Personal Branding In Private Practice

Uriah
Maegan, welcome to the podcast!

Maegan
Uriah, I am so happy to be here!

Uriah
I am seriously stoked that we're talking, really. Legitimately, not just saying that for the podcast.

Maegan
Yeah, same. I know. We were just saying to each other, how long has it been since we saw each other's faces on Zoom? It's been too long.

Uriah
I think it was 2020.

Maegan
That's wild. I know. Time flies when you're having a great time. I guess.

Uriah
We could.

Maegan
Say that. Yeah, sure. I'm using air quotes.

Uriah
Having a great time. Great time. Yeah. I'm excited about this topic that we're talking about today. And there's so many different directions that we could go and so many different things I wanted to ask you about and also potentially get your feedback on my retreat from personal branding. If you don't mind going down a little rabbit.

Maegan
Trail with that. Are you kidding? Targets are my favorite direction.

Uriah
Your specialty. Fantastic. But here's my first question for you, honestly. What gets you excited about personal branding? What is it about that? Yeah.

Maegan
It really, for me, is about self expression, getting paid to figure out who I am, getting paid to work on myself, getting paid to express my ideas, and getting paid to really devote myself to creative practice. So there's the personal element of the personal brand that I'm a big fan of. And the other thing that I love about the personal branding path is the variety that it gives you in terms of what you can do and sell. So how you can make money with a personal brand feels to me like there are really an infinite number of ways that you can make money with a personal brand in a way that having a group practice or a therapy practice offered fewer avenues for revenue generation. So I like the expansiveness and the space for self expression that a personal brand gives you.

Uriah
More flexibility, more creativity. In some ways, I'm not going to say more fun, but when you're working on something that is so connected to your personal interests and your passions, it is just more fun, isn't it?

Maegan
I think so. I think this is where it's really important to understand who you are as a person because I have colleagues who were made to be group practice owners. They love being behind the scenes. They love systems, they love mentorship, they love managing teams and nurturing employees. They love it. That really is an alignment with who they are. And then there are people like me for whom that was not an alignment with who I am. I like being in center stage, not backstage. I like really expressing myself more than I like managing a team, just as an example. So yeah, I think it's more fun for me. But part of the beauty of being an entrepreneur is you get to discover who you are and then make career and professional decisions that are totally in alignment with how you want to be in the world.

Uriah
That's the big win, isn't it? To figure out if you want to be center stage or you want to be behind the scenes and then design your business and your career around your zone of excellence, where that is. And I think for a lot of therapists, being center stage and creating a personal brand that is compelling, that is, like you said, in alignment is absolutely the way to go. So I guess the question I would have for you is two things. The first one is every solo private practitioner, are they automatically a personal brand? And how does that person know if they should, not should, if they might want to lean into developing a more strong personal brand or not?

Maegan
Okay, these are great questions. Why don't we start with just establishing for those who are unfamiliar, what exactly is a personal brand? Because I think it's a term that's in the zygeist, right? But no one knows what it really actually means. And it's not a protected term. So there is no single definition that we all agree to. For me, a personal brand is a business that is based on you, your personality, your values, your subject matter expertise. It really is like you, again, you are in the spotlight. You are standing center stage, sharing your message and your opinions and your thoughts and your creativity with the world, with your clients. So is a therapist in private practice automatically a personal brand? I'm going to say no. I think the opportunity is there for you to have a personal brand, but there are many people who do not want to be in the spotlight in that way. I want to make sure that those people feel really seen and validated that you do not... The personal brand path is not superior to something that is is not about you. So maybe we can look at two different types of private practices. If you don't want to be in the spotlight, if you really don't want your business to be about you, you can brand your private practice as something other than yourself. Maybe you're like... Well, I'll just look at my group practice as an example. So my group practice is called the Center for couples and sex therapy. It is not branded around me. I am not the face of the brand. I am not the name of the brand. The brand exists separate from me. And I named my practice the center for couples and sex therapy when I was just one person because I had the vision of hiring more for the future. So that's a way you can set up your private practice that is externalized. It's about what you do, not about who you are. But if you want a private practice that is Megan Meganson Psychotherapy, and you are the face of the practice, and you are really being bold and self expressed in your copy and your marketing and your clinical work, then you are on the path to creating a profitable personal brand for yourself.

Uriah
That's a helpful distinction. I'm thinking of one of my friends who was a former clinician here at my group practice, and he branched out to solo practice. He's very much not the personal brand person, but he still has a thriving solo practice without doing some of the things that you might attach to personal branding. He doesn't do social media. He doesn't have really much of a website, but he's got a business that supports him and his family. What I'm hearing you say is that's very much a valid option, just as much as personal brand is. It's more about the person and what they want and what they are drawn to.

Maegan
Absolutely. Your business should be an extension of who you are always. I'm just a big believer that I became a business owner to serve myself. I became a business owner to create the life that I want for me and my family. And whatever business you create should be an extension and a reflection of who you are and what life you're trying to create. So it can look like anything. It can look any way you want it to look. I think the reason I'm really passionate about bringing this personal branding conversation to more therapists is because many of us are taught explicitly that we're not allowed to do that, that we are not allowed to self disclose, that we're not allowed to be bold and self expressed and opinionated. So I think people tend to default to creating these private practices that are branded in some externalized way where their identity is really missing from the business, not because they made that intentional choice, but because they just think it's against the rules for them to say more about who they are. That's what I want to disrupt a little bit.

Uriah
Yeah, I'm glad that's changing, and I'm glad that you are at the forefront of that because I think that's really cool because therapists have personalities.

Maegan
Right. I know. Yeah, we're not a blank slate. That is a role that we can play in our clinical practices. It's a costume we can wear if we want to, but we shouldn't feel like it's a costume that's being forced upon us as clinicians. We have choices and we have agency and how we present ourselves within our clinical work.

Uriah
Definitely. I want to tell you a quick story about a personal branding win. This was probably about, gosh, eight or 10 years ago, and I was revamping my website for my solo practice, and I decided to tell more of my story about how I went from being a troubled team to I can't remember the terminology that I used, but the title was something like From troubled team to something else. It was good. I can't remember what it was. I actually hired a copywriter to help me craft this, what was essentially my homepage. And it talked about how I had done so much work and struggled through my life to become the therapist that I wish I had when I was 16. And it was like sharing the reasoning why I do what I do and why I'm so passionate about it. And I even talked about how when I was a teenager, I was using drugs and I was failing in school and I was doing all kinds of things that I was getting in trouble with. And then I talked about how I transformed my life and became a therapist. And it was this really compelling story. It was a little bit scary to share, but not that scary because it was very much I'm removed from that, right? From that version of myself. But when I would get on the phone with parents, they would be a thousand % sold on me working with their teenage son because they just felt like, I believe this person can connect with my son, help my family. And it was really powerful. I can't tell you, I think I spent $600 on the copywriting for that page, and it brought in so many ideal clients. It was a beautiful thing.

Maegan
That is such a powerful example of self expression to create connection. You'll hear a lot in the marketing space, perfection doesn't create connection. But rarely do marketers follow that up with what does create connection. They're just like, Be imperfect. And I'm like, okay, that's not actually helpful. I agree, perfection doesn't create connection. I would say blank slate persona doesn't create connection. What does create connection is real, authentic storytelling. When I allow you to see that I am a imperfect human who has a story to share and who has learned some things the hard way, it gives you an opportunity to connect with me on more of a nervous system level. It's like that real deep interpersonal connection that we're creating and helping people create in the therapy room. We're trying to replicate that in our marketing. I think that is such a perfect example of what it looks like in practice to share a real part of yourself thoughtfully and strategically. You hired the copywriter to help you with the strategy. I'm sure you talked about it in your own therapy. You really were ready to share that story. But then when you do, the right people are magnetized towards you. It's like you are a muff to the flame. Man, I love that story. And I'm listening to you and I'm like, do we have another hour? Because I just want to hear the rest of that story. That's a great marker that you're onto something is when the story that you tell makes people really curious to know more about you.

Uriah
Absolutely. So I would love to hear what you have to say about how a therapist having a personal brand can help them stand out in the sea of therapists. Because depending on where you live, there are a lot of options for people. There's even more options now than ever with Better Help and various other large companies that have these networks of therapists. So how does, in 2023, a solo practitioner create a personal brand so that they stand out and maybe become the best person or the go to person for their population or whatever it is that they treat? How does that help?

Maegan
Oh, my gosh. This is a great question. I'm very excited to answer it. So I'm going to try my best to practice brevity here. We'll see together how it goes. Well, first of all, I want to answer that strategically in a moment. But first I want to say that you are magic. That each person, each of us individually, we have something unique and magical about us that is our thing. It's like our fingerprint. It cannot be replicated. So right out of the gate, when you say, I'm going to turn my private practice into a personal brand, you are saying, I am creating a business that is uncopyable. Nobody can do what you are doing when you are showing up as yourself because there's only one you. Now, there might be some self confidence and self esteem work that you have to do in your own therapy to get to the point that you believe that's true about yourself. So I will say the personal branding path is hard if you are really struggling with how you're connecting to yourself. If you don't believe you're valuable, if you don't believe you're unique, if you don't believe you have something to offer, you're probably not going to have a very compelling personal brand. But when you really land in like, no, I am great. I'm great and I have something special to offer, then you can step into personality in your practice and you're just uncopyable. So that piece is, quote, easy. If you can just learn how to be yourself, immediately you are differentiated from the sea of sameness that is the psychotherapy space.

Uriah
That makes sense. Yeah.

Maegan
That's the personal piece. Now, let's talk about the strategic piece, which is from a business perspective, how do we differentiate ourselves as therapists? I think this conversation is applicable to any therapist, whether you have a personal brand or not. I think what's really necessary here is specificity. I think a lot of people, a lot of business owners, they want to help everybody. They're really afraid of narrowing the lens of their specialty area and their focus because they don't want to exclude anybody. They don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but they also don't want to potentially exclude a paying client from entering their practice. And what happens when your brand is broad and generic is that you end up capturing no one's attention because nobody knows if you're speaking to them. It's so easy. Any of us could go on to Google right now and type in exactly what we're struggling with. And what we're going to find are 100 therapy websites that are generic. I help people find happiness. Okay, what does that mean? And then we're going to find five websites of someone who says, I specialize in exactly what you just typed into Google. And we're going to go with one of those people because we feel so seen and so understood. Now, one little pro tip I want to offer here, and this is something I think a lot of people teaching therapists how to do business get wrong and teach in a way that's not helpful is the difference between having a target market and having a niche. So there's a lot of talk in the therapist space about you need to niche down, you need to niche down or niche down, however you want to pronounce that word. You need to niche down. So what we have now are a lot of therapists who say, I specialize in treating anxiety, I specialize in couples counseling, I specialize in EMDR for trauma. And then they come to me a year later and they're like, I did all this niching, but it's still not working. And now I'm giving up on my vision. And the first thing I say to them is your niche is actually a lot less important than your target market. So more important than how you're serving people is getting really clear about who you're here to serve, who are you talking to, who do you feel called to support and help in the world? So if you want to differentiate your personal brand from the sea of sameness in the healing space and the mental health space, the best thing you can do is be yourself. Get really clear about the type of person that you're here to support, and then you can start talking about your niche, which is how you help support them.

Uriah
That's great. Yeah. I was trying to think, before this conversation, I was trying to think about therapists who have a personal brand that I can recall that I can remember. And not big names, not like Dr. Phil, Brené, Brown, etc.

Maegan
In your community, even.

Uriah
Even that, right. And I had a somewhat of a hard time finding, coming up with answers to that. But one that came to me was the ADHD guy, and he's a therapist named Ryan in Pennsylvania, and he works with boys with ADHD. And I believe that's the name of his business. And I was like, Great, because I remember him. And he's got these great videos that talk to parents about how to help your son who has ADHD. And he also uses all kinds of play and creativity and games in his therapy work. So that came to mind. And also the angry therapist, have you ever heard of this guy? Yes. I don't even know what he's doing now, but his brand just came to mind for some reason. He's, I think, therapist who branched into other things, coaching and other kinds of things. Can you think of anybody that's not a big name that has a personal brand who may not be a client?

Maegan
I was going to say all of my clients are the ones who come to mind. Right at first. That's okay. I think a great exercise you could try here is spend some time looking around in your community or even just looking through your own personal Rolodex, wherever you keep track of your network and your contacts. And another pro tip, if you don't have that and you're like, I don't have that right now, make that. That's very important that you have an organized space to keep track of who do I know, who am I keeping in touch with? But look through that Rolodex and see if you can say in one sentence what each of those people do. I know when I see Uriah's name in my inbox that Uriah helps therapists be more productive in their businesses. I know who he serves, therapists who are business owners, and I know what he helps them do, be more productive in their businesses. So I see Uriah's name, I know exactly who he is and what he's about. If a client is sitting with me on Zoom or in my office and they're struggling with overwhelm and organization and really needing support but not knowing where to find it, my brain can quickly pull Uriah's name out of this Rolodex because I know this is who he serves and what he does. So I think this is a really helpful exercise to go through your own network and ask yourself, Who do I know who's already doing this really well? And then reverse engineer that on yourself. When my colleagues see my name on a list serve, or when they see my name in their inbox, do they know immediately who I am, who I serve, and how I help them? And if they don't, you've got some work to do.

Uriah
That really makes sense. And I'm glad that you feel that way about my brand.

Maegan
100 %.

Uriah
Of I've worked hard to, quote unquote, own the word productive and productivity in this small corner of the internet. I think you've done a great job. People tag me on Facebook all the time and say, What does the productivity guy say? What about you, Rhia? What does he think of this?

Maegan
I'm like, Yes, it's working. I think you have a great example of a brand that's a hybrid. It's like a hybrid of it between a personal brand and a more traditional business that obviously the business is called productive therapist and all the branding is under productive therapist, but everybody knows that that means Uriah. And we know Uriah's face. I know I'm talking about you like you're not here right now, but it's like, I know what Uriah's face looks like. I know his voice. I know his writing style. So that I think what you're doing is a really great example of how you can have a hybrid if that's something that you want.

Uriah
I wanted to tell you about this, and I'll try to keep this short, but I would love your feedback on this. I'm in the process, and then we'll circle back to personal branding and wrap things up. But I'm in the process of retreating from personal branding, which is the right thing for me. So in my solo practice turned group practice, I decided, unlike you, to put my name in the title of my group practice. And so for many years, it was called Guilford Family counseling. That's my last name. And just this last year, I completed a rebrand to take my name off the door, so to speak, and off of the business and rebrand it to in tune family counseling. Cool thing about that for me is that our brand is still centered on something that I'm passionate about, which is music. And so we've got this beautiful analogy between music and relationships and families. And if you walk into to our offices, we've got record albums on the wall. We've got literally have guitars hanging on the wall. So it's like this really cool thing that resonates with me. So it's still personal, but it's very much not about me. Nobody calls for your eye anymore, which is amazing, right? Because I do like being in the background. And then with Productive Therapists, we are moving slowly towards taking not my name and face off of the brand, but making it less about me and more about my team, which feels really great to me and potentially maybe even renaming the podcast from productive therapist to productive practice. So that feels like just something that's in alignment with me and where I want to go because I don't actually... I'm an introvert, I think like you. And I know that you don't have to... It's not like introvert, extrovert, personal brand or no. I understand that. But this feels like something that is the right direction for me and for my businesses. Have you seen that happen before with people? Because you help people move towards creating a personal brand. Have you seen people move away from it, too?

Maegan
I absolutely have seen people move away from it, mostly colleagues. Not necessarily colleagues in the therapy space, but I'm very connected and do a lot of my own coaching and professional development with people in other business spaces that are more focused on online business and personal branding. And I have definitely had some really good friends who have come to a similar place in their development where they've built this personal brand. And then they've gone, you know, actually, this isn't the path that I want to pursue. And maybe it's just because they are learning how to know themselves better. Maybe they're becoming more. That's a process. Yeah, exactly. Their own inner knowing is shifting and changing. It might also be something contextually is changing in their life. So people have kids they're child free and then they have kids. And all of a sudden they're like, my life is really focused in on my kids now and I don't want to have to be as on in my personal brand as I was before. So I think there are a hundred different reasons why you might decide to make the pivot. For you, I think it makes a lot of sense simply because it is challenging to grow an agency type business model when you are the face of the brand. So I think a lot of people experience that, too, where their group practice is... First, it's like Megan Megan and associates. I'm just going to throw in the and associates. But as it grows and takes on a life of its own, it starts to make less sense for it to be a reflection of us, of who we are. We want it to stand on its own two feet. We want to be a part of the system and not the top of the pyramid, so to speak. So I love that for you. And I love the way that you are really being intentional about how you're making sure that it still works for you. That the business is still your business. So there are still bits and pieces of you that are interwoven into this tapestry of the business. It's just not a picture of your face on the center of the tapestry anymore. Yeah, I think.

Uriah
That's great. Yeah. It's my grand scheme to work less and travel more, honestly.

Maegan
Yeah. I think it comes... I love that we're talking about this right now about pivoting because we were just talking before the call that I'm moving away from my group practice and more into the personal brand. So I think the meta process here, if we can just be therapists for a moment, is that you have to pivot. Your business has to pivot as you pivot personally. So as you're taking a right turn, as you're learning more about yourself, as you're getting clearer about the life that you want to create, you can't be afraid to change your business accordingly, even when it feels scary or other people are telling you like, Oh, that doesn't make sense, or Why are you abandoning your ship? No, it doesn't matter what other people think. It's just important that you and your business are always existing in parallel to each other.

Uriah
That's such a good point. And I would say to people who are listening to this and considering developing a personal brand, but not 100 % sure if that's what they want to do, it's all subject to revision and iteration and change over time. I've certainly done that many times as I've shared a little bit here, and you have too.

Maegan
I think it's important. I say this to my clients all the time, literally nothing you can do here is permanent. Nothing is permanent. Capitalism would like us to believe that everything's permanent. You need to know yesterday what you wanted to do with your life, and you need to do it, and you need to climb the ladder. Everything is this continuous upward trajectory to some magical end destination. I just don't find that to be the way life actually unfolds. So I agree, nothing is permanent. And I often coach my clients to think of their businesses and any projects that they're working on as working drafts. My group practice is still a working draft. My personal brand, my coaching business, working draft, subject to changes at any moment. And that does give you so much freedom to pivot and change direction when you know in your own gut that it's time to make a change.

Uriah
Yeah, that's good. Also, some of us, myself included, have a desire to create something that outlives us, or certainly that has a bigger impact than we can do on our own, whether that's building a team or not. I'm thinking about, this is just a quick reflection, then we can change gears if we want to. But think about other personal brands that I've seen shift over time. There's some, I'm thinking of Jim Rowne, who was a very well known motivational speaker and author. And he was a personal brand from day one until he passed away. And his personal brand exists beyond him because there's a foundation, his books still sell, his audios still sell. So it very much is like his personal brand is still alive for a lot of people. And then there's other folks like Michael Hyatt comes to mind. He had a personal brand for many, many, many years. And then he got older, decided that he wanted to hand the company over to his daughters, and they rebranded, took his name off of it. It was Michael Hyatt & Co. Right? Right. Yeah. They're point earlier. And then they changed it to, I think, Full Focus. So there's different ways to go with that. And I think if anybody was listening to this, I would want them to take away the idea of exploration and adventure. And to your point earlier, learning more about yourself and how you want to uniquely show up in your business. That's a win no matter what it looks like, even if it's a little messy at times.

Maegan
I love that as a take away. Just dip your toes in the water. And this is great advice for all business owners. I'm sure you and I are examples, Uriah, of people who have invested way too much money and things before it was really time to do it. What are you talking about? I'm just going to like, okay, I got this. I think I know what the business is going to be, so let me spend 20 grand on a new website and new branding for this thing. And then six months later, you're like, oh, shit, that's not the thing. I got to start over. So slow down, I think is the second part of this invitation. If the first part is explore and be open, the second part of the invitation is slow down and take this process in a series of tiny experiments, tiny low cost experiments and just one experiment at a time. And trust that if this first experiment is a yes and you try another experiment and another and another, that you will get to where you're meant to be. You don't have to know today where you're going to be three years from now. Just take it one little experiment at a time and you'll figure it out.

Uriah
That's great. Yeah. And you and I are still figuring it out. We get super practical for a minute. So for my friend, Jim, who I mentioned earlier, who doesn't have a personal brand, but he has a solo private practice. If I was having a conversation with him and he's like Uriah, I listened to that episode with Maegan Megginson, amazing. And I decided that I wanted to develop a personal brand. So he's got no social media. He has a website that is hard to find. So what would be the first one, two, maybe even three steps for him to take to develop a.

Maegan
Personal brand? Yeah, this is a really great question. First of all, I'll just throw out there that I have two very successful businesses and no social media. So social media does not have to be a part of the equation if that does not speak to your soul. So don't panic. Having a personal brand doesn't mean you have to have a social media presence. My main way of connecting with my audience is through my email list. I love writing. I think email marketing reading is solid for reasons we can talk about in another podcast episode. But you get to show up. You get to create your stage and your audience in whatever way on whatever platform makes the most sense for you. So if you're in private practice right now and you are just wanting to dip your toes into the water of personal branding, well, first of all, you can download my Personality Power Pack at personalitypowerpack. Com. And this is a free gift that literally walks you through the first series of steps that I use with my coaching clients when they are starting the process of figuring out how to weave more personality into your clinical work and your existing business. So that's where we want to start. We want to start with an exploration of who you are, and we want to give you an opportunity to intentionally choose with consent, what parts of me, of my life, of my personality am I going to weave into my work and what parts am I not? So what parts are public and what parts are private? I think that is a really good way to start experimenting with self expression and personality within your existing business to get a sense of how it feels for you. It's either going to feel so expansive and liberating that you're going to be ready to just jump on the ship and go for the journey, or it's going to feel really uncomfortable and out of alignment. And you're going to know that you should slow down and really do some more exploration before you decide what direction you're taking your business next.

Uriah
Step one is go to personalitypowerpack.com. That's a great name, by the way.

Maegan
Great name. I'm a sucker for a good alliteration. I'm glad that you said that. The thing.

Uriah
That might like that. I'm glad that you said that because from idea to implementation, you've got to do some work. You got to do some self exploration, maybe work with a coach, maybe sign up for next level therapist. Because you got to do that part because you don't know what domain you want to buy. You don't necessarily know what brand colors you want to choose or font you want to choose, etc. Before you figure out some of those foundational things. That's really good.

Maegan
Starting small, and it reminds me of something a mentor said to me years ago that has always stayed with me. He said, Megan, I really believe that all business problems are personal problems in disguise. So if you're sitting in your private practice right now and there's a problem or there's something that doesn't feel quite right, just gently name, that probably has more to do with me than it does to do with the business itself. It's like it's out at first because we're used to trying to not look inward for answers. We're looking externally, we're looking to pay coaches to tell us what the answer is. But over time, I find that it actually becomes such a gift. What a privilege and an honor that we get paid to work on our own stuff as business owners. So use this as an opportunity just to get curious. If something doesn't feel right in your private practice, take that into work with your therapist to say, Hey, I really want to dig into... So let's say, maybe just a common example, people who are bored by their clients and they're like, I'm so bored by clinical work. Okay, that's really interesting. Take that to therapy and see what does that mean about your own personal development? What parts of you are needing some attention? What parts of you are not being expressed? And if you approach it from the personal development angle first, usually it's a whole lot easier to name. What new experiments do I want to try within my business to move in a different direction?

Uriah
I've said this for years that my best life coach has been my business.

Maegan
Oh, my gosh. I love that.

Uriah
Agreed. Endless opportunities for growth. Some welcome and some rather annoying. Do I really have to do this right now?

Maegan
Totally. It's not always fun. It's hard. It's hard work being a business owner, no doubt about it. And what a privilege, again, that most people spend their whole lives working for someone else, and they are so exhausted and so full up of someone else's vision and priorities that there is not even space or time or energy to say, Well, what about me? How am I doing? What healing work do I need to do? So I just really encourage everyone listening to celebrate that we get paid to work on ourselves. And by working on ourselves, we actually hold tremendous power to create a ripple effect of positive change in the world around us. So we hold a lot of responsibility as business owners. And it's important to honor that while also making sure that we are just doing tiny little experiments between now and wherever it is we're headed on this big professional journey.

Uriah
So empowering. I'm genuinely so happy that you're doing this work and that you are giving permission to therapists to explore these things wherever they end up. You're allowing them the space and the ability to explore those things and to create something that's in such alignment with themselves that their business is an expression of themselves and it also meets their needs first, like you said. That's such good message.

Maegan
Thank you, Uriah. And likewise, I am so grateful to you showing up in such a transparent way with your audience to say, and sometimes we walk things back, and sometimes the path that we thought was right isn't right. Actually, I'm going to move back in this other direction. I think just circling back to that reminder for everyone listening that it's all an experiment, nothing is permanent, and you will change your mind a thousand times between today and the end of your career. And that is to be celebrated, not judged. Yes.

Uriah
And one of the worst things you could do is stay bored and stay burnout and slug through the next 10, 15, 20 years of your career. There's no need for that. It's just not necessary. Yeah, I totally agree. Life's too short.

Maegan
What's your tag line? I love it in your emails. It's like, okay, I'm totally going to butcher it. It's like, work less, you can have more fun. But it rimes.

Uriah
So my favorite tag line that we've ever had is we help therapists get more done so they can have more fun.

Maegan
Yes. We help therapists get more done so they can have more fun. Every time I see that, it makes me smile. I love that.

Uriah
I need to seriously reposition our brand to be more vacation photos, more lifestyle and less person at computer.

Maegan
That's a really great point, right? We want to speak to the pleasure. We want to speak to... Another marketing pro tip from Uriah and Megan. Yeah, get people excited about where they're headed and we can spend less time poking pain points and more time celebrating pleasure val visions for the future. So more vacation, more time, more fun. That is what I think of when I see your name and I see the productive therapist logo.

Uriah
I just have to add something in. I've been working on... I think you and I both share a love of copywriting, right? So I've been working on adding some more flavor to our copy writing instead of... I was showing it to a friend at a conference. I was like, What do you think about this? Because we were in a talk on messaging, and he was like, Yeah, but do people actually think that or do they say that? Don't they instead say, Do they really say, I want to work less and make more money? Or do they say, I want to stop doing all this admin work, or I got to stop working nights and weekends, or I want to take an actual two week vacation. Those are the things that people think and say that are powerful, right?

Maegan
Yeah. And then that's it. How are we grabbing that voice of customer and weaving the words people are actually saying into our copy, which is a great lesson for therapist in private practice because it feels like 70 % of therapy websites that you land on, it's a bunch of jargon. And this speaks again to your net's too wide. You're trying to speak to everyone. You're trying to say really generic things so people can maybe see themselves somewhere in the landscape if I treat depression, anxiety, and trauma. But when you swap that language out for actual words and phrases people are saying and words and phrase that you yourself are saying, bam, immediately you have more personality in your private practice and people are going to resonate so much more with who you are and what you have to say. Yeah, let your voice shine through. I love that.

Uriah
Okay. So part two of you and I talking on the podcast is going to have to be maybe email marketing and maybe part three is copywriting. Okay, great. We could do some teardowns. That's a.

Maegan
Terrible each other.

Uriah
We can deconstruct. Therapy website enhancements.

Maegan
There we go. Yes. And how do we make this better? And knowing that everything you have right now, you should be incredibly proud of. And this conversation is just about how do I take where how do I take what I have and just make it more and more an expression of who I am and in alignment with who I want to serve and how I want to live my life. So this is all very exciting. We're not adding things to your to do list. We're giving you invitations to step more in to who you're becoming. And that's what this work is all about.

Uriah
Okay. Personalitypowerpack.com, go there now, fill in your information and get Megan's emails because they really are good. They're genuinely worth reading and value packed. And then if people are interested in your coaching program, which is called Next Level Therapist, where do they find that?

Maegan
Yeah. So you can go to nextleveltherapistprogram. Com and hop on my email list and I'll let you know anytime we're welcoming new members into that community. So excellent. Any way that you want to connect, let's connect. And it's just great. It's so good to reconnect with you. And yeah, it's such an honor to be here.

Uriah
Awesome. Have a great day.

Maegan
You, too.