If you are new to starting a private practice, or you’ve been in business for years and still missing that magic piece to help you fill your practice, then you are not going to want to miss this FREE call! Join me on Tuesday, April 27th at 8:30-9:30pm EST as I share my insider strategies on how to niche and fill your practice.

I’ll reveal:

• The top 7 reasons why people don’t niche. Yes, you are sabotaging your practice and you may not even understand why. Here I reveal to you why therapists don’t niche and how this DRAMATICALLY impacts your business and keeps you from serving many (many) more clients, making a bigger impact, and creating more income. I’ll also share the 5 reasons you must niche!
• The 5 niches that clients are looking for help with. These are the trends of what clients are seeking and if you position yourself as an expert in one of these niches expect lucrative and rewarding results
• Which niches may not be such a good idea if you are looking to create a fee-for-service practice. If you are working with these clients you may feel rewarded, but you may not see much in your wallet.
• How to know if your niche is a bomb. There is a clear warning that your niche (or lack thereof) is not working. If you ignore this it may be detrimental to your business.
• The 7 steps to creating an authentic and profitable niche using my Niche and Fill My Practice Signature System (you’ll get the insider secrets on creating a powerful niche,you’ll wish you had when you first started your practice).

Sign up here.

Following his WTCI Interview, Buck Black, LCSW writes about doing therapy with truckers—what’s different, what’s the same, and how it works.

Truckers have their own community.  The average person probably doesn’t think about this community or even know it exists.  However, its important to remember that truckers are responsible for bring us practically everything we own, as well as making our economy move. However, there is little support for truck drivers and their families (see my recent article).

Given the nature of the life of the trucker, I see depression and family problems as the two most common issues truckers address in their coaching sessions with me.  Just think, you sit in isolation all day long (not just 8 hours, but all day long).  Then you repeat this procedure for several consecutive days, if not weeks.  Eventually, you are able to return home and spend just a few days with your family.

There are many disagreements between truckers and their spouses.  This is often caused as a result of the trucker essentially being an absent parent and doing his/her best to help parent from hundred or thousands of miles away.  Also, given that the trucker has contact with friends and family over the phone and occasionally Skype, there are often plenty of instances of miscommunication that result in arguments.  This type of long distance relationship is often prone to miscommunication because the phone and even Skype often does not convey true feelings and body language.

Truckers have a lot of time to think.  If you ask them, most will tell you that they have too much time to think.  If something at home is not going well, they have hours on end to dwell on it while driving.  This is one of the bigger dangers of the job the average person does not recognize.  I often help drivers with simple CBT techniques for thought stopping and distraction.  Given all the opportunity for rumination, there are many drivers that let their thoughts turn into worry and anger.  Again, I often help them use CBT techniques to address these issues.

How it works:  Clients typically find me via facebook, twitter, OOIDA, and word of mouth.  If you search “Therapy for Truckers,” you will find my website.  However, truckers often do not think of doing this.

The screening process is a must given that I work with clients at a distance.  I rely on the assessment form clients initially fill out.  This explains to the client that this service is not for them if they are homicidal or suicidal and that emergency services are not provided.  If there is a need for this service, then face to face therapy is required.  Of course, I will help a client if they happen to have an emergency.  However, I will not enter into a relationship with a client if I feel they will likely have emergencies.  Also, if I have the feeling that I will worry about the person’s wellbeing after I hang up, I will advise them that they need more intensive face-to-face therapy.  Ultimately, the telephone or Skype is the tool I use to screen the client to see if they are appropriate for distant services.

Amazingly, I have found that building rapport on Skype is about the same as in the office.  I think rapport happens so easily because clients come to me wanting to use the technology.  I am not trying to talk someone into using Skype.  If the person were not comfortable with the technology, then there would probably be more difficulty building rapport.  I must point out there are drivers who do not trust that I am a legitimate therapist.  I’ve had a driver call me up and say, “I don’t trust you people,” and continue to tell me his problems.  I listened to him for 20 minutes; he told me that it really helped to get his problems off his chest.  When I asked him to become a client, he said, “No offense, but I don’t believe in your profession.”  I invited him to call back and become a client if he ever felt the need.  So far, I’m still waiting!  There continues to be a great deal of stigma in the mental health field in general and even more specifically with truckers.

The successes that stand out on my mind are couples coaching sessions with a trucker.  I do this via conference call.  Other than using the telephone, it turns into a standard couples session. This is the time that issues can be addressed and I can help the couple with communication skills that will allow them to become much closer and limit their arguing.  This is often an opportunity for the couple to express feelings that they have never shared with one another.  It is this type of work that makes me feel that I really am helping.

Find Buck Black, LCSW online at TruckerTherapy.com and BuckBlack.com.

Have a practice niche you’d like to write about?  Great!  Get started with an email to WTCI.

Four Switches to Make to Get a Cash Based Practice

Deah Curry, PhD

Switch #1 ~ Speak Marketing

Most health care practitioners speak clinician-ese. This doesn’t connect with people who are seeking help, and may in fact be intimidating to them, creating a counterproductive barrier that actually drives them away. To attract a cash paying clientele you must learn to speak the language of marketing.

• Talk directly to an ideal client type. Use second person tense.
• Talk about them, not about you.
• Save all information about your credentials for your About Me website page.
• Talk about their negative experience of their problem, using phrasing they would use.
• Talk about the outcome they want from you, using phrasing they would use.
• Talk about these things in the emotional language of a 5-7 year old.
• Use direct, concrete, specific descriptions of what their suffering does and/or prevents.
• Use direct, concrete, specific descriptions of the results they are desperate for, and will pay for.

Switch #2 ~ Niche Yourself

Niche marketing is NOT the same as limiting the scope of your practice. It will not prevent people outside your niche from wanting to work with you. This is one of the most difficult concepts for clinicians to understand, and one of the most crucial mindset switches you must make. Niche marketing is only about putting a bright spotlight on you. It is not about how you practice or who you accept as a client.

Niche marketing positions you as a specialist or expert. Marketing psychology shows that people naturally make the intuitive leap from understanding that you excel at a particular problem, to assuming that you must also be good at other problems. To establish your niche you must:

• Focus on one ideal client type in clear, concrete, specific language.
• Decide what problem they have, and describe it in clear, concrete, specific language.
• Make that “problem” what you most enjoy helping solve, heal, or change.
• Be confident about the outcome you can help people achieve, in clear, concrete, specific language.
• Exude trust and rapport in all marketing efforts.
• Resist watering down your niche with too many variations and options.
• Be focused and consistent in marketing to your niche in multiple venues.
• Plan multiple ways to market to your niche (see reverse for some ideas).
• Continually refine your language to make it even more specific and emotion-connecting.
• Give your marketing efforts enough time to bear fruit – usually 6-12 months.

Switch #3 ~ Be Persistent

Marketing is an ongoing endeavor. It is a necessary part of running a successful business. Just like bookkeeping, marketing needs to be done on a continual basis. Having a marketing plan helps you be focused and consistent in your efforts, rather than hit and miss. Working your plan ensures that your efforts are timely in connecting with the felt-need of your ideal clients, and also guarantees that you don’t miss advertising deadlines. When you don’t have a plan, or aren’t continually working your plan, it’s difficult to establish a steady stream of cash-paying clients. Persistence in niche marketing might include:

• Contracting to run advertising for 6-12 months in monthly publications.
• Running advertising for 9-16 weeks in weekly publications.
• Having a signature talk and presenting it where your ideal clients go for information.
• Having a website with a well maintained blog.
• Producing a patient education ezine on a monthly or quarterly basis.
• Networking with potential referral sources, such as doctors and other allied professionals.
• Getting hard copies of your ezine on display in others’ offices.
• Teaching a community education workshop on a regular basis.
• Keeping track of what type of marketing works well for you and do more of that.
• Keeping track of how your competition does their marketing and learn from that.
• Keeping track of what type of marketing does not feel natural or energizing for you, and stop that.
• Making appointments with yourself to work on your marketing plan, and keeping them.
• Using half a day a week for marketing when you have all the clients you want.
• Using 2 hours a day for marketing until you have all the clients you want.

Switch #4 ~ Invest in a Sticky Website

A sticky website not only makes visitors want to stay and read more, but return time and again because there is so much of value, or because there is new information posted on a frequent (meaning, weekly) basis. Research shows that when a website isn’t sticky, visitors click away within 3-10 seconds. You have only that long to connect, establish rapport, and stimulate the desire to know more.

Research also shows that 98 million adults use the internet to search for health care services each year. NAMI reports that mental health sites are one of the top 5 searched for sites. That’s good and bad news – good because it makes the relatively inexpensive venture of having a website a good investment, but bad in that your competition likely has one too. There’s more pressure than ever to make your website really do its job for you in terms of attracting potential clients and converting them to appointment-makers.

Website Do’s

• Speak marketing (see Switch #1).

• Speak to your niche (see Switch #2).

• Engage visitors with something interactive (leaving blog comments, ezine sign up, take a quiz, etc).

• Give away free tips in exchange for getting their email address (creates a pool of prospects).

• Repeatedly insert a call to action (a suggestion to call for an appointment).

Website Don’ts

• Link to others’ websites – it encourages people to wander off and not call for appointment.

• Extol your own virtues except on your bio page – exception: do say I can help.

• Write in the third person as if you are writing a book report in high school — it’s cold and impersonal.

• Use professional jargon – it’s confusing, meaningless, distancing, and intimidating.

Find Deah Curry online at thenohypementor.com and on the No Hype Marketing Mentor Blog.