Rebel Therapist

This podcast is changing because my work is changing! I'm still offering business coaching, and you can find out how I help therapists and healers with their businesses at rebeltherapist.me. AND I've stepped back into working with clients as a healer. I have been on a HUGE healing journey of my own that started with a guided psychedelic journey in January of 2023. I then received Brainspotting, first from my friend, Alicia Taverner. Hire her if you can. She's at *https://www.ranchocounseling.com/.* Then I received some parts work. I have gotten so much help from these modalities. They really get to the root of my trauma in a way that nothing else has. I felt this magnetic pull to learn these modalities myself and to start working as a healer again. I work with people who are estranged from a parent or caregiver and other folks who want to do some big healing. I also have a workshop coming up later this summer for people who are estranged from a parent or caregiver and are working to build their most beautiful life. If you're interested in checking out any of that, find it at AnnieZam.com. Let's get to today's amazing therapist guest who I adore. My favorite kind of practitioner is the kind that wouldn't ask their client to do anything they don't do themselves. I'm SO excited to introduce Jaclyn Tyson, a therapist and spiritual companion who helps people reconnect with their inner wisdom through spirituality, creativity, and healing practices. She weaves together approaches like Brainspotting, parts work, energy healing, and expressive arts to support personal and collective transformation. In our conversation, you'll hear about how she uses these modalities with her clients AND how they're central to her own growth and healing. Here's some of what we talked about: How Jaclyn processed her grief after her father passed and she knew she needed something beyond the tools she already had Jaclyn's mentorship with a Shaman How she brings Reiki, Brainspotting and IFS together all at once with her clients The rituals she does before and after sessions Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/247

My 2 guests today created and will co-facilitate The Hour Before Dawn A Program for Inheritors of Wealth with Family Ties to the Nazi Regime who want to take ancestral responsibility and create a more just world. (https://www.irisbrilliant.com/the-hour-before-dawn) Iris Brilliant is a money coach based in Berlin, Germany. She guides wealthy people who are confused or conflicted about what to do with their money to create a deeply liberating vision and plan for their wealth. She has recently shaped her career to fight fascism globally. Justine Epstein is a facilitator and mentor for people with inherited wealth who want to examine the histories of their ancestors and money, and take meaningful action to address these legacies. Her approach combines ancestral research, contextual history, political education, wealth redistribution and divestment, with embodied mindfulness, ritual, connection to the natural world, and creative expression. They both come from wealthy families. You're about to hear how they've done intense personal work AND justice work. I'm swooning on that combination and it's a combination of work I aspire to do. You'll hear me ask them some challenging questions. You know, the stuff people who have wealth don't usually talk about in public? They talk about that stuff with a ton of transparency. I think it's courageous. Here's some of what we talked about: Iris and Justine's journeys with generational examination and healing around wealth Navigating wealth and relationships Shame, guilt, and transformative healing and action Building their collaborative partnership Creating and facilitating their program: The Hour Before Dawn Addressing the Palestinian genocide Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/246

I've been regularly creating content to build and nurture my audience for 10 years now. This strategy has worked really well for me. It's been a huge part of how I've drawn people to my work and built their trust. My content has also helped thousands of people who I'll never have the pleasure of meeting. AND…creating content week after week can be overwhelming. Daniel Fava had me on his podcast, Private Practice Elevation, and we dug into all of my insights about how to create content that matters. I realized this conversation includes a lot of things I haven't shared with you, and I asked Daniel if I could release it as a Rebel Therapist episode as well. Daniel Fava is the owner of Private Practice Elevation where his team helps therapist with all things website and SEO. He got into this particular niche because his spouse is a therapist. Here's some of what we talked about: How to figure out what to create content about (and the questions I go back to every week) Finding your voice by using your voice What to do if you're overwhelmed What to do if you think you're annoying people with your emails Creating your content ritual My actual process Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/245

When you engage in your own healing, how does your work change? Today I'm talking to Judy Hu. They've created a group process to alchemize generational trauma, and in this episode she talks all about her own path to healing and finding this way of working. They also guide me through an unexpected and powerful process during the interview. Judy Hu is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor turned Boundary Coach based in Massachusetts. Judy is the author of bestselling book, The Boundary Revolution: Decolonize Your Relationships and Discover a New Path to Joy, which documents the framework Judy developed to guide her clients through their boundary healing. They're also a Rebel Therapist grad. Here's some of what we talked about: Transitioning from therapist to boundary coach Developing a group process to alchemize ancestral trauma Bringing playfulness and creativity to their groups How a ketamine journey influenced her path Her big life changes and healing Collective healing and group dynamics Decolonizing our work Why the way Judy works now does not cause them to burn out Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/244

Before I share the replay of this open coaching call I want to tell you… Wednesday, April 2nd is the last day to sign up for Create Your Program in 2025. Do you have a sense of what having your own course or program could do for your career? If you've been sitting on an idea for a while, I want to invite you to create your program with me. This is the process where you take your incredible strengths as a therapist or healer and you create a signature program so that you can serve more people, make more money, and get your best ideas out of your head and into a unique container you'll be able to offer over and over. We go through an 11 week process together step by step so that you are actually launching your program during our time together with my support. I ran a free and open coaching call recently for everyone in our audience, including clients and listeners. We had such great questions that I decided to share the recording with you. Here are some of the questions I answered and expanded on: Can I create my first program with minimal tech? How can I carve out time to work on my program when I've got a full private practice? I have a few ideas for programs. How can I choose one? Is it best to wait to do CYP until I have a fully formed program idea, or do plenty of people figure it out along the way? How do you support therapists like me who are constantly taking courses and never creating? How far in advance of my course should I start promoting it? I sometimes think “I have no good ideas.” How do I get past this and tap into an offer I feel clear and confident about? How do you support therapists in being visible. I'm worried how my therapy clients might react if I share more of my personal story in a newsletter. With the economy quickly changing, how do we factor that in as we choose which program to create? Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/243

Got shame? When shame shows up, it's overwhelming and contagious. My guest has created a process to help therapists transform shame with their clients. You're about to hear how she created her program, how her process works, and how she transformed her own shame in the process of building her business. Tatra De La Rosa is a therapist and educator with a private practice in Northern California where she provides supervision and training to associate therapists, and teaches graduate students on the path to becoming therapists. She's been working with clients in her private practice to heal shame at its source and is passionate about teaching other therapists how they can learn to do so as well. She's also a recent grad of Create Your Program. Here's some of what we talked about: Why we get frustrated when we work with shame protectors How shame gets activated in the therapist, a.k.a. “I'm a terrible therapist!” or imposter syndrome Why shame is actually a misunderstanding The and modules of her program and how she teaches it Using a recorded session of her work as well as live group coaching to teach participants the method How she filled her pilot program Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/242

Sometimes you have to unexpectedly step away from your business. When you return, it's really helpful to have a program you've created that you can dive back into. Having your own program separate from your private practice gives you a way to serve people and make money from anywhere, and you don't lose that branch of your business, even if you move to a different part of the world. That's the story of this week's guest. Kate Ahl is a therapist and coach with over 20 years' experience of working with writers, researchers and academics, in the UK and the US. For many years she was an in-house therapist for faculty and staff at Cambridge University and in her private practice she continues to serve people who live by their brains, struggling with perfectionism, imposter syndrome, and creative block. She's also a grad of Create Your Program and Rebel Therapist Marketing Intensive. Here's some of what we talked about: Helping people with restless, problem solving minds The challenges and fun parts of working with extremely brainy humans Diving back into her program after months away because of life issues AND a transatlantic move Her feeling of relief that her program was ready for her to pick up and run again Returning to the container and structure she learned in Rebel Therapist programs so she could stay out of overwhelm in her business Dripping curriculum out little by little so that participants don't get overwhelmed Offering asynchronous as well as live coaching during her program How she's marketing her program using content and guesting on podcasts Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/241

Pivoting to work beyond private practice usually means getting more visible. And getting more visible can bring up a lot of vulnerability for people, especially people who are therapists. Today's guest is putting himself out there in new ways, and finding that while he grows his audience, he also finds there's a way it is contributing to his own healing. Jose Aleman is a therapist-turned-coach with over 20 years of experience. As the creator of Loving Your Awkward Self, Jose offers confidence-boosting content tailored to queer, first-generation, and BIPOC individuals, while welcoming all. Passionate about authenticity and safe spaces, Jose is dedicated to helping people embrace their true selves and grow. Here's some of what we talked about: Creating “Loving Your Awkward Self” Reels as a resource to reach people in an accessible way AND to work on his own healing by being seen Working with people who tend to shut down emotionally, particularly BIPoC, first gen and queer folks Creating a group for queer, BIPoC men about increasing confidence Jose's step-by-step posting process Annie's advice about repurposing content Honing the skill of grabbing people's attention quickly (a necessity for social media) How he chooses his topics for posts Annie's suggestions for growing his audience Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/240

Here's a really cool idea: create a program that helps your write your book. When you create a program you get to take your best ideas, turn them into a clear process, AND help a group of people in real time. You get feedback and make adjustments along the way so that your process gets even better. Then you write your book knowing that you're writing something that really helps people. Both your program and your book allow you to help more people and get known for your work. That's what today's guest, Dr. Christen Mullane has been up to. She's a clinical psychologist and certified meditation teacher. She is the owner of Ginkgo Leaf Health Services, a psychotherapy practice aimed at providing services for those who have experienced medical stress and trauma. She offers a therapy program called RISE, which specifically focuses on trauma-informed mindfulness within this population. She's also the author of Medical Stress & Trauma. I'm proud to say that she's a grad of Create Your Program. Here's some of what we talked about on this week's podcast episode: The process Christen went through to publish her workbook and create her group program How running her program is different from her therapy sessions How she brought a trauma informed lens to her program and her book Annie and Christen's young parts showing up when they get more visible How Christen finds safe spaces to get honest, actionable feedback The lightbulb moment when Christen realized she needed to work in a new way Finding the uniqueness of her message while giving credit to all of her sources How she got participants for her program through networking, list building and SEO Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/239

We're out of balance with how much of our brain energy we give to certain numbers. Like when this happens in my brain: “How many likes did I get for that post?” A few minutes later…”How about now?” Not useful. I want the numbers I track and encourage my clients and listeners to track to be highly meaningful and helpful in making real business decisions. I never want those numbers to make us feel bad or to help us assess our worthiness. Fuck that. Useful numbers help us make decisions and pay attention to what we care about. Less useful numbers stress us out and distract us from what matters to us. Most people I know don't like to spend much time tracking or analyzing numbers in their businesses. I, on the other hand, can tend to OVER track and analyze. I sometimes like to cope with my anxiety by pretending I have some control. Tracking and analyzing numbers on spreadsheets can sometimes feel soothing. But as a company of one, NOT a huge corporation, I don't have time or energy to track every single number in my business. Using my intuition AND useful numbers helps me resist some of the most damaging traps we tend to fall into when making decisions. Useful numbers help me resist things like recency bias, confirmation bias, sunk cost fallacy, and shiny object syndrome. In this week's podcast episode, I talk about the numbers I ALWAYS pay attention to, the numbers I pay attention to just during an experiment, and the numbers I try to ignore. If you want to get my help creating your signature program beyond therapy sessions, head over to https://rebeltherapist.me/create. I'd love to support you. People mentioned in this episode: Podge Thomas  https://smallbusinesscopilot.com/ Bari Tessler  https://baritessler.com/ Thea Monyee  https://theamonyee.com/ Show notes at  https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/238

Today's guest is a grad of CYP. If you want this to be the year you finally launch your course or make a pivot to coaching, do what she did. Get my support in a step-by-step process to create and launch it. Head over to https://rebeltherapist.me/. Don't know what your topic will be? No idea where to start? You'll be in good company. You do have a program in you. As this is going live, you can still get into the cohort that's about to start. You'll be launching your course by a few months from now. If you're too late, get on the notification list for next time. That's https://rebeltherapist.me/create Now to today's conversation: Dr. Jenn Kennedy is a clinical sexologist and licensed marriage and family therapist based in Santa Barbara. Dr. Jenn supports clients in the areas of relationships, sex, addiction and LGBT. In 2023, Dr. Jenn launched The Pleasure Project, which is dedicated to helping us all have a better sex life. Through this venture, Dr. Jenn hosts a podcast called Pleasure Project: Sex & Relationships and she offers small group intensives for women and couples. She is coming out with an asynchronous course in 2025. Dr. Jenn has been quoted in Redbook, Reader's Digest, Forbes Health, DailyOm, Shondaland, Parade, Allure, Yahoo!life and others. She is often tapped to discuss intimacy and sexuality for therapists and physicians. And she's a grad of Create Your Program. You're about to hear why she created a program called The Pleasure Circle, to help women who want to want sex more. Here's some of what we talked about: Creating a program for women 40 and over about desire Emotional barriers Dr. Jenn experienced in creating and sharing the program Getting feedback partway through and making adjustments each time How she handles sharing her personal stories (which she does more of in this program than in therapy). Being out as lesbian How she markets her program and brings in participants Annie coaches Dr. Jenn on a pain point around making sales calls Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/237

I met recently with a group of therapsits and healers who are getting ready to create high quality and life changing courses, workshops and programs. Each of them has a beautiful and unique glimmer of what they will create and they've got so much love for the people they're creating for. Each creator has great personal reasons for creating their offerings: preventing their own burnout, making money without more sessions, having an outlet for their creativity, and creating a body of work that can be shared beyond the privacy of therapy sessions. I talked to them about how to get ready for this big project. I shared what has worked for me and tons of other people accomplishing self-directed projects. When YOU are the boss of whether you do this thing or not, you need to set yourself up well! I'm going to share that with you. Whatever project you're getting ready for, this is good stuff. And it is NOT about productivity as usual. A project is something with a particular start and end point. For example: Creating and launching your course for the first time. Launching a podcast. Once you've launched your course once, you've completed that particular project. Once you've launched the first episode of your podcast, you've completed that project. We can each take on only one or two projects at a time, because we've got a lot of other things we're already busy with. In this episode I talk about how to: Question productivity as usual, and and step into sovereignty instead Be the boss of your to do list rather than it's employee Make sovereign rather than default choices Identify something to quit so you can free up energy Identify something to do badly so you can free up energy Partner with your nervous system in this project Set aside blocks of time for your project Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/236

Join me for my annual free planning workshop: Plan Your Aligned Year. December 10th 11 am to 12:30 pm PT https://rebeltherapist.me/plan I take therapists and healers through a process to create their own courses and programs. That's my whole job. When I recently got inspired to create a program that's totally about healing and personal growth I took myself through my own process. I want to share that experience with you as a case study. In this episode, I share my process with you, both what steps I took and also what came up for me emotionally in that process. I'm sharing this to make it easier for you to create and share YOUR program. Estranged is a workshop for adults who are estranged or have disengaged from a parent or caregiver and who are working on building their most beautiful lives and relationships. It's happening on Thursday, December 12th and Thursday, December 19th from 2 to 3:30 pm PT. Learn about it here: https://rebeltherapist.me/estranged I really could have used this workshop myself many times. I'm one of these people who is estranged from a parent. I've also supported a ton of people through letting go of family members when I was a therapist for 20 years. Too often the assumption is that whenever there is estrangement, the goal should be reconnection. Spaces of mental health and personal growth often gets this wrong and do harm. My strong belief is that we get to create the most beautiful and honest lives we are capable of. If a past relationship holds us back from that life, we have every right to let it go or to find the amount of distance that allows us to create that life. I know that having distance from a parent can be an incredibly important part of healing. It has been for me and for so many people I've worked with. I believe that every great program has a clear purpose. The purpose of this workshop is to give folks who are estranged support in creating their most beautiful life and relationships. I want participants to practice some tools that help with that process, and to hear from each other so they are reminded how NOT alone they are in their experience. Here's some of what I talk about: Choosing the structure of the workshop Setting the price How I spread the word The mindset stuff that came up for me in creating this Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/235

Wednesday, November 20th is the last day to sign up for early access to create your program. Do you have a sense of what having your own course or program could do for your career? If you've been sitting on an idea for a while, I want to invite you to create your program with me. This is the process where you take your incredible strengths as a therapist or healer and you create a signature program so that you can serve more people, make more money, and get your best ideas out of your head and into a unique container you'll be able to offer over and over. We go through an 11 week process together step by step so that you are actually launching your program during our time together with my support. Head to https://rebeltherapist.me/create to enroll now. I ran a free and open coaching call recently for everyone in our audience, including clients and folks on my email list. We had such great questions that I decided to share the recording with you. Here are the questions I answered and expanded on: What questions should I ask myself to decide what kind of program to create? Do you think in-person or online programs are more in demand right now? Are there any prompts or guidance on how to go about spotlight coaching on group calls? Do I have to set up coaching programs separate from my therapy business? What goals should we aim for when starting a group? How many members? Cost? Time commitment? What's the best way to fill the group? What are some great niches for women's groups in particular? And what makes a great niche? Do therapists need to be trained as coaches? How do you go from a general to a more specific niche topic? Is trauma healing specific enough? How would you get more specific? If I'm trying to reach people across the country or world, does it still make sense to build up local connections and local networking? The idea of creating a group program and running a group call makes my head explode. Do you have any sense of if individual or group programs tend to be more successful in enrollment? For group programs, how essential is it to use social media as a tool to grow our niche community? Might it work to write articles and listicles as a way to grow my audience? Do I need some type of insurance for liability if I decide to switch from therapy to coaching? Plus we hear from a grad of CYP about an experiment she has been running in her business. Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/234

Today I'm talking about how to run engaging and effective group calls in your signature program, rather than calls that leave people bored or frustrated or just not showing up. When I say PROGRAM, I'm talking about a niched, outcome oriented, structured container. Your program might be a workshop, retreat, group coaching program, course, or some hybrid of different formats. These are the kinds of programs that are always in demand because they actually help people make significant transformations. I'm not talking about flimsy self-led courses here. I'm talking about programs where your participants get to interact with you in a meaningful way. Therapists and healers make the best programs. We've got training and experience in how to help people get from point A to point B. We know how to work with resistance, emotions, and all of the other things that make change difficult. If you've been a participant in a lot of programs, you know that some group leaders have no idea what they're doing! You as a therapist or healer have the potential to be a very skilled group leader for your program. BUT there's some stuff that therapists also need to learn about running calls in their structured, niched and outcome oriented programs. A question I get a lot is: “How can I facilitate group calls well in my new program?” And I'm excited to share my answer with you here. THE TROUBLE WITH THERAPISTS Our biggest mistakes as therapists are that we tend to run our program calls like group therapy sessions when we need to be doing something different. I'll use myself as an example. I really fucked this up at the beginning. In the beginning, I ran my program calls a lot like group therapy sessions, and that wasn't what my business coaching program needed. I tended to go towards depth and bigger emotional material because I was comfortable there and that's what I was used to doing with groups. I had been moving that way during years and years of working as a therapist. If a person brought up feeling stuck in perfectionism or imposter syndrome, I'd expand and encourage that conversation to the point that it took up most of the session. Then I'd try to rush through some business concepts. I didn't know how to balance that beautiful depth with the need to direct the group towards the goal of the program. My group calls left people feeling understood, bonded to others in the group, and probably with less shame about their experiences. The calls didn't give the participants enough help with taking strategic steps in their businesses. Were the calls bad? It depends what you think the purpose of the calls was. People who primarily wanted space to process about their emotions about their businesses probably thought the calls were great. People who wanted to move forward with strategy probably felt frustrated. Lots of participants probably felt pretty good about the calls while they were happening, but then bummed out at the end of the program that we hadn't gotten enough business stuff done. As therapists, we still get to use our attunement skills, but we need to harness them differently. The problem was that I hadn't chosen ONE clear purpose for my calls. CHOSE A PURPOSE That brings me to one of my favorite thought leaders around running groups: Priya Parker. She's an author and a facilitator, and she's NOT a therapist. Her book, The Art Of Gathering, has changed how I think about groups forever. Priya Parker says that for any gathering, you need to choose ONE clear purpose. You definitely need one clear purpose for your program. The purpose of your program is the outcome it helps people move towards. For example: Let's pretend your program helps couples in blended families to strengthen their relationships. (That's a juicy niche by the way. Grab it if you want!) This program is designed to get the couple from point A to point B. Point A is where the couple is now, feeling distress in their bond. point B is feeling stronger in their relationship. Every single decision you make about your program should be in service of helping your couples towards the goal of a stronger relationship. Your whole program has a purpose. Within that program, each of the group calls needs to have one clear purpose as well. For each session, you can ask yourself: “What is the one thing that this call needs to do well?” Is the purpose of each meeting to internalize a concept? To feel connected to other participants? To hear each other's stories? Choose ONE purpose to build the call around. Yes, they'll get additional benefits out of those meetings too. But choosing just one purpose saves us from this bias we all tend to have. We overestimate our ability to prioritize lots of things at once and do all of them well. That's when calls get boring and frustrating for the participants, and you notice that people stop showing up. That's also when you as the leader get stressed out and maybe even resentful. You're trying to do SO much and it's not working. Here's something I hate to hear from the leader at the beginning of a workshop or a meeting: “We've got way more stuff to cover than we have time for!” We've all learned to humble brag about being over committed and doing too much, but when a group call doesn't have enough time to accomplish the goal, it's just not as valuable. RUN YOUR CALLS IN A WAY THAT PROTECTS THE PURPOSE Once you know the purpose of the program and specifically of each of calls, it's your job to protect that purpose. When people signed up for your program, you promised them a process to get from point A to point B. I'm gonna talk about some things you can do in structuring your calls to make that happen. THINGS TO DO ON THE FIRST CALL Your first meeting will be different from the subsequent ones because the purpose of the first call is to get everyone set up for success in the program. (If what you're running is a multi-hour workshop or a retreat, this applies to the beginning of that event.) Start on time. If you wait to start until everyone has arrived, people will take that cue and show up late next time. Don't start the first meeting with logistics because that's a missed opportunity. Start the very first moment of the very first meeting with something that brings people into more presence. Logistics can be the second thing you do. You might start with a breathing exercise, an inspiring story, or a simple experiential exercise. Name and ask for acknowledgement of group agreements. Ask participants to share other desired agreements, and allow them to email you with suggested additions if they don't want to bring them up in the group. Tell people how you'd like participants to behave on the group calls. Talk explicitly about what's in the range of desired behavior, including things like eating, turning their cameras off, coming late or leaving early. There's no one right answer to these things, so you need to tell them what's expected here. Model taking care of yourself. For example, take a sip of water and stretch when you need to. Tell people to expect that you'll interrupt them sometimes, always with loving kindness, because you're going to be driving this bus towards a particular direction. Tell people what kinds of feedback or comments are welcome. Unlike in a therapy group, their feedback to each other might not be the priority on these calls. If that's the case, tell them. Tell them how to get the most out of these calls and the whole program. If there's homework, give them a sense of how much time that will take, and help them plant seeds for themselves about how they'll get that done and what they'll do if they fall behind. STRUCTURING THE REST OF YOUR CALLS Start with a ritual in each meeting to help people arrive. Briefly tell people after that ritual what will happen during that call. When that plan changes partway through the call, acknowledge that you're pivoting. They won't care that you're pivoting. They'll just be glad you're still driving the bus. If you've got multiple group calls, a structure that often works well is one portion for teaching, then a portion for spotlight coaching or discussion. 90 minutes tends to be a good length for calls where both teaching and discussion and coaching happen. If you've got 6 people or more, breakout rooms of 2 or 3 people can be a helpful tool for discussion. When you use breakout rooms, give them a prompt and tell them to use the time as feels best. When you're teaching something, teach! Keep the focus rather than going into too much discussion in the middle of teaching. Every time you teach a concept, include something experiential so that participants can grapple with what they're learning. That could be as simple as pausing for silent reflection or journaling. You could fill in a worksheet together. You could lead folks through a visualization. Try to show a visual like a slide every time you teach a big concept. You might include spotlight coaching in place of or in addition to more open ended group discussion. This might move you away from your comfort zone if you've been a group therapist. In spotlights, you coach one person in front of the group. If you've got a lot of expertise in this topic, and people have paid big bucks to learn from you, so don't shy away from spotlight coaching. Sometimes therapists are so used to saying “you're the expert on you” or “the group has all the wisdom” that we don't step into our authority enough. Return to the purpose of your group call. If spotlight coaching will fulfill that purpose better than open ended discussion, do it. Remember when you said you'll interrupt in order to protect the purpose of the calls? As someone is talking, it is YOUR job to decide if this discussion serves the purpose of the call. If it doesn't, explain that kindly and move on. On the other hand, If what's happening with a person does serve the purpose particularly well, you might spend MORE time on one person's spotlight. At the end of your very last session, do something that brings people into being present, not logistics. That means you'll need to talk logistics before the end. EXPERIMENT WITH DIFFERENT STRUCTURES I'm a participant in a group right now in which we learn and internalize a new concept each week. The leader summarizes in one sentence what she would like us to internalize. Then she teaches on that. Then we have a discussion to further internalize the concept. In my container, Create Your Program, people do all of the short video lessons and work between sessions. By the way, I do NOT recommend that you prerecord videos. I recommend that you teach everything live at least the first time you run your program. I taught CYP live many times before I recorded the curriculum. In CYP, the purpose of the weekly calls is to move through obstacles to getting your program created and launched. The structure of most of my calls is a quick ritual, then spotlight coaching, and sometimes a 10 minute breakout with groups of 2 or 3. People get other benefits from the calls, but by focusing on that one purpose, I know the calls do that one thing really well. I've also been a participant in a group where we met two times a week. One session was all about learning a concept, and the other session was for discussion and Q&A. DIFFICULT MOMENTS Handling difficult moments might come easily to you as a therapist. We know how to have some really tricky conversations while staying present. One difficult thing you'll deal with is shame. Your participants will sometimes experience shame during calls because they're learning big stuff and making changes. Rather than expanding in that direction, which might be too much for the container, you might want to normalize and contain shame. You're containing the group process, not the person. One way to do that is to say out loud what you see in others (” I see lots of head nods” or “I see a lot of resonance on people's faces”) to show that the person is not alone in their experience. You can also name it if you have struggled in a similar way yourself. If a participant seems to be in fight or flight or freeze, you might acknowledge that things got big, and that this is big stuff. Name that you'll circle back with the person if that feels right. Don't feel you have to tie a bow on every interaction. You won't always be able to fix or resolve everything, and that's OK. When you're the one who gets dysregulated, especially if you cause any kind of harm, name it. Say “that was about me.” Don't over apologize, because then participants are likely to feel they need to take care of you. Circle back next time if you've got more accountability to take. Even if you're not normally available between calls, you'll need to be available if a conflict happened and harm happened. Now remember what I said about talking about homework in the first session? It's gonna come up in subsequent sessions. If you've got a program where there's homework, you'll need to acknowledge many times that it's hard to get the work done. Whether you give 5 minutes of homework or 3 hours of homework, it will be hard for people to get it done. If there's any way to get people to the outcome without homework, don't assign homework! This is gonna go against your therapist sensibility, but you've got to contain the conversation around how hard it is to get the homework done. Don't allow your program to become a group only about how hard it is to do the homework. That will not serve the purpose of the group. In my program, there's a LOT of homework. The homework is broken down into bite sized pieces, but it's a lot, because people are creating their programs. I have a lot of practice at normalizing the struggle to get things done, and strategizing with people about what to prioritize and what to let go of. BE WILLING TO BE LESS LIKED This is something you might already be good at as a therapist. Running a group program is great for getting over people pleasing because you can't people please 4 or 8 or 25 people at once. I used to have the habit of scanning for the person who looked least happy on the call and focusing on them. I rarely do that anymore. Partly because I've done a lot of trauma healing recently and partly also just because I'm 52, I just don't need everyone to like me at every moment. It's also helped me to be a participant and watch group leaders who don't take it personally when someone is struggling or unhappy in the moment. I've noticed how calm that makes me feel. I've watched myself as a participant and noticed when I'm the “difficult person”. It's fine and helpful to be redirected in those moments. When someone else is the “difficult person”, it's very comforting to watch the group leader handle it with compassion and clear boundaries. I work to allow myself to be a conduit for anger, frustration, or whatever a participant might need to feel in a particular moment. It's always generous to protect the purpose of the group. Therapists and healers really do create the best programs. Once you harness what you're already great at and grow your skills around this particular kind of facilitation, my prediction is that you're going to be hooked on running group programs. The energy and mutual support that happen make group calls my favorite part of my whole job. Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/233

The fact that you are providing a real and nuanced process rather than a quick fix is actually not a problem. It's how you're going to attract the right folks to your work. Therapists and healers work with me to create high quality, niched programs beyond private practice. The people I work with have a ton of integrity. What I mean by that is that the people I work with really give a shit about the work they do and the programs they create. They care deeply about the people they help. As they're getting clear on their niches, I hear something like this from many of them: “I like to help people with deep and nuanced transformation rather than quick fixes or practical tips. I worry that people are just looking for the practical solutions.” This thing tends to happen: Once you've chosen the topic of your signature program, you might start noticing Reels, Tiktoks or articles with simple tips to solve the problem you help people with. Some of those tips are useful, or even sufficient for some people. But those are not the people you're selling your program to. Your people are ready for a paradigm shift, and that's what you're going to guide them through. Before they even sign up to work with you, they'll learn that you're inviting them to look at their problem in a different way, perhaps questioning some of their underlying assumptions. I actually encourage you to lean in to the depth and nuance of the solution you offer. Leave the quick tips to someone else. You get to be known for the stuff you are great at. The people who want to purchase your program have probably already tried those practical strategies, and have been failed by them, or they've already spotted that those strategies aren't the right fit for them. Maybe some of your people are wondering why those things haven't worked for them. They might even feel shame that they don't seem able to fix this problem when some people say it's simple. The attractiveness of YOUR offer is that you have a deeper solution, one that perhaps gets to the root of the issue. And your solution is one that they have not yet tried. You get to tell them: “You've tried these practical tips. It's not your fault that those things haven't solved this for you. To have a lasting change in how you experience this issue, here's a completely different approach.” And then you name the paradigm shift. The person who wants to work with you will feel relief and resonance. I'll give you an example. Lots of therapists I've worked with who help parents tell me: “I want to help parents who's kids are having undesirable behaviors, but I'm not going to teach the parents how to get their kids to stop doing the undesirable behavior. I'm going to take the parents through a much deeper process that has to do with the parents accepting themselves and deeply accepting their child. The behaviors do usually shift quite a bit during that process, but I don't want to promise that.” Great! You're going to work with people ready for a paradigm shift around their children's difficult behavior. If they're like I was when my kids were younger, they've already tried about a million tips that seemed to work for other parents. But nothing stuck, and none of it really helped my family to feel grounded at a deeper level. Don't hide the fact that you have a deeper solution, and don't apologize for it. Lead with it. If you can articulate this paradigm shift well, the right folks will be grateful they finally found you. Your future participants are smart, and they like hearing what YOU'RE saying because they're finally hearing something that sounds true. You'll talk about the problem exactly as your right fit person is experiencing it, which perhaps includes feeling totally frustrated, hopeless, confused or ashamed. You'll help them feel less shame when you point out that the reason why those quick fix solutions haven't worked is because those tips don't address the root of the issue. There's nothing wrong with them. It's not their fault. A deeper paradigm shift is needed, and it's totally normal that they need support in moving through that. In fact, when I realize I'm ready for a paradigm shift, it's an easy leap to wanting to consider signing up for your high touch program. If I'm gonna do some deep unlearning and profound inner work, I'm probably going to benefit from a container and a guide to walk me through that. And by the way, you probably DO offer some practical tips that will help your people find some relief soon. Feel free to share those too. In fact, just hearing about this paradigm shift is probably already helping them feel better. Join me for a free workshop on choosing a juicy niche for your program beyond private practice. Sign up at https://rebeltherapist.me/niche. It's live on Tuesday, October 29th at 11am PT. But if you sign up you'll also get a recording for about a week. A great niche is a HUGE predictor of the success of your program beyond private practice. Niching for a program beyond private practice is totally different from niching for your therapy practice. What worked there might not work here. We'll talk about how to choose a juicy niche and how to articulate your niche so that the right people understand how valuable your program is. I haven't offered a free workshop on niching in years, and I may not do it again for quite a while. I'd love to have you there. Get on the waitlist for Create Your Program If you're thinking you might want to get my guidance with creating and selling your signature program, make sure you also get on the waitlist for Create Your Program. We start in January 2025, but I've got some really good early bird bonuses ONLY for folks who sign up in November. So go to https://rebeltherapist.me/create and get on that list so you're notified as soon as we open registration. Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/232

If you want to work in a different way, but you feel like maybe it's too late to start your own signature program or you regret not starting sooner, this episode is for you. In the last couple of years I have done a LOT of things that I had thought maybe it was too late to do. So I feel you. One of those has been returning to roller skating. You know the proverb. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now. For me, the best time to return to roller skate would have been 30 years ago. The next best time just happened. I went to roller discos as a kid in the early 80's from about age 8 to 10 and I felt so alive and joyful. Skating felt like flying and dancing at the same time. I was part of a little crew of girls who skated together. We got sparkly T shirts with roller skates on the front and abbreviations of our names on the back, just to save money on the letters. A couple of my birthday parties were at the roller disco. When Dolly Parton, Donna Summer or Blondie came on I would get shivers. My family moved across the country when I was 10 and I stopped roller skating partly because I didn't have my crew anymore and partly because I felt more awkward and self conscious in my body as I got older. As an adult, through my 30's and 40's I wished I could roller skate again, but I figured it was too late. I assumed I would fall and injure myself if I tried. And I guess I worried that I would look foolish. As roller skating made a big revival in the last few years, I kept seeing the cutest roller skates everywhere. When I would walk past the roller skaters in golden gate park, I felt that longing. I also noticed that lots of the skaters there appeared to be my age or older. As I was turning 50, I did a little research and discovered it actually STILL wasn't too late for me to get on roller skates. Not at ALL too late. So for my 50th birthday I bought a pair of purple skates, knee pads, wrist guards, and elbow pads. The first thing you're supposed to do is practice falling safely, so I did that about 100 times. By the way, I know there's a whole camp of skaters who don't believe in using padding. I'm not here to fight about it. I see you and I respect you. I finally I got myself to the outdoor skating area in Golden Gate Park. It's flat and smooth, and several times a week there's even someone from the community playing music with a huge speaker. I shyly asked the incredible roller skaters about the etiquette and advice for a new skater. Then I slowly rolled out there. I realized I could still roller skate. Even after 40 years my body still remembered how. Even if I didn't already know how, it wouldn't have been too late. I've met plenty of people who started skating at lots of different ages. I basically just skate around the area enjoying the music. I feel joy and energy moving through my body. Just like when I was 10, I feel like I'm flying and dancing. Some folks are in the middle of the area dancing their asses off. Maybe I'll start learning some of those moves soon. I keep my roller skates and protective gear in my trunk at all times so that I can skate whenever I get the chance. I go about once a week. Sometimes my spouse comes and sits and watches. They say they love how happy I look. I know how to fall safely, but at this point I haven't actually fallen. But I probably will, especially when I start learning those dance moves. And that's totally OK with me. Back to creating your own program. If you've been wanting to create a program beyond private practice, but a part of you has thought it's already too late, let's try something for a moment. Let's do a little parts work, inspired by IFS and other things. What part of you is trying to be heard with that regret or that fear? Hear them out. If it's the right path for you, it is not too late. In your wisest and most embodied self, you know this. But also if you've got a part that feels like it's too late, you might need to hear that part out. It's trying to protect you in the best way it knows how. So let this “it's too late” part know that you are ready to listen and that you're grateful for it's attempt at protecting you. Kindly let that part vent about why they think it's too late. And take notes. Maybe you'll hear: Other people are already doing it. The market is saturated. People already know me as a therapist. If I had started when I first wanted to I'd already be successful but now I'd be a beginner. People don't buy courses anymore. If I do it now, I'll have to feel the grief of not having done it sooner. Then when the “it's too late” part has gotten it all out, you can converse with that part. I can help because I know what it actually takes to create a successful program. I'm an actual expert on creating and making a living from your unique and excellent program. So let's go through those reasons one by one. I realize you may have come up with other reasons why it's too late. I tried to cover the most common ones here Other people are already doing it: Yep. There's probably at least a handful of successful people in your niche. That's a good sign. It probably means there are people paying them and it's a viable niche. It would be unusual to step into a niche no one else is in. Some people are going to want to pay YOU to be the one to help them because you're the best fit. Just like there's room for lots of therapists, there's room for more than one program in your niche of choice. The market is saturated: A funny thing happens. Whatever niche you choose, you'll start to see evidence that your niche is saturated. That's because you're paying lots of attention to what's going on in your niche. Confirmation bias will have you believing that your niche is the most saturated one. That's incredibly unlikely. People already know me as a therapist: If people know that you've been a therapist for a long time, your program is going to look even MORE valuable to them. Your experience as a therapist is part of what sets you apart. It's beautiful to have more than one identity. If you're already wishing you'd done this sooner, now is a great time to show yourself that you're not limited to one identity or one way of working for the rest of your career. If I had started when I first wanted to, I'd already be successful, but now I'd be a beginner: You've been a beginner so many times before. Learning new things is incredibly good for keeping you in an optimal state of growth and happiness. Starting your own program is a gorgeous blend of being really experienced in your work AND being a beginner at offering your work in a new way. You've got new stuff to learn about how to turn your best work into a program, and how to make money with that program. And you don't have to figure it all out on your own. People don't buy courses anymore. The truth is people don't tend to pay as much for self-led courses where they will go through curriculum without getting access to the creator. We're smart to be wary of self-led courses. The completion rates for self-led courses tend to be quite low. We're tired of purchasing these courses and never doing them. It's always the right time for a high-quality program in which participants will get coached by you or observe you coaching others, and will get their particular questions answered. It will always be the right time for great programs like these because they work. If I do it now, I'll have to feel the grief of not having done it sooner. Yes love, and that grief is there because it matters to you. Grief happens when let ourselves feel. If you haven't allowed yourself to work in the way that suits you, you will likely feel grief as you finally give yourself permission. Once you have heard everything from that “it's too late” part, see if you can hear from the part of you that feels curious and excited about working in a new way. If the “it's too late part” interrupts, ask if they would step back for a moment so you can find out more about the part that's curious and excited about working in a new way. See what you dream up. I would love to know what you come up with. If you're a therapist or healer and you want to work and make money in a new way, I would love to have you in Create Your Program. You'll walk through a step-by-step process with me and a small group of therapists and healers to create a high-quality program and offer it to the people who need it. That's a big goal, and I break it down for you into tiny goals you can accomplish one at a time. And you get my coaching along the way. We get started very soon and enrollment is open right now for just a little while. Sign up right away to make sure you get a special bonus training only available this week. This is your last chance until at least 2025 to walk through this process with me. Go to https://rebeltherapist.me/create I'm excited to support you. Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/231

I help therapists and healers who have private practices to add a second part to their business models. I show you how to create a niched and outcome based program that you can get known for and offer to people all over the world. Learn more about that and get on the notification list at https://rebeltherapist.me/create. I would love to see your name on that list. You'll get informed as soon as enrollment opens, which happens very soon. I realized I need to tell you something today: Even if you are doing your marketing right, you probably won't enjoy it all of the time. This is sort of a part 2 to my last podcast episode. Here's a summary of that in case you didn't hear it or you'd like a quick recap: Reactive marketing is when you feel like you urgently must take action to make more money, to get more people to sign up for your work, or to fix something that seems broken in your business. You know you're in reactive mode when you believe you've got to do something NOW to market your work. If lots of your marketing activity is reactive marketing, it isn't going to be very effective and it's going to burn you out. When you're reactive, you're not tuned in to the people you want to serve, you don't have access to your more creative parts, and you aren't taking action from a thoughtful strategy. Relaxed marketing is what we want to be engaging in at least 90% of the time. Whether you're creating content, reaching out to referral partners, running free live events, pitching to podcasts, or writing website copy, whatever it is that you're doing during your marketing time, you want to engage in it with a more relaxed nervous system. You'll come up with better, more attuned work when you do that. And you're going to be able to make better decisions about what your overall marketing strategy looks like. I received emails from some of you letting me know that the episode really resonated with you. You loved being reminded that you'll do your best work when you're tuning into the people you're serving, and NOT when you're in panic mode. The next thing I need to share involves a lot of nuance: Even if you engage in relaxed marketing practices, You might still not enjoy marketing some of the time. “Relaxed” might not be the way you feel when you're sitting down to your marketing activities. Two things happened today that reminded me to talk about this nuanced truth. One is: I sat down to do some of my own marketing work. I was not in urgency or panic, and I WAS tapped into the needs of the people I am here to serve. I also didn't feel relaxed. I felt a bit of dread, a bit of anxiety, and a strong urge to find something else to do. I felt my heart rate speed up a bit. I felt the fear that I might not have a good idea to share. (Yes, Even though I've got a huge list of ideas that I've been storing up for years). I had the thought “I hate this part.” We have a pillow that lists dozens of emotions, so that we can look at it and identify which ones we are feeling in the moment. Yeah, it's the kind a therapist might have in their office. In that moment I identified “inadequate, avoidant and worried.” Then in order to properly procrastinate, I opened Instagram and I saw a post from one of my favorite writers, Clementine Morrigan. She writes on personal growth, trauma, polyamory and other stuff, and she's a leftist. Here she's talking specifically about writing, but I want to apply this to how it can feel to work on marketing your wonderful work. Clementine says: “I find writing viscerally uncomfortable. Sometimes it is excruciatingly painful. It almost never feels good. The thing that is most important to me and that I have dedicated my life to is extremely difficult and unpleasant for me to actually do lol. Your calling might not feel good. I don't think anyone tells us that. Pleasure and ease are not the only indications that a thing is worth doing. Sometimes our most important and rewarding work feels bad." So I read that. Then I thought of you. If you heard my last episode and felt excited to commit or recommit to some regular, more relaxed marketing practices, you might have then sat down to do your marketing work and felt something other than relaxed. Just like I often do. Maybe distressed or avoidant or inadequate or afraid. So I realized I NEED you to know you're not doing it wrong. Sometimes doing the work of marketing is not joyful even when you're doing it right. I NEVER want to make you feel like there's some perfect way to run a business that will have you in ease and riches all of the time, and that you just haven't discovered it yet. Marketing your offers can bring up so many feelings. Now I want to talk about some ways to move through the discomfort and stick with it anyway. Here are some things that work for most people most of the time: Know that you're not alone if you sometimes have a hard time in doing the work of marketing. Remind yourself of your personal reasons for marketing your offers. Perhaps you want to work in new ways or make more money or shift your schedule or create your body of work. Remind yourself of the reasons why your work matters to the people who need it. Write those things down and look at them when you are struggling. Give yourself tons of credit. Remind yourself that you are doing brave and vulnerable work. You are claiming the value of the work you offer the world and telling people that it matters. You're reaching out to the people who need your help and you're willing to be uncomfortable to do it. Remind yourself that by marketing your offers, you're doing the work of growing your business. That's part of taking care of yourself. Your younger parts are watching you and feeling taken care of. Depending on your life situation, you might also be supporting other humans with your business. Don't let a marketing session go on for too long, even if it is going well. Save some energy for next time. We hunger to get into a flow state where we don't really notice time going by. In that state, it feels like words are writing themselves or whatever action we're taking is happening without effort. We still need to stop or take a break after a reasonable amount of time. Otherwise we may feel so depleted that we have a hard time creating again next time. I heard that tip from Kelly Diels who I interviewed on the podcast. EbonyJanice Moore, another mentor of mine who I interviewed on the podcast, speaks about reserving some of your energy. She follows the 80/20 rule, meaning that 80% of her waking time is put towards living, healing, connecting, and other things outside of productivity. Only 20% of her time goes towards any kind of work. She avoids working more than four hours a day. Bring something pleasurable into the experience of your marketing sessions in order to counteract your negativity bias. Bringing in a positive association begins to tell our nervous system that this activity is not all bad. For me, moving to a cozy spot in my house, playing my favorite instrumental mix or changing into my most comfortable clothes can give my nervous system the message that something good is happening. Have a starting ritual. This could be a gorgeous, involved ritual, or it could be as simple as making yourself a cup of coffee. Those things work for most people most of the time to keep doing the work of marketing. Notice what works for you. One more note about that last episode: If you heard my last in my last episode, you heard me talk about how much I love taking care of my indoor plants. I compared relaxed marketing to my plant care rituals, in which experience a lot of pleasure in tuning into each plant. I left something out because it didn't really add to the story. Now it's relevant. A year and a half ago, I had 75 houseplants. When I was getting ready to move across town, I decided to give away about 50 of them. I realized I was starting to feel a bit burdened by my indoor jungle. Now I've got 24 houseplants, and that's a fun amount for me. There's a difference between engaging in a really fun hobby and running a business. We can experience joy and pleasure in our businesses, and we're going to feel discomfort sometimes. Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/230

I help therapists and healers who have private practices to add a second part to their business models. I show you how to create a niched and outcome based program that you can offer to people all over the world. Learn more and get on the waitlist at https://rebeltherapist.me/create. I would love to see your name on that list. You'll get informed as soon as enrollment opens next month. I'm gonna talk about my houseplants for a moment, but this episode is really about how to create effective marketing practices. I had a moment of freak out with my houseplants the other day. I looked up and saw that a group of my plants under the skylight by my home office were very sad and thirsty. One of them looked like it had been receiving too much sun for a few days. I grabbed my watering can immediately, watered them, and moved the over-sunned plant to a different spot. Phew! I'd solved the immediate and obvious problems. That's reactive plant care. Of course sometimes it's necessary to get reactive, just to keep my plants alive. It's just not joyful or sustainable for me or the plants to be in this mode most of the time. If that were the only kind of care I was giving my plants, I wouldn't want to have plants, and they wouldn't really want me either. You see, I really enjoy taking care of my houseplants. I enjoy learning what they need and tuning into them. I spend some time just about every week hanging out with my plants, watering them, fertilizing them, trimming them, cleaning off their leaves, turning them so that different sides of them get light, moving their location if they're getting too much or too little light, repotting the ones that need it, adding new soil to some of them, spotting and removing pests, and on and on. Before this recording, I looked at my fern. She's lovely. Her new growth looks so green and happy. I felt inspired to take her into the shower and give her a really good spray. I also peeked at my fiddle leaf fig. She's a bit dusty right now. Later I'll give her leaves a nice wipe down because I know she'll enjoy a bit more light when she's clean. When I do this stuff, I'm present and relaxed. My plants thrive when I'm doing this and I kind of do too. When at least 90% of my houseplant care happens in this relaxed way, we're all thriving. I'm describing reactive plant care vs. relaxed plant care. I believe it works the same way with the marketing in my business. And in your business. Here's how reactive marketing looks You have a moment of anxiety, and you think: “I need to do something RIGHT NOW to get people to buy my offer!” The trigger of this thought could be that you aren't hitting your revenue goal. Or your group isn't filling. Or you realize you haven't gotten any new referrals for a while. Or you see another entrepreneur on Instagram and it looks like they are having more success than you, so you think “I need to do what they're doing, like now.” Or maybe you're just having a hard day. Doing something quickly in your marketing because you're anxious or afraid or feeling scarcity is reactive marketing. Maybe you quickly email your list after over a month away. Maybe you create a social media post. Maybe you sign up for a course on some aspect of marketing that you think you should be doing. Whatever you do, you're feeling pretty anxious while you do it. If you're doing a lot of reactive marketing, that's not gonna go well for you or your business. I understand why you get reactive. The things you're anxious about matter. You need to pay your bills. It matters that people find your work. Your identity as a business owner matters. So does just getting to do enough of the thing you want to do. But the reactivity that capitalism encourages in us is not what we want to let guide us. Here's why reactive marketing doesn't work In reactive marketing, you're in scarcity, panic and self doubt. The actions you take from that place won't be the actions to make your business thrive. When you're doing reactive marketing, you don't do your most creative, interesting or attuned work, so it doesn't speak to your future participant very well. It's not fun or sustainable for you so you'll be more likely to burn out. Also, there's just not much you can do in one day or one moment to see significant results in your business. For all of these reasons, If you're spending more than 10% of your marketing time in reactive mode, it's way too much. Here's what you CAN'T do when you're in reactive mode You aren't in your safe and relaxed nervous system, so you can't feel your love, attunement or empathy for the people you serve. You can't feel your confidence and love of your offering. You can't figure out a creative and sound overall marketing strategy. Here's what an effective marketing system looks like Marketing is everything you do to bring people to your work. I break marketing down into 3 parts: grow, nurture and sell. Grow means bringing new people to your work who are not yet aware of it. Nurture means showing people who are aware of your work how you can help. Sell means making a clear offer so they can decide whether to sign up to work with you. Doing all of those things effectively doesn't happen when you're in reactive mode. You need a set of marketing practices that allow you to do all 3 of those things somewhat regularly. Think of yourself as a marketing team, because you are. If anyone has ever hired you, then your business is already doing some kind of marketing. Your business has a marketing team. Perhaps you are that whole team. Great. You've got a marketing team of one. You want your marketing team to be creative, strategic, and calm. You want them to have a sense of what they're doing each week to grow, nurture and sell. You'd prefer that the team has access to creativity, care about your clients and feel excited about your offer. You wouldn't want to start meetings with your marketing team each week by saying “React to this problem! I have no plan! Just do something! Do it today! What's wrong with you?!” I doubt you'd EVER treat a team member (other than you) that way. You'd like that team to be working in a relaxed way at least 90% of the time so that they could feel good and do their best work. The alternative to reactive marketing is relaxed marketing. Relaxed marketing might look like this: Perhaps set aside 3 hours each week, or maybe it's 8 hours every other week. You choose an amount and a rhythm that works with your body and life. You set aside and then honor that time on your calendar. Think of that time as a relaxed marketing session with your team of one. During your relaxed marketing sessions: You spend time planning what you'll do to grow, nurture and sell. You make sure your plan is realistic to do in the amount of time you've got. You pick a few activities to do pretty well rather than trying to do everything you see others doing. You start tracking what's already working so that you can do more of those things. When it's time to reach out to a potential referral partner, you do it in a kind, respectful and generous way. When it's time to create content like an email, article, social media post, video or a podcast episode, you encourage your idea generation to flow by asking yourself questions like: What is my right fit person struggling with right now around my topic? What do they need to know in order to be ready to make a decision about working with me? What do they not know about this topic that they need to know? What do I wish I could say about this topic, but I couldn't dare? (You probably should!) Whenever you have an idea about content you might create or an activity you'd like to try in your marketing, you jot it down so that when your relaxed marketing session comes, you've got new ideas handy. Either during your relaxed marketing sessions or outside of them, you read or listen to people who inspire you and percolate on what you're learning. All of that is relaxed marketing. Ah, that feels so much better. So what about those times when you're anxious and feeling scarcity and you're tempted to do some reactive marketing? Here's what I try to do: I take a moment to feel my feelings. I make room for my fear or anxiety. Then I reach out to an entrepreneur friend and talk about how I'm feeling. I immediately feel less alone and less stressed. Then when I'm ready, I get curious about what I might want to do differently. I bring that strategic and creative thinking to my next relaxed marketing session. But is it OK to DO the reactive thing? Sure! As long as it takes up just 10% or less of your marketing activities, you can go ahead and do the reactive thing if you want to. It might help and it probably won't hurt. It's no big deal either way. If you do that thing, observe how it feels and whether it works. If it works well, you can bring that action into your future relaxed marketing sessions. Want to work with me to create a valuable, niched, outcome-based program beyond your private practice that you can offer to people all over the world and get known for? Get on the waitlist for Create Your Program. Enrollment opens up next month and I would love to support you. You'll walk through a step-by-step process together with me and a small group of smart and kind therapists and healers. You'll be launching your program by the end of our time together. Go to https://rebeltherapist.me/create to get your name on the list so you're informed as soon as enrollment opens. Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/229

I love encouraging healers and therapists to think deeply and creatively about what their work could look like. I often say: Step out of default thinking for a moment and give yourself permission to dream into what you want to create. Who are you serving? How are you working with them? What work do you no longer do or do less of? What does your day look like? Who are you collaborating with? In this episode I got to talk to 2 sisters who dreamed up a way to work differently by creating a business together! Meet Kaitlyn and Meghann Ellis. Meghann Ellis is a therapist with over 18 years experience and has a specialty in complex trauma, EMDR and dissociative diagnoses. She has combined forces with her twin sister, Kaitlyn Ellis, who is an Occupational Therapist and pelvic floor specialist with over 20 years of experience. Together they run Twin Root Wellness Here's some of what we talked about: Combining the skills of an Occupational Therapist and a mental health expert in one program Choosing the niche of pregnant and post-partum athletes The unique physical and emotional struggles of athlete mothers How they realized they wanted to start this business together Why Meghann is finding that this work prevents her from burning out as a therapist How they nurture their relationship and communicate as both sisters and business partners How they bring in referrals and build their audience Why they are starting with individual coaching before creating a group program Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/228

This is a short episode and it's really about you giving yourself permission to do the work that is going to feel most joyful and sustainable for you. I'm going to talk about two different roles we might choose for ourselves as therapists, healers and coaches: A catalyst who helps people through a big and clear change in a particular area of their lives. OR An integrator who helps people grow and maintain changes over a long period of time in many areas of their lives. I know there's a lot of overlap and nuance between these 2 roles. Therapists I work with who want to create signature programs beyond private practice often want to be in the role of catalyst more of the time, and long-term integrator less of the time. They're feeling over-full on the long-term work of helping their clients day-by-day, week-by-week, month-by-month and year-by-year. They value that long-term work and are honored to get to do it, but they fear that if they keep doing it full time, they're going to burn out, or maybe just not love their work so much. In the programs they create, these therapists want to be in the role of short-term change catalyst. They want to step further into their role as teacher, presenter, and facilitator. They want to create a container that moves participants through a process of profound growth in a particular area that they really care about. The topics of these programs include: sexuality, relationships, parenting, money, business, and particular life experiences like divorce and grief…and on and on. I'll give you a few examples of programs folks have created in a minute. These programs are time-limited, usually happening over a number weeks or just a few days. These therapists find it satisfying to watch their people have big insights and make big changes and progress in their programs. But when folks are getting ready to create their programs, they sometimes think… “Wait a minute. Even if I help people create a lot of change quickly, maintaining those changes takes long-term work. It's not just one and done. So then is my program valuable enough if it doesn't help people through the long-term maintenance of that change?” Here's my answer: YES. The focused change your program creates is highly valuable. Both kinds of work are totally valuable and necessary. Neither kind of work is more or less valuable. As a therapist, I was trained with a bit of either/or thinking. I remember learning that REAL change takes time, and that rapid change is probably fleeting. Perhaps as therapists, sometimes this is a defensive stance. Sometimes the long-term, subtler work of a therapist doesn't get enough credit because it's less obvious than the change that happens during something like a retreat or a workshop. But you, my friend, are not going to devalue that long-term work. AND you still might not always want to do that long-term work yourself. You can choose to run a time-limited program and you can also encourage your participants to keep doing long-term work after they are done with your program. Think of this from the participant's point of view. I'll use myself as an example. When a topic really matters to me, I want to work with someone who is obsessed with that topic for a period of time. I want to be held in a container where I'll get to focus on topic only. I want a curated experience that is designed to help me make a significant change. This happened to me recently. I was a participant last year in Deb Benfield's program: Aging With Vitality And Body Liberation. As a 52 year old who has a body, I loved the idea of putting myself in Deb's hands to go through a big transformative experience over 8 weeks. I wanted to deprogram myself from ageism and step further into body liberation. I know Deb is an expert in both of these areas, and is one of the ONLY people who is really a badass in both areas. In the venn diagram of body liberation and pro-aging, you find Deb and few others in that intersection. she was a grad of my programs, so I know her work well and I trust her. In signing up for Deb's program, I wanted a focused experience to bring about some big changes in perspective and to jump start a process to serve me for as long as I'm lucky enough to keep on aging. I had already done some learning about pro-aging. I'd done years and years of work around body liberation. And within the first session interacting with Deb and the small group, I had some insights that shifted my trajectory permanently. I got to focus on this one topic with Deb so those insights and shifts kept coming. Could I have gone into individual long-term work instead for the same result? Not really. I wouldn't have had the curated experience Deb was able to provide. In long-term work, I would have been busy integrating all the other areas of my life as a parent, partner, business owner, friend, and person healing from childhood trauma. I benefited from the container being ALL about change within this one topic. Now I can take those insights and all the transformation that happened over those 8 weeks and integrate them long term. You better bet that even though the 8 weeks are over, from time to time whenever anything comes up around aging, health, food, or bodies, I say “well Deb Benfield says…” Now I'll share a few more examples of programs that folks in the most recent cohort of CYP have created. All of these are designed to bring about big changes in a particular area over a short period of time. All of them are on topics that are profoundly important to the creator of the program as well as the participants who will enroll. All of these are delivered live by the the creator. Aliza Septimus created an Anxiety Relief Program to help people manage worrying thoughts, calm their bodies, and confidently face things they tend to avoid. Alana Jaeck created Not Just A Pet, a program to help people navigate the loss, or the impending loss of a pet and find their own unique way through the grief. Salina Bambic created a program to help young adults struggling with social anxiety to build confidence so they can form relationships. Ali Schaffer created Wandering In Spain, a retreat for women who are ready to experience transformation through exploration and engagement with nature. Emily Germain created Connected Relationships, a program for busy, motivated couples who are struggling with disconnection. I'll be sharing more examples in future episodes because I LOVE to brag on what our grads have created AND because many of you tell me you crave examples so that you can imagine what's possible. Now after hearing all of this, do you still find yourself wondering whether it's OK to just be a change catalyst? Do you still question whether it's enough to take people through a valuable and time-limited process and then let them turn to other long-term support? Maybe there's some part of you that believes you that you've got to suffer in order to be enough. Maybe there's a part of you that withholds permission to work in the way you will find most joyful and sustainable. If that resonates, I would encourage you to sit with that belief and see if your wisest self agrees. My bet is no. Remember, this week is the time to enroll in CYP to get early access to the curriculum all summer AND a bonus training to help you fill your program. Go to https://rebeltherapist.me/create. I can't wait to support you. Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/227

Some people create the program they needed for themself. As you move through a challenging situation and you grow from it, learn about yourself, and find community, you realize: “This did not need to be QUITE this hard! I want to create a process or a container to help people move through this with more support.” If you also happen to be a therapist or healer, you may realize you're uniquely equipped to create something really effective and powerful. My guest Robin Gibler did just that when she created a program for moms with ADHD. Robin is a licensed professional counselor specializing in maternal mental health. As a mom with ADHD herself, she is passionate about providing education and support for other women to create their own version of what motherhood looks like and care for kids who may also be neurodivergent. Here's some of what we talked about: What ADHD feels like for moms who are overburdened by the impossible cultural standards of motherhood Why moms with ADHD often feel: “I must not be trying hard enough.” How our hormones impact our ADHD symptoms Why Robin started a group program for moms with ADHD How Robin designed her group program and decided what to include and what not to Developing a longer program including guest speakers and a community cohort How ADHD shows up in Robin's business and how she works with her strengths How she gives herself time to be the visionary in her business with solo mini retreats Giving up her group practice with 11 therapists because it wasn't the right business model for her strengths and challenges Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/226

At first this will seem like a story about my online yoga instructor. But it's really a story about making your business more sustainable by stopping unnecessary and exhausting emotional labor. First of all, I know what you're thinking. It's so unexpected to hear about a 52-year-old white woman doing yoga. Kidding. This past fall I was getting back into yoga after several years away. I started with a 30-days-of-yoga video series by an instructor. I sensed that I'd like her in real life. She had spunk, made kind of inapropriate jokes, wore fun rocker outfits, and had good banter. She even had a sweet dog who joined her on the mat. It took me about 3 months to get through all 30 videos. When I was done with those, I wanted to do more of her videos. I searched her name on YouTube again, and a different instructor came up. I started trying one of this new person's videos. It was OK, but this person wasn't telling jokes. Her voice was lower. There was more silence. I was kinda pissed. I called my partner over and said: “Isn't this illegal? She's got the same name, she even has a dog who looks like the other instructor's dog. Can she DO this? It's like identity theft.” And Ames said: “That's her. That's the same person.” “NO it can't be” I said. I looked back and discovered the 30 days of videos I had watched were from 9 years ago. This new video was her now. I'm used to all of us aging. This is not ONLY about aging. Something else really big had shifted. I was bummed at first. Where are the inapropriate jokes? Where's the banter? where's the rocker vibe? And then I followed the new video and realized her teaching had gotten even better. She was suggesting small adjustments that were gentler on my body. I was relieved that no one had stollen the instructor's identity. And of course this was the same sweet dog 9 years later. As I like to do, I made up a whole story about this instructor. This is ONLY my conjecture, based on my own projections. I decided that between those videos 9 years ago and now, this instructor decided to stop doing the emotional labor of trying to be liked. When she started her youtube channel, she truly enjoyed making those videos. For the first 10 or 20 or even 50 videos, she enjoyed being silly, providing banter, and dressing with a rocker vibe. She felt satisfied expressing real parts of her personality on her channel. She got feedback from her fans that they loved it, so she gave even more of the same. The pressure to get more subscribers and to make a living as an entrepreneur led her to keep performing these parts of her personality. And then little by little, she stopped having fun with it. It started feeling like emotional labor. For a while, she kept performing this way. The videos were popular, and she wasn't exactly being inauthentic. It was just a little tiring, but work is supposed to be tiring, she told herself. It's better than working in a mine. But working in this way was feeling less and less sustainable until she began to DREAD making those videos. She decided she either needed to consider letting the whole channel go, or to start doing the videos in a more easeful way. She decided to just teach the yoga. She decided to focus on delivering great yoga instruction, but to let the rest of the effort go. She decided to just stop performing, and wear what felt appealing and comfortable to her NOW. She decided to let people be disappointed by her more boring clothing and lack of jokes. She started with “Let's start in a seated position.” rather than “OK it's day seven. Let's go to heaven!” with a wink. Her voice came out a little lower because that's how her body was naturally changing AND because she was relaxing into her easiest way of speaking. She decided that this was the only sustainable and joyful way for her to continue. I'm an entrepreneur too, and I can relate to this story. And yes, I haven't forgotten that I made this story up. I've been through a somewhat similar process. My process has shifted how I run my group coaching calls. I used to show up to group coaching calls feeling the need to amp up my personality and lean into the parts of me that made people feel comfortable. I performed warmth. I wanted to show that I was someone you could be yourself with. I tried to bring a lot of energy to calls and show each person that I cared about them. I was self-deprecating. I made lots of jokes. I'd always scan the zoom room for the least satisfied person and try to please them. And then I got tired, and decided to show up to my calls in my more natural state, and stop performing so hard. In my more natural state, I actually DO care about every person I'm working with, but the way that looks when I'm not performing is different. Now I allow myself to breathe. I ask people to take care of themselves. At the beginning of just about every call, I ask people to take a breath, notice if there's anything hanging over their head, and then to jot it down or otherwise let it go so they can be more present. Then I ask them to take another breath and see if there is an intention they'd like to set. My focus in my coaching now is on being clear, giving honest and helpful feedback and asking questions that will help each person make their own best decisions in their businesses. I'm fairly obsessed with doing that well. That's part of how I love. The feedback I'm MOST interested in now is what outcome participants are getting, and NOT how much they like me. When I was performing care with more effort, my focus was, in a certain way, on me. When I'm serving and in more of my realness, I provide authentic care without translating it into a performance. It's TRULY OK with me now if I am not every person's cup of tea. The funny thing is though, I was never every person's cup of tea anyway. I wonder if folks who were coached by me back 5 or 10 years ago would notice a big change in how I behave now. I wonder if they would see me as less vibrant. Or just less anxious. I share all of this of course to invite you to ask yourself what you want to give yourself permission to stop performing. I'd love to know what you come up with. Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/225

Join me for a Free Open Coaching Call on Thursday, May 9th at 11 am PT. A recording will be available if you sign up. Grab your seat at https://rebeltherapist.me/question. Do you identify with the word neurodivergent? Or not? Either way, stay with us. In today's episode we're talking about getting curious about yourself, the way your particular brain works, and what that means about what kind of business will really work for you. You'll hear my guest and I both talk about some big changes we've each made to our work lives in order to honor our operating manuals. I loved hearing how Jennifer gave herself permission to close her therapy practice and create a new business as a consultant instead. And if you're wondering how to use LinkedIn effectively, you want to hear Jennifer break it down. Meet Jennifer Alumbaugh, MS. They are here to help change the cultural narrative for late identified Autistic and ADHD founders, executives, and professionals. She built Expansive Expressions in order to create and deliver neurodivergent business & marketing training, support systems, and business strategies so that neurodivergent entrepreneurs can build profitable and sustainable businesses. Here's some of what we talked about: Why Jennifer closed their therapy practice Divesting from licensure for ethical AND capacity reasons Building a consulting business as a neuroinclusion DEI consultant Issues that come up for neurodivergent microbusiness owners The masking neurodivergent people do at work and what that costs us Exactly how Jennifer uses LinkedIn to create relationships and find speaking opportunities Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/224

Today I'm talking about the most effective way to fill a signature program beyond private practice: Creating and nurturing Ideal Referral Partnerships. If I were to coach my clients to do only ONE kind of marketing, this would be it. Another word for this is networking. You're probably already doing this, but you might not be doing it very strategically. When I meet someone who says they don't do any marketing, but they've got customers or clients, I know they HAVE been marketing. They just didn't see their behavior as marketing. I often find out that the marketing they've been doing has been networking. If you have relationships with people who refer to you, even if you don't do any of it on purpose, you've been marketing. Maybe you've been networking with colleagues you met at trainings, at agencies you worked at, or from working with the same client at some point. You hit it off with these folks. Some of these people have referred clients to you or introduced you to other people who referred clients to you. If you're an extrovert, you might have experienced a TON of this with very little conscious effort. It's time to get strategic because your time is limited. Michelle Warner teaches a course called Networking That Pays. She points out that we can each only maintain a finite number of meaningful relationships (between 100 to 250, according to British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, author of How Many Friends Does One Person Need). We need to be strategic about WHO we spend our limited networking time and energy with. You'll also need to be more strategic when you're selling a signature program because you'll probably be serving MORE new people each year than you do in your private practice. If you do long term work, you may only need 10 new clients a year to keep your practice full, or even less in some cases. To keep a signature program full, on the other hand, you might need 30 or 100 or more new participants each year. The math is a bit different, so the networking will be a bit more strategic. I just peeked at my own statistics. This year, over half of my participants have come through my referral partners, NOT by stumbling upon my podcast or finding me through IG or google or paid ads. But let's look for a moment at the OTHER kinds of marketing activities I do and you might do too: Sending out a weekly or biweekly email. Creating a podcast episode. Delivering a free live event. Updating my website. Creating a new lead magnet. Setting up an ad funnel. Posting on social. Some of these things do help people find me, and I love that I can do these things in relative isolation. AND… It's a really bad idea to leave relationships out of our marketing practices. Networking will help to amplify the effectiveness of those other activities. Dialing down your time spent on solo digital marketing activities and dialing UP your time and energy spent with ideal referral partners is going to grow your business WAY more quickly and more reliably. Why is this kind of strategic networking so effective? LOTS of your future participants are already in someone else's audience. The people who created those audiences are your Ideal Referral Partners. By PLACE I mean things like: a podcast, a free online community, a paid community, an email newsletter list, or a paid small group program. When the person who leads and curates that gathering place invites you in and vouches for you and the work you do, you're MUCH more likely to have the trust of members of that community. Compare that to the trust that you can establish in a video on IG that is 60 seconds long. I created a step-by-step process for this activity, not because it comes easily to me. Rather I created it because it is very important and does NOT come easily to me. Here's a quick summary of that process. First, you figure out: Who are my Ideal Referral Partners? They serve your niche They probably serve your niche in a different way than you do. (If you don't know what your niche is, that's your task before you can find your Ideal Referral Partners). You have aligned enough values You don't have to agree on everything, but you resonate with the way this person works and you feel that they have integrity. They have an audience They do NOT need to have a huge audience. A very small audience of people who are highly engaged and in your niche is better than a big audience of folks not in your niche That means they've already gathered a group of your potential participants. (It's OK to spend time networking with people who just work with folks 1:1. But your growth will happen a lot faster if they have at least a small audience.) They may be open to sharing their audience with you in some way How this sharing happens may become clear right away or later on. Then, once you've identified an Ideal Referral Partner: Step one: Find where their audience is gathered. (A podcast, a community, a newsletter, a paid program, for example.) Step two: Observe. (Listen to the podcast, hang out in the group, or read the emails.) Step three: Approach them with specific praise or observations and invite connection. (If there's any way to get an introduction, ask for it!) Step four: Meet (Come with a back pocket idea, but be open to their idea, a different idea, or NO idea happening.) Step five: Try it (Be a guest on their podcast, guest teach in their course, or share each other's work.) Step six: Check in (Get in touch in from time to time and collaborate again.) When you meet, you'll start with an open ended conversation. You won't rush in and say: “I want access to your group.” They are as protective of the time, energy and well-being of their participants as you will be of yours. Plant the seed for collaboration with no pressure. Make it easy to say no. Think about what might be in it for them. Maybe you're offering access to your audience if that would serve your audience. If you have no audience yet, what's in it for them is simply your willingness to serve their folks. You're not there to extract value. You want to build trust both with the person who gathered those folks, AND with the people in that community. Be open to giving more than you get. Be unattached to the particular outcome of you serving their audience. Embrace some emotional discomfort! You might feel tempted NOT to do any of this strategic networking stuff. You might think: What if they ignore my invitation? What if the person I reach out to doesn't like me? What if I don't enjoy my time with them? What if it stays completely awkward? I mean, have you ever had a horrible networking date? Those feel bad. I get it. I'm introverted. I find small talk exhausting. I don't say that because I think I'm above small talk. I understand that small talk is a way to test easy topics and start building a bit of trust. Small talk tires me out because I don't understand it well, and meeting new people in an unstructured way is a bit painful for me. And that's what networking dates ARE. I KNOW. Some of the time this process might not go well. But I promise you, some of the time it WILL go well, and it is TOTALLY worth it. Resources Discussed: Michelle Warner (https://www.themichellewarner.com/ Shownotes at: https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/223  

If you fear bothering people with your marketing, this is for you. I recently got the worst email I've opened in over a year. I'm gonna share the actual email with you and I'm gonna share my internal reactions and the decisions I made after. In the context of life, this email is really NOT that bad at all. No trigger warning necessary. I'm sharing this because I know many of you are really afraid of getting an email like this. I'm hoping hearing about my experience will help you feel less afraid of getting an email like this. I'm hoping that you feeling less afraid will help you make aligned decisions. I'll explain all of that in a moment. The email I'll share was a response to one of my sales emails promoting Create Your Program, the high touch program I run 3 times a year. Here's what the email said: “Way too many emails with not much info. Blocking your email and please remove me from your waitlist. Feels like clickbait.” I said “ouch!” My partner looked over my shoulder and said “that's not nice!” I had a moment of panic. I thought: Am I a fraudster? Am I a villian? Am I a jerk who never provides value? AND…Does this person hate me? And then paused and I said to my partner: “No it's OK. She's right to tell me. She's annoyed.” Now I did feel a little peeved with the email sender. I thought: “She could have just unsubscribed. There's a link in every single email to unsubscribe! Why didn't she just unsubscribe? Why be like that?” And I wished I could write back to her and explain about unsubscribing and also say I'm sorry you didn't get value…and maybe you should check out this or that free resource I provide. But I couldn't write her back because she told me not to contact her. But you know what? She might not know that unsubscribing works. She's totally within her rights to tell me about her experience and to set a digital boundary. She was clear. She did not call me names or behave abusively. She let me know that she's withdrawn her consent to be emailed. I very much WANT people to be able to withdraw their consent. So as she asked, I went into my email platform and deleted her from it. Then while I was there I looked into what emails I had sent her, so I could better understand her experience. She had signed up for a free workshop through an instagram ad that I run. Then she'd gotten follow up emails reminding her to watch that free workshop, and then some sales emails about my program. It's likely that she didn't actually watch the workshop…which is totally understandable. I've signed up for a free workshop or class and then not hit play on it. She also signed up for the waitlist for Create Your Program. She received the maximum amount of emails someone could ever get from me, about 2 a day for a handful of days. That's because she signed up for my free workshop and then my waitlist, all during a launch of my program, I took a step back and considered…is there anything I want to change about this email flow going forward? In this case, there's not much I wanted to change. I want people who are new to my list to have a chance to jump on the wait list for CYP, which functions as an interest list. Often people find me right when they're looking for a program like mine, and it's important that they CAN sign up right away if that's what they want. I only run CYP 3 times a year right now, so I don't want people to have to wait months to have a chance to jump in. I did make one change to my email flow. I already have an opt OUT email that I send to my list when I'm launching. It basically says: “I'm gonna be promoting my program for a couple of weeks. If you want to stay on my list but you don't want to hear about CYP this round, click here. I'll be quiet for a couple weeks.” I learned this opt-out approach from Kelly Diels, and I always hat tip to her in that email. Here's the change: I added a quick opt-out option in just about every sales email. Now if someone on my list opens ANY sales email before the final day of enrollment, they'll have a chance to opt out of receiving more sales emails in that round. This change took about 10 minutes. Done! I feel pretty great about how that went. When I get criticized, I'm tempted to either collapse into shame OR get mad at the person who criticized me. I felt really good noticing that I didn't do either in this situation. I felt twinges of shame and anger, and then I quickly found a more grounded spot. On the shame side I felt: “Hmmmm. this feels upsetting. But also, I know I'm a good person who's striving to do good work. I don't need to collapse into shame.” On the anger side I felt: “I'm irritated at the person who sent the email. BUT also I know she's standing up for herself as best she can and I KNOW that's exactly what people should do. So I don't really need to be mad.” When I teach people about email marketing and guide them to create a practice of emailing their list regularly, they often tell me they're terrified of getting a response like the one I got. Here's the thing: If you email your list, you might get an email like this. But probably not very often. This is the worst email I had gotten in several years. The people I work with and the people who listen to my podcast and read my emails are here to do important work. They're NOT just here to make money. They want to make good money AND they are invested in creating meaningful work that helps people. The people I work with are critical of any kind of tactics that are manipulative. The people who want to connect with Rebel Therapist LOVE consent. So when people like you email your lists, you're probably doing so thoughtfully. The good news is that when you send emails, you'll probably enjoy a LOT of feedback telling you that your work is helpful. When our team member Taitlyn saw the email, she said “this is the FIRST time in the year I've worked here that I've ever seen an email like that.” What a good perspective. I also noticed that on that same DAY, I got an email thanking me for the valuable free content and naming a specific takeaway they got from it. If you're increasing how much you're communicating with your email list, or you are getting more frequent or more bold with your messaging, and you're fearing some kind of push back…I'm here to tell you it's probably gonna be OK. You're going to be able to consider the feedback, take useful stuff from it, leave the rest, and keep doing your important work. Before I close this topic, I need to tell you where this kind of thinking doesn't apply: I have gotten some really mean and abusive comments on social media. Like someone recently sharing that I am hideous. That feels bad of course, but that kind of comment is so clearly NOT something to let in. It's coming from a person who is trying to harm a stranger by insulting that stranger's appearance. I inherently don't believe that's a good thing to be doing. When people are dehumanizing in their communication with you, I DON'T suggest you consider their feedback. Fuck that. That's not feedback. Want to get help from me to create your signature program? Get on the interest list for Create Your Program. You'll be notified first when we open early access registration. In CYP I work with you and a small group of ethical therapists and healers to create signature programs and start working and making money in new ways. —> Get on the list. ( https://rebeltherapist.me/create) Yes, that's the very interest list this person requested being removed from. You can easily unsubscribe at any time. Show Notes at: https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/222

I've had a hard time figuring out how to talk to you about this. I never want to be a dream killer. Or a bummer. If you're thinking of creating and launching a signature program, I want you to do it. AND I'm gonna talk about one of the hardest parts of that today. Then I'll talk about how to handle this hard part. I promise. In Create Your Program, I help a small group of therapists create their high quality, high touch, niched programs. And then I help them launch those programs so that they can actually start making money. Those programs bring these entrepreneurs significant ongoing incomes. Some folks choose to shrink or close their therapy practices or leave their agency jobs once their programs are established. AND…one really hard part of that whole process is launching the program, especially for the first time. Launching basically means sharing your program with people. Launching involves two really hard things: being more visible and asking for help. You have to be visible when you launch because you need to share your program with people so that they can sign up to work with you. You have to ask for help because you need other people to help you spread the word. Launching isn't the hardest part of the process at all in terms of skills and it's not the most time consuming part either. But emotionally it can be really hard, especially for sensitive souls. We feel vulnerable and exposed when we launch, and we might even worry that we're bugging people. On top of that, most of the people in Create Your Program haven't launched this kind of program before, so these are new muscles they're using. Launching can even give them queasy feelings. And when something is emotionally hard, and makes one feel queasy, one finds a way to avoid it. In Create Your Program, up until now I always walked people all the way up to that launching finish line. Participants got training and structure from me to create their launch plan. I encouraged them to take the brave final steps and even asked people to take some of that action on the final day of our program. And some people did that! I ask participants to share their announcement emails with me, which are the emails they send out to their colleagues and communities. I always received some on the final day of the program, and a bunch more in the following couple of weeks. Lots of people would use the momentum of the program to follow through and continue implementing. But some others would put it off. They'd say they weren't quite ready. They'd say they started reconsidering their niche. They'd say life started getting in the way so they didn't get around to it yet. Or many other valid things. Side note: As a very direct coach, I'll tell you that these are people who really wanted to launch! They were ready enough, and they had already done enough work on their niches. They had indeed done everything they needed to do in order to launch their pilot programs. When I was describing this issue to my former business coach Claire Pelletreau, she said: “You have to walk them all the way over the finish line.” And I knew she was right. Immediately I made a change to Create Your Program. And I'll describe that in a minute. Let's talk about HOW we get ourselves over the finish line to accomplishing hard things in our businesses and lives in general. Well, there's accountability and support. Those help. But you know what else helps? A Hard Ass Deadline. Accountability buddies usually don't cut it for the really hard stuff. They're helpful for getting focused, but not necessarily for getting over the finish line with the very hardest things. Now I've got 2 short examples for you: Taxes and Art. This just came up for me around my taxes. I get intimidated by the process of my taxes every single year. I've been trying to get my documents toghether to give my accountant for a while now. My accountant has a policy that once you turn in all your documents to her, THEN you can schedule an appointment. I called the office and begged them to please give me an appointment first and promised I'd get the docs turned in 2 weeks before that appointment. And they agreed. Phew. Now I have a Hard Ass Deadline. As you're listening to or reading this on or after March 19th, I promise you I've already handed in my documents to my accountant. My partner is a neon artist. They're also a neon sign maker. Most days they make and repair neon signs for people and businesses, or they create the neon aspects of art pieces for other artists. But they make incredible art themself. AND almost all of the art they create happens when they've got a show coming up. Because being part of a show means having a deadline. They sometimes say: “I SHOULD make more art. I WANT to make more art.” They talk to their artist friends about making art. They get inspired thinking about what they'd like to make. But it's the deadline that gets them past all the hard parts and forces them to create wonderful pieces, some of which I won't let them sell because I need to see them in our house every day. Back to how we changed Create Your Program: We've added an 11th week. After meeting weekly for 10 weeks, we amp it up in the final week with more meetings and more support. Here's the Hard Ass Deadline: You have to submit the registration page for your pilot program in order to attend week 11. During week 11, you take steps to launch your program while we are together. You walk over the finish line with me and your cohort in real time. It's called Nausea Week. That's because getting visible and asking for help are really hard to do. And during nausea week, you'll be doing both of those things. It's worth it. When you actually launch your program, you're WAY closer to creating the business you want. And you get to start serving the people you made your program for. I would LOVE to have you join me for Create Your Program. We're enrolling right now and the last day to sign up is March 26th. We're already half full, so please register now. I can't wait to help you walk over the finish line and launch your signature program! Register at https://rebeltherapist.me/create Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/221

Lea had been helping people with self-compassion for years, but when she started using art journaling in her program, it came together in a more powerful way. Now she teaches art journaling in every session of her signature program, Everyday Self-Compassion. Once she integrated this practice into her program, she fell even more in love with her work. She's got a feeling of presence, joy and even goofiness. I deeply resonate with the need to feel like my full self as I do my work. How about you? You're about to hear how she transformed her program over the last several years, why she loves running it, and why she's got fewer therapy sessions in her schedule. Lea Seigen Shinraku is an artist, teacher, licensed therapist and founder of the Center for Creative Self-Compassion. Through her transformative program ~ Everyday Self-Compassion ~ she helps people who struggle with self-judgment connect with their innate creativity and joy, so they can feel more calm, connected, confident and playful in meeting the uncertainty of being alive. Here's some of what we talked about: Working with people who are finally ready to really learn how to do self-compassion An example of how Lea teaches art journaling How Lea designed her program Why including art in her program made her feel more joyful and present Creating a follow up program to Everyday Self-Compassion How she fills her program How she draws people to her work with free offers and events A tip from Annie (via Claire Pelletreau) on tracking your Meta ads Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/220

Do you ever dream of creating a program you'll love running over and over again? My guest Amy has run her program, Grief Medicine, at least 9 times now. Sometimes people wonder if focusing on grief brings her down, but you're going to hear why working with folks around their grief brings her inspiration and joy. As you listen to this conversation, one thing I want you to notice is how much Amy enjoys running this program and never seems to experience it as a grind. You'll hear how she created her program and how she continues to fill it after so many iterations. And by the way, it's mostly NOT through social media. Meet Amy Hyun Swart, a therapist, writer, children's book illustrator, and entrepreneur who has been leading grief gatherings, rituals, and courses since 2015, both in-person and online. She was introduced to the healing power of grief work by way of her own life experience, the traumatic loss of a parent at an early age. As a grief activist, Amy views grief as a critical ingredient to move through these collectively heartbreaking times without losing our shared sense of humanity. Here's some of what we talked about: Why her program went from 6 to 10 to 8 weeks long How grief is handled SO badly in our culture Co-hosting local grief gatherings Co-facilititating BIPOC Art of Grief courses Creating safety and connection in her program How she fills her program each time How her program has changed over time Why she's still feeling inspired by her program after 9 iterations Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/219

Today I'm gonna talk about one of the fastest and least stressful ways to start a group program. Let's say you're excited to run a signature program beyond your private practice, and you know you want it to be a small group. I relate. I LOVE running groups. Just a few reasons you might be in love with the idea of creating a group program: Participants benefit from each other's wisdom and feel less alone. You make more money. A sense of accountability is often bigger in a group. Groups give you energy. You're gifted at running groups. In a group, you get the richness of discussion. Let's imagine this is you. You've written up a sales page or registration page for your program. You've told everyone you know all about it. You've sent out emails to your small but growing email list. You've posted on instagram, in FB groups and anywhere else where it's appropriate to post. You've reached out to every single colleague who might make a referral. You've even reached out directly to a handful of people who you think would be great participants with a no pressure invitation to check it out. All your friends and colleagues are excited for you. You keep hearing: “People will want this!” You've got the outline ready. You've got the zoom link ready to share. The group calls are on your calendar. You've figured out how to accept payments. You are just SO ready. You offer a free consultation to anyone who has questions about the program and might want to sign up. And then the consultations start… You talk to one person who might be interested but not right now and is wondering when you'll run it again. You talk to another person who might be interested and will let you know. You talk to a third person who decides to sign up. Yay! You talk to a fourth person who says they want to do it but then realize they'll be away for the first 3 weeks of your program. And then…no more consultations. No more sign ups. And your start date is next week. Arg! Did you do something wrong? Is your group not meant to be? First of all, you are not alone. This has happened to me. This has happened to many people who run successful group programs now. This often happens when you're transitioning to a new kind of business. Even if you already had a full therapy practice, this can easily happen when you step into selling a program for the first time. Perhaps your mistake (if you made one) was to start with a group program. Perhaps you should have started with a 1:1 structured, niched and outcome based program. What?! We just talked about why you really prefer to run a group. But you STILL might be better off starting your pilot program 1:1 and then turning that offer into a group when your business is ready. Listen to the episode in which I break down why starting with a 1:1 structured, niched and outcome based program might be your fastest, least stressful way to create a group program. Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/218

Maybe you plan to double or significantly increase your income this year. If you're in private practice, you might look at the numbers and think you should double your sessions. And you totally could. People are out there looking for a therapist exactly like you. You might feel like adding sessions is your ONLY option to increase your revenue. That's not true. You've got other options. Check in and be honest with yourself. Will adding to your client load exhaust you or head you towards burnout? If you're already seeing 12 clients or 15 clients and you're starting to feel a bit of dread around sessions…do not double your sessions. On the other hand, If your'e excited about filling up your private practice further, follow that excitement and do it. Like I said, there are plenty of people who need a therapist like you. If you're like SO many therapists I know, you might have the time in your schedule to add more sessions, but you don't have the capacity in other ways. You don't have the energy, the self-care practices, attention or focus capacity to add even more sessions. I want to invite you to take a step back and look at your business model. Your business model is basically the way your business is set up to make you money. It's the combination of the things you get paid for. If your business model is built on 1:1 private practice sessions, and that isn't sustainable for you…you are in good company! There's nothing wrong with you. A full private practice might not be the right fit for your nervous system or your particular gifts. There are other business models. For years I thought I should be happy to have 25 or more therapy sessions a week. I had worked so hard to build that business. I was helping people and making good money so I thought I should just be grateful. But that business model wasn't right for me long-term. Then I started helping therapists build their private practices and I talked to tons of therapists privately about what really works for them. I discovered that LOTS of therapists don't find it sustainable to have 25 or more sessions each week. Like me, they built their private practices and then discovered it wasn't right for them. And they felt guilt or shame like they SHOULD want the full private practice they worked so hard for. They started to feel drained and overwhelmed. Either their work or their life outside of work or both began to suffer. Therapists often don't want to tell people they feel overwhelmed by a full private practice. So they think they're alone. If working in a different way at least some of the time would be a better fit for you and for your nervous system and your gifts, now is the time to start building a different business model. I know that it's really hard to carve out time and space to do something different. But it is SO important to start building a business you'll be more fulfilled by. The business model I help people create is based on running your own high-touch, niched, outcome-based signature program. If you're someone who loves teaching or facilitating and you'd love to really focus in on a topic you're passionate about, a signature program might be a great fit for you. If this resonates with you…but you're feeling overwhelmed by the idea of getting started…mostly because you're not even sure HOW to get started, do not let that stop you. I end up hearing from grads of my program that they just wish they had realized sooner that it was possible to grow a signature program. They are so relieved to have another income source and another place to direct their creative energy. They're happy that they no longer have all their eggs in the private practice basket. If you think you want to run a signature program, don't wait. Don't set yourself up to stumble along exhausted trying to build something AFTER you've burnt out. AND Don't just make little tweaks to a business model that is showing itself to be unsustainable for you. Start building your signature program. If you want to make a lot LESS mistakes and get there a LOT faster, with a step-by-step process, join me in Create Your Program. That's where I help a small group of therapists and healers to create signature programs they're really excited to run and then start selling them. This is exactly the process I needed when I was ready to build a business beyond private practice. Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/217

As this episode goes live, registration for Create Your Program is open. This is my process to help you create and launch your signature program beyond private practice. If you'd like to start growing another part of your business and make money in a new way, this is the best time to jump into Create Your Program. If you register by Sunday, January 7th, you're going to get lifetime access to a bonus training that has helped grads of CYP to fill their programs. Go to https://rebeltherapist.me/create now to register. I can't wait to see you inside. Today I want to talk about a few really important things that set apart the people who launch programs and succeed from those who wish they had. Here are 3 things people who succeed with their programs are WILLING to do. 1: Be willing to work through discomfort in your marketing. My last guest, Samantha Fox, is great at this. Just like most people who sign up to work with me, Samantha was really nervous about getting more visible and sharing her work with large audiences. Her program is called Unbox Your Sexuality. She helps women all over the world who are realizing they are not as straight as they thought they were. She had to work through her discomfort with being known as a queer thought leader. A few years later, she's so glad she did! She's constantly creating content, including videos, and sharing it with people all over the world. She's guested on about 20 podcasts and gotten comfortable using her voice in that way. She gets to hear from people she's never met about how much her work has changed their lives. So even though she is an introvert and she used to be afraid of visibility, she's now a very public leader who feels abundant love and energy for the people who find her from all over the planet. 2: Be willing to talk about your program with a lot of enthusiasm, and ask people to help you share it. Thing is something that the prior guest, Sonya Brewer, knows how to do! This one sounds obvious, but asking for help is NOT natural or easy for many folks who sign up to work with me. Sonya said that she shared the news about her program, badass boundaries for trauma survivors, with everyone she knows. She asked people: “Who do you have for me?” Sonya was able to do this because she knows her program is excellent. She sees the transformations her participants are able to make, and so she's willing to spread the word. Many people start to shrink or hide or even apologize when it's time to sell their programs. Even if this doesn't come easily to you, I know that you CAN learn to ask for referrals with enthusiasm! I used to shrink when it was time to talk about my work, and now I ask for referrals with ease. I no longer feel like hiding how awesome I know Create Your Program is. I've iterated it over 28 times. I've worked over 200 therapists through it. I've worked with a curriculum designer. We've got the best expert guest teachers who come in and teach particular vital things. CYP has grads like Sonya and Samantha and so many others who have created SO much value. Now when I talk about Create Your Program, I exude a lot of enthusiasm. I also don't care any longer if some folks don't like me because of my confidence. For every person who feels annoyed at my confidence, there are a few people who are encouraged to be a bit more confident themselves. So follow Sonya's lead and shout your program from the rooftops.

Samantha has shrunk her therapy practice way down and is no longer taking new therapy clients. She's delighted that her business has transitioned to mostly her coaching programs. She's found that she's got abundant energy and love for serving in this way. AND…Samantha has discovered that even the free stuff she provides on social media and on her site helps many queer women live truer lives. That's just ONE of the ways that the work she's doing now is a much better fit for her life than a full time therapy practice was. As a sexuality coach, Samantha Fox works with women worldwide to support them as they discover that they are not as straight as they might have thought. She's developed an experiential method called Unbox Your Sexuality that creates a monumental transformation. The method helps women in unpacking, unlearning, and relearning schemas and narratives that we carry with us due to being born into a patriarchal society. Here's some of what we talked about: Why Samantha is happy she's shrunk her therapy practice and transitioned her business mostly to coaching Choosing the niche of women who are curious and coming out as queer Creating her signature program: Unbox Your Sexuality Why she feels great about being visible in her work (even though she used to be afraid) How she fills her program using podcast guesting How she creates and repurposes her videos and the apps she recommends Creating lead magnets that attract the right people Dealing with trolls on social media How Rebel Therapist helped her build this program Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/215

We're sharing one of our favorite episodes as an encore this week. How do you create and fill a group program? How do you navigate a full therapy practice at the same time? We're about to go behind the scenes and find out exactly how my guest has done it. Meet Sonya Brewer, a trauma specialist and relationship expert who specializes in creative life and relationship design for overachieving trauma survivors and their partners. She created Badass Boundaries, a 12-week group mentorship program for overachieving trauma survivors. Here's some of what we talked about: Sonya's framework to help trauma survivors transform their relationship to boundaries Creating Badass Boundaries, her 12-week group mentorship program for overachieving trauma survivors How Sonya helps people befriend their bodies as they do boundary work The benefits of offering 1:1 asynchronous coaching in the program How she filled her program Sonya's advice about running valuable and joyful free workshops (engage with your participants!) How and why Sonya runs her discovery calls Navigating building this program while also running a full private practice Leaning what works for her as a socially motivated person, including having a coach and scheduling co-working sessions Her weekly planning ritual Why she chose “mentor” as the name for her role in this program rather than “coach” The anxiety provoking process of keeping her two businesses separate Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/214

How can you create a business if you're a disruptor in your field? If you've got a unique voice and you're finding yourself pushing back against most others in your field, that could actually be a wonderful thing for your business. Today's guest has carved out an important space right at the intersection of the Body Liberation and Pro-Aging movements. And she's pretty much on her own as a leader there. Meet Deb Benfield, a Nutrition and Body Relationship Coach with over 35 years of experience working with women to heal their relationships with food, eating and their bodies. You'll hear why Deb created a program for women in mid-life and beyond, how she designed her program and grew her audience, and what works to fill her program. Here's some of what we talked about: Why she's alone at intersection of the Pro-Aging and Body Liberation movements How she designed her program Streamlining her program and leaving more room for integration How she grounds herself when stepping into her work Pivoting her niche and feeling the stress of losing some audience members (but gaining others) Where most of her participants find her How she collaborates with other creators Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/213

I'm grateful to be running a tiny and simple business right now. I have no plans to grow this business up to 7 figures. I was a bit hesitant to tell you that! I feel some fear that you won't think I'm a badass, or you'll think I have upper limit problems or limited beliefs. Maybe you won't want to hire me because I'm not as ambitious as you hoped. Or if you're my friend who runs a larger and more complicated business, maybe you'll think I'm judging you when you hear what I have to say about running a tiny business. (I'm not. I promise!) But since I have the desire to be radically honest and I think this serves you, I'm sharing it anyway. I trust you to identify the parts of this that fit for you and the parts that don't. Note: I'm talking about service based businesses, because that's what I know best. Capitalism tends to point us towards one vision of what it means to be a successful business owner. And that's being a business owner who always makes and does MORE. Capitalism tends to pull us AWAY from noticing when we have enough, or even considering what enough might be. Us feeling enoughness or satisfaction is NOT helpful to capitalism. Here's the default vision of a successful business owner: They've got a company bringing in revenue of 7 figures or more. They've hired a big team. They expand their business to serve more people year over year. These numbers are all as big as possible: total revenue, number of team members, number of followers, and number of people served. This person might be a coach who runs a course or membership with hundreds or thousands of members at a time. Perhaps they also have many many other offers at many price points. But when I look around at my colleagues and friends who are having a good time and feeling fairly stable financially, I tend to see a people with tiny and simple businesses. Here's the vision of that (tiny) business owner: They've got a tiny team, like zero or one employees. They've got smaller revenue, like under 500k, but they get to keep more than half of that money. Their tech is simple. They don't have much overhead. They have one or two high-touch offers. Sometimes people come work with me hoping to create huge empires. I'm delighted to help them because the first phase in creating an empire should be to create a really solid small business. And that is what I help with. When you start with a tiny, strong and simple business, you focus on creating value. And that's where every business needs to start. Listen to the episode to hear 2 stories of folks who scaled big, hated it, and decided to simplify and shrink their businesses How I keep Rebel Therapist simple How you can still serve more people with a tiny business Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/212

How do you discover the work you're meant to create? Today's episode is a master class on how to allow the collective and your spirit to pull you in that direction. Judy Hu created a framework for boundary healing. Then she wrote a bestselling book: The Boundary Revolution: Decolonize Your Relationships and Discover A New Path To Joy. She's a Licensed Mental Health Counselor turned Boundary Coach based in Massachusetts. You'll hear the intensely personal and brave process Judy went through to develop and share her work. Here's some of what we talked about: Creating a group program for BIPoC folks around boundaries in summer of 2020 Discovering that work can be fun, exciting and enjoyable Bringing together many lineages to create her method Hiring a social media team to get more visible Losing relationships as she stepped into being unapologetically herself Writing her book and changing the topic halfway through the first draft Why it's terrifying to launch her book How she's struggling and growing with the tech and administrative parts of running her business Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/211

I got this question recently from someone getting ready to expand their business to beyond private practice. They want to start offering a non-therapy program within their own business. “Should I create my own program from scratch, or should I just deliver an established method from a well-known person?” For example, although it's not the example this person gave: Brene Brown's Dare To Lead method. Here's my answer without knowing any of the particulars. First of all…nothing is new under the sun. Whatever program you offer will be influenced by your learning lineages and your mentors… So the REAL question is: will you create something new by bringing together many influences, giving them all credit, and blending them in a unique way? OR Will you primarily use one established method from a mentor and jump through the hoops of getting that license or certification or purchasing that curriculum, so that you can use it in its entirety and put their name on it? To figure this out, ask yourself: What is the truest, most high quality and aligned offering you can make right now? Which choice will be of the highest service to your participants? A good reason to use someone else's method is that you feel clear that it is the most aligned choice. A misguided reason to use someone else's method is that you think it will be easier to create and sell it. Since you're creating this program within your business, you will likely be working just as hard with either choice. Whether you sell someone else's method or create your own, you will… Identify who it's for (your niche) Create or adapt the program Do messaging and marketing work to bring in participants In the business I'm running now, I've created my own method while giving a ton of credit to the people I've learn from. You can't get through my program without hearing about Tara McMullin, the business strategist who has had the biggest influence on me. And you hear about many other folks whose influences are woven into my programs. At this point I'm so hooked on creating my own processes and weaving together many influences, I can't imagine I'll ever teach someone else's entire method ever again. But once I did! In this week's episode, I share a story about running a couples workshop using someone else's method with permission. Listen to learn from my experience so you can skip my mistakes. Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/210

Even if you already work with the niche you want to work with in your private practice, you might ALSO love having an innovative signature program as an additional way to serve them. Danika Maddocks is a parent coach who's passionate about supporting parents of gifted and twice-exceptional kids. She's been partnering with bright kids and their families for over a dozen years as a teacher and therapist. You're going to hear why she created a signature program for twice exceptional kids, and you'll hear how she grows her business without becoming a full-time marketer. Here's some of what we talked about: Why she wanted to create a group program for parents of twice exceptional kids (kids who are both gifted AND neurodivergent) How she designed her 8-week program Using asynchronous coaching between live calls The simple and effective ways she grows an engaged audience and gets referrals The system she uses to sell her program each time she launches Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/209

“Has it been extra challenging to sell group programs lately?” “How do I figure out what niche to choose and what program to create?” “When is it the right time for Facebook or Instagram ads?” I ran a free and open coaching call recently for everyone in our audience, including podcast listeners, clients, and email subscribers. A record number of folks submitted questions, and I spent over an hour riffing on a bunch of them. We had such a great response from the attendees that I decided to share the entire call recording with you. You'll hear my answers to the questions above and more, including: My program isn't selling. Is it priced too high? How do I take a break from my business for a big life circumstance? Is it OK to post or send emails sporadically? Or should I do it consistently or not at all? How much of an expert do I have to be in my topic area? How much of an ROI do you get from social media? Is it a good idea to start a program with a friend? Do I have to get my private practice stable before I start a program? What if some things in my program were influenced by the work of others? How do I carve out time for following through with creative ideas if I'm overwhelmed and exhausted by my caseload? Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/208

Can you REALLY make great money running a program that you love and that's based on what you do best? Rebecca Lee does. And she's got a year-long waitlist. As a social worker and supervisor for social workers, she felt a pull to create something totally different, something that wouldn't fit into the box of supervision or therapy or even coaching as we know it. At first, she struggled with giving herself permission to do it. In this episode, you'll hear how she created something that only she could create and why her family's farm is part of it. If you've wondered if your idea is too out there, this is going to give you a big dose of permission to create your program. Rebecca Lee is a Clinical Supervisor and Eco therapist who works with therapists, wellness professionals and healers to tap into their own rhythm, health and vision so they can create an impactful and joyful professional lives for themselves. Her work is centered around how we can re-connect with our authentic landscape through social justice, anti-oppression, seasonal landscape relationship, Yoga and Ayerveda practices. Here's some of what we talked about: Creating a group program for social workers and other givers who want to find a new way of working and living Helping her participants step into their natural rhythms and give themselves permission to do what they really want to How she built the year-long program, Becoming Home and her other program, Supervision Circle Running in-person retreats on her family farm Providing asynchronous 1:1 support in her programs Using mostly word-of-mouth to fill her programs with a year-long waitlist! Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/207

In the last episode of Rebel Therapist Podcast, talked to Claire Pelletreau about switching roles with her husband so that she's no longer the default parent. That change made a REALLY big difference in her business. Because she made that change she's able to take on big projects, and make more money. And that got me thinking about what boundaries help me take on the big stuff that really makes me happy, makes a big impact and sometimes makes my business lots of money. In that exploration I realized that I go through two steps when I'm creating a new boundary: I realize that I need the boundary. I decide I'm going to insist on protecting that boundary. Until I've really made the decision that I'm going to insist on the boundary, it's pretty hopeless. TRYING to hold a boundary before I've fully decided doesn't do it. That's a half-assed boundary. In this episode I walk through a couple of examples of boundaries I've created recently that are helping increase my joy and capacity. Both of these are about finally having my own home office. This episode is NOT about me giving you advice that you need to a quiet home office too…or that you have to do what Claire did and switch roles with your spouse. I don't know what you need or what's possible for you right now. Rather, it's about each of us figuring out what we want and need, and then when we can, claiming those boundaries for ourselves. Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/206

It's really fucking hard to be a mother entrepreneur with young kids, especially if you're the default or primary parent. My guest this week has a robust business and she makes good money. She realized last year that she was afraid to take on big projects in her business because as the primary parent of 2 young kids, she didn't consistently have the capacity she'd need to carry them through. She and her husband decided to switch roles. In this conversation she talks about what's changed since they made that switch. We also talk about how we each navigate the complicated and ever changing terrain of co-parenting and doing life with our spouses. Claire Pelletreau is a Facebook and Instagram ads expert and conversion optimization expert. Her mission is to actually help people see a return on the money they're putting into the Zuckerberg machine without the expensive help of an outside ad consultant. Claire is also the host of The Get Paid Podcast where she asks her guests everything about their businesses, including how much they charge - and how much they earn. Annie was a guest in May of 2022. She's also my coach. Here's some of what we talked about: The conversation with her husband that led to switching roles The resentment Claire used to feel about holding the family to-do list Dealing with the cultural expectations of what a mother is supposed to do How she feels different from most moms she meets The joy of sometimes traveling alone Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/205

  I used to ask every podcast guest: “What productivity or time management hacks do you use as an entrepreneur?” I've stopped asking that. I'm no longer lit up by trying to make my habits atomic or maximize my time. The work of Tricia Hersey, Ebony Janice Moore, Tara McMullin and others has helped me (along with everyone I know) to question whether productivity is the measure to focus on and strive for. We're here to heal, play, love and rest and BE, and when we do more of those things, we make it more possible to create the world we want. When we're talking about running a small business, which is my lane, I find that to create something new like a new business or a new program, we need something different than productivity or time management. We need to nurture our creative energy. How do I know time management and productivity alone are not the answer? When suddenly given a huge amount of time, we don't usually make as much progress as we had hoped to. We might use that time scrolling or spinning our wheels. Lots of folks discovered this during lock down. So when a person asks me how many hours a week it takes to build a program beyond private practice, I could say…at least 3, better 5, and better yet 10. But really, I find that nurturing your creative energy for an entrepreneurial project is more important than how many hours you give it. Side note for folks running private practices: Running a private practice might be a bit different… It's a terrible idea, and I don't recommend it, but you may have noticed that you CAN run a private practice with scraps of energy, at least for a while. You probably know how to scrape together those scraps or energy to show up for your clients. Here's what Katherine Eastlake says. She runs a private practice and has a program for therapists wanting to deepen embodied practice. “I can be fairly dysregulated and settle quickly when a client walks into my room/pops up on Zoom. But when I am writing my newsletter or designing a training, I feel like I need more time and space to ground myself and orient to the process. It is a different energy with different requirements of my mind and body.” To move beyond private practice and create something new, like a signature program, you can't just add time and productivity hacks. Pomodoro timers and to-do lists are not going to get you there. You need to access your creative energy, and that means devoting yourself to replenishing that energy. Here are five ways I nurture my creative energy:      1. Devote myself to the things that make me feel expansive. I get creative energy when I devote myself to all the things that make me feel more expansive. I need to play, feeling my feelings, talk to people who inspire me, listen to podcasts and music that move me, go on walks, sing, and dance.       2. Set deadlines that people know about. There's a sweet spot for each of us between having deadlines and having the freedom to move at our own pace. I crave more freedom when I'm facing too many deadlines, but when completely lack deadlines, I'm not creating a lot. Even this episode would not necessarily be here if I had no deadline for it. I used to be so internally motivated that I could set my own deadlines that no one knew about and I'd meet them. Um…hypervigilant much? You spotted that? Yes I was. Now I find that I need to share my deadlines with others.      3. Make room for discomfort in the creative process. Expect really itchy moments when you have to keep trying/writing/talking/moving your pen so that the work actually happens. Expect a 3 hour task to take 10 hours sometimes. Expect to feel like you can't do this and know that doesn't mean you can't do this. Expect to feel like leaving. Let your frustration tolerance build. All of that discomfort is part of opening up to creative energy.      4. Avoid certain things. In order to access creative energy, I avoid… Social media Comparison Expecting myself to get other things done as much or as well New tech platforms or tools      5. Find or build a community so we're mutually supporting each other in accessing our creative energy. Build or find a Community of other creators who commit to creating when the world wouldn't say they have to. Entrepreneurs are a good bet because they've signed up for the tricky thing you've signed up for: They're creating what they want to create AND they're finding a way to make good money with it. That's a different challenge than creating only for the sake of creating. And speaking of community, I have an assignment ready for you, if you choose to accept it. Choose someone you trust who believes in you and will give you a loving kick in the pants and send them an email. Here's your loose script: “I'm planning on doing something brave. (Here's what it is). I may try to talk myself out of it. Will you please support me and encourage me in doing it?” Please bcc me if you like at info@coachingwithannie.com. I'd LOVE to know that you did this assignment. Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/204

Show Notes: I love to help you make more money. AND…For some of you, the biggest reasons you have for creating your own signature programs are not financial. You want to create programs to tap into your purpose, to express your love for your communities, to experience and share joy, to resist oppressive forces, and on and on. Our guest created a program for his community because he loves his community. Dr. Damon Constantinides is a trans and queer sex coach, trainer, and writer offering services nationally. He is trained as a clinical social worker, sex therapist, and sexuality educator. He created The Trans Masc Sexual Pleasure Group Coaching Program and he's recently launched the second cohort. In this conversation he shares how he created the program, how he brings in participants, and how he's finding the energy and time to make it all happen in addition to running his private practice. Here's some of what we talked about: Why creating this program was a reaction to attacks on trans folks Unhooking his ego from the business numbers How he makes his program accessible Specific ways he created safety for the participants and the group How he created the outline for the program and also keeps it flexible Marketing his program in a way that feels authentic and fun Working with folks from all over the US and beyond Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/203

Everyone is scared to launch their first program. Someone asked recently: what if I'm REALLY scared to launch my program. Like…what if there are powerful individuals and structures out there who might want to do me harm? What if putting myself out there associated with this work might actually be dangerous to me or my family? GREAT question. Let's agree NOT to give it the usual online marketing answer: “Just do the mindset work.” This visibility stuff comes up for ALL of us. I have it. Everyone I've ever worked with has had work come up around their childhood, their upper limits, self esteem, or imposter syndrome. We all need and deserve to do some important work around getting visible, using our voices, and taking up space. AND…it's gaslighting to say it's the same for everyone. When you are deciding to get more visible and you've got a marginalized identity or you're sharing messages that oppose our power structures, your visibility work is not just about getting out of your own way. For example, if you're speaking out against anti-black racism or you're talking about fat liberation or trans liberation, you're being brave in a significant ADDITIONAL way. My niche is not as risky. I'm a business coach & strategist. Yes, I'm queer and I'm a woman. AND I have lots of privilege: having money, being white, being cis-gendered… and on and on. Even with all of that privilege, I absolutely need and deserve to have colleagues I can get really vulnerable with and feel through my own visibility and exposure fears. We all do. In terms of this question: “What should I do if I'm REALLY afraid to launch my program? Should I switch niches? Should I move forward?” I do not have the right answer for you. I don't think there is one. Here are a couple things I'm pretty sure I DO know so that you can figure out your path. ONE: Find people who really understand what you have at stake and can support you emotionally and spiritually. If you're part of a marginalized group and/or if your work is related to opposing a power structure, you cannot do this alone. What if those people who you need to go to for support as an entrepreneur are also afraid? That doesn't mean that they can't support you and that you can't support them. We need to give up on the idea that we must be totally through the woods before we can help others. It's just not true. We can actually have mutual support while we're figuring this stuff out. Asking for help might mean saying: “Please stay on the phone with me while I work through what to do in this scary moment.” Or “Please sit on my couch while I press send on this email.” TWO: Don't rush through your fear. Feel the feelings that are coming up, and let the fear speak. Don't rush it to go away. Fear isn't the only force making decisions, but you can listen to it and allow it to have a seat at the table. I've got a great example coming up on the podcast. Next time we'll be hearing from Dr. Damon Constantinides. He created a Trans Masc Sexual Pleasure group. That's brave. Trans folks are always under attack, and especially right now. Damon talks in the episode about his decisions about creating his program and making his work visible. Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/202

You ever wonder what's going on with the personal finances of entrepreneurs? Like are they all just born wealthy? How are they taking these risks and making these investments to grow these businesses? My guest today is going to tell you how in a one year period she was able to clear $25,000 of credit card debt and save $55,000 for a house. She's gonna really get into the nitty gritty of it. And no, she didn't grow up wealthy. Meet Podge Thomas, a Notion Consultant and People Ops Specialist. She works with small business owners to build operational infrastructure through the lens of liberation and justice. One of the businesses she has helped a ton is Rebel Therapist and I am proud to call Podge a friend. Here's some of what we talked about: Podge's history of spending money as soon as she had it Identifying the ways she was getting in the way of her goals Finding a path forward financially with her wife Investing in working with a financial coach Growing up without money Unhooking her ability to spend money from her sense of worthiness The step by step plan Podge used to change her finances Using “envelope saving” to plan and track her finances How her new frugal mindset impacts her business How she decides what to invest her business dollars on How she and her wife chose a fixer upper and are fixing it up with their own 4 hands. Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/201  

I mentioned in episode 196: 332K Of Revenue With Over 2 Months Off that I've been engaging in some profound trauma healing, and that's changed the way I experience my business. I've heard from many of you that you'd like to hear more. This episode is all about how trauma healing has been changing just about everything about how I experience my work. Although I avoid binaries, I talk about the difference between the old Annie (less healed) and the new Annie (more healed). A few highlights: I've stopped trying to manage/control my participants' experiences as a way to feel safe. I still get anxious in moments, but I no longer identify myself as a constantly anxious person. I'm more straightforward with my participants and tell them the truth about what I see in their businesses right away. (And they can handle it!) I'm more patient with the process my participants go through as they build their businesses. I embrace the beautiful nuance you each bring to your work. I'm asking for help when I'm struggling, rather than reporting when I've got it all figured out. I'm more transparent about what's going on in my own business and life, rather than trying to make everything seem perfect. Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/200

You want to run a group program? One common question from my participants is: “What skills do I need to learn in order to facilitate a group really well?” I've got someone here on the pod to share her unique process of leading large groups in an expansive, liberated and trauma informed way. Introducing Tracy Gantlin-Monroy. Tracy Gantlin Monroy is a licensed professional counselor and resident therapist at Grace Community Counseling & Social Services in Atlanta, Georgia. She is a brain-wise, body therapist passionate about trauma healing. Tracy is the first Black female Brainspotting trainer in the world having been mentored by Dr. David Grand, founder & Developer of Brainspotting. Tracy also runs healing retreats for Black women. Her attendees call Tracy engaging, loving and caring, and they talk about feeling safe in her groups even when they don't USUALLY feel safe in groups. You're about to hear how she does it. You'll hear how she prepares for trainings, holds people as an empath, and teaches at the speed of safety. Here's some of what we talked about: How Tracy brings her authentic energy and intentionality to public speaking The ritual she goes through every time she presents a three-day training How she creates safety and dismantles power dynamics in the entire large group How she calls participants in when they step in it or cause harm Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/199

I got a message from one of the grads of Create Your Program recently saying that she was in the middle of launching her program. She said that launching was both a soul expanding and soul draining experience. I want to talk about some ways to protect and take care of your soul while you're launching your program. First I'll define “launch”: The time when registration is open for a time limited with a deadline, and the things you do to promote your program during that time. When we're launching, we're opening ourselves up to a lot of different feelings and voices, both internal and external. Some of these feelings and voices can be really painful. Scarcity, shame, and fear can come in. We might have thoughts like : ”Who am I to offer this?” “What if no one signs up?” “I'm annoying people.” Some of these feelings and voices are exciting. You might feel joy that you're offering a wonderful program, and excitement that people are asking questions and signing up. You might have fun talking about your program and getting to run a free event. You might feel abundance as people sign up and as you give great stuff away. I've found that I need to manage my energy and feelings during a launch. Here are some things that work for me and lots of my clients: Allow yourself to feel your feelings and don't tell yourself that you're doing something wrong if you feel stressed. That only adds judgement to stress. And at the same time… Remember that you are not your launch. Say it to yourself. I am not my business and I am certainly not my launch. Don't compare the inside of your launch to the outside of other people's launches. The tough moments of a launch are usually not visible. Don't count on this one launch to pay the bills. See if you can set up your business so that it doesn't live and die by this one launch financially. If you get less people than you hoped, you can be disappointed, but don't let that destroy your finances. Track and know your numbers. Some good numbers to track from launch to launch are: The number of people on your email list at the start of your launch The number of people on your waitlist when you open registration (if you've got one) The number of people who signed up for your free event during the launch The number of people who attended your free event The number of people who viewed your sales page during your launch When you've got that data, you can compare it from launch to launch and the process will feel less like a mystery. Plan your launch at least a month ahead of time. Create a calendar of what you will do to promote your program. Plan to send more emails than you are probably comfortable with. (Remember that you're sending these to the people who are interested in your program. Tailor your launch experience for the people who are most interested in your program, not the people most likely to unsubscribe from your list.) Pre-schedule those emails and do everything you can ahead of time so you're not taking action from a pressured place during your launch. Stick to your plan. Don't panic and remove things from your launch calendar. Don't panic and add a bunch of things. Repeat your launch. You don't need to rewrite every single email from scratch. You don't need to create a totally new free event. Make small tweaks each time you launch rather than exhausting yourself with a totally new plan each time. Create a document where you place your intentions. Grab a piece of paper and a pen. Write down what you most want for your participants, What you'll be creating for them, how you want them to feel as they go through your program, and any other intentions you'd like to set. Then create a blank spot for each participant you'd like to have in the program. Draw an empty oval or rectangle for each one. As they sign up, fill in their names. This is just for your own private use. It's a physical place to represent your launch and your program. Remember that you don't know how your launch went til it's over. Once I spent most of a 2-week launch feeling bummed out because my program wasn't filling. Then it totally filled in the final 48 hours. I realized I'd never get that time back. Now I return to that memory when I start to think I know how a launch is going before it's over. Set your schedule in a way that will support you during your launch. Maybe that means working less during your launch because you expect to feel distracted. Tell your loved ones how to support you during your launch. This might mean: “Remind me that I am not my launch. Remind me that I don't know how it went until it's over.” Give yourself a big dose of credit at the end of your launch for doing the things you decided to do, NOT just for the results. If your launch has ended and your program didn't fill, go listen to episode 162: When Your Program Doesn't Fill. Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/198

Heidi Savell is a therapist and polyamory coach. She helps those newish to polyamory find more steadiness and fulfillment in their relationships. You're about to hear about the business she's created beyond her therapy practice, how she built it and why she loves running her program. Heidi's giving us a masterclass on using Tiktok and Instagram to move the needle on your business. She gets 40-80 people per month from Tiktok and IG over to her email list. 10 out of 12 of her last participants came from those platforms. You'll hear exactly how she's created those referrals. As Heidi points out, she is not working to become an influencer, and her main goal is NOT to grow her Tiktok or IG following. Rather, she's an educator, and she uses these social media platforms to help people and to grow her business. Her primary work happens in her program, not on social media. You'll hear Heidi and I talk about why I use social media very little and she uses it quite a lot but how we are running similar businesses in a fundamental way. You'll also hear how Heidi developed her voice and her message by using it, how she deals with critics, and how she finds the right level of vulnerability for online sharing. Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/197