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Foreign welcome to Ask Allison. Y' all ask the questions about having a fun and thriving practice and I answer them. We have a worksheet for you today so you can bring this answer into your life. You can Access that@AbundancePracticeBuilding.com links where you'll also be able to ask any questions you have for Ask Allison. If you want more support, we've got some free trainings in there too. If you can't get enough Ask Allison, check out our YouTube channel for our entire Ask Allison library. Hello and welcome back to Ask Allison. Here's today's question. I thought getting clients would be easier than this. What am I doing wrong? Ugh, this question hurts my soul. Before I answer it, I would like to thank TherapyNotes for sponsoring Ask Allison. I've talked about them for years. I know their features by heart. You probably do too. But that's not what truly sets them apart as much as the fact that they genuinely care about your experience. It's not just about troubleshooting. They actively implement user suggested features like Therapy Search, a smooth super bill process, clinical outcome tracking, and their AI feature, therapy fuel. Everyone at TherapyNotes believes in the product and wants you to love it too. Plus, and this is important, they're independently owned, which means no venture capital and no pressure to prioritize investors over their customers. This independence allows them to keep prices fair, focused, focus on innovation, and prioritize customer experience. With over a hundred thousand therapists already on board, they've proven you don't have to compromise success for quality. If you're ready to see for yourself, try Therapy Notes, free for two months with the code abundant@therapynotes.com okay, so first off, if that's you, please know that you're not alone. I know how discouraging it can feel to put your heart and your soul and your student loan debt into becoming a therapist and then open the doors and not see referrals roll in. So without looking at your specific marketing, I can't tell you exactly what's going wrong, but I can walk you through the top three reasons that most therapists struggle to get clients. And these are the same issues I see again and again and again. And chances are high that one of them is getting in your way. So first up, not truly niching. There are three types of non nichers that I tend to see first, those who don't want a niche. Second, those who struggle to choose. And third, those who think they've niched, but they actually haven't. So let's take the first group, if you're in the I don't want to niche camp, that's totally your call. You get to run your practice however you want. But know that building a full practice without a niche takes longer. It's harder. You're more likely to experience burnout. You're. You'll probably make less money per session. And most of the reasons I hear for not wanting to niche are honestly myths. Worries like I'm going to get bored or I like working with everyone. Those are very valid feelings, but they're not always valid business strategies. I've rarely had more than 60% of my practice be my niche in the last 20 years of work. So you aren't being pigeonholed or pigeonholing yourself the way that you're imagining now. The second group, the ones who can't pick these, are the folks who ask if it's okay to have three niches. And again, yeah, you're the boss of your practice. But imagine this from a potential client's perspective. If I'm newly past postpartum, I'm browsing therapist websites, and I land on one that says specializing in substance abuse, perinatal mental health, and recovery from narcissistic abuse, I'm clicking away. Not because you're not amazing, but because I'm not sure I'm your person. I don't feel sane. It feels scattered or not specialized to what I'm working with. And then there's the third group, therapists who think they're niched, but they haven't really gone deep enough. I'm thinking phrases like women in transition. And here's the thing, clients don't describe themselves that way. Nobody says I need therapy because I'm in a transition. They say things like, I just got divorced or my kid just left for college or I moved to a new city, and I feel totally unmoored. When you zoom out too far, people stop recognizing themselves in your message. But when you zoom in and you use their exact words, that's when they're like, oh, this therapist gets me. The second issue, beyond niching that can get in the way, is not knowing how to market, and this one is huge. Most of us went through grad school that completely ignored marketing, or worse, programs that made marketing and even private practice feel unethical. So if words like SEO or networking make you cringe, I get it. I really do. But here's the good news. Marketing is learnable. It, in fact, it is like, way, way easier to learn how to market than it was to learn how to Do Therapy and other good news. As a therapist, you're actually at a huge advantage. See, most marketers spend tons of time trying to understand their audience's thoughts, feelings and behaviors. But we have that information. Our clients tell us directly what's going on for them. We don't have to guess. And here's where I'm going to get a little soapboxy. You can use that insight ethically to help potential clients find you. That might mean describing their pain clearly on your website or offering helpful content that speaks directly to what they're going through. But what I don't want you to do ever is use fear based marketing. So no, your life will completely spiral if you don't get therapy now kind of messaging. Good therapy is about offering clarity and connection. It's about making it easier for the right clients to find the right therapist, which might be, you might not. And that's okay. But when you approach it this way, marketing becomes less like selling and way more like serving. Okay, the third issue. Trying to do too much at once. This one hits home for a lot of therapists, especially my type A folks and shiny object chasers. Once you start learning that marketing can be fun and helpful, it's easy to try everything all at once. Instagram, networking, blogging, directories, podcast, guesting or workshops, Pinterest. The truth is, there is no one silver bullet. If there was, I swear to God y', all I would tell you. People market the thing they teach in ways that make us feel like we're just one strategy away from what we want. So for 99% of us, no one strategy is going to fill your practice. But so adding one more to a solid marketing strategy isn't going to help. More isn't better. In fact, doing more marketing can make it less effective. Think about it like therapy modalities. You might be trained in ifs, emdr, cbt, act, dbt, brainspotting, somatic work, and more. But you know, trying to do all of them in one session makes your work less effective. Marketing is the same. That's why I recommend picking no more than five marketing strategies. It's a solid mix that might include some strategies that are set it and forget it, like a directory listing, and strategies that are more consistent like social media or blogging or SEO. A great website is non negotiable. You got to have a great website. So that's one of the five. Some form of networking is another non negotiable. That can be online or in person. So of your five marketing strategies You've already got two accounted for great website and networking, and then you've got the other three to play with. There are tons of other options, but five is plenty. You're a therapist. You're not a full time marketer. Your time and your energy should go to the clinical work you love, not endlessly spinning your wheels trying 14 marketing platforms so circling back to your original question, what am I doing wrong? It's probably one or more of these three. A lack of a clear, specific niche, not having the marketing knowledge you need, doing too many things at once and doing them halfway. And here's the most important part. None of it is your fault. You are not supposed to know this stuff. It wasn't taught. That's why it feels hard. You just haven't learned or implemented this stuff yet. So if you're stuck and you want support, we've got to know your niche course it's $27. We have a marketing Fundamentals course inside the Abundance Party. The niche course is in there too. You don't need to figure this out alone. The abundance party is $69 a month, which is a super accessible investment for most new therapists in private practice. It includes an incredibly supportive community, plus all the courses, the worksheets, the guidance that you need to get your practice filled with people you love working with. And like I said, you can purchase Know youw Niche a la carte. It's a great way to kind of get a feel for whether or not the party is something you want to do. And speaking of worksheets, this week's free worksheet is all about niching. If you DM me the word sheets, I will send you this week's worksheet plus the full library of past ones we've created. If you're listening to this on the podcast, you can look in the show notes and you'll find that link there. All right, have a great day. If you're ready for a much easier practice, TherapyNotes is the way to go. Go to therapynotes.com and use the promo code abundant for two months free. I hope that helped. If you have questions for Ask Allison or you want to get your hands on the worksheet for this episode, go to abundancepracticebuilding.com Links if you're listening, you probably need some support building your practice. If you're a super newbie, grab our free checklist using the link in the show notes. I'd love for you to follow, rate and review, but I really want you to share this episode with a therapist friend. Let's help all our colleagues build what they want.