A (0:00)

Foreign.

B (0:08)

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.

A (0:36)

Welcome back to Ask Allison. Here's today's question. I can't really afford to hire someone to build a website and I don't have the tech skills to do it myself. Do I really need one or can I just focus on other ways to market? So before I answer this, I would love to talk about our sponsor, Therapy Notes. I've talked about them for years now, know their futures by heart, but what truly sets them apart is that they really care about your experience. It's not just about troubleshooting. They actively implement user suggested features like Therapy search, secure messaging, clinical outcome tracking, and their AI notes feature therapy fuel. Everyone at TherapyNotes believes in the product and wants you to love it too. Plus, they're independently owned, which means no venture capital and no pressure to prioritize investors over customers. This independence allows them to keep their prices fair, focus on innovation, and prioritize customer experience. With over 100,000 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 TherapyNotes free for two months with the code abundant@theapynotes.com all right, let's talk about it. So here's what I see over and over. Some of my students write amazing website copy, the kind of copy that makes me want to book them right away. But then it just sits in a Google Doc. Because the tech part of building a website feels like stepping into another universe. And some students don't even write the copy because they know what comes next and it's the website. So they freeze before they even start. If that's what you're at. I see you. You're not behind. But I am going to be really honest with you today. The truth is you can fill your caseload without a website if you're okay with it taking forever. Like painfully, painfully slow. Like you might question everything slow. So if you've got endless time and you're just dipping your toe into part time or a hobby practice mode, then that's fine. You can skip the site for now. But if you're trying to build a real, sustainable, profitable practice in this year, in 2026, you need to be visible. And that starts with having a website. So let's think about this from a client's perspective. Let's say they get three names from a referral source. Two of those clinicians have websites. One doesn't. The client clicks through, gets a feel for clinicians one and two, reads their bios, sees a few blog posts, maybe watches a video if one of them is a, you know, going for videos. If clinician 3 is just the name and a phone number that's not going anywhere, that referral source would have to go way out of their way to sell clinician number three, because the clients need to get a sense of who you are. So unless you've got a rock star referral source who's only going to go to bat for you over and over again, you're going to need that scenario to play out at least 40 times to land your first 20 clients. And that is not sustainable for most new practices. When my daughter needed a therapist, even though I got a great referral from a trusted therapist friend, I still did what most parents are going to do. I researched every single person that I got names for. I wanted to read about them. I wanted to get a sense of who they were and how they worked and if they felt like a fit. If they didn't have a website, they were just off the list. I wasn't messing with it. And your clients are doing the same thing. In a world where we Google everything from restaurants to pediatricians, therapy is not a different scenario. So no website equals no credibility in their eyes. And I know the idea of building a website can be super overwhelming. Even if you have your copy, your photos, you're trying to plug in some builder, that can all drive you up a wall. And let's be honest, not all website builders are created equal. I consistently recommend Squarespace. It's the most intuitive, it's the cleanest, it's the easiest to work with. In my opinion, that's what my website's built on for my practice. But the kicker is, hiring someone else doesn't necessarily make it that much easier. If you are not on top of your stuff, you still have deadlines, you might have creative miscommunications, and there might be moments of, this is not what I meant to happen. So if it's a friend or a family member building it, things can get really complicated fast. And if it's somebody you're paying, then you kind of have more leverage and more of a voice. Either path, whether you're DIYing it or you're outsourcing it, there's going to be some frustration. That's just part of it. Which kind of brings me to a bigger truth that you're not asking about, and that's the Being in business means getting uncomfortable. It means trying. It means failing and learning and trying again. It means becoming someone more capable than you were a month ago in this process, in this scenario, it's building a website, it's showing up online, it's taking up space. It's part of that. And you're already doing a lot of this for your clients. This showing up, this being present. You help them push through hard stuff. You help them work through discomfort and blocks. That's what you do, right? And this is your version of that. We don't tell clients, oh, setting boundaries is too hard. Never mind. No, we find a way forward. And that's what I want you to do with your website, too. Now, there's somebody, I promise you, there's somebody out there saying, but I'm already getting referrals and I don't have a website. Great for you. That's awesome. That means there's already something working. But imagine how much more momentum you'd have if people could actually find you online, if they didn't cross you off a list because you're not visible. I also hear, oh, well, what about these therapists who've been practicing 30 years and still don't have a website? Great. They've got three decades worth of word of mouth. They have built a name, a network, a long list of loyal referrals. So if you are building in 2026, you are in a completely different landscape. You've got to do things differently. Does your site have to be fancy? No, it absolutely does not. I always think about the founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman. He said, if you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late. I love that. Done is better than perfect, right? Your first site might be clunky. That is fine if your copy is strong and clear, if it shows who you help and how you're going to get clients. My original Abundance website, it's so embarrassing. I wish I had pictures of it because it was so bad. It was a template builder. I did my best. It worked because my copy did all the heavy lifting. But over time, both the copy and the design evolved and now it Works even better. And I don't have website shame, which is a real thing. My therapy site, like I said, it's on Squarespace. It has been for over a decade and it still quietly brings people in with very little maintenance. So, yes, you need a website, even if it's not perfect, even if it frustrates you to build or you have to save some money to have somebody else build it. Because it's one of the most effective ways to help clients find you and trust you and reach out. If you get to a point where you're like, if I have to build this thing, I'm just going to throw something against the wall. We have a program called Website in a Week where you can turn everything into our designer and he will put it together within a week. So you can DM me the word website and we can give you that information. And for those of you who are going to diy, whether it's your website or just your marketing, which we should all be diying our marketing, the free worksheet today lays out five of the most effective marketing strategies. It's different strategies that you can choose from. Going to help you see where the website fits and it's going to help you work with the other strategies. You can DM me the word sheets and I will send you this week's worksheet plus a link to all the past ones. So please don't shy away from the things that feel hard. If you want to have a business, there's going to be lots of hard you're capable of all of it. A website. If a website is going to stop you from having a business, maybe business is not for you. If a website is incredibly frustrating and you wish you didn't have to do it, dude, I feel you. Welcome to the club. So, like, we just got to move past the things that are hard because we can. Alrighty. I will talk to you later. Have a great day.