STP 126 | From Stuck to Steady Growth: Fixing the Flow in Your Marketing System with Joshua Brummel
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Joshua Brummel: what does it feel like?
To add a million dollars in revenue in the next 18 months, the next 12 months to a practice. And how do you strategically need to approach that, especially after you've already built something first and then tactically, do we have the space? Because every practice owner struggles with different things, some more with marketing than others, some with recruiting more than others, some with, uh, intake.
There's ops, finances. Is there a place to get the nuts and bolts? Tactical strategies to resolve what their bottlenecks will be in that next year of growth.
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There's no room to take on new opportunities. In my free webinar Beyond Fully Booked, I'll show you how to create income flow w without maximizing your schedule, without scheduling every minute of your day. Register for the next [00:02:00] live session [email protected] slash beyond. Fully booked.
Your dream should be more than just a full schedule. Today we're talking about growing a group practice and getting past the roadblocks that slow you down. My guest is expert Joshua Brummel from Therapy Flow. For almost seven years, he's been helping therapists grow their practices with honest, clear marketing, and really just smart business tips. We talk about Joshua's next big event, the Group Practice Con, this fall in Chicago.
Guess what, it's already, it's already sold out. Uh, Josh and his partner, Julie Harris from Green Oak Accounting are in demand. Don't worry, there's, there's plenty of other resources for you. He's got great tools to help you, like his [00:03:00] free weekly newsletter that's full of practical tips that you can use right away.
And I, I tend to read this, this is one of his, this is one of the newsletters that I read on the regular basis. It's just full of good information and there's also a, uh, Facebook community that you can join. So check out the show notes and links to other helpful resources at the end of the show. And now.
let's talk to our guest, Joshua Bruell.
James Marland: Hello and welcome back to the Scaling Therapy
Practice. I'm your host, James Marland. This is the show where we empower mission-driven leaders to launch life-changing courses. Today I am here with Joshua Brummel from Therapy Flow and he is, he with some partners is leading a A conference in 2025, and I thought this would be a great topic to talk about the marketing and the execution. of the nuts and bolts about running a conference and getting people together to talk [00:04:00] about a topic. So Joshua, welcome to the show.
Joshua Brummel: Thanks for having me, James. Appreciate the time and excited for today's conversation.
James Marland: Oh yeah, really excited. When I saw your event come up on my newsfeed, I'm like, this is great. It's, uh, you and Julie Harris, uh, from Green Oak Accounting, I was just. This is a perfect idea. So before we get into that, uh, for people who don't know you, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do and how you help therapists and group practice owners?
Joshua Brummel: Yeah. Uh, therapy Flow. My company has been working with, uh, therapists and group practice owners for close to seven years now. We primarily provide marketing services. Holistic practice, uh, consultation coaching, and, uh, we have a HIPAA compliant CRM. So embedded in that through the years has been a lot of courses that we've both given away for free.
We've built coaching communities around and we've sold individual courses, master classes, other things. And [00:05:00] so this, uh, event that we'll be talking about today is as much an extension of our marketing services and the marketing community we have, as it is around all of the individuals who've, um, been supported by therapy flow through years on growing and scaling their group practice.
And so a lot of marketing conversations and holistic business growth, um, is, is what I love to do and help our practices with.
James Marland: And what I appreciate about you and your company is you're not, you're not trying to turn, uh, therapists into marketers. You're trying to help them their value with other people. You help them serve. Not, not sell, like nobody's going to be turn, like nobody's gonna be twisted or manipulated with your services.
Your services are just designed to lead people to the right conclusion. And if it's the therapist, that's great. So, um, you guys are like a super ethical company and just, know, I appreciate, um, I appreciate what you do.[00:06:00]
Joshua Brummel: It's, uh, our, our first piece of content was used Carman sales tactics for therapists. Um, not quite, not quite.
James Marland: no, the hundred percent not like
Joshua Brummel: Yeah. One of actually, like, one of the, the big things that, like I got pulled into the conferences in the space to talk about first was like holistic and value driven intake or sales processes for, for therapy practices.
Because it is this, um, this tension of how do you in a. Healthcare product, like mental healthcare ethically, do the, do the sales, do the marketing actions, and just do the work needed to grow the business, which requires specific effort, but can also feel kind of a little restricted. And, um, you, you kind of wanna pull away from it because it feels.
Growth sometimes to have to push into that. It's like, how do I wrap our head around it? And I think it, it feels like it's turned up a couple notches [00:07:00] when you're in the healthcare space or your product is about, um, certain types of health outcomes. Your course content is about healing trauma or whatever that looks like.
But most businesses, small businesses have to confront this, which is how do I get myself out there and feel great about the content and the risk I'm taking by building this business?
James Marland: Yeah. And you and you guys, you, you, you, you and your company do that very well, and it, and it comes out with like the things you do for other people. And even just talking to, at conferences, you're, you're, um, good at answering questions and helping people, uh, in a way that. just is, feels good and relies on the natural ability of therapists to like build relationships and help people build relationships and help people. And you
Joshua Brummel: Yeah.
James Marland: really well. So, uh, okay, so we're gonna talk about, uh, the group at Practice conference in 2025. And I just, you know, just wanted to pick your brain about, you [00:08:00] know, your decisions that you were making about the conference and maybe some of the marketing of the conference and how it might translate to. Some other products, but let's just start out with a, a general question. What, what is the group practice conference and why did you decide to do one in 2025?
Joshua Brummel: So it's a in-person event. We'll, we'll have probably just around 60. Group practice owner specifically at this event for, uh, what will be year one and we hope, uh, for future years as well. And the goal is, is twofold. Number one is to provide a space for those that have already, uh, grown a little bit and maybe plateaued or are trying to hit a fast growth cycle for their growth practice.
We, you know, advertise that we really want practice owners to have about eight clinicians being nearing. Seven figures in annual revenue are already surpassed that. And you know, most of the people who have joined us so far, uh, for the event and grabbing a ticket [00:09:00] are, uh, probably between the, the, the eight and the 30, 35 clinician range.
And so most of our content then will be geared towards. Outcomes on kind of your next 10 clinicians or your next, uh, seven figures of revenue. And so the second piece then is we also want to provide a mix of high level strategy conversations, sort of the big overview, zoomed out of what does it feel like?
To add a million dollars in revenue in the next 18 months, the next 12 months to a practice. And how do you strategically need to approach that, especially after you've already built something first and then tactically, do we have the space? Because every practice owner struggles with different things, some more with marketing than others, some with recruiting more than others, some with, uh, intake.
There's ops, finances. Is there a place to get the nuts and bolts? Tactical strategies to resolve [00:10:00] what their bottlenecks will be in that next year of growth. So we've designed the event to provide an in-person space and to tackle that all in a single, um, weekend, essentially.
James Marland: So do you Yeah. That, that's awesome. Do you see the, the bottlenecks as a, uh, you know, like a five or six figure business different than the seven, eight, uh, figure business?
Joshua Brummel: The thing that I've been saying more consistently, I probably heard it from Alex Ramzi first, is just, uh, big businesses, great businesses, figure out how to do all of the little things that they already know how to do at scale. When I talk to a practice that's doing four or $5 million in revenue, the shape of the business looks very, very similar, uh, as the one that's doing 300,000.
They just have a lot more bodies. They do more marketing, they do more recruitment, but it's kind of the same loops in all of the different [00:11:00] pieces that you get exposed to when you first start a group practice. They're just doing those at higher volume, better quality, and maintaining consistency as they get larger.
So there are size bottlenecks that appear within there. Uh, but it's really, uh, capacity bottlenecks in different departments of like, man, how do we, how do we do even more of this when our sort of our clinician family grows exponentially from three to 50?
James Marland: Yeah, I, I remember a, a friend who had a therapy practice and then in like five years she opened a second office and then in like two years after that, she opened another office. she figured out how to off open offices at scale, and she
Joshua Brummel: Yeah,
James Marland: eight or 10 offices. It's still hiring people by, you know, doing the buildings, but now she can do it, you know, like, like, uh, it's, it's much easier.
You don't have to figure it out. You've got your system down and you, you
Joshua Brummel: definitely.
James Marland: So,
Joshua Brummel: Yeah.[00:12:00]
James Marland: So how does this event, you mentioned that this, this, uh, this event ha, is sort of like a natural progression of the mission or values of therapy flow. Can you explain that just a little bit? Like how is this event, uh, just an expansion of what you're already doing?
Joshua Brummel: Yeah, that's a great question. You know, for years I've wanted to host an in-person event like this. And personal life, timing, business timing, audience size, timing. If we think about it from a marketing perspective, all of those kind of have to come together. And, and many of them have, but we have been rooted in equipping practice owners and business owners with the knowledge they need to scale their business.
Uh, I, at the end of the day, I really believe that, you know, the business is a reflection of you. And so sometimes that's a reflection of your, uh. Working capacity, the actions you take, the way you lead the output you personally have as a leader, [00:13:00] and sometimes that is your organizational. Business knowledge.
You know, what, what does a budget look like for a million dollar practice? What does a W2 versus 10 99 hiring decision look like? Uh, when things are really tight at 15 therapists, how do you make the decision between spending more and marketing and, uh, spending more time doing your own community networking and not outsourcing it to a provider?
These are really gritty decisions on the way up. It's, it's messy. You're, it feels like when you're scaling your, your house is kind of burning down wire. You're building it at all times and it's not fun. And so something has to pierce through that noise, give sort of a source of truth on, on next steps.
But contextual to your situation, it can't just be, you know, do it this way because that way's gonna fail if it's not applied to your specific situation. And so we've done our best to provide that context for [00:14:00] live virtual coaching that we have as part of all of our programs and all of our products. Uh, but.
A big natural extension then is to say, Hey, uh, so much collaboration, access to experts that I can all get in a, in a room that I can't have in my own coaching program every day across all of the other spheres of success for a practice owner like finances from Julie Harris, or, uh, other related recruitment pieces from, you know, Andy at Spare Search Services.
All of that just kind of unlocks and opens that door in a single setting at an in-person event. Uh, and your learning outcomes are so much faster, which is awesome because it's just a great venue to do all of that work.
James Marland: Yeah. Um, it sounds you're, you're, you have a lot of knowledge and connections and you're bringing it together to, to serve the community.
Joshua Brummel: Yeah.
James Marland: um, are you following a plan? So I'm gonna ask some nuts and bolts [00:15:00] questions
Joshua Brummel: No plan. Uh.
James Marland: because, you know, eventually people who create courses and create content, they're gonna wanna bring 'em together. And, and, um, so I'm just curious about your, when you start, when you decided to do this, what, what was your plan and uh, um, what were some of the first big decisions you had to make?
Joshua Brummel: Yeah, great question. So the, the very first decision that we did have to make was, is this something that we even want to do? Meaning is the opportunity cost, it's gonna be. Budget, it's gonna be risk, it's gonna be marketing, it's gonna be this, uh, an in-person event compared to virtual just comes with a lot more associated risk at every stage.
I asked myself the question. What is the simple version of this that's still viable for the outcomes that we want to achieve? And I kind of wrote down what are the outcomes that make [00:16:00] this incredible for people who participate? And then I kind of planned it all on paper. Uh, and then I went through the whole list and I kind of looked at, uh, these giant sheets of paper that I'd put together in my office across a couple days of planning and.
I came back to it one day later and I was like, this isn't very simple. This looks like I, I went through, you know, the, the catalog of the toy ad. Someone said, Hey, what do you want for Christmas? And I circled literally everything but one. And, and I was like, okay, how do I pair this down? And so the first couple months of ruminating out of this was actually that process of like, how do I get rid of things?
This is too complicated. This isn't gonna go well. How do I pair this back? Uh, to share one example, even the decision of a lot of in-person events. Host sponsors that can help bring cash in and other things. But I'm like, well. That's more operational communication that's dictates the space we can choose because I have to have enough space to host those sponsors or have tables so we don't have [00:17:00] adjacent sponsors helping run this event.
We'll make the event less profitable. Also make the event a lot more focused on the content and a lot more simple to. Execute on this first time around. And to share One last, last piece, um, is I sort of did a dry run in January when I knew that I wanted to do this. Uh, we hosted a one full day virtual free event, and I sort of, you know, we planned a whole day agenda.
We advertised it, we brought in the whole layers, and it was kind of, um, you know, stage one. Fill the room, run a whole day event, interface with some content. We'd done a lot of masterclasses, longer form masterclasses, live coaching, but you know, running sort of a start to finish themed virtual event was, you know, dry run number one to see, hey, do we want to try and do this live with all the other logistics that might be attached to it?
James Marland: I bet you learned some lessons [00:18:00] from that. Uh, do you have any takeaways from that, uh, virtual event as far as, uh, logistics and organization?
Joshua Brummel: Yeah, I mean, I think number one was just transitions and communication of changes, and I think this is actually even more important on a virtual event of you have to really engineer to hold someone's attention through the whole day if you want to. To get momentum. We had some like offers that we wanted to share at the end of that event for people to enroll in our services.
And there wasn't a lot of engagement or, uh, or participants by the full end of the day. And so whether it was how we communicated, how the day would unfold, the, the placement of that communication, the speaker. Or the panel that we brought in, some of those pieces, um, that I'm just like, whoa, you kind of don't learn any of those lessons unless you just give it a try.
Uh, and I felt like I learned all of those. And then within that, um, just there's a lot of, [00:19:00] um, a lot of little, little things. And so I'm anticipating that even more so for this event in the fall. And we've built a, a better, more robust team to handle this stuff in the fall in preparation for it. But just.
The volume of little details that you overlook and have to be taken care of the, the days or day leading up to it is just high when you think about it.
James Marland: You, you mentioned a couple principles, uh, when you were talking about the, the planning one was the minimum viable product or the, you said the simplest thing you could do to make it go forward. And
Joshua Brummel: Yeah.
James Marland: I think that's so I. When you're launching anything that is so critical, 'cause you could get caught up in all the details and all the bells and whistles and even the simple thing of not having, um, sponsors like that saves, like, that saves some mental energy and some, uh, focus that you can put more on the, the people coming to the event and making the event [00:20:00] great for those type of people.
You don't have to provide your attention. 'cause I'm sure if you had sponsors. If they would wanna get their money's worth out of the, the sponsorship. I mean, it just, nothing wrong with that. It's just you, you want, you want a good place to, to, to, to talk about your, your service. So, yeah, the minimum vial product.
And then there was one other thing. Oh, Jim Collins, uh, great by choice. It's his, the one that's blue is, uh, he has a red one, a blue one, and a black one. Uh, three books, maybe even another one. Anyways, um, the blue one talks about fire bullets than cannonballs and that you just.
Joshua Brummel: Yeah.
James Marland: Did that principle right there, you, you put a little bit of resources to make sure you were aiming in the right direction, tested it, learned, adjusted, and then you gear up for something even bigger.
And that, that, um, just how you talked about, we did a dry run and a test run was just a great way to [00:21:00] do some, do some reps, you know, do some, uh, training before the, the actual event. Were you thinking
Joshua Brummel: Yeah.
James Marland: way or how.
Joshua Brummel: Yes, is the easy answer. I think that, um, especially when we think about running a successful company, whether you're a course creator or you're doing something else, uh, my big transition last year into this year is knowing that. Authenticity is the wrong, wrong word here, but sort of the authenticity of your brand in terms of how real are you?
How updated is your content? How much interaction can people have with your brand, the results that you get and the value you bring as a result. There's so much value in showing up to a live event where you walk away with tangible learning from virtual or in person. And so some of the, the course content needs to [00:22:00] live there in order for.
Someone to, to sell that, to reference, to go back and to, uh, for that person to receive takeaways and implement into their business, but sort of your, your entry point. Uh, I think that that entry point of seeing people live in person and the authenticity and the experience of that is just a huge marketing win for yourself and for the people who become paying clients of yours that, you know, it feels great to leverage.
James Marland: So I wanna turn, turn the attention to a little bit on what people can expect at the group practice conference. Like, what, what, what do you hope, uh, what, what do you hope people come away from this event with?
Joshua Brummel: Yeah, been a little bit of a moving target. Uh, back to that earlier question of what are the outcomes we actually want to achieve
James Marland: Hmm.
Joshua Brummel: what do we need to. Definitely do, and how can we remove everything else? I think most people have feedback at [00:23:00] in-person events is it's so much content, it's what do I implement, where do I go with it?
It's like there's kind of always enough, especially when it's done well. So being aware of that, kind of pick more and more things out. It's a two day event. Uh, essentially we'll have, um, a, a welcome reception the night before for whoever is. You know, made it and settled before the next day, or first day is starting.
Day one, uh, is focused on higher level strategy and pacing for a practice owner to really set the sights on where they need to go, the future of group practice layers that they're gonna experience big financial success that afternoon. We've got one primary activity led by my co-founder, LIO, uh, on private practice bottlenecks.
And so it's gonna be, uh, a both a group and an individualized activity for you to discover your own personal growth bottlenecks now, and what might, what might come up as you grow in the [00:24:00] next 12 months. That will then prepare them for day two as we go into some more tactical sessions on recruitment or nuts and bolts of finance, hr, marketing, um, things around those.
Then in the afternoon of day two, our primary activity is what we're calling round tables. Each one of our speakers will be hosting their own table. They'll all be happening at the same time. In one room, you'll have about an hour and a half to go from table to table. It'll be, you know, just a couple seats at each table essentially.
And you'll be able to just have a one-on-one conversation, essentially with any of. The speaker's there. So if recruitment's not an issue at all, great, don't go to that table during that hour and a half, but it's gonna give you a chance after hearing all of them break down their high level strategy concepts.
To come to the table and unpack it and get live feedback from the expert on your practice, your context, your area, your [00:25:00] issues, and probably get that from, you know, three or four great individuals over the course of that hour and a half. And so that's gonna help you leave the event with some incredible customized takeaways, uh, before, you know, heading off and implementing.
James Marland: We, we've, that, that's sounds really fantastic. We talked a couple times, bottlenecks keeps coming up and one of the things I recently learned about bottlenecks, I mean I've heard it over more, more than once, is like most companies, uh, you have one bottleneck at a time. And that's
Joshua Brummel: Yeah.
James Marland: narrow.
That's where, that's where things narrow and things start building up because you could have, you know, your business if you think about it like a river. It ebbs and flows, but there's only one narrowest point of the river. There's only one point that ever that things stop flowing as fast as other things.
And once you break that it turn, there's another point in the river that's actually becomes the narrowest. [00:26:00] And so then
Joshua Brummel: Yeah.
James Marland: on that. And as you were talking about, you want people to come away with a plan and bottlenecks and resources and networking. You know, it just sounded like something that would be very beneficial for people who might not know. They're where the bottlenecks are or where like, oh, something's not working right, and I'm worried about this, but it, what is the, what's the issue? And just to get some
Joshua Brummel: Yeah, I.
James Marland: and other people who have either gone through it or going through it and sitting around the table sounds like a fantastic, um, opportunity for people who wanna, uh, continue to grow.
Joshua Brummel: When you first start a business, everything's a bottleneck. When you've, when you've built some or even a good portion of the business, uh, you're probably still doing a number of things right? And not everything is constricted. And I think that's why this format and why we kind of segmented away from just people who want to launch their group practice for the first time as well, is because we want to have space to have the conversations [00:27:00] around.
Um. Sort of established bottleneck difficulties. 'cause one, it can be hard to maybe not spot your own bottlenecks, but understand how to prioritize them. When you talk about where you want to grow, it's like, okay, our marketing isn't great, but neither is our recruitment. Which one should we actually spend time on?
Uh, our, our pay cycles are fine, but will that last if I hire another 15 clinicians this next year? And so that's where you start running this. Never ending equation in your head, and you can kind of get stuck on that bottleneck, that first one to actually solve.
James Marland: Great. We're we're starting to, like, I have about 20 more questions, but we're starting to run outta time.
Joshua Brummel: Yeah.
James Marland: uh, this has been really fascinating. I guess I wanted to, before we, we talk about where people can find you in the be um, before we started the, the po uh, recording, the pre-show I call it, is we started talking about, you know, marketing an event, [00:28:00] has some similarities with other types of marketing and. You know, said you've been doing some things that are working for your marketing for, um, this event. Do you wanna just way high level, you know,
Joshua Brummel: Yeah.
James Marland: some of the things you're doing and what's working for you for marketing and event?
Joshua Brummel: Yeah. Number one is, is finding a great partner. Specifically, I think when we think about running this event, you know, one of the first things I, I, I did was approach Green Oak accounting and their, you know, 50 50 partners, so to speak. Their, they're pulling their full, their full weight and partnership for this event.
And I did that so that way there would be, um. Marketing manpower all the way down to logistics. And it just, again, it went back to the what would make this undeniably successful and easier to pull off. And so on a marketing level, there's lots of practical things we've, we've done. I'll, I'll share just a couple in a second, but that's a big bonus.
So if you think about a virtual event, if you think [00:29:00] about an in-person event, uh, collaborate with someone on it, someone who's got an adjacent. Uh, brand, an adjacent course, an adjacent whatever to you, because two will go farther than one, especially in this live context with live hosts and some of those things.
And then from there, uh, the lists, the, the email marketing. Um, this is mainly possible due to the. To the email lists that we have curated over time, and it's really interesting to look at how many people have signed up for this event who have never purchased a product before from either of our teams, and how many who have and more have never purchased anything before, but they've been on our list reading our emails for who knows how many years.
And so you really can't undervalue. Even today, building your list, doing email marketing, and that's kind of step one. We've ran some paid ads, we've worked with some partners, we've had some conversations. [00:30:00] We've networked a little bit, but, um, building a good partnership to help run the event in the way that, you know, we have this time and email marketing are the two that have really made it
possible so far.
James Marland: Um, so where can people go to find more about Therapy Flow and also the, the, the Group Practice Conference?
Joshua Brummel: Yeah. So whether you're a solo practice or really at any stage of developing a group practice, we've got some incredible services for you that you can check [email protected]. Um, an easy grab as I write a newsletter every week, uh, has about 13,000, uh, practice owner readers. I pour a lot of time into that and just practical marketing and business strategies.
So you can just even join, join that, uh, through the website as well, regardless of our other marketing pieces. And then if you are a group practice owner with eight or more clinicians and you are looking at growth, uh, for the next [00:31:00] year plus considerably group practice con. Dot com, uh, is a, is a great place to explore that event and see if, uh, there's any tickets left for you to grab and see us in Chicago this fall.
James Marland: Great. Well tho those links will be in the show notes. Um, or you can just go to probably, uh,
Joshua Brummel: Yep.
James Marland: therapy flow.com. Right. And there'll be links and stuff in there. what a wonderful resource you're doing and a great conference you're putting on. Uh, I love the, the, the heart and the attitude and just like how you. gonna, um, be creating a great resource for these people. Thanks for, uh, coming on the show.
Joshua Brummel: Yeah. Thanks for the questions today, James. Cheers.
James Marland: So thanks. Thanks for listening to the Scaling Therapy Practice. It's now time to go put your mission in motion. We'll see you next time [00:32:00]
