Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hey, hey, it's Shauna A, the delightful clinician. And you are listening to delightful audio sodes, the email audio newsletter where I empower therapists to build lucrative careers and side hustles. This week we are going to be talking some insights that lent me a profound experience.
[00:00:17] Here we go. Recently, a friend sent me a invite to a group that I found to be very interesting, usually on the social medias. I'm a part of a lot of groups that are pertaining to therapists. This group has nothing to do with therapists at all. And I'm so happy that I actually joined the group because for the first time I was able to see something that I hadn't been quite putting together in my therapist basis. So essentially what happened was there was an offer for a free webinar. The free webinar was like how to go from zero to ten K in 30 days. When I applied to be a part of the webinar, I actually didn't get in, but then they did a follow up webinar which I was able to get in the following day. So in the follow up webinar on the following day is when my perspective completely changed. I would say that the webinar was like complete gold. And I have to explain to you all that I have been to many webinars, like a lot, a lot over the past couple of years, and I've been to so many webinars that I can tell you when the pitch is coming. They all follow the same format, they all feel about the same to me. There's really only one coach whose webinars that I've been to, and I love going to them because I walk away with so much and they deliver exactly what they say they're going to deliver. So there isn't any like, oh, I'm going to show you how to do this, and then they show you something else, but then they relate it back to if you know how to do this thing, then you can do that thing. This one coach, when they say that they are going to show you how to do something, they're going to show you how to do that thing, and then they're going to offer the expansion on that thing. So it's like, if you want to continue to do this and learn how to do more, then let me show you how to do this.
[00:02:18] So anyways, none of that is neither here nor there. I've just been to so many webinars that I can really start to feel when the sale is coming. I can really start to see their whole formula. There is like a formula that people follow when it comes to these things. And quite honestly, it's not for me. And I know that many people are tired of it, or at least so I thought, because one of the things that it allowed me to see was how much folks was really into this. They were eating it up. And I thought to myself, well, this is interesting, because much of what I was seeing wasn't new to me. And here's the thing about being an expert. Carrying authority in certain spaces. When you carry a lot of authority in certain spaces, when you have a level of expertise in certain places, sometimes you tend to think that other people are carrying that same level as you.
[00:03:19] And stepping outside of my usual spares helped me to see that there was so many people that did not carry that level that I carried. There were so many people that hadn't been to thousands of webinars and couldn't sense the pitch coming. There were so many people that hadn't been to hundreds of webinar and couldn't see the formula of the webinar because they hadn't seen this so many times before. And it was actually quite refreshing and really motivating because it helped me to see that maybe part of my issue with my side hustles is that I was trying to make people operate at the same level. Even though I know that I am teaching them how to solve this problem, I'm showing them how to solve the problem. So, of course, if you're teaching and you're showing people how to solve a certain problem, they're not going to be operating at the same level. And this is where the mindset shift came in for me. And I have to say, for what the webinar offered, it was amazing. There was so much stuff. This was a free webinar. It was supposed to be like 60 minutes, at least I thought it was going to be 60 minutes. And y'all, this person ended up in like a six hour webinar. It started at seven, and people said that they didn't leave until 04:00 a.m. And the first time that this person offered a webinar, they only had the capacity for 100 participants. The second time, which was one day later, that they offered this free webinar, they had the capacity for more. So they expanded their capacity. And I think the key to this was that one, so many people had this same sense of urgency because, again, they're not all at the same level. They hadn't seen these pitches before. And two, there were so many people that were in that step, one that just ate up. Love the fact that they were showing this from the very, very beginning. I think that sometimes we take for granted how huge showing those first steps can be. I think we take for granted that those simple things that seem like second nature sometimes go such a long way. And I could put this in therapy terms, right? A lot of times, when I started teaching deep breathing to my clients, when we were going through trauma protocols and things like that, one of the first lessons that I would do is a lesson in breathing. And let me tell you, I would always preface it with, this is going to seem silly because we breathe. Every day we breathe and we don't even think about it, but we're going to be really intentional and really purposeful, and I'm going to show you how to do that. And I would do the whole lesson hand on the belly, hand on the chest. Listen, feel all of those things. That is such a simple task. It is a simple thing, and there's so much value in it. And I can tell you that we treat our services like this as well. There are so many things that are really simple that we forget the value on it, and we forget that people need to learn these things and that there are value in the really simple things. And the other thing, in our very complex world, we often mistake complexity with sophisticated. And there is so much elegance in simplicity. Keeping things simple, focusing on those basic building blocks. Think about this as well. There are so many people out there who are just struggling in the space between having their basic needs met and getting to that next level. Sometimes we operate from, everybody has their basic needs met. I cannot tell you how many times I've gone into therapy sessions and I've talked about maslow hierarchy of needs and then going back and talking to people about basic needs. And were their basic needs met as a child, do they feel like they're meeting their basic needs right now and reevaluating what that looks like for them? So much value in there. Now, of course, this is going to vary for you depending on who your clientele is, but we often overlook the simple things because we think that either people already have it in place or that it's so simple that it's no longer valuable. And that is just not true. This opened my eyes to so many things because I often am like, why would people buy this? Right? Why would I offer this? Because there's no value in this anymore, when the truth is that people are not where we think they are. As far as our emotional intelligence is concerned as far as meeting their needs. People are not as high up as we think they are. And if we are able to step back and recognize that there is value and simplicity, you can create so many things with just those values. And not only that, you can offer that at different levels of care. Somebody who's just starting out is probably not going to go to your yoga retreat, but they might engage in your resource library that has a bunch of yoga videos for them. Somebody who's just starting out is probably not ready for your intensive breath work program, but they're probably going to enjoy your early meditation videos if they have some kind of access to that. And in between, not everybody is going to be sitting in your office, but they might like some kind of combination of the things that you have to offer. And this is what I mean by looking at the varying levels and taking something that could be really simple and then expanding it in multiple ways. And we're going to come back and talk a little bit more about the expansion of the different levels. But for a moment, I want you to also think about this. Many times people like to say, I am the niche. I do this because this was my experience, or I have now solved this problem for myself so I can go back and help other people solve this problem, which is not anything wrong with that. But I want you to know that if you feel like you are the niche, then the problem has not been solved yet. Remember, your niche is a problem that you help people to solve. You know who those people are and you know what the problem is. So if you are within that niche, then you haven't helped yourself to solve that problem. And I think that a lot of people make this mistake. You probably have already solved this problem. You just have to go back and recognize your level because there are various spaces of that issue. So, for example, if I was in the middle of a divorce, I'm probably not going to focus on divorce as my niche right now until maybe after that divorce is resolved. Now it doesn't mean that you can't see clients if you're in the middle of a divorce. It does mean that you might want to be extra cautious about what may come up for you. Any countertransference, those kinds of things. It also doesn't mean that you can't ever have this as your niche at all. And it doesn't mean that you can't work different parts of the process. There are parts of a divorce, if you're in the middle of one, that you have already come to conclusions about. So if you have decided that you and your partner are no longer going to be together in a marriage and you have come to that decision, there again is the first part of that process that you might be able to help others resolve, if that's the reason why they're coming to you. And of course, this is with like a grain of salt, right? I don't want you all to just start telling people when they need to have divorces and things like this. This would be worked and formulated with a plan and all of that. But if you're at the part where there's trials and things like that and there's back and forth with the lawyers, this is probably not something that I'm going to be like, I'm the expert of until it's complete, until it's resolved for you. So you can look at different stages of certain things that you are part of, but it's better if you are grounded in your niche and you have resolved those problems, or you can clearly see the solution not from a hypothetical stance, but from a place of, this is what the research says, this is the data, this is the discussions with many people.
[00:12:02] I would not be in the middle of something because of the emotional toll that it could potentially take on to you, but also because you want to see it all the way through without having any other additional influences. And once you're out of that space, then you can go back and be like, okay, I've seen this problem. This is what I tried. This is what I've seen. And now I can go back and say, this is the issue, and this is how I help people work through that.
[00:12:33] So remember, you're not your niche at all. You might have been at one point in time, but you have now moved past that issue and you have resolved that issue. And now you are helping others move through and pass that issue so they can resolve that issue as well. I want to bring it back to something that I continue to have said over and over again in this. And that is you have to assess all the levels of a problem. Just like I mentioned before with the divorce scenario. There are multiple levels of a divorce. There comes the point where there's a decision that's made. There comes a point where there is a decision about how you're going to go about this. Is this going to be contested? There needs to be lawyers. How do we divide assets, those kinds of things? There's so many different levels of that that you can find value in all of those levels of the issue. We must diligently assess all of the levels of the problems. And you know what? I think that this can be easily done. So I'm going to give you some questions that I want you to ask yourself so that you can assess the different levels of a problem. The first question is, what's step one for my audience? When you're thinking about the people that you are talking to, what is the first step that they have to take? When it comes to the work that they're doing, when it comes to the problem that they have, what is the first thing that they're going to do? Another question that's very similar to the first one is, what is their ground floor? What is level one for them? Again, what is the basic entry point for addressing this problem and this issue? So the next question are, what are the other levels? What are the other steps? So now that you figured out what the ground floor is, what their step one is, what are the other steps in between that, where are they trying to go? How do we know that this problem is resolved? Or they're okay to keep working on this on their own or in different capacities? What does that journey look like? And then I want you to think about what level do you believe that they are operating at? Are they at step one? Are they at step five? This final question is an important one. It is, am I meeting them at their level? So as you write these out, you're writing out the different steps, and then you're saying to yourself, what's step one? And then you're looking at where they are at in this process. And I want you to think about all of the steps that came to wherever they are at right now. Can you capture more of your audience by expanding to the other steps below where your current audience is at now? Probably. Can you create programs out of those various levels? Absolutely. This is truly the idea of meeting your clients where they are at and guiding them through to where they want to be and where they need to be one step at a time. I want you to think about your businesses and your solutions that you offer. Are you truly meeting your audience at their level? Are you providing the tools they need to grow? This week, I challenge you to consider how you can create more accessible, valuable offerings that resonate with your audience's current needs, as well as expanding that so that you provide multiple levels of care. You can post your thoughts in the therapizing collective group, and I look forward to chatting with you in the next delightful audio sode. Bye for now.
