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Joshua Brummel: So the goal is to understand all the individual contributing parts to your brand. It's logo.
This is visuals. It's your copywriting. It's your service experience. It's how easily do people go through your website and book on your calendar. It's, it's a million little things, but this is your bouquet of flowers. We think the size of the bouquet essentially is what's needed, and in reality, we need simplicity and just quality. βHello, listeners, and welcome back to The Scaling Therapist. I'm your host, James Marlin. This is the show where we give you tools, tips, and techniques and introduce you to experts to help your growth journey. Today, I am here with a returning guest, Joshua Brum- Brummel, co-founder of TherapyFlow. Hello, Joshua.[00:01:00]
Hey, thanks for having me. Excited to be back. I think this is our, like our fourth or our fifth conversation. It's always a pleasure to hop in here
James Marland: Yep.
Joshua Brummel: chat for a little bit.
James Marland: And I think I've seen you twice in person. We might have even had lunch together. Y- you're just a, a great... You've, you've always been generous and always been helpful, and I enjoy bringing you back onto the show to help the listeners. We were just doing a little bit of catching up. You have had a couple events and some virtual events and live events since we last met.
Before we get into our topic of branding and branding your page, what have you been up to in the last year or two?
Joshua Brummel: Yeah. Most of my time right now is spent with TherapyFlow. It's a company that works with therapists and counselors, primarily group practices really and we help them scale with marketing services, coaching and a HIPAA-compliant CRM with a bunch of AI functions, features, calling, a lot of stuff we could get into there.
But we really just try and help therapy practices flow better, hence the name TherapyFlow. We just hosted our AI [00:02:00] practice summit a couple weeks ago. We had over 350 people attend virtually with us, and we just spent the whole day talking about AI use cases, functions, how do we think about it, how do we implement it, where do we even start?
Should we use it? All of those fun
James Marland: Oh, wow. Yeah
Joshua Brummel: and it's, it's been great. It's been a lot of fun. We do things like that next to all of the large marketing services and consulting work we do with our practices.
James Marland: What were some of the questions or insights from the AI? We won't spend too much time on it, but I'm wondering what, what was the general sense or general questions of therapy practice owners and clinicians around AI?
Joshua Brummel: Yeah. Where do I start? How do I protect privacy? And should-- is it worth the hype? Answering
James Marland: Oh, very good questions. Yeah
Joshua Brummel: yeah, is, is what we spent the day talking about. And the, the long and the short of each one of those is productivity and [00:03:00] administrative work for either delegation or volume, like output.
Those are great places to get good AI function out of right now. Privacy-wise, you just have to be very careful with what you're choosing for AI note takers and
Listening and disclosures and some of those things, and there's some great leaders that aren't here at TherapyFlow that, that talk about that.
We actually had a, a panel interview with some, some tool builders, I think a John from Quill Therapy or m- and some others that's, that spoke to the privacy layer. So there's, there's ways to use it effectively right now, even considering privacy. And then lastly, like where do, where do you start? And I have a big answer and a small answer. Number one, start with what you can do. So start with one thing and use it and implement it. And two is especially look at your admin team if you are a practice owner or you're copywriting and your website stuff, which we'll talk about in a second as ways to get great movement [00:04:00] and either delegation or time saving from those sources right now.
James Marland: Yeah, I, I, I kind of use AI right now with, with my podcast and creating content is I'll just, I'll, I'll, I'll data dump. I'll say, "This is what I wanna talk about," and just ask me questions about it. What would a skeptic say?
What would, what would somebody who agrees with me say? What would Like, it just fills in the gaps, and then when we have enough data, we create an outline and we move forward, and you can do that with almost any piece of content: a letter, blog post. Just, yeah, I just use it as somebody that reframes my ideas.
Joshua Brummel: Yeah
James Marland: and the, yeah, the, the questions that, that people had, like where do I start and like how do I do the, the HIPAA compliant, like those, those disclosures and things like if you don't know how to do it, you don't know how to do it right, you're gonna walk into a minefield.
So I'm really glad you're providing that resource. Uh, we've probably spent the rest of the time talking about AI, but this course, this this show is helping people [00:05:00] create additional streams of income. And one of the main problems people have is like, how do people find me? How do I position myself to to, to signal people that they're, that I am reputable and that they can buy from me?
And then to even get them on the webpage and click yes "Yes, I wanna know more. Yes, I wanna get involved." It's a, it's a major struggle, especially if you're, It's, it's not therapy, something that you have done your whole life, but-- and you trained for eight years, you know how to talk about it, you know how to explain it.
But if you're doing something different, additional stream of income, a course, coaching, consulting type of program, like developing that brand and developing that instant yes can be very difficult. So Joshua, you're an expert on, on branding and webpages and, and helping people see your value. What kind of insight do you have?
Where do you wanna get us started on promoting your brand and getting people to say yes?
Joshua Brummel: Yeah. I wanna make it [00:06:00] really practical, and then we can zoom out to some frameworks. There's a concept that I use consistently, which is moving away from what you do. So s- don't describe in your webpage, in your headlines, in your content, in your description just what you do. to talk about what you deliver instead. And you also have to talk about what you deliver without what baggage comes attached to it, right? So for instance, when, when we think of, of modernization with AI, we'll just use that as an example because everyone's talking about it, is AI does something for us. It writes a message, X, Y, and Z. What it really does is AI delivers a faster-paced work experience, or AI delivers work done without having to pay an employee.
So I just did two things there. AI delivers faster [00:07:00] work without having to pay an employee.
So for, let's say someone has a course on emotional wellness or on couples intimacy, right? Is, we, we deliver... I wouldn't quite use the language of deliver, but, we equip couples to have an incredible thriving relationship without fighting all the time, without sacrificing their evenings and their weekends, or without, fill in the blank for some of those things.
James Marland: And I, and I think you... That, that principle is, is key because as experts and people who love our material, we often talk about our solution. I give you a course, I'll give you 15 videos and six worksheets so you can have a better marriage. That's often talking about the bridge instead of the destination.
People, people don't always care about [00:08:00] what your solution is. They care about what you're delivering, just what you said. And if you don't, if you don't talk in their language what happens if you don't talk in their language and you don't d- tell them what you're delivering without the, the baggage?
What happens?
Joshua Brummel: Yeah. They just don't know what it is that they're gonna get. And so going a step further, we have to be really explicit and do this to the language of what they want. So to go further, say with that couple's intimacy piece of things, what do they want? They want a great night that actually has like energy and vibrancy or whatever else to it, right? And we help you have an intimate Friday night where you walk away, full, full of joy and partnership without blank, blank, and blank.
James Marland: Without all the struggle, without all the, yeah
Joshua Brummel: Yeah, when you're crafting these is, is sit down and really think about do you deliver and what do your [00:09:00] clients want? don't use AI to write these initially. It needs to be from your knowledge and your voice. Write 20 to 30 of these statements. It's kinda hard work, but physically sit down, type it out, write it out. Write 20 of, 30 of these statements, and these are your core pillars for creating strong content and strong copy on your webpages and your social content that will actually make people be like, "Oh, I need that," or, "I want that."
Identify it, because you saying, "We," "We do therapy," or, "We offer a course to help couples with their intimacy," it doesn't resonate the same.
James Marland: Yeah, they're not, they're not sure what they're getting. It's like the restaurant that offers food, you
know? I, I offer food. That you, you will get some people who will want food, but if somebody really wants Italian or they really want, a hamburger, they may or may not go to your food restaurant or your food s- your food service.
So the more specific you are, [00:10:00] the more you're signaling to people that you are in the right place. We can help you. You will get the outcome that you're looking for. 'Cause people are not often searching, or initially anyways, they're not searching about what it is exactly. They're searching for their problem.
What is the problem that I want solved?
Joshua Brummel: Yeah. So to zoom out and give a little bit of a, of a bigger framework to all of this, that's one way to do this. That's where we're talking about your process. Your process or your mechanism is the thing you sell, the thing you deliver, the thing that, goes well for clients when they get it. There's two other elements that are really important to show up very clearly in your sales collateral. Your webpage, your funnel, your social content, your ads, and that is your people and your proof. By people, I just mean the real-life stuff that makes this happen. This is if you are the provider, the teacher that's happening it, right?
This is you, this is your [00:11:00] credentials, this is your bio, this is your, you- your layer of things. This is the people's also other real-life stuff. So this could be the physical, tangible course material, the images, the content, just like the, the physical thing. And for often course creators, for class holders, for therapists, you are the thing, which is why I use the word people.
But it needs to be rooted in reality, rooted in reality. And then proof. Proof is how do I know I'm going to get the results? And proof can come from a myriad of s- of ways and circumstances. Testimonials, data, volume, certifications, experience. But when we really strongly blend together a description of our process, our product/people, and our proof, and that shines through in all of our sales content and our collateral, people can understand and convert and buy the thing that [00:12:00] we're looking for them to purchase.
James Marland: So I'm wondering, have you, can you think of a time when you worked with a client where they had that aha moment where that all came together for them?
Joshua Brummel: Yeah. Yeah. I actually, one of my very first clients Ilona, she was a cash pay therapist and she wanted to scale her rates and her community and her content. And so for, for each one of these frameworks, her, her process was still individualized therapy and then her external content. But she got really specific.
So sh- you know, she helped a certain type of woman with a very specific, outcome. That's what she delivered without feeling like shame, without feeling hurt, without feeling the weight of pursuing support because that was a big detractor of just like feeling weighted for having to go and get support in general for the things that they were struggling with. So she was really clear about her process and who she [00:13:00] served in her process. a proof level, she started to tell stories video primarily on social media and put videos on her website and her web pages of just the experiences that her clients were having, de-identified information and other layers.
But she just-- she told stories about the, the women in her life and the freedom that they were having, the growth that they were having. She just got good at telling stories and that was her version of, of proof. And then in terms of people, right? She was the one doing it. She was live, she was showing up and sh- she made this content consistently daily and it all blended together and she built a vibrant practice very quickly when she realized she just needed to show up in these three layers
James Marland: Hmm. So I had, I was curious about short-form video. Is, is short-form video still a good way to get attention and to get, to get known as consistently posting short-form video? What, what do you... What's your [00:14:00] advice on that?
Joshua Brummel: Yeah. So I think for short-form video, follow the stages of like social media, we have to develop social media and our content posting to be successful. For most platforms, you need to be posting anywhere from three to five times a day a high enough quality if you expect to get new clients from the platform, and this would be a developed stage. business owners need to find themselves in a stage before that, which I call essentially the, the fundamental stage or the just the awareness stage. Our goal with our social media profiles is to just not have it be a ghost town.
James Marland: Hmm.
Joshua Brummel: So if someone goes to our social can they scroll through a couple videos, some images, whatever else, and it doesn't turn them off from our products or our services. And if we're not gonna post semi-consistently, then we should just not have that social media channel. Otherwise, we should [00:15:00] post at least semi-consistently in a way that doesn't detract from your brand and your process, or we should go the fuller way and use it as a primary way to get new clients. issue for a lot of like therapists or course builders doing short-form video, very time-consuming
James Marland: Yeah
Joshua Brummel: to their goals.
They want to sell, a couple courses a month or a couple high-ticket coaching or a couple whatever. ads networking, other things sometimes are gonna be better fits than the amount of time it takes to be successful. Because on social media, you're competing against everyone else. You're not just competing against other therapists or course builders.
James Marland: Yeah, it reminds me of Netflix. Netflix isn't just competing with other TV providers. They're pr- they're competing with all other forms of entertainment. And so when you're in the arena of social media, you're not just competing against other therapists. It's like everything else that's out there you're competing against.[00:16:00]
Joshua Brummel: And that's why some of this brand stuff is really important because when you're comparing against someone else that's doing something similar or not even comparing at all, but alternatives to health and wellness, so especially the course builders out there and the retreat builders and the people building alternative sources of income, an alternative way to pursue healing and growth and the outcomes you're advertising. So if you aren't really good at drawing them in, sharing those stories, talking about your process and your people and your proof, you're not going to have enough meat on the bone, so to speak, for that person to want to say yes to it compared to traditional alternatives.
James Marland: So when somebody wants to start their brand what do... You have the, the proof, the people, and the process on the page. Is there anything else that they should be doing, or w- where [00:17:00] else can that show up?
Joshua Brummel: Yeah. So when we think about branding, an analogy that was taught to me is a little bit like a bouquet of fo- of flowers, right? Your, your bouquet of flowers is filled with all of these individual stems. One single flower is a little broken or it's not perfect, but it's in the sum of the whole and it looks great. You're gonna be like, "Oh, that's, that's what it is," right? But if your flowers are, like, keeling over and, and dying, the whole thing as a whole is looking a little rough around the edges, that's gonna be the experience. So the goal is to understand all the individual contributing parts to your brand. It's logo.
This is visuals. It's your copywriting. It's your service experience. It's how easily do people go through your website and book on your calendar. It's, it's a million little things, but this is your bouquet of flowers. And my encouragement is if we can't deliver a great version of it into our bouquet, let's not do it all and [00:18:00] keep things simple, right?
A smaller, beautiful bouquet is better than a bigger, eh, an
James Marland: A more full r- a more full dying bouquet.
Joshua Brummel: and that shows
James Marland: your wife would rather Valentine's Day is coming up when we're recording this. She'd r- much rather have a beautiful, small, my wife anyways, small bouquet than if some... I picked up the one that's just barely alive, half price, ready to die bouquet.
Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense
Joshua Brummel: we think volume, right? We think the size of the bouquet essentially is what's needed, and in reality, we need simplicity and just quality. So to give one other framework I wrote my newsletter on this today actually. Volume, consistency, and quality. Those are three levers you're building your business, you're building. First, are we doing the volume needed? This looks are we sending enough people to our landing [00:19:00] page where we're selling? Are we getting enough video views? Are we doing enough work to get the volume of people seeing our stuff? are we being consistent enough with it, right? Are we con- showing up consistently?
Are we calling the leads back consistently? Are we consistently engaging in the work and the practice, the marketing that we need? And then quality. Is what we're offering in its quality format for some of those, those pieces? Different way to say is volume is having a bouquet. Consistency is making sure that it's always fresh for whatever size that we've chosen, and then quality is slowly level- leveling up the types of flowers and the preferences and the other things that go into that for, for our services or for our products.
James Marland: Yeah, I, I hadn't thought-- Until you mentioned it, I hadn't really thought that if you have a social media platform that you didn't po- you haven't posted on for six months, it's actually a deterrent. If I go to a page and I'm looking somebody up and they haven't posted in a long time or [00:20:00] it's something super old, I'm like I...
Do they even care? Are they even in business?" And unless I'm like, they were recommended to me or I'm super interested, I'm not gonna follow up. I'm gonna move to the next one. So having something that isn't maintained could actually detract, even if y-you're thinking, "Oh, I'm out there. I'm on Facebook or I'm on Instagram or Pinterest or whatever."
You-- But you're not, you're not keeping up with it, you, you could actually be hurting yourself. I hadn't, I hadn't really thought about it that way.
Joshua Brummel: Yeah. For most of our platforms for TherapyFlow, I just try and sit in the, the fundamentals category, not having a ghost town. No, no detractions, no deterrents. We post pretty consistently in our YouTube, which is great. A little bit in Instagram and other places, but otherwise, we don't have a Twitter 'cause I don't wanna maintain a Twitter.
We don't have a a Pinterest. We don't have some of these others, and they could be relevant, but not for TherapyFlow right now
James Marland: All right. You have... [00:21:00] So man, we could probably go in a lot of different directions, but I think what I wanna do right now is direct people to where they can get more support. First, I wanna say they should sign up for your newsletter. If you're not ready to market right yet, you will be at some point, and you will want TherapyFlow's newsletter.
They have Josh and, Josh and his team make great, great are just very useful, practical advice that helps you think through things week after week. So definitely do that. So Josh, where can they find you, and what, what are some of the things that they would find on your webpage?
Joshua Brummel: Yeah. So if you go to mytherapyflow.com, you'll find our newsletter there, any and all of our services. The newsletter is a great free resource. I write that weekly. No AI. It's my top trending, most impactful thoughts for practice owners on, on marketing and on business development. And then we've got a couple other fun things.
We, of course, have our marketing services. These are for group practice owners who are trying to scale specifically. So we don't support [00:22:00] course builders, but we have a HIPAA-compliant CRM. You can build courses inside of there. You can run automations. You can do email marketing. We have coaching available for that system and that program.
And then we have some awesome live events. In here, up in May, we've got a large marketing conference with a bunch of incredible presenters that you can see through our website. In the fall, we've got a Group Practice Con, which is for practices seven figures or larger who want to be on-site with us here in Chicago and learn how to continue to scale to their next seven figures and beyond.
So mytherapyflow.com, you'll find most of those pieces and we'd love to at least have you in the newsletter to learn with us weekly.
James Marland: Wonderful. And, and, and as I said at the top, Joshua's Joshua and his team are always very generous, very helpful, very practical. Th- this conversation is chock-full of wisdom, but it's also very understandable and simple to understand. So if you're interested in marketing, if you're interested in scaling your practice, [00:23:00] definitely check out Joshua and his team.
That will all be in the show notes. Any- anything else you wanna say before we end? Any final advice for people who are thinking about building a brand or reaching more people?
Joshua Brummel: Yeah, I just wanna return to that one exercise. Sit down, write out 20 to 30 we deliver statements without blank statements, right? What do you do for your clients? Make it really real, really contextual, and without what do they don't want? What do you do it without, right? Without having to attend therapy for years, right?
That's some of the intensive promises. Without having to, spend months inside of a therapy session. That's for EMDR intensives, right? There's lots of fun things, but do that work. It has always paid dividends when I'd slow down and do that refinement.
James Marland: All right. Thank you so much for being on the show, Josh.
Joshua Brummel: Thanks, James
James Marland: All right, listeners you've, you've heard it here. Do some of that hard work. It's gonna pay [00:24:00] off at the end. It's now time to put your mission in motion. We'll see you next time.
Speaker: If your practice is stuck behind a business bottleneck, you don't have to solve it alone. You can visit the scalingtherapistservices.com directory and connect with our trusted providers.
The providers are Humor Speaks, RevKey, The Practice CoLab, Arc Integrated, TheraSaaS CRM, Guest Compliance and Consulting LLC, Freedom Business Solutions, Bosco LLC, and Profit Comes First. Pick one bottleneck, take the next step, and keep your mission in, in motion. We will see you next time
