The Practice of Therapy

Gordon Brewer 0:00
This episode is brought to you by therapy notes, therapy notes calm. They are the leading Electronic Health Record system for private practices in the mental health field. They're who I use in my practice, so be sure and check them out 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 190 of the practice of therapy podcast. Hello, everyone. I'm Gordon Brewer. Glad you're with me glad you're with me on this journey. I hope you're having a good week or weekend whenever you might be listening to this. I'm really excited for you to get to hear from my guest today, Paul Petroski. And Paul is an entrepreneur. But he's also started working with counselors and therapists and teaching them how to create online courses. And so we have a great conversation not only about creating online courses that could be kind of create some extra income for you, but also just the mindset around all of that. And so I'm looking forward to you listening in on that conversation. You know, as I said in last week's episode, with Chris Swenson, it's, it's interesting how these themes kind of come out with different people that I talked to. And the two themes that I think have just kind of bubbled up to the surface over the last few episodes is really this. Number one, this thing of mindset of really being able to think about your practice and what you're doing in different ways, but also being able to think about ways in which you might diversify your income. I think as I mentioned, in this particular episode, you can reach a ceiling with your in with the amount of income you can bring in, depending on how your your practice is set up. But really, the thing about being able to kind of take things to the next level, is learning different ways to take, rather from having one to one kind of contact with people where we're doing traditional therapy due to going from the one to one to one to many. And so online courses is a great way to do that. I'm a big proponent of online core courses. So anyway, we're gonna get to my conversation with Paul about all of this here in just a minute. I wanted to and speaking of courses, I wanted to let you know about the pre launch of my next course. And I'm excited that it's going to be coming out. And it's using Google workspace as a practice platform. This particular course is piggyback on the course that I currently have out there, Google workspace for therapists, this tag kind of takes it to the next level and teaching people how to use the tools of Google workspace to create a platform for your practice, in other words, a virtual platform so that you're being more productive, and you've been able to automate more within your practice. And you can find out more about that particular course that's in the the pre launch stage here at practice of therapy.com. Slash g w s platform and take advantage of the early bird pricing, you can get the entire course, as it comes out and launches. At $90 off the regular price is just 179. For the early bird price, it's going to be a great deal. So you can do the math, it's going to be $90. More than that when the course actually comes out. But anyway, once you enroll in the course you get lifetime access, and also access to any updates that I make to the course along the way. I'm in the process of getting all the content loaded on the platform and within teachable but check it out. Practice of therapy.com slash g w s platform and take advantage of that early bird pricing because the coin the course is scheduled to launch fully in the first part of September and so you can get the pre launch price before I do the full launch. So take advantage of that. And also, before we get to Paul, I'd love for you to check out therapy notes, therapy notes.com. Or you can go to practice of therapy.com slash therapy notes and find out more about them. They are the leading Electronic Health Record system for mental health providers there who I use in my practice, and they have a platform that's second to none. Therapy notes is what I use to handle the clinical side of my practice and Google workspace for the business side. So in that course, going back to that I teach you kind of how you can use things like that together.

So But anyway, be sure and check them out. Practice of therapy.com slash therapy notes, and be sure and use the coupon code, Gordon just Gao r do and they will absolutely help you make your the clinical side of your practice run smoother, and you will no longer let things fall through the cracks by using that platform. So be sure and check it out. And so now that we got all that out of the way, let's listen in to my conversation with Paul Petroski.

Hello, everyone, and welcome again to the podcast and glad for you to get to hear from Paul Petroski today. And Paul is one of those good folks that reached out to me online and started looking at some of his things. And he has, he and I have similar passions and that we just really are into creating online courses. And one of the things about that is it's a really good way for a lot of therapists and counselors to kind of diversify their income and move into other directions. So Paul, welcome. Thanks. Good to be here. Ah, yeah, glad to have you. And and as I start with everyone, why don't you tell folks a little bit about your journey and how you've landed where you've landed?

Paul Petroski 7:16
Yeah, sounds good. So I'm, I'm a 20 plus year corporate world, business learning and development professional was doing learning and development back in late 2000s, when the when the whole stock market and the whole economy crashed. And what happened at that time is a lot of businesses recognize we used to bring people together face to face and do live trainings like most industry did. And we recognize at that point that we just didn't have the budget to do that anymore. And so businesses that really survived, that crash made a shift from a learning perspective to how do we take advantage of online technologies. And I think that was really the explosion of what we consider online learning. And so over the last 15 years have been doing that in a variety of different spaces. And then about, probably about five or six years ago, it was so interesting, because entrepreneurs began to see that there's a huge opportunity with online learning to take what I used to do in a webinar and a live conference, packaged it up into something that I can put online and platforms like teachable, and others started to come along to support that process. And so you saw this shift from the business world into now entrepreneurs using this technique to package up their expertise and to begin to sell that. And then for me personally, about five years ago, I kind of had what I call an early midlife crisis and found myself and my counselor counselors chair and started working on some things personally with him. And he was somebody that was very entrepreneurial himself. So is he and I obviously working on on my stuff. But we also would talk about what I did professionally. And that just bubbled up this idea of counselors are just in this amazing position to create online courses. Because when when entrepreneurs create online courses, what they try to do, they go out, they try to find a problem in the industry, whatever they're working on, they become a subject matter expert on it. And then they package up those expertise into an online course. And as counselors, you all have been sitting across people helping them to, you know, address problems, you know, for however long your counseling practices, you probably have a niche and something that you're really good at. And so there's just this great opportunity to shift that expertise into an online course you already have a practice of people that that's a good starting point to sell that course too. But it just became just a phenomenal opportunity to start working with counselors to take this step, as you said, start thinking about how do I round out my practice and create some other forms of income?

Gordon Brewer 9:44
Right, right. Yeah. And it's, as we were speaking about before we started recording, it's something I'm passionate about, and I really do encourage the people that have been listening my podcast just really particularly for solid practitioners being able to create multiple streams of income for their practice. And it doesn't have to be necessarily the one to one way of thinking of therapy, but really kind of moving into that one to many. And so, yeah, so what is so far for you, Paul, what have you kind of learned from other counselors and other people that are starting on this journey? And this kind of like, what's the starting point? And how do you figure out what topics to put out there? And how to create a course and all of that? I know, that's a broad question. Yeah. Well, I

Paul Petroski 10:39
think it starts even before you get into the course you're alluding to it is a mindset shift. You know, in working with a lot of counselors, they are there other training, all their coaching practicum, all the stuff that they do is focused on? How do you build your practice? How do you get, you know, in the training world, called butts and seats, how to get people across from you that are going to help you make money with your practice. And I think the first step in taking the journey down building an online course is stepping back from that and thinking of your practice as something bigger, which you've done a great job with your podcast of helping people think about how do you run a business, not a practice. And I think that's the big thing that I've found in having those early conversations with counselors that are wrestling with this is shifting that mindset from a practice owner to a business owner. Because when you make that shift, then you start thinking about what are the right ways to grow a business outside of just getting people in my practice. And so then when you make that shift, then you start thinking about what are all the different ways by which I can make additional forms of income? And then you can land on is building an online course for for me, because sometimes I've talked to people they're like, Oh, yeah, this seems like a really good concept. But they haven't thought through the business aspect of is this right for me at this time. So the first step there, I think, is that thinking about the business side of what you're trying to accomplish with your practice, or how you're trying to grow a business. And then if you think if you've got those expertise, like I said, You've been doing this for some time, you have a niche, that's one of the things that I really work with people to figure out is they have lots of ideas, but how do you create this funnel those ideas into something that becomes a course that people will actually buy, is thinking about what's your niche, if you've been doing counseling for 10 1520 years, you've probably seen, you have successes with people, maybe you're helping marriages, maybe you're helping people come back from affairs and recovery of that maybe you're helping people with, with your self esteem, maybe it's it's you're helping people overcome addiction. So whatever that niche that you've seen success in over the years in your practice, start thinking about how you might turn that into something that instead of just a one on one, the one too many, because that's the big thing within online courses, you go from one on one, trading your time for money, to now having this offering that can really reach many people. And if you do a lot of things that you've talked about on your podcast of SEO and your website, and you start working on that side of your business, when you have an offering like an online course on your website, you start reaching broader people. And so when when I start talking to people about that, that kind of light bulbs go on, and the shift starts happening from I got to put all my efforts into building my practice to how do I build my business. And then from there, we start digging into that niche and start helping them think through Okay, with your niche, you probably have done workshops or your conferences or teaching. So you have content out there, that you probably put together a little bit of a different format, live face to face is different than doing online. But that creates a good foundation for the ideation or the design phase of building an online course. And so then we work with counselors to kind of think through how would you do that? And we talk about the shift from Well, how do you create an experience for people in a in an online course type of setting versus face to face? Because there's definitely some techniques you want to do that? How do you create an online course that isn't just what we would call content? Don't just information, but how do you create something that's experiential, where people can actually be doing things as they go through the online course. And then then we work through the production and the deployment and all that of it, but it's definitely a process. But it starts with people recognizing this is a business shift that I need to make, and and helping them really realize that this is a shift that they're ready for.

Gordon Brewer 14:25
Right? Right. And that, you know, the one as you were saying all that one of the things that came to mind for me is just thinking about, for a lot of therapists, there's really you can reach if you you know, I think most of us go into this field just because we're passionate about helping people and we really enjoy that interaction within the therapy room and all of that sort of thing. But there is a limit. There's kind of a ceiling that you can reach with that and that there's only so many clients you can see in a week. There's only so much time You can devote to that. Whereas with something like an online course, it's really limitless. In that there's, you know, you can, you know, you can you can reach 1000s of people with, with that kind of virtual interaction that you wouldn't necessarily have within the therapy room. And you're exactly right, you do have to think about it as a business, because, you know, I, I tend to separate it out in my mind between the business side and the clinical side. And those two are kind of interconnected. But if you don't have that business side, correct, no matter how good your clinical side is, your your practice is kind of flounder. And so

Paul Petroski 15:43
yeah, and I think that's the case with a lot of people that go into starting their own business, or any kind of service business, like like a counseling practice, right, you're really passionate about what you do about helping people about, you know, doing electrical, or whatever it is. And it's that where the real growth happens for people is learning the business side of it. And and, and then evolving that business to something that's scalable, because that's what you're talking about the one to one is, is one thing, but when you start scaling your business, that's the big leap that a lot of small businesses struggle to make. And and that's where I think support like, like, what we've done with counselors to come in to help with that shift is is an important one, that sometimes you just need some help decide to get get your mind around. How do you make that shift?

Gordon Brewer 16:23
Right, right. And so yeah, and the other thing, too, I would add to that, Paul, is, I encourage people to really get some help with that. Because I think one of the things is, is that we can bootstrap too much to the point where it just eats up all of our time in order to do that. So yeah, so that would be something to think about. So yeah, I know,

Paul Petroski 16:48
that's one of the things that when I have that initial discovery call with people is we have that conversation about time for money, right? Your Money, Your time is valuable, there's a certain dollar value behind it. And you have to decide you want to take that time to go learn that, how do you design a course? How do you do the production of the course? How do you deploy it? Or is there a benefit to saying, Let me bring in somebody and I think that's the case with any business, whether you're talking to your administrative, your billing, whatever it is you're doing with your practice, you constantly are at that peak, that point where you have to recognize is it time for me to pay somebody else to help doing this and, and at first, you're like, you're afraid, because that means you're letting it go. But that's again, that's where the scale side comes in, is it gives you the ability to begin to scale your time and shift from being the doer to being more the visionary in the big picture, type of person that builds a business versus just a practice. Right,

Gordon Brewer 17:37
right. It's a, it's something that, you know, you're speaking of mindset earlier. And I think that's one of the things that a lot of lot of folks struggle with is just kind of their money mindset. And that they, you know, that we want to hang on to our money, I mean, it's good to save, and it's good to, you know, do things in a in an economical way. But you can hang on to it so tight that you really kind of lose the potential for return on investment ROI. By not investing in, in your practice in that way. And one of the best ways to advance like you, like you were alluding to with is to do some outsourcing of things. So that you're, you're trading you're, it's a better use of your time. And your money by doing that, if you can pay somebody 30 bucks an hour to do something for you. that frees you up to make 100 bucks an hour, that's a, that's a pretty good return on my investment. Yeah,

Paul Petroski 18:40
and one of the great things about building an online course is while there is an upfront cost associated with it, again, whether you do it yourself, and it's your time or whether you hire somebody, but the reality is once once you have that course out there the route, they want to get our proposals, we often put this chart that says, you know, here's the upfront cost, but if you sell this course for say, you know, $30 every offering you sell 10 of them, you know, within the six month point seven month point, you're gonna hit your breakeven point. And then everything else after that is profit to you. And so helping people realize there are some investments that while there is that upfront costs, in the long run, they're going to be an offering for you that you can you're going to have for and again the reach of people that you can give to it. It's a pretty, pretty smart investment for people that take that take the dive and do it.

Gordon Brewer 19:25
Right. Right. So yeah, so one of one of the things you mentioned, is just this whole idea around passive income which I'm, I'm pretty passionate about that as well. Although passive income, there's no true passive income that I've discovered, but you want to talk a little bit about that just about being able to, to create passive income within your progress.

Paul Petroski 19:50
Yeah, and you know, if you're not familiar with Pat Flynn, Smart Passive income is probably the guy that has been the wizard out there if you're not been on his website. Definitely go out there. Yeah,

Gordon Brewer 20:01
yeah, I would get it. Did I do that? That's my go to. And I've learned so much from him listening to his podcast and some of the things that he does. Yeah, yeah,

Paul Petroski 20:11
but But yeah, this concept of Smart Passive income is, is whether it's real estate, whether it's building an online course, or they're, you know, the idea is that you create something, a service and asset or you have something that gives you the ability to make money, in a, what I would call non traditional way, in the traditional way of making money, we often think I'm trading my time for money, I have a job, I go to that job, and I work a certain amount of hours and that my employer pays me I have a practice, I have people that come in, are in my practice, and you're pretty much trading that one for one. And so with Smart Passive income, what you're doing is you're trying to find ways by which you can have assets or against services that are out there that allow you to make money without your direct involvement. Now, as you said, it's not completely passive, because there is some level when I own a rental home, I have a few rental homes here in Colorado, that, you know, I still have to maintain them, I have to maintain that I have to do the maintenance on them, I have to have to meet with the tenants when I have to turn it over. So there is that aspect of it. But the reality is, is when you get the good tenants in there when the property is well taken care of. And every month, I'm making a check from my my tenants that is giving me quote unquote, passive income. And so when you land that into this concept of an online course, there's definitely upfront work and costs that you'd have to put into building it and creating it and getting it deployed. And then even from there, search engine optimization of trying to get people to your site and the things that you have to do to foster that. But the reality is, is that with that course, out there on your website, and with your existing client base, it just gives you another thing that you can make money off of some quote unquote, passively because it's there, and it's available, and you're not having to be on that course, directly delivering it every time you've packaged it up in a way that it becomes available. And these platforms allow you to sell it. So that's kind of the shift of mindset. Yeah.

Gordon Brewer 22:02
Yeah. So So if somebody is maybe thinking about this, but there may be saying, well, there's just all sounds kind of intimidating, I don't know any of the technology or, you know, even where to begin, what, what, how do you help folks with that? that problem? Yeah,

Paul Petroski 22:20
yeah, that's when in all the people we've worked with the production aspect of it is the biggest fear of I'm not a professional videography, I wouldn't even know where to start and start sure I can, I can put some videos on my smartphone. And I've seen my kids Tick Tock account, but that's about as far as I can go. And so that's definitely where we, we work with clients that sometimes want the full picture in the sense that the design the production and deployment we work with, but we put them other times people have a really good concept of where they want to start. But that production piece is often where we come alongside and work with people because there are different ways you can create an online course, some people do the like live recording of themselves, where they're using a DSLR camera or something or they even a zoom or something like that. Other times people do what might be known as the voiceover PowerPoint approach where their content is more of the focus, and they're doing just VoiceOver on it. So and then there's screen capture type software's like Camtasia, and other ones where you can record your screen that creates an experience. So there, there is definitely some work to do and understanding the different techniques of how you can create content. And and knowing that's part of the design process of creating the courses you talk through, what's the outcome that you want to try to create out of this, there's definitely more of a personal touch when you're on video camera, and you're talking to that person as if you were in a in a webinar or in a live workshop. And if you're just doing screen capture. And but that's there's a little bit more complexity to that. And then there's the post production editing side of it, once you create, nobody sits down and does their first take perfectly. So you have to edit that stuff and do some post production editing. So to me, that's the piece that for them, by far the external kind of bringing in an external consultant or somebody to help with that. Because that's the piece where you can get so overwhelmed, and then walk away and just say, this isn't for me, you can have the greatest idea in the world, the greatest nature, great design, you can have a great website that people are coming to. But that middle piece there of the production is where people can get caught up and be like, this is too overwhelming. So if you're if you're somewhat advanced in the technology space, I think you can certainly get something started and get going on it. But if that's something that's all new to you, I'd definitely recommend bringing in some expertise to help coach you through

Gordon Brewer 24:42
that. Right, right. Yeah. And it's, as I tell folks, you know, if I can do it, you can probably do it. Yeah. And it was it was something I had to learn but I you know, I just I enjoy learning those kinds of things, but, but I will get back to our earlier point. If this is something that just is overwhelming, there's just tons of resources out there of ways that you will get video editing done, and, and all that sort of thing.

Paul Petroski 25:11
YouTube is just a greatest learning management system in the world, you can learn anything on YouTube. And so, like I said, that just takes a little bit more of your time, you have to be willing to invest in the learning side of that. And so if that's where you're at, and that's your niche, I think you can definitely learn a lot. Whether it's podcasting, whether it's course creation, there's so many things that you can do for passive income that you can begin. And again, the great greatest place to start is smart, passive income. I know Pat Flynn recently did some new modules out there on online courses, he did some of his own. So he's seeing the benefit of that, and they're starting to support his community on doing that.

Gordon Brewer 25:48
I'm gonna get to see Pat Flynn live week after next I'm going to a conference in Nashville, the podcast or movement conference, and he's one of the keynote speakers, and I'm really, really pumped about that. But yeah, so yeah, so I want to be respectful of your time, Paul, but tell folks more about your company count counts, its online counts online,

Paul Petroski 26:14
Counselor, the counselor online course.com. That's where you can go, you can learn about us what we do. We got a whole section that talks about the services that we offer, we also have a little readiness assessment out there. Because a lot of times, that's the first step for people is to realize is this something that I can do and that assessment, you know, several questions that will ask you about the three phases of the course creation, process, the design and production, and then the deployment. And then you'll get a personalized read out for yourself that will help you with some feedback as to where your strengths where your weaknesses might be. Because again, that's the first step is people recognizing, while this is a cool idea, and everybody wants to passive income, that the steps to actually get there, we want to make sure we're not setting people up for failure. So that readiness assessment is a great place to start. We also have a resource section on our website where you can go and learn about whether it's cameras, tools, lighting, all that kind of stuff, we have some recommendations for, for what you might need. And from our process, if you're interested, we pretty much do an initial 30 minute free introductory call, where we just learned about you your practice, where you're at what you're trying to do what your niche is, and then see if it's a fit. And fundamentally, if that is a fit, we then we can kind of work with you to help you understand how we can help support whether it is the full scope of everything, or whether it's even just the part of it.

Gordon Brewer 27:30
Yeah, so what what sort of parting thoughts? Do you have all about this to just this? I think it's a you know, obviously, I'm very passionate about this and really enjoy helping counselors and therapists, particularly those that have that have built the practice, and they're really thinking about scaling, this is just a really great opportunity to do that.

Paul Petroski 27:54
Yeah, I mean, I think that the parting thoughts is, is a lot of times we hear the concept of imposter syndrome, right? Can Can I actually do that? And and it's funny, because when I sit down and I talk with counselors, that's, that's one of the biggest struggles they think is somebody's actually going to buy my course if I create it. And I have the NSA start picking this conversation. It's almost like a reverse counseling appointment, or I'm counseling the counselor because I, I sit there and I have this conversation with them. And we start talking about how long you've been doing counseling for 15 years, and how many clients have you had over those years and they start like throwing out numbers, and then you start realizing you in many ways have been an expert to people and helping them work through now I get counseling sitting across the chair from somebody is definitely different than than then teaching in an online course. But the reality is, you are an expert, you have if you've got yours underneath your belt, you have helped people. And that imposter syndrome is something that when you really start picking that apart, you realize that that Yeah, you have experienced what you're just doing is taking that experience and packaging it up in a little bit of a different format. And if you can get over that imposter syndrome, I really believe it's something that you can do. Right, right.

Gordon Brewer 29:03
And I fully agree with you. I think that's one of the toughest things that people deal with is that imposter syndrome and feeling like, okay, I don't have the right credentials or don't have the the number of years or experience and that's just not correct. And, you know, one side note here, I will say, Paul, and this is really a challenge to the listeners. And thinking about this. If you were to think about how you do your sessions with clients, how would How would that that what you would notice is that there's a theme in the way that you help people. And by looking at that theme and thinking about, you know, you say the same things to clients, and then packaging that into a course where you're teaching people online, what you do with them in the therapy room, people will buy that people will want that and so that's it Yeah, challenge out there. So

Paul Petroski 30:01
you know, a lot of times, again, entrepreneurs, when they go off and they create courses, then their biggest struggle is going off and finding people to buy them so that they have to build that audience. And again, one of the phenomenal things for counselors you have an audience whether whether you've been capturing an email list or not, you have a pool of people that you have worked with 1015 years, you might have several 100 people in your clinical practice that you've worked with. And so that way people trust you that they know who you are, they've worked with you. So you have a great launching point that when we do launch your course, you're not starting from square zero, you're starting from a big list of people that already know who you are. And I think that just gives counselors a leg up in using this as another form of income. Right,

Gordon Brewer 30:40
right. So well, Paul, I'm so glad we got connected. And so glad you were on the podcast, I think this is a is a great episode. And hopefully Paul will maybe come back and listen to it again. So thanks for being here.

Well, again, I'm grateful to Paul for being on the podcast. And hopefully this our conversation was helpful for you and not only thinking about your, your mindset around running your practice as a business and it being a business for you. But also some ideas about possibly looking into starting some online courses. And if you can, be sure to check out Paul's materials you can go to online counselor online course COMM And again, there are links here in the show notes for Paul's things. And also, be sure to check out this upcoming courses kind of launch fully first part of September, using Google workspace as a practice platform course. And you can get to that by going to practice of therapy.com slash GW s course and take advantage of the early bird pricing by enrolling now and you'll get lifetime access to the course as the materials continue to be uploaded to the platform. They're on teachable. And be sure and check out our sponsor for the podcast therapy notes. And if you'll go to practice of therapy.com slash therapy notes, and be sure to use the coupon code or the promo code Gordon just G or d o n and you can get two months of their services for free. They are the leading Electronic Health Record system for private practice owners in the mental health fields. As I mentioned earlier there who I use in my practice, so I can highly recommend them. So So thanks again for joining me for the podcast. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast, wherever you might be listening to it. And also leave us a review and give us your honest feedback about the podcast. I love being able to find out about that and be sure and share it with your friends if you're so compelled to do and again. Thanks for joining me folks hope that the rest of your week or weekend is good, and we'll be talking with you next time on the practice of therapy podcast.

You've 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.