Scaling Therapist: From One-on-One to Systems
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[00:00:00] James Marland: ~Oops. Okay. Hello, and welcome back to The Scaling Therapist. I'm your host, James Marlin. This is the show where we, we help you create systems that mul-multiply missions and missions that matter, where we help you...~
[00:00:00] ~where we develop systems that matter and missions that matter. Systems that multiply missions that matter. Hello, this is James Marlin, host of The Scaling Therapist. This is the show where we... Where missions matter. No, where we focus on... This is the show for... Hello. Hello, this is James. Hello, this is James Marlin, host of The Scaling Therapist.~
[00:00:00] ~This is the show where missions matter and systems multiply. Systems multiply and missions matter. Hello. Hello, this is James Marlin. This is the sc-- Oh. Hello, you're listening to The Scaling Therapist, where missions matter and systems multiply. I'm your host, James Marlin. Hello, you're listening to The Scaling Therapist, where systems multiply.~
[00:00:00] ~No, where missions matter, systems multiply. Hello. Hello, ~Hello, you're listening to The Scaling Therapist, where missions matter and systems multiply. I'm your host, James Marlin.
[00:00:10] Today, we're gonna be talking about the question you never want to hear your customers ask. In fact, you never want to hear anyone ask it after they read your webpage. And the question is: what do you really sell? This happened to me recently. I've been working with a social media expert, Emily King, from River Street Studios, and she was doing some social media posts for me and asked, what do you really sell?
[00:00:39] ~I read your, ~I read your webpage, but what do you really... What product do you really offer?" And I was like, "Well, I offer courses, and I offer support, and I offer networking, and I offer, uh, community groups, and I offer, uh, live sessions and coaching and, and-" After trying to explain it for what seemed like [00:01:00] way too long, I realized, you know what?
[00:01:03] It is not super clear what Course Creation Studio really sells. That's my webpage, Course Creation Studio. Because when I first started, I was heavily influenced by Graham Cochrane and some of my other therapist friends who had made courses and who were doing well, and I thought, "I can help therapists make courses.
[00:01:27] I can help experts put their information into the world. Why don't I create a place where they can create courses?" And since then, the market has become very saturated. Courses have sort of fallen out of favor. A lot of the... Not that they're not used, they are still heavily used, but the projections of billions and billions of dollars, uh, in the market segment is, uh, being [00:02:00] tempered.
[00:02:00] Yes, there are still billions of dollars being so- put into the educational market, but there are things like AI being developed and the oversaturation, and then jaded people who have gotten courses and coaching, and it hasn't worked. So tho- And then lots of low-quality AI-created copycat junk that gets flooded into the market that doesn't work, and then people are hesitant to buy.
[00:02:28] So anyways, I started out with courses. ~I s- ~I had the podcast, the, Scaling Therapy Practices. That was way, you know, three years ago when I talked about just, my co-host and I talked about just building therapy practices, and about a year and a half ago, I transformed into Scaling Therapist. I recently created the Scaling Therapist Directory or Scaling Therapist Services to network the people who have been on the show.[00:03:00]
[00:03:00] And so course creation and what my webpage was got jumbled. It wasn't clear, even though I've spent hours and hours working on the webpage. So when somebody says, "What do you really sell?" That's an indicator that you're not being clear. I've been going through a workbook by Tad Hargrave's, uh, Marketing for Hippies.
[00:03:29] It's his niching workbook. It's like, more than 100 pages. It's, uh, it's called Your Ideal Client... your Ideal Client Page Workbook. ~Craft, ~craft a one-page crea... Oh, man, reading is tough. Craft a page on your website that has your ideal client raising their hand and leaning forward to work with you, even if you struggled with your niche for years.
[00:03:52] And that certainly impacted me. It's 139 pages, lots of, uh, [00:04:00] workbooks, lots of, fill-in-the-blank worksheets, and I've done all this work before, and I'd resisted doing it again, but this has been the best workbook on the subject I've ever done, especially since I was having the problem... You know, I'm being real with you.
[00:04:14] I was having the problem of like, well, if courses are waning and it's harder to reach people and the market is flooded, well, what am I? What do I do? this workbook hit at a really good time. There will be an interview with Tad Hargrave in the future. I was able to get him on the podcast. He gave me this workbook as a thank you for being on the show and promoting him.
[00:04:37] But I would... I normally, I promote, I've been promoting him for about two years now with, without any, uh, uh, motivation just because his stuff is so good. Uh, but ~you could, ~you could find ~the, ~this workbook, I think it's 30, 40 bucks on Marketing for Hippies. It's just a wonderful workbook. So as I'm going through, and I'm about halfway through, this plus The Coach Builder [00:05:00] right there on the video, The ~Coach, ~Coach Builder book from Donald Miller has really helped me refine my niche.
[00:05:08] these are the six questions ~of s- ~of niching or six questions of scaling or six questions of making an impact, I haven't quite defined what they are, that I've kind of pulled out that have been helping me answer that question, what do you actually do, or what are you actually selling? So I'm gonna go through that with you. what is your core product? What problem does it solve? Who wants it? Why do they want it? Why do they want it now? And why you?
[00:05:40] Question one is what is your core product? What are you, what are you actually trying to sell? Not... You're g- you can do a lot. M- most of you are multi-talented. You can run businesses. You can hire people. You can do therapy. Maybe you're good at playing the guitar. Like, you have all these skills and, [00:06:00] uh, y- you're good at teaching, good at listening good at parenting.
[00:06:03] You have all these skills, but what is your core product? What... If you could only sell one thing that would sustain you, what would that be? If you can nail that down, the rest of this gets a little easier because that, that defines- Who you sell it. It, it defines the other questions. Why do you start with the core product?
[00:06:24] Because this core product is the thing that you can do the best, the cheapest, it gives value to other people, it sustains you, it lights you up, it's something you can do day in and day out, and it makes you money. And it, it can sustain your, your future. You can make money at it.
[00:06:46] People will pay for it. as I was going through all the things that I help people with, you know, I help people with one-on-one coaching, ~building, ~building online content and products, building, your webpage, your niche, your [00:07:00] product, your price. I did a whole webpage ser- or a podcast series on that a little bit ago the three elements of scaling.
[00:07:08] So what, what do I actually do? And ~I ~I have narrowed that down to resources to launch ~scaling products for experts and therapists. So resources to launch products for... ~scaling products for experts and therapists. It's not just coaching, it's not just being your friend and listening to you, which I love doing by the way.
[00:07:25] ~I love, ~I love brainstorming and listening and refining. But what, what is the product that would sustain me and help other people, and something I would like love to do day in and day out? It's help people launch their scaling product. What problem does that solve? The problem that burns my heart is these~ the, ~the experts and therapists who believe that they have to stay in the one-on-one services model, where one hour for one lump of, you know, [00:08:00] one payment, one client at a time.
[00:08:03] You're chained to the couch, you're chained to the calendar,
[00:08:06] You're chained to the clock. Those type of people who could help more people, but they feel like there's no other way to earn revenue, have a return on investment from their, uh, their education and experience.
[00:08:20] ~They have, ~they have a core mission. I'm always talking about mission, put your mission in motion. They have this mission on their heart, but they are held back by ~the s- ~the old service model of one-on-one service delivery. And so the problem of that is burnout. They can't go on vacation. They fear sick days.
[00:08:41] F- they fear snow days. They're either working a lot Extra to prepare for time off, or they work a lot after. Every minute of the day has to be accounted for, because every minute of the day that you're not using ~in a revenue-generating activi- ~activi- in a revenue-generating [00:09:00] activity means that you are not maximizing your effort.
[00:09:04] However, the same road to success of a full schedule and maximizing your income is also the same road to burnout, where if you go too far in maximizing your time, you leave little time for yourself, little time for your family, little time for your future, and then the future good you can do if you had a sustainable life, a balanced life, a life that respected your time and paid you for your value, not just for a 60 minutes of your time.
[00:09:37] Th- those people can help more people in the long run than just the people who burn out in 15 years. And I wanna help maximize the experts who can help more people and make the lives of many, many people better. So it solves the problem of burnout, it solves the problem of impact, it [00:10:00] solves the problem of freedom and being able to take those vacations, take those sick days, spend the time with your family, uh, spend the time with, uh, relatives that need it, and, and eventually, hopefully, give yourself over to an a place of service where you can fully devote your time to your mission or passion.
[00:10:23] Who wants this? The people who want that type of services are therapists who want to scale beyond one-on-one services limitations. They have had an experience where they, they have seen the future. Probably not the new therapist who believes, "Oh, I gotta max my schedule," and not the new therapist who is like, "Well, what is my m- niche, and what am I passionate about?"
[00:10:48] But the therapist who has grounded out for 10 years, and they see the future, and they're like, "I am going to be grinding it out for the next [00:11:00] 30 years, stressful every summer season, stressful every tax season, stressful every snow season," if, if you live in the Northeast, when people can't see you. S- th...
[00:11:12] Just a life full of stress, hoping I don't burn out. The people who have looked gl- who've looked into the, the mirror, who've looked into the, the future, and they have seen the stress and like just, "I'm gonna be doing this forever, and it's not gonna fulfill me, and it's not gonna give me the freedom and impact that I want.
[00:11:35] And oh yeah, by the way the people I really care about That, uh, I know I can help the most, they're not getting my time because I'm stuck doing things that I need to do or have to do to make a living. I wish I could do more with them, but I can't. The people who believe that they can make an impact and make a change, and they've seen the future, those are the people who want it.
[00:11:59] People who are [00:12:00] happy doing one-on-one therapy and that fulfills their life, this isn't for them. Those people are probably in their best state ~doing, ~doing that, and ~they should s- ~they should stay there, and they love the puzzle, and they love the excitement of their schedule. Those people are in the perfect place.
[00:12:17] There are many of people out there like them. The world needs people like them. But then there are people who, who look at the future and they see, "This does not fulfill me." So we've gone through three questions. What is your product? What problem does it solve? Who wants it? The next is why do they want it?
[00:12:36] And the people who would want a scaling product or ~s- ~a service that they can scale is somebody who wants to get off the one-on-one service tread- treadmill. They... It doesn't excitement them. It doesn't fulfill them. Maybe they do ~10, ~10 clients of that, but they wanna do 20 other hours of something else, or they wanna get off the one-on-one service treadmill [00:13:00] altogether.
[00:13:01] One-on-one services are like milk that in the grocery store. If nobody buys that milk, it is... it gets spoiled, and your time ~is what you normally, what is normally, which ~is what is sold. You, you sell your time to provide a service in the one-on-one services arena. However, once that time is gone, it's gone forever.
[00:13:23] You cannot recoup it. You invest that time to see that one person. If they don't show, you don't show, the insurance doesn't line up they're late, ~that, ~that time is spoiled and gone forever. So the people who want this type of service, they see that, they understand that, and they wanna invest time in something that will give time back to them.
[00:13:45] Why did I start with online courses? Because, one, therapists are experts, and ~they, they have a, ~they have something that they can give that the world wants. Two, ~there's, ~there's way too many people for them to see one-on-one all over again. Three, [00:14:00] videos, ~c- ~online courses, worksheets, you know, this book that I'm doing by Tad Hargraves, it doesn't spoil.
[00:14:05] He made it. He invested a lot of ~t- ~like it's 100 plus pages. He invested a lot of time. He hired somebody to help him. I'm sure he did something with the graphics and the formatting. ~That, ~that was an investment of time. But that time now, it gives back to him over and over again. He sells how many- How many $40 workbooks do you have to sell to make back up $1,000 of investment?
[00:14:33] So it pays him back. So why do people want it? They want to invest in products or services that serve a lot of people and they don't have to be there one-on-one all the time. In my webinar, Buckets to Aqueducts, that's the same thing. Right now, the one-on-one service provider fills up their bucket at the [00:15:00] well and delivers their bucket to the people who need the water, that need the service.
[00:15:05] And then they go back to the well, pump it out and bring it over and over again, an endless stream of buckets. And you might be full of energy in the morning, but as the day goes on, delivering all those buckets starts to get tiring. Or you might have a lot of energy in the beginning of the week, but as you deliver those one-on-one services, your energy starts to wane.
[00:15:31] And you see that and you know that, but you don't see a way out. You actually want to be an architect. An architect can develop an aqueduct. An aqueduct is a system that you build the system, and I think of the Roman aqueducts, and it delivers the water into the area where people can come and get it. And it works.
[00:15:52] As long as you maintain the system, it's going to work for months, years, and centuries. I don't know if the Roman aqueducts [00:16:00] still work, but they were marvels of engineering. So why do they want it? They want to get off that one-on-one service treadmill, stop being the person who is the system. They want to be the person who works on the system to get greater and greater results.
[00:16:22] The next question, question five after why do they want it, is why now? What's the urgency to this now? And I've struggled with this because I am trying to solve a future problem. If you're listening to this now, you're probably not 100% burnt out. You probably have some energy. You probably have some vigor, and you're like, I love what I do.
[00:16:43] I love helping people. I'm just trying to think about how to grow. And so those type of people might not have an urgent problem. Like how do you create urgency where, oh, I need to buy [00:17:00] this now? Like how do you prepare for your retirement party 30 years before you need to? It's really difficult to to quantify the urgency for that.
[00:17:14] So what I said about that is the people who want this now is they've, they have, uh, seen the future, and they want a different outcome. So maybe they see a friend who's ten, 15 years ahead of them going through their second or third marriage. Or maybe they see their friends get addicted to alcohol or some way to numb the pain.
[00:17:39] Or maybe they see... They work in a group practice, and they see their friend in the parking lot crying because they're like, "Oh, I don't know if I can handle another day of this stress." Or maybe they, they've tur- tossed and turned in their bed, and they're, they're beginning to have the fringes of some burnout where they're like, "Oh, do I...
[00:17:59] Am I [00:18:00] sick, or am I gonna get up today?" Or they wake up at 3:00 AM because they're the savior of everybody's problem. Everybody wants them, and they can't help as many people as they want, and they wish they could help their specific group of people, but they cannot. They can't see everybody, and it just grates on them that, "Oh, I should be doing more.
[00:18:20] I should be seeing more people." Or maybe they've had this, "Oh, I'm never gonna do that again," moment. And I think about what comes up a lot is vacations and time off where when... ~If you plan... ~If you're a one-on-one service provider, and you're the entire system where if you stop working, the whole system falls apart, vacations are stressful because ~you gotta, ~you gotta either work really hard during the year or really hard the month before or really hard the month after.
[00:18:51] And then during the vacation, you're worried about what is the problem you're coming back to in a day or two. Before you return, your mind [00:19:00] is completely consumed by the emails you're gonna have to ~lis- ~answer, the voicemails, the problems. Or maybe you didn't even put your work email on silent, and so now you're answering all these work emails during your vacation because you don't wanna deal with it when you get back.
[00:19:17] But then your vacation is not very relaxful, and, you know, you're flying on the plane stressed going out, stressed during the vacation, stressed after the vacation, and you're like, "Well, ~I'm, ~I'm just not gonna take a vacation again." I'm just not going to take a two-week vacation again. I'm just gonna do ~three, ~three-day vacations and that's it for the rest of my life.
[00:19:39] Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and I better get back to work on Monday because if I'm gone for three days, y- the world ends for my clients. The world ends for my business. And I wanna reach out to those people who are like, "Well, I'm never gonna do that again." They've had some sort of experience, whether they've experienced it through their friends, or they've experienced it [00:20:00] through, uh, a bad experience with a vacation, a call off, a sickness, an illness, and they're like, "I gotta invest in myself so that I make sure this never happens again, or this doesn't happen to me."
[00:20:15] The final question... We've gone through what is your core product? Question two was why-- what problem does it solve? Question three was who wants it? Question four was why do they want it? Question five was why do they want it now? The sixth question is probably the most difficult one for people who don't love the limelight, and they struggle with imposter syndrome, and they struggle with negative internal dialogue.
[00:20:46] Raise your hand if that sounds like you. And that would be why you? You know, why do they wanna buy it from you? What i- what are, what are you, what is your special power? What is so special about you? And man, friends, I've really [00:21:00] struggled with this because I grew up in a place where I wasn't special, okay?
[00:21:08] I couldn't compete with my older brother who was stronger, faster, better at things. I couldn't compete with my younger siblings who were cuter and friendlier and had, like, more outgoing personalities. I... That's how I grew up, and what is special about me? I-- Here's a, here's a heartbreaking story.
[00:21:31] For me, it's heartbreaking. I entered a speech contest with, uh, at, in school. It's called Fine Arts, and for my bracket, there were only two people who entered. I did my speech, I think it was the Abraham Lincoln, and I mi- I missed two words up. I put one word in front of another word, but that was my only mistake as far as I can tell, something I worked on a long time.
[00:21:58] The other person made [00:22:00] many more mistakes in their speech, and I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna win this speech." And the Fine Arts people, the, whoever the judges were said, ~"We're, ~we're awarding no awards. Nobody gets an award for this." And that sort of, it wrecked me. It wrecked me a little bit. There's nothing special, nothing award-winning about James Marland.
[00:22:30] And I have lived with that story and it has impacted my life. Is it true? No, it is not true. I have a lot to give and I have a lot of special talents. But when somebody asks me, what is special about you? Why would they buy from you? I repel a little bit. Like it's hard for me to say, yeah, I'm special about these things.
[00:22:59] So [00:23:00] maybe this is the hardest question for you when you're thinking, what is your superpower? And what can people identify with you and what would be attractive to you? Why would they buy your product or go to your coaching or listen to your speech? So had two surface things and two internal things.
[00:23:20] One, I've built up a network of people through the podcast, through going to resources, through promoting other people, that I have contacts and connections. And I love linking people to the right resource. I just, the connections I make in my brain about the problems people have and the services or the books or the people or the workbooks or the videos, the audio podcasts, the things that could help them, they're like filtered in my brain.
[00:23:54] And when I hear problems, I connect them because I am, that's just, I [00:24:00] smash problems together. I smash unrelated things together and come up with great solutions. So that's one thing that's my superpower. these could be liabilities in certain areas. And I have believed they have been liabilities, but I have very low ego and I want to promote other people and help other people grow.
[00:24:28] Those things work together. I don't want to be the main thing. I want you to be the main thing. I want you and your service to be the main thing. And so having a low ego where I want to help other people and I don't care if they grow beyond me. If I charge $5,000 for my services and they charge $50,000 for their services, wow. I help them grow to a point where they can afford the life that they've always wanted to live, the freedom that they want, [00:25:00] plus the impact that they make.
[00:25:02] Speaker: the, the, and then the other thing is because I have been passed over for many advancements, whether in career, um, whether, you know, that school story you know, dating, like I passed over for, for dating.
[00:25:21] Uh,
[00:25:23] James Marland: Oh
[00:25:23] Speaker: I,
[00:25:23] James Marland: I, I'm not... Okay, I will tell the story. I went to a, uh, a, there was a, a school dance.
[00:25:31] No, it was, it was called, oh, it was a Christian school, and it was called the Friendship Banquet. And at the Friendship Banquet you invited a friend that was your... You know, I would invite a girl. There was a girl that I liked, I invited her, and she decided not to go to the Friendship Banquet because she didn't wanna say no to anyone, and she didn't wanna hurt anybody's feelings.
[00:25:51] Well, she didn't wanna go with me, that's for sure. And so, you know, it's another thing where, I feel like I have a lot to give, [00:26:00] but, and I'm a good, you know, I'm a good guy, but I wasn't chosen. And so because of that pain and the other pains that I've had, I see people. I see their pain. I see their potential.
[00:26:13] I look past what they are now and see the vision of what could be. Some people do this with houses. You know, they walk into a house, and they see the, the ceiling falling in and the bad carpet, and they're like, "Oh, this got great bones, and we could do something with this." And that's what I do for people.
[00:26:35] Uh, I believe in the power of people committed to an idea. You don't have to be an extrovert. You don't have to have a large social media following. You don't even have to have a webpage. But if you have a passion, if you have a mission, and you have a calling, and you feel like nobody sees you, those are the people that I connect with.
[00:26:57] ~Why do you wanna, ~why do you wanna connect with me? [00:27:00] Because I see you, and I wanna help you put your mission in motion. the six questions again were, what is your core product? What problem does it solve? Who wants it? Why do they want it? Why do they want it now? And why you? If you can answer those questions, you are well on your way to having a one-page website that people will look at and say, "Yes, that is me. ~That is, ~that-" Person gets me and I want their product. If you don't have that developed yet, I wanna meet with you. ~I want to, uh, listen to what you h- what ideas...~
[00:27:41] I wanna listen to what ideas are percolating in your head, seeing if we can come up with a plan to get you to develop a product that will help you scale. I am launching a, I call them Mission Labs. Uh, they are monthly. There, there's a monthly free Mission [00:28:00] Lab where you can come in, ask your questions.
[00:28:02] It's, it's like office hours where if five or six people show up, everybody gets five to 10 minutes, and, uh, we'll meet for 45 minutes to an hour. You get to answer your questions, listen to other people, and go out with a clear next step for your process. And then I'm, I also offer, uh, weekly Mission Labs, which is, you can subscribe to those, just drop in, ask a question at any time, get what you need, get your next steps, and move on. It's relatively inexpensive. You get all my courses with that, and it's just a new way for me to try to reach out and help people scale their time, scale what they put in to get maximum amount of output.
[00:28:50] If you listened this far, I got one more announcement. Uh, that is the Course Creation Studio webpage is eventually going to be turned [00:29:00] to just scalingtherapist.com because I bought the domain name. ~Funny story, I looked up scalingtherapist.com, and I... ~Funny story, I looked up scalingtherapist.com, and I realized somebody had already purchased it, so I searched for other names, and I found thescalingtherapist.com and thescalingtherapist.org.
[00:29:17] So I bought those, bought them for three years, went into my Squarespace, uh, domain name registry and found out that I had already bought scalingtherapist.com. So now I own them all. So eventually, the Course Creation Studio is going to be transformed into the scalingtherapist.com because I believe it's my mission to help therapists become the architect of their own futures where they can have more influence, impact, and independence.
[00:29:47] Okay, listeners, it's now time to clear- clearly identify who you serve and how you serve them so you can put your mission in motion. I'm here to help. We'll see you next [00:30:00] time
