But really, if you're narrowing people down at this point, you're actually doing a really great job with your marketing.

Uriah
Definitely. I'll tell you something real quick that came up today. So most of the people listening know that Productive Therapist provides virtual assistance for therapists across the United States. And we heard from one of our VAS that the therapist that she's supporting got extra specific about age ranges and all the various different things that most coaches will walk you through on identifying your ideal client. But he narrowed it down super focused, and she said it's been amazing because it's made her job easier in knowing who's the right fit for this person and who's not. And then as a result, the therapist is super happy because he's getting only the people that he's really excited to work with.

Bess
Yes, it's so awesome. And it's amazing, too, how much people start reaching out to you more. It's like counterintuitive. You think you're casting a wider net, but really you're not speaking to anybody.

Uriah
No, it's true. So what do you think about taking a look at this profile?

Bess
Yeah, let's do it.

Uriah
All right.

Bess
Do you want me to just look at it on my computer?

Uriah
Yeah, people are going to obviously just listen to this. So we'll paint a picture for you.

Bess
Yeah, we will. We'll make it look really good. So when I do Psychology Today reviews, typically what I do is I start with their picture because that's the thing that I think draws people to them. Like, initially, you're going to basically be looking at someone's picture first. One of the things that I've noticed as an error that some people do is they create a picture that's like, they choose a picture that's super professional, like they're in a suit coat. I had a guy, actually, who I did a review with. His picture was so professional, but then I got on a call with him and he was, like, really kind of casual. And I was like, this doesn't seem like it embodies your personality. So this picture is really great. So, Shauna, her picture looks very inviting, very friendly. It's somebody that I would want to talk to. So right off the bat. That's an eight plus. And it's professional, but it's not, like, professional enough that it's, like, off putting. Because I think when people seek therapists, they want to see that you can be somebody you can talk to, they can talk to. So I was actually concerned that I wasn't going to have anything to say about this profile because she started off really very specific. Is your child or teen struggling with depression, anxiety, stress, or ADHD? So this is a really great first line. What I would say is that I typically tell people to try to take clinical language out, especially in the very beginning of the profile, because although ADHD, I think, is becoming so much more mainstream, you could probably have that be something that you say, but I would describe it a little bit more in detail. So you kind of want, like, we're saying we're painting a picture of this. We want to be painting a picture more of what the experience is. So what does it look like for their child or teen to be struggling with depression?

Uriah
Just can't focus. Yeah.

Bess
What's that?

Uriah
Just can't focus with the ADHD, like, swap that out, probably.

Bess
Exactly. Like, just can't focus for getting all their things procrastinating until the last minute. With assignments, like, whatever it is that they're experiencing, you want to almost initially just get inside whoever your ideal clients mind is and have them be like, oh, my gosh, that's me right off the bat. And she jumps to these things can make life difficult for you and for your child, which is true. I think that that's not a problem. I would even get more descriptive of that. Like, what does it do to life? And I think she didn't use all her characters in this section, so I would definitely put a little bit more in this first paragraph. Okay. I think that the first paragraph should really be, like, painting that picture of your ideal client and what their experience is and think about where they are when they're first searching for a therapist. Like, what are they thinking when they're first searching? A lot of times, therapists will say something like, oh, it was so hard for you to reach out or say something along those lines. And that's not what I mean. Where are they at when they first look out for a therapist? Does that make sense?

Uriah
It totally makes sense, yeah.

Bess
Okay, so you really want to, like, I'll give you an example. My profile right now is for moms, and I say, Are you hey, busy mama? Are you carrying the mental load of being the default parent? So I just jump right in about specifically what they're experiencing. She writes, I enjoy working with kids. So this is one thing that therapists do that is probably I would shift. I enjoy working with kids and teens to help them cope with the challenges of life. I wouldn't talk about what I enjoy at all in my profile, right? Because it ends up being, like, becoming more about me and less about the person that is reading it.

Uriah
Do you think it's true that most people, I mean, some folks want to see more, like, credentials or show me the evidence that you really know how to work with my son or daughter or my issue? But the fact that there's this professional profile on a professional directory with all the specialties and all the things, I'm guessing that lends to the credibility and you don't need to say as much, maybe. What do you think?

Bess
Yeah, I feel like just what you said is right. But then the other way that you can demonstrate that you understand on a deeper level, on a professional level, that you understand what they're going through is to describe it in a way that they like. On the profile that I have about self harm, I explain in my second paragraph, like, what is going on for that individual rather than having to be like, I have intensive training in DBT. I don't have to say that, but I can say something along the lines of, you know, self harm is often an attempt to communicate something nonverbally. And so I'm almost creating my authority through my language, and I don't have to just rely on my credentials to create my authority.

Uriah
You're demonstrating it and actually a more credible way, most likely, because if you describe my problem and I'm like, Yeah, that's it. I immediately trust you. And I'm like, because people really just want to know, do you get me? And then, can you help me?

Bess
Right. Yes, that's exactly it.

Uriah
It's all about survival. Survival and thriving.

Bess
Exactly. And when I'm looking for a therapist, actually, one of the reasons I got into this Psychology Today nerding out was because when I originally was seeking a therapist for myself, I remember my therapist profile at the time, she was like, a specialist in two things that I wasn't even looking for. But I loved the way that she talked in her profile so much that I reached out to her, and she ended up being a great fit. So you can also be targeting a specific population and then attract other people just based on how you're conveying yourself. So she talks a little bit about counseling, can support you and your whole family to be happier and healthy. I wouldn't even really get into that that much. They obviously know that therapy is supposed to be something that's helpful for you to change. It's not easy, but it's possible to make positive changes. So I would scrap that. I don't mind the first paragraph of this, but I would definitely reword everything so that it's really almost mind reading. Then in the second paragraph, what I suggest that people do is that they look at there's a couple of options for the second paragraph. The other thing just real quick, a side note on Psychology Today. In the edit profile, it's going to give you prompts, but just ignore them. Don't even pay attention to what they say because they're going to walk you through like it just doesn't work out. You want to write what you feel is best for your ideal client. So on that second paragraph, I would say give some insight. Like I was saying, kind of establish your authority on understanding their problem on a deeper level, maybe like giving a little psycho education on what's happening or maybe even getting into painting a picture of what they are looking for, what would be the dream outcome for them in the experience of doing therapy. So she talks about change and feeling supported. So she's talking a lot about the process of counseling, which actually I prefer people to leave out because most people, when they come to therapy or any service, they don't really care what you're going to do with. I mean, obviously they care to a certain extent what you're going to do, but they don't really care as much about the process as long as you know how to help them. And then you can bay that through your language about understanding their problems and then understanding what their outcome would be.

Uriah
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think I'm a big fan of giving people the steps, like telling them exactly what to do at the end of whatever the box of text is called action. Right. And do you recommend putting that somewhere on the Psychology Today profile? What happens next?

Bess
Yes. So the thing is that Psychology Today now has this option, and I think she has this below her second picture yet says, call or email for a free 15 minutes consultation now. And it has the number. So Psychology Today does populate that call to action automatically. Okay, some people do. And I think this is great. In that third paragraph, say something along the lines of, I offer free 15 minutes consultations if you'd like to see if we're a good fit. And just put that as like, the last sentence. I would definitely speak a little bit to what the process is, but not like almost just touch on the process, but then rely more on speaking about where they're going to be once they've done therapy with you.

Uriah
I just have to share this. Do you want to hear my three steps on my new website for my accounting practice? On the home page, and I wish I could show you this right now, but it says, step one, schedule a call. Step two, get matched. Step three, do a happy dance.

Bess
I love that.

Uriah
And then there's a little text below that that tells them exactly what that means. People are going through a hard time, so they want to know, okay, once they land on the profile of the person, they think like, oh, maybe this is the person that's going to help me, and they want to be kind of, like, guided, hopefully, to the next part of the process.

Bess
Yeah. And one of the things that I loved about the way that your practice runs and this is something that I've always wanted to do, but again, I have a pretty decent ADHD brain going on. I want to maintain a calendar that people can schedule on, and it's such a great idea because you do that, and I love that you offer also, like, hey, you can schedule these two times and then we'll pick the one that works best for you. And then it seems like Shauna is in that calendar system. So that, I think, is a really great call to action, and she could speak to that in her profile, click on my website and schedule a free 15 minutes. Consultation on my calendar is, like, super appealing to people because it skips a whole bunch of steps. Like, they don't have to call and leave a voicemail, which is so scary for anybody who's, like, a millennial or younger nowadays, talking to a human is hard.

Uriah
Yeah, for sure. Makes sense. So once we kind of revamp all the text or tweak it a little bit and make some changes there, what else would you recommend?

Bess
Yeah, so the other thing that I would recommend is if we're looking at, like, the right hand side on the website, there are specialties, and she has child anger management and life transition. I would nail this down a little bit more clearly. She says she's specializing in the first sentence of ADHD, depression, anxiety and stress. So I would have those three be in the specialties if that's what she wants to be working with. So before I jump to the next section and issues, I would narrow that down to just the issues that you're wanting to target in your practice so that it's, like, as narrow as possible. I really minimize this section on my profile. One of the things, too, is I feel like the more issues you put as specialties, it reduces your credibility a little bit, I think, because it's like, Oh, I can do all these things. And it's like, can you really?

Uriah
I agree.

Bess
I know that we're all jacks of all trades and we all do eclectic therapy in all the areas, but I think it's more credible when people see that you're just doing a few different things. And that doesn't mean you can't do the other things. It's just that you've chosen to narrow your focus.

Uriah
That's so good. And going along with your previous tip, you could change that. I think every week would be too much for me personally, but whatever the frequency is, you can change those check boxes as well as change the text on your profile and then have them match up really well to an ideal client. That's good.

Bess
Exactly. Yeah. And then you're thinking, like when somebody comes to Psychology Today and they're searching and they go to the filter and they're checking boxes, you want to fall under the categories of only the things. And this is even more important when you get down the page a little bit. So she has mental health. I actually don't check any of the boxes under mental health because I don't feel like an expert in any of those areas, and I truly feel like if you're not an expert in the areas, you probably shouldn't put it right. The other thing is under client focus right here, this is awesome. She has her ethnicity, and because people will be if someone wants a Hispanic therapist or other racial background, I don't know if they have a specific but if they're looking for a specific ethnic background and their therapist, that would be a really great place to put it. And then she also has she speaks farsi, which is like, if someone's looking for a therapist who speaks farsi, there's also a section for different religious backgrounds. So if you are like, a Christian counselor, you want to put it there. I've seen some therapists put Christian there because that's their own faith background, but they don't provide Christian counseling. And so I say don't do that.

Uriah
It's got to be you got to be thinking about that being client facing.

Bess
Exactly.

Uriah
Yeah. Okay.

Bess
And then the other thing that I would shift in this profile, in her main body, she talks about treating teens and children. And in her age section, she has almost every box checked except for toddlers. So it's elders, adults, teens, preteens, children. I would just have the children preteens and teens listed. Psychology Today also what's that easy fix right there? Exactly. So Psychology Today also has this funny little new section, which I think is great because we want to have communities that we support, but there's this long list of allied communities, and there's, like, aviation professionals and veterans, so you can check all these boxes. I think some therapists feel like if they don't check the box, then they're not considered allied. But what I would caution you is that if you're not specializing in that area, obviously you may be LGBTQ allied, but if you're not specializing in treating that, if you don't have that training in that community, then I would not check the box. Body positivity is there, which is great, but if you don't have a background in eating disorders or health at every size or intuitive eating or whatever it is, I would probably stay away from that, if that makes sense.

Uriah
It certainly does, because what you don't want is somebody to get a picture of who you are and what you do, and then once they talk to you, it's really not in alignment with who you actually are.

Bess
Right, exactly. Yeah. And that comes up, like, much more significantly in this next section because this is the types of therapy section. So this is the section I would be the most careful about because I think in our field there have been treatments that have been watered down significantly based on different training places that provide certifications that aren't up to par or whatever. Or maybe you take a class on something like, for instance, I'm intensively DVT, trained with one of the main companies, so I would put that in my profile. But I'm not certified, so I'm not going to put that in my profile. Right, but also I don't have training in ISS, even though I might use some parts work in my therapy, but I'm not going to put that because I don't have that certification. So a lot of times, like, I just did a review with someone earlier who had checked DBT, CBT and Solution Focus Therapy, and they didn't actually have training in that. So I told them to not put that.

Uriah
Definitely.

Bess
I would just caution anybody in most.

Uriah
Of our ethical codes. What do you call that? Truth in advertising or not false advertising. That's actually an ethics code, I believe. Right, so you don't want to put yourself out there something that you're not for so many reasons.

Bess
Exactly.

Uriah
Yeah, right.

Bess
And unfortunately, this is happening a lot in our field where for a lot of things like coaches or whatever, I'm not on one side or another necessarily, but I think that we should be putting if we're going to be doing a therapy, then put that therapy that we're trained in and not putting other things. Like there are options that are catchalls, like eclectic therapy or strength based or personcentered, and those are all things that we're all doing integrative. I don't know.

Uriah
Yes, if you have to put client focused at this point.

Bess
Right, I know person centered. I'm like I hope that's for everybody.

Uriah
I'm really animal centered in my therapy with humans. Yeah, these are all really good tips. I have so much I have a little bit of work to do here. Is there anything else you want to add on to it?

Bess
Well, there's just the last section of Modality and some people, like she's putting individuals, couples and family. I don't know if she's providing all three types of therapy, and if she is, then maybe she should have one for couples and one for family therapy. Like that. She can interchange with this profile, but it looked like she was focusing on children and teens with ADHD and some other issues. So that would likely be individual therapy. Maybe groups or something.

Uriah
Yeah, maybe family. A theme of what I'm hearing you say is that just make sure everything that you put on this page, on this profile is in alignment and that it all makes sense and basically tells the same story.

Bess
Exactly.

Uriah
Which will give the potential client that experience of going yes, yes, or on the other side, no.

Bess
Right. Which is just as important as yes, I think absolutely. Yeah. You just want to be in integrity with yourself and your professional background and how you're presenting yourself, but also for your own well being in your practice. When you bring in clients, you want to be bringing in the right clients for you and not pretending you can do something that you can't.

Uriah
Absolutely. This is amazingly helpful. Thank you so much. I invited you on the podcast, but this is really free consulting for me, so thank you for that. I'm literally going to go make those changes and I think I'm actually thinking about reactivating a couple of profiles of just the clinicians that we're trying to fill at any given time and then revisit all the points that you shared and make all those changes for each one of them. So I think I'm going to do that.

Bess
Yeah, I was thinking that when you were saying something earlier. Like, this is a great way to have an on switch when you're trying to fill caseloads, and then you can turn it off when you are not wanting to fill caseloads. Some people keep their profile running all the time and it says, I'm not accepting clients, but I usually just cancel it if I have no need for it.

Uriah
I think that makes sense. Yeah, that's great. So tell me, where can people find out more about you and maybe get your support with this?

Bess
Yeah, so my business is called Now That I Can Fly and my website is now that Icfly.com, they can go to that to contact me. I also have a Facebook group for therapist called Your Holistic Therapy Practice. So they can go there and get the marketing tips that I provide for free. Or if they want to work with me, they can follow those two to me that way, too.

Uriah
That's perfect. And we'll put those links in the show notes and then also on the website. This is so great. Beth, thank you for your time. Appreciate you being here so much.

Bess
Uriah, yeah.

Uriah
Have a good one!

Bess
You too. Bye!