The Practice of Therapy

Gordon Brewer 0:00
This episode is brought to you by the solo to group practice webinar. It's a free webinar that you can find at practice of therapy.com slash group, and also brought to you by therapy notes therapy notes.com.

This is the practice of therapy podcast with Gordon Brewer, helping you to navigate your private practice journey.

This is session number 186 of the practice of therapy podcast. Hello, folks, I'm Gordon Brewer, glad you've joined me hope you're having a good month of July, it's hard to believe that we're halfway through the year already. It's, you know, it's just seems like this year has flown by. And I don't know why. But that's just the way I'm experience it. Some of you might not experience that way. But at least for me, it just seems like this year is flying by. I'm really looking forward to you getting to hear from my guest today Aaron carpenter, who is the the owner of legendary lion, which is a design and graphics company. And they're who I used to develop the logo and branding for, for practice of therapy. And, Aaron, I don't know why I've not had him on the podcast before. But this is a pretty, pretty significant topic. I know one of the things that we've been kind of on a theme a little bit with this year is just around marketing, at least a lot of the episodes of the podcasts have dealt with that and the different aspects of marketing either through SEO, which is search, search, search engine optimization. But creating a brand for your practice is something that is really important for you, for you to stand out. And Aaron has a wonderful process that he takes people through in figuring out the brand for their practice. And like I said, he's the one that helped me develop the branding that I use for practice of therapy, the logo that we use. So anyway, looking forward to you hearing from Aaron. But before we get to air, and one of the things I want to let you know about is I've got another upcoming free webinar. And that will be on July 30. That's a Friday. And it'll be at 1pm. Eastern time. And this free webinar, I'm going to be jumping back into talking about Google workspace. And particularly in this webinar, I'm going to be talking about using Google workspace as a practice platform. And just talk about how people can use the different tools of Google workspace in their practice to just handle the different systems and processes that we all need in our practices to make things run smoothly. I use Google workspace in conjunction with therapy notes. And I'll tell you a little more about therapy notes here in a minute. Therapy notes is an Electronic Health Record system. But the one thing about Google workspace is it really helps you streamline and, and do a lot of the business side of your practice. Therapy notes is really more designed for the clinical side of things and dealing with

clients client specific issues. And whether it's the billing clients or that sort of thing. I use them in conjunction. But anyway, the webinar is going to be July 30. It's a free webinar and find out about the webinar got a practice of therapy.com slash g w s webinar. And you'll find if you follow that link, you will get to the place at which you can register for the webinar. And even if you're not able to join us that day, be sure to register anyway. So you can get the replay of the webinar. But I'd love to have you join me. And we'll have time at the end of that to answer questions and that sort of thing. And that webinar will be about an hour long. But again, it's a free webinar cost you nothing to sign up. And you can get to that at practice of therapy.com slash g w s webinar. And before we get to Aaron, I'd love for you to go and check out therapy notes. You can get to them by either going to therapy notes calm or there is a special landing page for practice of therapy users if you go to practice of therapy.com slash therapy notes. Therapy notes is the leading Electronic Health Record system for private practices. Particularly those of Thus, in the mental health field, it's an it is a platform that allows you to have clients schedule with you virtually, they have a patient portal that is second to none. They also are attached to a clearinghouse where you can file your insurance claims electronically. It also handles patient billing and all of that sort of thing. All on one platform. They also have a telehealth portal there so that you can do it again, all on one platform. And I will say this, their technical support is second to none. And I couldn't survive without them in my practice. So be sure to check them out therapy notes, and you can go to practice of therapy.com slash therapy notes. And be sure and use the coupon code our promo code Gordon, g o r d o n, and that will give you two months or their services for free. So you can try them out for free. That's a win win situation. So well, with all of that. And without further ado, here's my conversation with Aaron carpenter.

Well, hello, everyone, and welcome again to the podcasts. And I'm excited for you to get to hear from my guest today, Aaron carpenter and Aaron and I kind of go back aways and part of one of the little inside secrets. So just not really a secret secret. But Aaron was the one that helped me design the logo for the practice of therapy that you see. And I do Aaron reached out to me and I thought, yeah, I need to have Aaron on the podcast. So welcome, Eric vigr here.

Aaron Carpenter 6:53
Hey, thanks, Gordon. It's nice to be here.

Gordon Brewer 6:55
Yeah. So. So Aaron, why don't you tell folks is a start with everyone. tell folks a little bit about yourself and kind of how you've landed where you've landed and the work you do?

Aaron Carpenter 7:06
Sure. Yeah. So legendary line creative agency was a passion project, which, you know, it's just something I was always very interested in. When I first got my start building websites, I remember the first site I put online, and just knowing that you could access that from any device anywhere in the world was just the coolest thing to me. And then evolved into, you know, learning more about design, learning storytelling through design and learning, really the psychology behind how people react to websites and brands and things like that. And so our approach has always been to start with like a design brief with clients and help them start to shape like their story. Everybody kind of has like an origin story, like you just asked me about mine. But there are also especially with practices, they're usually like unique approaches to therapy and philosophies around therapy. And when you start to talk about that, you can start to build an identity around that, which then when that becomes the first thing that people see, and then they connect with you, or or start to feel like what it's like to be in your practice. All of those things really resonate together. You know, it really looks like you have your act together. So yeah, so designing brands is something that we find a lot of fun in. And it can be a really interesting process working with clients to start to discover what is that mark? And the idea visually that we're going to show you know, and, and lead with,

Gordon Brewer 8:28
right, right. I remember when you will get a little more of the backstory, I found out about Aaron through Joe Sanok at practice of the practice, and we've all kind of had run in some of the same circles. I know that Joe was there. I guess you're in Travis Traverse City still where Joe we're used to live Joe's traveling about now he's a bit of a nomad right now. But anyway, I just really remember that I was really impressed with the process, Aaron and Aaron took me through when I was really trying to come up with a new design for the logo for practice of therapy. I mean, the other one I had kind of put together myself just kind of bootstrapped and it really wasn't that attractive. But one of the things that I'll tell folks Aaron, is that when you look at our logo, it looks a little bit a like a question mark. And one of the things that I said I wanted in my logo for practice of therapy was a door and so you took that whole concept of questioning about going into private practice and this is is this for me and that sort of thing. And that's kind of where that came from and then sent out polls to people I never even though I'm from Tennessee, I never would have thought I would have picked the kind of the orange palette for raw for the logo but that's what it ended up being so it was just a really Cool process.

Aaron Carpenter 10:01
Yeah, thank you, we try to make it where it's fun for the client. It's very, the industry jargon term is client centric, but like you just kind of stick real close with the client and walk them through a process to help uncover those things. And you learn tricks along the way to like, you know, tease out ideas and start to elaborate on ideas to make it you know, something really interesting and cool. And one of our favorite things to do, which you brought up with your logo is to take like a like the the real concept, which is like you wanted a doorway, you wanted something that helped people understand this opens doors, this helps you understand things. But also, we'd like to see what else is happening in a design brief and then start to sketch and figure out how can we merge these two concepts, so that we're kind of telling a little bit more than just right, you know, finger on the nose? Like just that one thing? And that's usually what adds a little bit to, to a project. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, you know, in terms of how other therapists can start to figure that stuff out. I think what we could do is provide, like our design brief questions, which anyone can answer for themselves, and it just kind of helps you start to explore that mentally? Like, what does that space look like? What makes me unique? Why did I get started in this? Why did I choose my business name and stuff. And through going through that is called design breathing. But through going through that activity, you can start to really get a little bit more clarity around your business and how you'd like to visually portray yourself. Right, right. Yeah,

Gordon Brewer 11:33
it's, yeah, and it's one of the things that I'd like you to get to maybe speak to Aaron is, an A lot of us, you know, in this space, don't really have any training and marketing, or don't really have that background at all. But you want to talk a little bit about the importance of creating a brand for yourself. And I think one of the, you know, some people might have kind of a funny feeling about that, in terms of using that kind of that nomenclature, I guess you could say, but you want to talk to talk to that about the importance of creating a brand.

Aaron Carpenter 12:11
Yeah, I'd like to Yeah, um, you know, a brand and that I think what you're kind of hinting at is that sometimes people can make it can make them feel like it's getting a bit salesy, you know, and it's getting a little too business stuffy. And the thing about therapy is that you you're building trust, you know, and before even that first phone call, you want to make sure that you're a good fit to work with that client. But you've also built some rapport and trust, so that they'll open up just a little bit more, and you can start off on the right foot. And that's exactly what good branding does, you know, so if you sometimes I'll use the analogy that like, branding is a lot like the clothing that you wear. And so if you showed up to therapy, just wearing your pajamas, for instance, maybe it's not going to be the best foot forward. But if you but if you spend some time just sort of exploring, intellectually, what is my practice? And and what is the feeling that I want to give people while they're at my practice, there's a lot of crossover between practices in terms of I want them to feel like I'll be a good listener, and that they'll get to be able to work through their issues. But there's usually something unique, that that helps resonate that. And that's something that clients can start to ask about. So we'd like to explore that. And it's really important. I mean, if you think about it as an investment to all things being equal, like law of large numbers, if you know, 100 different potential clients reach out to you over the course of a year, how many of those are potentially not taking you as seriously as you'd like to be taken? Because you haven't spent a little bit of energy and how you're portraying yourself online, which is how everyone really starts their buyers journey now is searching for a solution.

Gordon Brewer 13:52
Right, right. And I think the other thing too, is just you're speaking to something that I feel like is a kind of a probably in the very initial steps of starting a practice. And that is having a website, where that is kind of your go to place. You know, there are some people that never really, in some Sure, there are some that had been successful with this, but you know, might just have like a Facebook page or a Psychology Today profile. And that's the only online presence that they have for themselves. And I think you really need to put put some investment in a little more than that.

Aaron Carpenter 14:35
Yeah, I think that's totally true. I mean, of course, you know, I'm the web design guy. So of course, I say that right. But, but that's absolutely accurate. I mean, especially recently over the past, you know, little over a year where we stepped into this age of COVID. And suddenly everybody had to move and pivot to online counseling and virtual counseling. You know, never was it even more important for your life personality. And how you run your practice to be portrayed through the first medium that people are going to see you, you know, through. And so yeah, I feel like that really kind of made it even more important than it ever had been. But it's still a really big deal to be able to take the minute to explain yourself. And you can look up all different kinds of stats like on kissmetrics is a website, you can check out a bunch of website facts on and stuff, there's some really cool stuff out there that that helps you understand very quickly how internet users work. So for instance, if a web page takes a 10th of a second slower to load, you start to lose x percentage of visitors, they'll just bounce. So like for webpages that take about four seconds to load, you'll lose like 60 or 80% of your traffic, because it's just taking too long. And we've all done this before where you've gone to a site and expands and expands, you know, like, No, I don't have that kind of time. It was like three seconds, you know, right.

So you know, looking at that type of activity that's happening before you even have that first conversation with your potential client, I think is really important, especially if they're in the position of I need. I feel like I need help with this thing. Now, you know, right, the first thing they're gonna see is probably your site and your brand. Right,

Gordon Brewer 16:13
right. Yeah. So yeah, I love I love the fact that you too, is that you really understand the psychology of kind of, of behind, you know, what, what is it that draws people to a particular website? What is it that carries some do's and don'ts around that you want to maybe go into some of those? A little bit? Yeah,

Aaron Carpenter 16:36
sure. Um, well, I'll just speak, you know, paint with a broad brush here, since you know, everybody is kind of a unique project in any case, but the things that I see most often, if you're, if you're kind of in DIY mode, and you're not working with a professional on your brand to your site, the biggest tips I can give you are keep it simple. You know, the people are not as interested in your CV and credentials as much as your approach to therapy and whether or not that resonates with them have specific service pages. So if you work in certain modalities, or you focus on certain types of therapy, have a separate page for each one of those things, where you go into more detail about your approach to that. And then make sure it's very easy for people to connect with you, because that's what you're in the business of, you're in the business of connecting to people. So having a phone number, usually up in your header, if possible, like the next to the main menu, and then also having a contact page where people can fill out a form. And I kind of want to just elaborate a little bit on that connect point to people when they're looking for therapy, really all internet users, but especially people who are looking for therapy are in a pretty interesting spot when they're starting that journey. And so the more mediums that you can open up to allow them to start to connect with you, the better off you'll be, and the more convenient and comfortable you'll you'll make it for them to initiate that connection. So if you don't have a phone number, because you don't like taking calls, that's okay, but just know that some of your clients would like to speak with someone right away, right? So consider that when you're making those decisions with your project. If you are working with a professional, just think critically about, you know, the people that you're working with, and make sure you're working with that professional so that they understand, here's the the mind space that my potential clients are going to be in. And they'll help you, you know, sort of orchestrate what should go where?

Gordon Brewer 18:37
Mm hmm. Yeah, that and that's, that's you, you bring up a huge point, I think, Aaron, is that I think a lot of times, the mistake that people make in just thinking about their website is they don't really think through the user experience. They, they put a lot of great content on their website. But when it comes down to it, the bottom line is is that potential clients that are coming to us are wanting to find out, okay, is that can this person help me? And then what do I need to do to get in with them to begin to start the process? And so that should all be blatantly obvious on your website. And I think, a big mistake, you mentioned putting the phone number up on top of on top of the page, when I do consulting with people, that's one of the things we do is we look at their website. And you know, a lot of times, it's just real confusing about what to do when they get when someone goes to their website. You know, makes sense to them. But if you are somebody that were new and didn't know anything about the whole process of setting up a therapy appointment, you got to be able to kind of guide them through that.

Aaron Carpenter 19:53
Yeah, it's absolutely right. And you'll be we touched on it a little bit before and it ties back to the branding and also that digital presence, you know, the website that you have having, you know, Psychology Today profile, and those other things are great, and you should absolutely have those. But just know that when people are looking for a therapist, they're, they're uninformed buyers, that's really who they are. Even if they've been to therapy before, if they're looking for a new therapist, they're immediately again, mostly an uninformed buyer. And that uninformed sort of parameter there is really, they have no idea how they're going to connect with you. And that that's everything. And so the more that you can create imagery and storytelling and help them understand what it's like to work with you or what it's like to be a patient in your practice, or a client your practice, the better off that you'll be, and all things being equal, if there are, you know, four or five other options in the area where that person is searching for therapy services. If those other outfits are not spending attention doing that, but you do, you're going to look so much better, you're going to look like you have your act together, and you're professional and all those things, which credibility is, you know, everything when someone's making that decision, I mean, they're, they're going to try their, their life in their secrets with you, they want to know that you are professional. And so it is worth you know, spending some time and energy to get that right.

Gordon Brewer 21:21
Right. Right. And I would say, you know, to add to what you're saying, I would think, you know, another another thing that is huge, I think for, for being able to retain clients and clients and get good referrals is just the responsiveness of things. When somebody does inquire, you know, I think this is getting a little off topic. But one of the ways in which a person can really add value to their practice is to be able to hire a virtual assistant or someone to return phone calls in a in a timely manner. Because I think one of the things where people kind of get kind of get turned off is is that they might inquire, like, they might fill out a form or whatever. And nobody ever gets back to them about the form or the stuff that they done online, or they call and it might take a few hours for him to get back in touch. Which, you know, if you're a solo practitioner, that might be the case. But I would say, if they're really looking for someone to get help from the first person that responds to them is going to do much have a much greater likelihood.

Aaron Carpenter 22:39
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And that that, you know, that kind of speaks back to when we were talking about, you know, you, you don't want to feel salesy, but the reality is some of this really just is the mechanics of sales. And if you if you're in a spot where you're wanting to connect with a therapist, you're you're going to start asking questions, you're going to start reaching out to people. And if you don't hear back from a therapist, who potentially would be the best fit for you, you know, if you were able to connect with all of them, and you just talked with the first one or two and start to settle in on some decisions and make that first appointment and everything well, they're committed. Now, you know, you potentially missed out on that. But also, I think everybody listening, if you're in this business, that everyone can agree that it's really important to be getting in connection with someone when they're in that, you know, mind space of, of what they're feeling, so that you can start to help them get aligned and get back on track. And so yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, there are lots of different ways to make sure that those phone calls or emails get returned. rather quickly. I know that for larger group practices, most of them have a client intake coordinator, you know, and they help arrange those things. But yeah, I think you're absolutely right, you can just hire a VA, for instance, you know, and it doesn't have to be expensive. And it's a crucial part of your business. Right.

Gordon Brewer 23:58
Right. It's nearly always a good return on the investment of hiring that person to do that part of it. Yeah, so tell you, Aaron had shared with me before we started recording, just kind of how I've known about legendary lion for some time now. But really just kind of changing your focus, because I know that you'd not only work with therapists in the past, but you've also worked with a lot of other businesses as well, as well.

Aaron Carpenter 24:27
Yeah, sure. I can speak on that for a second. So you know, we we got our start in Traverse City, Michigan, and connected with we made some therapy connections, some influencers in that world and did some work with them. And they really appreciated the work that we did. So we started to get a lot of word of mouth referrals. And what that translated to was just us completing like a website or brand and then getting a couple more referrals out of that over and over again, and we just started to kind of build a large portion of our portfolio in mental health. We worked on some really big projects and different portals that people are probably familiar with online counseling.com, before COVID even hit, which is a really big deal, which was International, you know. And yeah, all those projects were really fascinating. So we decided over the last year, especially with what we saw with COVID, I have a lot of marketing clients and active projects that are still in the mental health space, we just decided, you know, we know so much about this, we really deliver a lot of value, once we get to be connected with clients that are in that space. Let's just focus more attention there. So that's what we're doing. So we're pivoting more towards that we're releasing mental health dot legendary line comm where we'll be adding tools and different downloadables and stuff, and it's all just value forward, hey, here are things that we've learned, take it and run with it learn, you know, and if we can help, or if you want to book a consultation, we're available, but we just want to make all these resources available to people because we've been working in this industry for like, over 10 years. And we just like, how much, you know.

Gordon Brewer 26:00
Yeah. So it was is this been a surprising niche for you?

Aaron Carpenter 26:05
I think it was tough for me, as a owner of a business to just let go of that whole cast a wide net thing, you know, like, I really just we do have a lot of different clients and really cool spaces. And you know, me and my team, were really interested in challenges being presented with a brand new problem or puzzle to solve. That's 100% my personality too. So I'm sure that helps govern some of our business decisions. But But, you know, the The reality is, I think it's a smart business decision for us to spend more of our time focused in mental health, because we know a lot about it, we can solve a lot of problems, and they're, and they're the same problems, we can get even better and more efficient at doing that and coming up with new ways to do that. So I think that's really what's driving our decision to start, you know, focusing more time there.

Gordon Brewer 26:58
Yes, yes. Yeah, it's a, I think that you speak to something that I think is common to a lot of businesses, and in particular with mental health is, is really identifying that whole niche and being able to, you know, not cast too broad of a net. And it's a scary thing, because we think we're going to lose some fish by having a bigger net. But in reality, it's it's much more, much more efficient to be very, very concentrated in what you're doing.

Aaron Carpenter 27:33
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. In fact, I would even make the case that it's the opposite. Even though you feel that, you know, casting a wide net, you're going to get everybody sort of a story that comes to mind is I used to be a president of BSI group as a business networking group DNI, International. And in that group, you would form a group and all of the members could only be the only person in their profession. So you'd have one real estate agent, one web designer, one therapist, right. And that way, you could build a network, but you weren't competing against someone else in the same room for business. What I learned in that group after being in that group for like, three years was when you ask for a referral, or you're talking to a large group of people, and you say, I'm Erin carpenter, I own legendary lion, if you know somebody who needs a website, let me know. Versus I'm Eric Carpenter from legendary lion, we focus on mental health conditions, and I'm looking to work specifically with lm FTS, or, you know, play therapy specialist supervisors. And you get laser specific, and here's what we can do for them, you know, we're gonna build a brand, and we're gonna build a website, and then we're going to help them drive engagement. Well, that room might not know a play therapist, or a marriage therapist, but they know a therapist, or they know a buddy, who really needs a website. Man, if he does that, I bet he could help my friend out, people will infer, you know, and I'm finding that's what's happening as we're getting more specific. And our other work is not going away. It's just making the specific work, we want to focus on that much easier to do.

Gordon Brewer 29:06
Right. Right. That's cool. That's cool. So I know you had mentioned too, that you were putting together a lot of resources for people and, and that sort of thing. You want to say some more about that.

Aaron Carpenter 29:18
Yeah. So I think just because of our conversation today, it's already a tool that we have. I'll make available today our design brief for brand design. So it's a set of questions that normally we walk a client through, and it's best to go through it with a professional, but I will make it available because you get a lot of value out of it. It's different open ended questions that help you with no right or wrong answer help you start to understand who you are, who your business is, how you want to portray yourself, and any great design project, be it web design, a poster, a brand, logo, all of those always start with a really good design brief for a designer to look at it and really connect with you and understand what's going on. So if you're thinking that you know when you're listening to this podcast that this is something that would be interesting and you'd like to explore. We'll make our brand design brief, free and available on mental health dot legendary line.com, for you to download, and we'll be releasing resources and assets and blog posts through that medium regularly over the next year.

Gordon Brewer 30:17
Awesome, awesome. And we'll be sure to have links in the show notes and show summary for all of those things. So Well, well, Aaron, I want to be respectful of your time. And I'm so glad we've we've had this conversation, you want to tell folks more about how they can get in touch with you and find out more? Yeah, so

Aaron Carpenter 30:36
we're legendary lion calm, legendary lion creative agency, you can schedule a free 15 minute call just to connect with one of us through that site. And again, mental health dot legendary lion calm, we're going to be adding more specific mental health resources for everyone there. We're always open to taking a first call and seeing where you're at and what you may need help with. So do please reach out if you'd like to talk to a professional about these things.

Gordon Brewer 31:02
That's awesome. And they do they do a wonderful job. I can just speak from experience in working with with Aaron in the past. And, again, the look of the practice of therapy, podcast and blog is is their work. So there's a there's a shining example right there. So thanks again, Aaron for being on the podcast.

Well, many thanks to Aaron for being on the podcast. And hopefully this has given you some ideas about thinking about your own branding and about, you know, even just thinking about your your niche and how you're how you're putting yourself out there so that people can find you. As you've heard from me before, for those of you that have been listening a while, you know that the key to having a successful marketing campaign, or really what marketing is all about within private practices, really just being very clear about how you can help people, and then making sure that they can know how to find you. And that's that's it in a nutshell, you're just really simply you putting yourself out there and your brand can can portray that in many different ways. So again, thanks to Aaron for joining me, and be sure to check out their, their materials. Again, there are links here in the show notes for you to get to that. And that that free guide that he mentioned, that's awfully generous of him. So the other thing is, be sure and join me for the free upcoming webinar. And that scans is going to be on July 30 2021 at 1pm. Eastern Time, and you can find out more about that is the Google workspace as a practice platform. And that is going to be again, July 30. And you can find that at practice of therapy.com slash g w s webinar, and there'll be links here in the show summary and show notes. So you can register for that webinar. And even if you don't think you can join the war live webinar webinar, be sure and sign up so you can get access to the recording. So hoped Hope to see you there. So and also, as always, Big thanks to therapy notes, therapy, notes calm, and also at practice of therapy.com slash therapy notes. They are the leading Electronic Health Record system for mental health providers in private practice there who I use in my practice, and absolutely couldn't do without them. They have a patient portal that is second to none. And they also have support that is just a plus in my book. Anytime you might have questions or things that you're trying to figure out, they are always responsive and you always hear back from them. So be sure to check them out. Again, if you go to practice of therapy.com slash therapy notes, and then be sure and use the coupon code or promo code Gordon, g o r d o n, you can get two months of their services at no cost to you. So it's a win win situation. You can try them out for free, so be sure and check them out. So that's it for today or for this particular episode. I hope you'll take time to subscribe to the podcast where ever you might be listening to it, whether it be on Apple podcasts or Spotify or Google podcast or Stitcher or any of the other numerous pod catchers out there. hope that you will subscribe and leave us a review. That'll just help Get our ratings up and help other folks to find us. So, take care folks hope that you have a good rest of your week or weekend. And thanks again for being with me on this journey.

You have been listening to the practice of therapy podcast with Gordon Brewer. Please visit us at practice of therapy.com for more information, resources, and tools to help you in starting, building and growing your private practice, and if you haven't done so already, please sign up to receive the free private practice startup guide practice of therapy.com. The information in this podcast is intended to be accurate and authoritative concerning the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host guests or producers are rendering legal accounting or clinical advice. If you need a professional, you should find the right person for them.