The Practice of Therapy

Gordon Brewer: well, hello everyone and welcome. Begin to the podcast and I'm excited for you for you to get to know today. Carly Hill from Carly Hill Coaching. Carly, welcome, glad you're on the podcast.
Carly Hill: Yeah, I was looking forward to it all I'm learning.
Gordon Brewer: Yes. And Carly also has a podcast and I'll let her tell you a little more about that, but it's the Thriving Therapreneur Podcast
And so, Carly, as I start with everyone, tell folks a little more about yourself and how you've landed where you've landed.
Carly Hill: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm a social worker by trade. I'm now a business coach, teaching therapists how they can outgrow the office, have more freedom, flexibility, security by tapping into the online space, creating digital products, creating courses, really leveraging all of their clinical knowledge and just making a larger impact and buying back their freedom.
I started in community mental health, brick and mortar, nine to five therapy jobs. I did work at Better Help for a short period of time when I got laid off from my nine to five therapy job during the pandemic. I had a very successful private practice, but I was capped. I was trading dollars for hours.
I was back to back one-to-one sessions. I was like, there's gotta be a better way. I always valued my freedom and I really also started studying the online industry at that time. I was like, what? What are all these coaches doing? What do they know that we don't know? What is this secret? How are they so successful?
And I was. Also a little skeptical and I was, had all of these feelings about coaches because we went to school for years and years and years. We have certifications every letter of the alphabet, but at the same time I was curious and I was like, well, you know what? We should be, US therapists should be on the frontline of coaching.
There's a time and a place and a space for therapy. There's a time and a place and a space for coaching. Honestly, I didn't even really fully understand the difference between therapy and coaching. It's can be quite confusing and we can talk about that. Mm-hmm. And when you Google it, most of the time people are more confused.
And so I also started studying that difference, speaking with attorneys. How can I add coaching? While protecting my license, I actually found out that I was doing a lot of coaching already in my quote unquote private practice. Mm-hmm. But I was limiting myself by the money I could make, by the impact that I could make.
So I made the shift myself. Long story short, started creating curriculum courses, digital products. Therapist naturally started asking me, how are you doing this, Carly? I'm a natural teacher at heart. And so from from that, my signature program, the therapist to Coach Accelerator, was born. I actually, at the time of this recording, I am doing a massive rebrand and the name has changed to the coats Coach Intensive.
I've added more support. Mm-hmm. But that, that's my MO, is just helping therapist scale. Yeah. Off freedom. Yeah. Use their clinical knowledge.
Gordon Brewer: Right, right. Yeah. It's a, you know, it's interesting because I've, I've found, you know, kind of a parallel story for me. I've not necessarily my small, I've got a small group practice and we've not really made the shift to doing coaching.
We're still traditional therapy and that sort of thing, but I could probably I can't break confidentiality, but I could name the clients that I'm just doing coaching with and we're still doing Yeah. It's so common. Yeah. Yeah. And so that, that sounds like a good place for us to start. Tell us how you define the difference between coaching and therapy, because I think that's something that a lot of us that, like you said, are clinically trained, we struggle with.
And I think a lot of times that gets, kind of this isn't a great word, but gets poo-pooed by a lot of clinicians because it does, it feels like it's a, yeah. They feel like, oh, well I'm, I'm, I'm sinking below my education and my well way of helping people.
Carly Hill: Yeah, absolutely. I'll make it really simple.
The easiest definition is coaching is. Solving a more situational, nonclinical, less severe problem. Mm-hmm. Therapy is treating medical necessity. You're treating textbook DSM criteria. It is more severe panic attacks, agoraphobia, that type of anxiety. Okay? Yes. Medical necessity therapy. You're having trouble standing up in the workplace.
You're a new mom having trouble taking your baby to x, y, Z place. All right? You can be coached through that. So is it a situational, nonclinical, less severe problem or do they need to be treated for medical necessity? I think the definition that trips people up all the time is, well, therapy is working on the past and coaching is working on the, on the present and the future.
I know as both a therapist and a coach, you talk about the past, present, and future in both scenarios, right? So there is a lot of nuances and there is a lot of overlap. But if you can just stay focused on, am I treating them for medical necessity or not? For example, I have a therapist or coach who works with domestic violence PTSD in her private practice, right?
And she has a coaching program to help these women boost self-confidence, get back into the dating world. Mm-hmm. It's very specific. It's just for that self-confidence, getting back into the dating world, navigating that. She's not treating them for PTSD. If they need to be treated for PTSD, she's gonna put them in her private practice.
Mm-hmm.
Gordon Brewer: Yes. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yes, it does. And that's a, that's really kind of how I've thought about it, excuse me, over the years as well. Just you know, coaching, helping with a specific problem that doesn't necessarily have any kind of for lack of a better term, doesn't really fit any sort of diagnosis other than mm-hmm.
You know, we you know. Unfortunately or whatever. I think a lot of times we throw adjustment disorder on a lot of, or anxiety
Carly Hill: unspecified. That was me in my private practice and I was just
Gordon Brewer: Right. Right.
Carly Hill: You know? Yeah. You don't know what you don't know. But yeah, I was so guilty of that, and I talk about that too.
Gordon Brewer: Right. And
Carly Hill: come to find out, I really was just. Coaching. Yeah. They did not meet criteria.
Gordon Brewer: Right, right. I think we,
Carly Hill: we could always find something to diagnose. Yeah. Anyone and everyone including ourselves with Right.
Gordon Brewer: But, right. Well, yeah. And the, the other thing too, I think is just the fact that you know, the funding of mental health you know, there's a lot of debate, you know, in our.
You know, in our circle, in our world, whether to be private pay or to accept insurance and that kind of thing. And I think everybody has to make that decision for themselves. But I know for my practice, we're an insurance-based practice and it's mainly because of the demographics of our area and the number of people that are relying on insurance to get services.
But yeah, so there's that whole piece. In it as well. But you know, one of the things I think that a lot of people have thought about, and I know we talked about this before we started recording, was just adding coaching to your practice and ways to think about that. So let's hear it, Carly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Carly Hill: Pull back the curtains, Carly. Yeah. So the first thing I wanna say is. You don't technically add it to your private practice. Mm-hmm. It needs to be separate. So now we're gonna go into protecting your license a bit. And if you could take anything away from this, it's the word separate. Keep everything separate.
Mm-hmm. Again, you don't know what you don't know. There's not that many people teaching how therapists can ethically and legally. A coaching while protecting their license, because we are still mandated reporters and informed consent is still important, and it does have to be different than our private practice.
So separate business entity meaning separate LLC, right? Mm-hmm. So you're not technically adding it to your practice, you're, you're adding a new business and then people are like, oh, well I don't have two of everything. I gotta have two LLCs. I have to have two websites. I have to have two paperwork stuff.
I gotta have two liability insurances. It's not that hard. Mm-hmm. And once it's done, it's done. And it is so worth it to just have the peace of mind that you're doing it the proper way. Mm-hmm. And there's people like myself to walk you through this process where you have the proper paperwork and the proper disclaimers on your website.
It, it's, I would say it's no excuse to not add coaching because mm-hmm. It can be so daunting in your head. But it's actually pretty simple, you know? Mm-hmm. It's not a hard and fast black and white rule. If you need a separate website or not, you can have a services page on your private practice website, that's fine.
But we don't want clients to be confused, right? It can be confusing for us to even understand the difference, right? Mm-hmm. And so have different colors. Fonts on there, have an explanation of this is the difference between therapy and coaching. Mm-hmm. So the first thing when you're like, all right, I wanna add coaching, is just make sure you're taking the steps to protect your license.
But then you gotta figure out your coaching niche, right? Mm-hmm. This gets to be fun. It, it could be similar to what you're doing in your private practice. Mm-hmm. Just that more situational, nonclinical, less severe version of that. You could actually be coaching the whole entire time in your private practice.
And so that's a easy shift. For me, I just morphed my private practice into my coaching business. So some people have two businesses, some people morph it in. Some people choose to keep their private practice, they just wanna reduce their clinical hours. Some people wanna dissolve their private practice in due time.
It, it's really up to you. Mm-hmm. Your coaching niche also could be something totally different. It could be a breath of fresh air. It could be something that you've walked yourself through in your personal life. I think that 90% of us are our own ideal client, and there's a beauty in coaching and sharing your story.
It really gets to be an extension of yourself. Where and therapy we're taught not to self disclose, right? Mm-hmm. So protecting your license, then figuring out your niche, and then it's really about going to market, letting yourself be known in the space, getting people to raise their hand and be like, whoa, what is this that you're offering?
Tell me more. This is exactly what I need. And then enrolling them as clients.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah. Yeah. So how, how does marketing, how do you think that marketing for a coaching practice differs from marketing for a therapy practice? I guess, yeah. Is 1, 1, 1 thing. Great. Great
Carly Hill: question. Obviously it's different if you're taking insurance, you're gonna market a different way just in your private practice.
If you're a self-pay practice or you're an insurance based practice, you're gonna market differently. Obviously in coaching, it's completely self pay, right? People can use their H-S-A-F-S-A if it allows them to do so, but still self pay, no insurance. I think the main thing is, you know, well, let's back up and talk about just marketing in general.
Mm-hmm. First, in marketing, you either have organic marketing or you have paid advertising. Organic marketing is free Social media marketing. Paid advertising is either Google Ads or meta ads, so Facebook ads or Instagram ads in your private practice. Google ads typically work well if you're going the paid advertising route because it's local, right?
You usually have a brick and mortar practice, or even if you're just doing telehealth, you're still seeing clients within the state that you're licensed. Mm-hmm. So Google Ads work well for that. In the coaching space, meta ads work well, so that's Facebook and Instagram ads. Regardless, I never recommend anybody take a hop, skip and a jump to paid advertising without testing out their messaging and seeing what lands with their ideal clients, what gets crickets.
Like. It's just as important to know what didn't work as it is. Mm-hmm. What worked right? And so it really does come down to your messaging, your niche. Making sure that you're emotionally connecting with your ideal client avatar where you are, if you're using social media, stopping the scroll, or you're getting them to open your email because you have a really good subject line, and that all comes down to your messaging.
You have to let them know that. You can help them, that you can solve their problem. People need to like us and trust us mm-hmm. And know us. But more importantly, they need to know that we can solve their problem. Right? That's what it comes down to. And then leading them in the next steps of the journey, right?
So once you are top of mind and they do know that you can solve their problem, telling them how they can work with you, what do you have to offer? What is the next steps? Are they booking a call? Are they clicking here? Are they going to a sales page and they're buying your digital product, your ebook, your mini course, et cetera.
What is the next steps for them to get in touch with you?
Gordon Brewer: Right, right. Yeah. And you know, one thing that comes to mind for me and just thinking about this is a, a good resource for people is checking out the story brand marketing kind of system from Donald Miller because it, it addresses all of those.
Things that you're talking about in terms of you know, making people aware of your, your presence there and how you can help them. I mean that's, I think a lot of times we, we have this idea that if we build it, they will come. But yeah, that's not, you've got to build them, build it, then tell them about it.
And also market from a standpoint of not how great you are, but how you can walk them through the problems that are they're facing and how you help them find that transformation. Exactly. I think is important, right? Yeah.
Carly Hill: Right. We love as clinicians to talk about our process and to talk about even our certifications and credentials.
Mm-hmm. And our process is our baby. It's almost like we know too much sometimes. We know that that's how it's going to help them, but to be honest, nobody really cares. They don't care about our credentials. They don't care that much about our process. Maybe a little bit. It doesn't mean we don't speak to it at all, but mm-hmm.
We speak to their, every day. We speak to their current living hell. We speak to the heaven that they wanna get to. We, we tell them, Hey, this is how I'm gonna help you go from problem to solution. Right. And we're just really clear about it. We dumb it down. Mm-hmm. We're not using AI to write all of our content.
We're not copying and pasting things. You're, you're emotionally connecting with them. And I will say too about social media marketing. You have to know, you know, copywriting frameworks. It's not just about consistency. You do need to have a marketing strategy. It's not just mm-hmm. Consistency, posting for fluff.
All right. I post it Monday through Friday. My, my job is done. Hands are clean. Well, did you post with a proven path to move them along in the journey and get them to raise their hand, or are you just posting as a chore?
Gordon Brewer: Yeah. That's a, that's a really good point because I think a lot of times people will approach social media in that way.
Well, I'm posting stuff every day, but nobody's calling me. And it's just the, the messaging is so important with that and just really, I think, like we said, already, getting that that whole transformation piece in there so that people can see. What it's gonna be like for them on the other side.
Carly Hill: Right.
And storytelling is a great way to do that. Mm-hmm. As you mentioned, story sells, right? Right. If you can tell stories, if you can use analogies, if they can see themselves in you, then it's gonna bypass the conscious mind. They're just gonna understand. They're like, whoa. She gets it. Right. Mm-hmm. And they're gonna be drawn to Yeah.
Whatever you have to offer next, if you tell them exactly what you have to offer next. Right. It's kind of like you're dangling carrots and planting seeds everywhere, and then when something really goes on in their life, you're gonna be top of mind and they will call you if they know exactly how to call you.
Gordon Brewer: Right? Right. You, you know, something you mentioned earlier, Carly, that I think it's probably worth exploring is, is, in the therapy world, if you're, particularly if you're doing just like individual therapy or you're still providing therapeutic services, you know you're exchanging your time. For giving your expertise and your guidance and that sort of thing.
And then there's kind of a, a ceiling with that and that there's only so many clients you can see in a week and only so much time you can put into it. And I think of it as going from one to one way of providing services to the one to many. So you wanna say some more about that? About Yes. How that, how that helps with coach.
Yeah. Particularly in the coaching world. Yeah.
Carly Hill: The reality is, and I say this with love and I, and I've been there, private practice is not the best business model in the world. Mm-hmm. Because we are trading dollars for hours, we are trading time for money. We're only getting paid when our butt is in the therapy chair.
When our client cancels or no shows or we're on vacation, we're not getting paid. Right. We're trading time for money, and the thing is we know so much, we have so much clinical knowledge. How can we work smarter? How can we leverage all of our knowledge? How can we impact more lives? It's getting out of trading dollars for hours.
It is public speaking. It is creating courses. I talked to so many therapists and I felt the same way in my private practice. I was sick of repeating myself. Like you, you have a client the day before, you know, you, you gave them the awesome spiel. You did some great psychoeducation, and then same client an hour later or the next day, you're saying it again and you feel like a broken record, and you're like, mm-hmm.
I wish I could have just recorded that and had them watch that piece. And that would help them get faster results too. Mm-hmm. Right, right. You're trimming the fat, you're, you're cutting the fluff. And you, you're giving them only what they need it. It's a win-win. Right. And the reality is not everybody needs therapy.
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm.
Carly Hill: If they don't need to be treated for medical necessity, but they think therapy is the only way that they can get help, they're gonna go see a therapist for 150 bucks for three years and spend $36,000 and it's gonna take three years. I mean, I'm just making this up, but this is kind of average.
Mm-hmm. Right. To get from problem to solution when they could have invested in a signature coaching program that was so hyper niche and so super specific for the exact problem they were having. They get to be around peers that are having the exact problem that they're having, and they can get faster, easier results.
Cheaper. Cheaper. It's the ultimate win-win. You get to leverage your time, your clinical knowledge. You get to make a little bit more cash, you get to impact more lives, and they get to have faster results. Right,
Gordon Brewer: right, right.
Carly Hill: So if you wanna scale, if you wanna impact more lives, and you want to slowly buy back your freedom, putting your knowledge into a curriculum, putting your knowledge into.
Something somebody can read. Writing a book as well, like I have a book, there's speaking podcasts, writing a book, doing courses and products. There's so many different ways that you can impact more lives.
Gordon Brewer: Right, right. Yeah. And I think it's you know, it's a, it's a better return on the investment of your time to really make that switch from the one-to-one way of providing services to the one to many right.
And it doesn't mean you
Carly Hill: have to give up one-to-one either.
Gordon Brewer: Right, right, right. Most of my clients
Carly Hill: do a hybrid, even in their signature coaching programs.
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm.
Carly Hill: They're, they're doing one group coaching call a week. They have their recorded curriculum, and then they have, you know, X amount of one-to-ones with them.
It's the best of all worlds. It's not either or ever in life. Right? Mm-hmm. It gets to be both and.
Gordon Brewer: Right, right. Yeah. So it's a, yeah. And so I think being able to think about it in those, in those ways it, it is so helpful. I know it's been helpful for me in just thinking about my career so far, and just being able to think about ways and it's, it, it's, the reason I started this podcast was just thinking about how I could help more people.
And, you know, at the same time be able to create additional income besides just my therapy practice and that sort of thing. And so that's how, how it's, how it's worked well for, for me. Yeah. In that, in that journey. Yeah.
Carly Hill: The potential is limitless. It's endless, right? I mean, sky is the limit. The world is your oyster.
You've been in the game a lot longer than I have. You have so much clinical knowledge that you could package up. And so, oh, yeah. And that actually becomes the easy part. Mm-hmm. It's, it's the marketing and reverse engineering your launch plans and actually getting eyeballs on your gold. That becomes Yeah.
The harder part. But so many clinicians have the fear around, well, I, I don't know enough, or mm-hmm. How am I gonna know what to put inside this course? Right. I think we forget how much we know sometimes. Right. And it's just innate and intuitive in session. You just pull it out of your imaginary tool belt and sometimes clients are like, what you said to me last week is so awesome?
And you're like, what did I say to them? Like, it's just
Gordon Brewer: right.
Carly Hill: It just comes out right? Um-huh. It's like muscle memory, so Right. If you can leverage AI and use it as a brain dump tool. It's just gonna mirror back to you everything that you actually do. And it's a plug and play formula that you can spit out your whole course outline in a matter of minutes.
Gordon Brewer: Right. And it
Carly Hill: is exactly what you do with clients. So mm-hmm. Creating the curriculum is actually so incredibly easy.
Gordon Brewer: Right. And a, a good hint for people of I would say of both finding their niche, but also finding their, the thing that they're passionate about is are two, I think, very important things in, in making that transition.
It to have both of those I think your passion points to your niche and also just paying attention. Okay. What are the things that I repeat with clients over and over again? And if, you know, if you, if you were to write that down or you were to really somehow or another record that there's your course.
Yep.
Carly Hill: Absolutely. A great point that you brought up because I, I have people come to me 'cause coaching is appealing. You can make more money and they're like, all right, Carly, what's the most profitable niches? How can I target rich people? And I'm like, you are thinking about this the totally wrong way.
Right. We need to back up and just, what are you passionate about? Who do you want to help? We can monetize almost anything. Mm-hmm. As long as we make it tangible and measurable. And people do struggle with their niche. If we talk about the most common challenges of therapists, adding coaching niche is totally one of them.
Mm-hmm. I mean, we're used to solving every problem under the sun, morphing into whoever's in front of us. Our hearts want to save the world. We, we think it's gonna be our niche for forever. We don't wanna alienate anyone. It is just, it's a whole slew of. Mindset problems and drama that kind of come up when you're picking your niche and then you're so sick of doing niche worksheets and then you're like, oh, screw it.
I'm just gonna throw the towel in. Mm-hmm. But you know, you, your niche can be laid out for you very simply. And I always say the the red carpet rolls out. Once you figure out your niche, you can actually just plug and play everything and get going.
Gordon Brewer: Right, right. Yeah. So, well, Carly, I've gotta be respectful of your time, and I know we could probably spend all day talking about all of this, but tell folks a little more about your services and what how they can get in touch with you and that sort of thing.
Carly Hill: Yeah, absolutely. So you can find me on Instagram at Carly Hill Coaching. You can also visit my website, carly hill coaching.com. I have a Facebook group. It's free. I have probably thousands of free resources at this point, including my, my book it's called The Therapist to Coach Accelerator. That's the name of the Facebook group.
I'm sure we'll link all of this in the show notes, so Yes,
Gordon Brewer: absolutely. Yeah. Tons
Carly Hill: of different resources to connect, whether it's protecting your license, figuring out your niche, actually going to market and, and selling. We have you covered.
Gordon Brewer: Right, right. And tell folks again the name of your podcast, and I'm sure they can find that wherever they listen to their podcasts, including wherever they're listening to this episode.
Carly Hill: Yes, absolutely. It's called The Thriving Therapreneur Podcast. And I can't wait to have you on it, Gordon.
Gordon Brewer: Yes. I'm looking forward to that. And so, like Carly mentioned, we'll have links here in the show notes and the show summary and so check it out. And thanks again Carly, for I'm glad we connected. I'm looking forward to having more conversations here in the future.
Carly Hill: Yeah. Thanks so much. Talk soon.
Gordon Brewer: Sure.