Perry: In this episode of the Therapist Experience I’m speaking with Jeff Guenther from Jeff Guenther LPC. This is the Therapist experience, episode number 42. Welcome to the Therapist Experience. The podcast where we interview successful therapists about what it’s really like starting and growing a private practice. I’m Perry Rosenbloom, the founder of Brighter Vision, and I’m so excited to introduce our guest today Jeff Guenther from Jeff Guenther LPC. Jeff, are you prepared to share your therapist experience?

Jeff: Yes, I sure am.

Perry: Fantastic. Jeff, thank you so much for being on the show. Let me tell our audience a little bit about you here. Jeff received his master’s degree in marriage and family therapy from the University of Southern California, and his bachelor’s degree in child and family development from San Diego State University. Prior to going into private practice he worked in the public school system providing individual group and family therapy to high-risk students while also teaching parenting classes. Jeff’s therapeutic career started out at a crisis line in Portland, Oregon where he mainly worked with people who were suffering from suicidal thoughts and severe anxiety. Jeff started his private practice in 2007, the bulk of his work now focuses on seeing couples and individuals between the ages of 20 and 40 years old. Jeff, I gave a little overview of you there but why don’t you take a minute, fill in the gaps from that introduction, and tell us a little bit more about you personally and about your practice?

Jeff: Sure. Well, I’m from Los Angeles and I moved to Portland right after I graduated from USC, and I just sort of moved to Portland because it sounded like a cool town. And I dove right in to working as a therapist. I interviewed for a lot of agency jobs, work at non-profit agencies, and I was really horrible at interviews. That wasn’t something that I was prepared for, like having an adult interview.

Perry: You didn’t tell me that before coming on a podcast interview.

Jeff: Yeah, sorry. This is going to be your worst podcast you ever did. Haha. So I was really bad at interviews. I used to get like severe anxiety in the interviews. I’m fine right now talking to you but it was bad. It was like the walls were shaky and I got blurry vision. So I eventually worked through that, I was okay. And that’s when I got my job working for a suicide crisis line, which was pretty heavy and difficult. But I was only there for a year and then I worked with children and families and like the public school system that you mentioned. And that’s what I always wanted to do, not the degree in marriage and family therapy, because I want to work with kids and families but I was only able to do that for maybe like a year and a half because it turned out that I couldn’t stand working with parents. Haha. I taught parenting classes at 25 years old, so that was kind of funny because all the parents were older than me. But I worked with the kids and I loved working with those kids and I was good doing child therapy and child psychology. But the parents were just driving me crazy, and so I decided to ease off on working with kids and families and just focus on working with adults and that’s when I went into private practice.

Perry: You made that transition 2007 right before the Great Recession. How did that go?

Jeff: Well, maybe we’ll get into this a little bit more but when I went into private practice I set my fees incredibly low, way too low.

Perry: When we’re saying way too low, what are we talking about?

Jeff: We’re talking 25$.

Perry: 25$ a session?

Jeff: 25$ a session, yes. And that brought in like a fair amount of people but the folks that were coming to see me and were just paying 25$, they didn’t seem very invested. So there’s a lot of no-shows, they didn’t really like kind of do the homework in between sessions. So it was a little rough-going at the start there.

Perry: How did you come up with 25$ a session?

Jeff: Hahaha.

Perry: Haha. That’s hands down the lowest rate I’ve ever heard so I’ve got to give you credit there for that, I guess.

Jeff: Yeah, I looked it all, there’s like a ton of therapists in Portland which is great, touchy, feely healing, feel-good place in Portland. Lots of counselors, lots of healers. And I looked at all the therapists or a lot of the therapists in Portland and what they were charging, and no one was charging as low as 25$. So I decided to go for it. I went into it with the sort of like– I was really scared that nobody would want to see me just because like this young kid giving therapy, so I thought like, well, I’m only worth 25$ an hour. So it’s coming from this like low self-confidence place.

Perry: How did you make the transition to raise your rates?

Jeff: Well, I charge 25$ for maybe like– Not very long at all. Maybe four, five months or something and I started to notice that the clients that were coming in were not like, high-quality invested clients. So I switched it to 40$ and then I would charge– I was charging 40$ for a while and then I went from 40$ to 60$, but the 40$ spot was kind of like my sweet spot. I was attracting the type of client that I wanted and at that time I was attracting clients that were– If you know anything about Portland, there’s just like a bunch of hipsters here. And I wanted to work with the hipsters. I wanted to work with those hipsters that were in their 20s and didn’t really know what to do, and they were feeling like quarter-life crisis sort of stuff. And they were bartenders and servers, they worked at retail, and they could just barely afford 40$. So I stayed there for a little while.

Perry: And what’s your current session rate if you don’t mind me asking? I know we usually ask that later but let’s keep going on this.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah, keep going. It’s 100$ per hour but I actually would probably be charging 120$ or 150$ right now, however I have like other streams of income. So I feel like 100$ an hour feels like a good price for me and I’m just going to kind of like stick with that. But I know that at least in Portland I could charge more because I sort of like encourage therapists to charge as much as the market can bear, and in Portland it’s probably between 125$ and 150$.

Perry: Are you still able to work with the types of clients that you want to work with? And I guess also, are those hipsters in their 20s and 30s the types of clients that you still want to be working with?

Jeff: Yeah. I love them and I still want to be working with them. And more than half of my practice I have those typical hipster clients, and now a lot of them have insurance.

Perry: That’s good.

Jeff: And I’m in that work with a lot of different insurance providers. So I still get to see those guys, a lot of them are the clients that I always wanted to work with. And working with 20 to 30 year–olds that are going through like quarter-life crisis of like, oh, I’m almost 30 and I’m not married or don’t have a job that I want, or, what the hell I am doing with my life? Like, those guys, they tend to stay in therapy for a long time. And I really like the long-term therapy but that wasn’t something that I was like going to specialize in, that age group or that culture, they sort of found me and made me specialize in them. Like I said before, I specialized in child and family therapy. So it turns out that it was them.

Perry: I think it’s just sort of the mix of the entrepreneurial and the professional journey. When I started off and I quit my full-time job and started my business I set off to do search engine optimization. That’s what my background is in. And do these large scale SEO campaigns for beer companies and– Then I realized even though I was really good at SEO I couldn’t convince these companies to pay me what I was worth. And eventually zigged and zagged and built a website for my mother in law who has a private practice in Jacksonville, Florida, and from there Brighter Vision was born. I didn’t set out to start working with therapists but I love it and I love what we do. It’s just sort of that journey of entrepreneurship that I think is so special and so unique to us entrepreneurs out there.

Jeff: Yeah, exactly. A little before my private practice I was trying to like force this specialty that I really enjoyed doing but for some reason just wasn’t really working for me. It wasn’t really resonating. So when I was able to kind of like let go and see where the journey would take me then everything started to click.

Perry: So Jeff, let’s take a step back here and let’s go back to a point in your career as a therapist where you could have called it quits. Because that entrepreneurial journey, we have those ups and those downs, it’s such a roller-coaster. So if you can share with our audience what that time was like when you just hit a wall and you were struggling and just couldn’t seem to get past it? And then more importantly, share with our audience how you persevered through and came out on the other side more successful?

Jeff: Well, my first job at the crisis line I was just relieved to get a job and not have to move back to LA where I’m from. So I got that and that was great but that was like a pretty high burnout rate because there is just tons of calls that I was taking and they’re all very anxiety provoking. And then I worked at this sort of non-profit that worked with public schools and that’s when I got to do child and family therapy and stuff like that. But that wasn’t really working for me either because there was just so much paperwork in the agency world and I’m horrible at paperwork, and not enough clinical time. And I felt like, if this is what therapy is, if this is what being a therapist is this is not for me. So before I decided to start my private practice I decided that I was going to quit my agency job and apply for a job in the mall. Because when I was a kid I worked in a mall and I loved it. So I was like, you know, I’m just going back to that. So I went to the mall in Portland downtown and I went to the Apple Store that we all love, and I applied for a job at the Apple Store. Then they called me the next day and were like, alright, we want to interview you. And I’m like obsessed with Apple. This was actually kind of like a dream job for me. I was going to work at the Apple Store, I was going to become an Apple genius and it was going to be amazing. So the next day they called me and they said that they want me to come in for an interview and I just couldn’t do it. I kept on thinking like, I can’t work at the mall, not that there’s anything wrong with working at the mall. But I was like, I can’t work at the mall next to the food court, I have a master’s degree, tons of money that I spent on it, what am I doing? So I almost quit my agency job to work at the Apple Store. I never showed up for an interview by the way. So who knows what would have happened. And instead I just sort of abruptly quit my agency job and that’s when I started the private practice, and I only charged 25$ an hour, but it was kind of like this scary, slightly dark time for me because I really didn’t know if this was going to work. But it ended up working out.

Perry: As none of us do, right? Again, it’s part of the journey, it’s part of the joy of being an entrepreneur. And the anxiety of it. Haha.

Jeff: Yeah, exactly.

Perry: And there’s no way that it could work out without marketing, and we haven’t actually really touched on this but I know that you have a great marketing experience both with your private practice and with some side-businesses you have. Something that we see therapists struggle with though is actually with marketing in sales, but there’s really no way to grow a thriving private practice without marketing. What do you feel like is the best marketing move you made for your private practice and why do you feel like it’s worked so well for you?

Jeff: Well, best marketing move was just creating a website. Obviously, you encourage everybody to do it. I made the website and I started to get really into my blog on the website. So I encouraged everybody to have a blog but the best part of logging on my website was that I was reaching my ideal clients. And the things that I was blogging about was things like, do you feel like you’re a Facebook stalker? Things that my clientele really sort of worried about. Facebook stalking, do you feel like you’re codependent? Do you feel like you’re having an existential crisis at 25 years old? So I started to blog and sometimes those blogs ranked well in search rankings but it was really the relationship that I was developing while my clients found my website and then read those blogs because I was using their same language. I was even typing in the same bars or clubs that I would go to and that they would go to. So they knew exactly that I knew what was going on there. So the technology I used was just making website and then creating a blog. I even for a second got really into Google Adwords and that’s where I came up with little taglines of, are you a Facebook stalker, or don’t you want to just breakup with your boyfriend? Or something like that. These little random catchy tags. So yeah, so the website and the blog was the most important thing for me.

Perry: Do you offer tele-health as well?

Jeff: I don’t, no.

Perry: Because one thing I– You know, I think blogging obviously is a very effective strategy but one thing that I think a drawback of blogging is that you’re able to reach such a large audience. And if you’re ranking well organically, which is just really SEO in Google Search results, you’re not able to work with everybody. Because you could be reaching a great large audience but 95% of them could be coming from outside of your state. So how have you struggle with that and worked through that? Are you focusing more on social media sharing and articles that would be heavily shared on social media so that way you’re connecting that way?

Jeff: Yeah, I share a lot on the social media but one of the things to kind of like solve that problem is that a lot of blogs that I used to write, they kind of had this local scent. So I was talking about actual coffee shops or actual bars in Portland, or I was talking about different neighborhoods and naming them in my blogs. So Google was able to be like, okay, this guy’s blogging and he’s a therapist, and he’s talking about a lot of Portland landmarks. So my blogs would come up more often when people were searching for Portland. I even teamed up with some like that, graphic designers and animators that are local here in Portland, and I made some little animations on how to date somebody who’s codependent? And there’s a lot of like local flavor to all the things that I was doing and that sort of differentiated me.

Perry: Fantastic. So Jeff, you went to school to become a therapist, not to get your MBA, but along the way you decided to open your own private practice. What’s the one thing that you wish you would have learned in school about starting your own business?

Jeff: A lot of things. It’s really unfortunate that getting a master’s degree in counseling and therapy they don’t really talk too much about building a private practice and becoming a business owner. But if I had to narrow it down to one thing, I’d probably say that I wish my professors would have talked to me about burnout. Because burnout, when it comes to how many clients you’re accepting, how can you know if you’re taking on too many for yourself. Because the thing is that like for a while there once I started to become successful in my private practice I was just like, let’s do this. I’m taking 30-40 clients a week, as much as I possibly can. That was when I had like no– Not a very big social circle and I wasn’t dating anybody. So I was able to spend a lot of time doing that. And then I saw clients come in one after the other after the other and I wasn’t like having any breaks, and I was like, this is great, this is amazing. It’s like bingeing on like my favorite TV series. At that time it was like, I love watching Lost and I just have to see one episode after the other. And it was just like, I love seeing my clients, one episode after the other. And I got really burned out and I didn’t really know it until like a year or so in. And I didn’t know why I was just kind of like starting to resent my clients and not wanting to go to work and that was very confusing. So then after that I learned that I have to have lots of breaks during the day, I have to have lots of quiet time. I have to have quiet time after my full days and not hangout with friends. And I had to just sort of learn all that on the fly. And I also had to create a supportive community. I had to have consultation groups and group therapy, and group supervision. And really get a lot of support that pays well.

Perry: That’s all really great advice there Jeff. And burnout definitely isn’t talked about. I’m sure when you’re charging 25 bucks a session you have to see a lot of clients to make the work.

Jeff: Yeah, I do.

Perry: And it’s going to be more likely to lead to burnout there. So before we move on to the Brighter Insights section, at the start of the interview you mentioned about some other income streams you have which have allowed you to keep your session rate sort of on the lower end of what the market can bear. Could you elaborate on other services that you offer in your other businesses?

Jeff: So there’s a few things and I encourage all therapists to do this. One of the things that I do and the first things– One of the things that I first did was that I rented out an office suite and in that suite there’s five offices and there’s this nice centrally located office space. And then I took one of the offices and then the other four offices I furnished myself to make them look like nice little therapy offices. And then I rented those offices part-time to other therapists. So there was about 15 or 20 therapists all in this office suite. And for profit I made like around 1500$ in profit per month. And so it was like, that was really nice. That’s like fantastic extra spending.

Perry: No, it’s great extra income there.

Jeff: Yeah. And it was really great for the therapists starting out because they’re all like new therapists that only could rent hourly and they only had to pay like just a really small amount just to get started and schedule their hours, and they all shared Google Calendar, an online calendar, to make sure that we’re all scheduled in the right place. And now I’m opening my fourth office space that’s just like that.

Perry: That’s fantastic.

Jeff: Yeah. There’s like 60 or 70 therapists that are all renting part-time. I’m just like helping them launch their practice. It’s actually really easy, it sucks kind of being the landlord sometimes. Like, that clock is too loud, or these chairs are uncomfortable. It’s just like, oh whatever, deal with it. But it works out well. So I do that and then through that when I first started I started my little counseling center, I called it Department Therapy Center and I built a website for it, and I was having people, other counselors, blog for it. And I turned Portland therapy center– All these therapists had a profile on there. And then I turned Portlandtherapycenter.com into a local mental health directory. And you know, there’s like Psychology Today, and there’s Goodtherapy.org, and those are big national directories. But especially Portland, but I think like most towns in the country, they love their local stuff. So I made just like a local Portland mental health directory. And now there’s almost 400 therapists on that website. I charge therapists 15$ a month to be on it and it gets over 10,000 visits a month from people looking for therapy. So that’s a whole another stream of income. And then the final thing is that I help therapists and healthcare workers improve their search engine optimization and rank higher in Google Search results and attracting their clients online at the Practiceacademy.com. And that’s sort of a new project, I’m not making too much money off of that right now. It’s mostly just like free weekly content that I’m giving away. But every now and then there’s like a premium product of like– If you go to a website you’ll see the ultimate SEO checklist and you can buy that for 27$. So there’s a little bit of income that I’m making there but I’m always thinking of what’s the next thing that I can do to make a little more income in the mental health community.

Perry: And provide a lot of value as well.

Jeff: Yes.

Perry: Speaking of, you have a special gift for our listeners here as well, correct?

Jeff: I do, yeah. I have that 27$ ultimate SEO checklist but there’s a free mini SEO checklist version and I have that to give away and I think everyone will really like that.

Perry: Fantastic. And to everyone listening, we’ll have links to all the great resources Jeff mentioned here, as well as the mini-checklist over in this week’s show notes at Brightervision.com/session42. Alright Jeff, time for us to move on to my favorite part of the interview, the part we like to refer to as Brighter Insights. And what’s so nice about this is we get to distill down your experience and your expertise into quick little soundbites and answers that our audience can use to motivate and excite them in growing their private practice. Are you ready?

Jeff: I’m ready.

Perry: What or whom inspired you to become a mental health professional?

Jeff: Well, I’m probably going to have to go with an easy answer there. My mom because she’s a therapist.

Perry: The best answer there is. not the easy one, the best.

Jeff: The best and easiest, yes. When I was like a really little kid I was like in grade school and I asked her what she did and she said she was a therapist. Didn’t quite understand what that was but she said that she helps like solve people’s problems so I got to do these little pretend sessions with her where I talked to her about how I really don’t like my teacher or I can’t stand doing my homework. Or I didn’t get picked first for like the basketball game on recess. And that was helpful for me as a little kid but also kind of like set the stage that I really enjoyed doing that kind of work.

Perry: What do you do to clear your head and get a fresh start in your day?

Jeff: What I do is I slow everything down as slow as I possibly can. Usually when I leave to go see my clients at the office I’m just doing a whole bunch of stuff. Taking notes, paying attention, giving lots of feedback, and it’s all just sort of like happening rapidly through the day. But at the beginning of the day I slow everything down, I eat breakfast really slow, I get ready to leave really slow, I play with my puppy. I do everything I can as slowly as possible and then I launch myself into the day. And that works as like a really good grounding experience for me.

Perry: What are some tools that you’ve used to leverage the power of technology in your private practice so technology is no longer a hurdle but instead an asset?

Jeff: Well, I still use the Portlandtherapycenter.com as the mental health directory, and I’m just always going on there and blogging and adding more content and coming up with different ways that people can search for therapists and find them. So I’m always kind of like tweaking my profile to see what would work, to see how many more clients or different clients I can attract. And one of the things I can kind of like get obsessed about is what profile picture attracts the most clients that I upload onto my profile on the mental health directory or onto my website. So nowadays I’m really interested in how to take the best picture and what picture resonates the most with clients.

Perry: What pictures do you find resonate or what qualities of a photo do you find resonate the best?

Jeff: I’ll tell you. Okay, are you ready?

Perry: I’m ready.

Jeff: Okay. Get ready for this. I have tried so many different photos with so many different length poses and this is what I found over the last three years. So go outside and take a picture, the photo should just be of your head and shoulders and of your chest a little bit. You should be smiling at the camera, don’t tilt your head, look straight at the camera, smile and make it a closed lip smile or just showing your top teeth. Do not show all of your teeth like your bottom teeth. You should wear like professional casual clothes, nothing too fancy but nothing too casual. make sure that there’s natural light coming in, make sure there’s something green in the background and that’s it. Oh, the last thing is, if you have a dog, throw it into the photo. Therapists that get clicked on, and maybe this is like a Portland thing because people love their dogs here. But I think it’s probably an everywhere thing. The therapists that have dogs in their photos get clicked on so much. So go to the dog park, steal the dog, take a photo and upload that to your website or to your mental health directory profile.

Perry: Are you basing this data off of your own profile pictures or are you also including data from your Portland mental health directory?

Jeff: It’s from over 400 different photos from the mental health directory.

Perry: Here’s an interesting question. What about cats? if you have a cat does it have just as much impact as a dog?

Jeff: Hahahahaha.

Perry: Hahaha. I’m serious, if you have a dog put it in the photo, what if you have a cat and cats may resonate with certain types of clientele more than a dog.

Jeff: Yeah, interestingly I haven’t thought of that and I haven’t seen any therapists that have taken a picture with their cat.

Perry: Alright, so therapists out there who are listening, if you have a cat go take a picture with it, throw it on your directory. It’s got to be a picture from outside, so you have to get your cat outside. Make sure they’re cool with going out and see if you get more clicks. And for the dogs, dog people do the same thing. And let’s see, people write in, let us know!

Jeff: Please, we need to know.

Perry: So you also mentioned wear professional casual clothing, can you give an example of that?

Jeff: It’s more like a nice sweater, a cute scarf, the hair kind of– If you’re a lady then it’s sort of like done up a little bit, and if you’re a guy it’s sort of styled a bit as well. But there’s some people that take like, whether they mean it or not, these sort of glamour shots, almost like prom photos sort of things. That’s not game. And then there’s other people that just sort of like takes selfies. Don’t take a selfie. You can tell if it’s a selfie and it’s very grainy. So professional causal, just sort of probably what you would wear when you’re going in to see a client. But you also need to– I forgot to mention this part two, there needs to be some contrast in the photo. So nice clear crisp shot of your face and then the background should be just like slightly blurry, you know? So that you’re sort of like popping just a little bit because there’s some therapist that the background and the foreground just sort of blends into itself or into each other. And those therapists are not getting many clicks.

Perry: For the photographer enthusiasts out there that background is slightly blurry, that’s called Bokeh. It’s one of the advantages of using a professional photographer. They can make sure that the background is appropriately blurry. It’s really hard to do on an iPhone. You can if you can focus things right but I definitely agree with everything you said. Obviously you’re the expert on this, especially the Bokeh part. Wow, fascinating stuff. I wrote all that down there and I’ll just sort of aggregate all that information in this week’s show notes at Brightervision.com/session42. Alright Jeff, what’s a quote that you hold near and dear, something that has helped formulate your perspective on life or has inspired, motivated, or provided guidance for you?

Jeff: Yeah, this might take just a little bit of explaining because it’s a quote that my dad made up. I don’t know how he made this up or where it came from but I was like a really big– We were both really into baseball. And I watched a lot of baseball and played a lot of baseball, and he was my coach growing up. And I loved playing second base and taking ground balls and I was really good at that. But every now and then I would make an error and I would always make an error on these balls that were just like a slowly hit balls that were so easy.

Perry: Those are the worst.

Jeff: Oh god, they were so bad. So my dad just during a game, or after the game he said to me. He said, “You know what Jeff–?” He was talking about ground balls being hit to me. He said, “Sometimes the easiest ones are the hardest ones and the hardest ones are the easiest ones.” Haha. So he was referencing those easy ground balls that get hit to you, you’re just overthinking it. And they are slowly coming to you and you’re not acting really natural but the hard ones, you’re going on instinct. It’s just based on like what feels right. And that’s when I would make these amazing plays. So I used that in other areas of my life just like in therapy where the really sort of– It’s really weird to call them this, but the easy clients. The clients that are kind of coming in and talking about the same thing or just doing process work. I’ve known them for a really long time. I’m really enjoying seeing them. I can just sort of like tune out a little bit or find myself thinking about other things because it’s just so easy. I don’t know. But the hard ones are challenging me and I’ve never dealt with this issue before, I’m working really hard and I’m just like really into it and I’m really connected to them. So it’s important to make sure that I take as many couples as I possibly can. Because those are the challenging ones and they get into fights and all that stuff. That’s when I’m just going on instinct and I’m trying really hard. So that works for me.

Perry: I got to admit, my chest has been tight this entire time you’ve been speaking. Just like thinking about playing hockey as a kid, and I played goalie. And instinctually I was great, I was superfast, lightning quick, but these shots that would come in from across the ice that required me to focus and stop with my stick and then pass away, I can’t even tell you how many times the puck was, what’s called ice, shot down from the other end, and I would miss it with my stick and it would dribble into the net or miss the net. I’m still like, maybe I need to go to therapy for this right now. I’m debating joining a men’s league for about a year now, maybe more like three years. Maybe that’s why I keep putting it off, who knows. Hahaha.

Jeff: Hahahaha.

Perry: I know exactly what you’re talking about here. Jeff, if you could recommend one book to our audience what would that book be?

Jeff: So this might be kind of a random one as well. The book is called Spiritual enlightenment: The damnedest thing and it’s by Jed McKenna. So I also really enjoy like reading about spirituality and enlightenment, but mostly like the spirituality that’s like really hard-hitting. Like, zen but like the real zen of like, I want to destroy my ego. I want to be enlightened and sit like in a cave for the rest of my life, or on a mountain top and just never see anyone again because I’m so detached from ego and people. I don’t know if I actually like want to do that myself, but I find those stories so fascinating and interesting. And there’s this one book, Spiritual enlightenment: The damnedest thing about this guy who just destroyed his ego, his personality. So he’s not attached to it whatsoever at all. And he wrote about his experience and if you want to try to do it he’ll give you like a little how-to. How exactly you can do it. Sounds like you have to like go crazy for two years but eventually you’re detached from your personality. It’s like weird, funny book that I go back to. I’ve read maybe like 10 times. It’s sort of like soothing and scary at the same time. Because it’s like, oh my god, what if you actually went through this? And one of the most interesting parts about this book– It’s actually a trilogy. That’s the first book in the trilogy. Is that nobody has ever been able to find this author. Jed McKenna is not the real name of the author. Nobody has ever interviewed him or her and he just publishes his own books, so he’s a complete mystery. He might be a total hack, I don’t think he is, or he might be the real deal, this enlightened guy.

Perry: Great stuff there. We’ll have a link of course to that and to everything else in this week’s show notes at Brightervision.com/session42. Alright Jeff, last question. If you moved to a new city with zero hipsters in it and you knew nobody–

Jeff: No.

Perry: And all that you had with you was your computer and 100$ to start a new private practice, what would you do on your very first day?

Jeff: I would probably open up that computer and start a website on Squarespace or something for 12$.

Perry: Oh I thought you were going to Brighter Vision, come on?

Jeff: No, I’m not. I mean, I’d probably go to you. But apparently I had a 100$, uhh. Maybe if I had 150$.

Perry: We’ll give you a month free but okay. So 12 bucks for Squarespace.

Jeff: Well then definitely Brighter Vision.

Perry: And start blogging.

Jeff: And start blogging. And then I would take the rest of that money. So if it was Squarespace for 12$ then I’d have like 88 bucks left. I would take the rest of that money and contact as many therapists in that town as possible and I’d ask them if I can take them out for coffee. And I would just sit down with them, ask them about their journey, how they started their practice, what clients they want to see or they are seeing. And let them now this is who I am, these are the clients that I like to see. And if there’s anybody that you wanted to refer I’m totally open for clients for availability. And the thing is that like I’m crazy into technology and SEO and website marketing and attracting more clients online, but I think like I’ve gotten some of the best results just taking other therapists after coffee. I think it works really well.

Perry: And to anyone listening here, if you want to take Jeff up on his advice and you want to go with Brighter Vision though, we’ll weigh the first month and the setup fee. You got to let us know within a week of this going live though. So you have a week after session 42 goes live. Let us know and we’ll basically give you a one month free trial so that you can– But you got to promise that you’re going to dedicate the rest of that money to going out and taking out therapists to coffee and helping you market your practice and get going here. Little timely offer there, right?

Jeff: Yeah, yeah. I support that. That’s the best way to launch a practice in my opinion.

Perry: Well Jeff, where can our listeners find you to connect and learn more about you?

Jeff: Well, they can go to one of my many websites. My private practice website is just Jeffguenther.com. You can also go check out my mental health directory at Portlandtherapycenter.com just to check it out. But if you want to see where I blog weekly about how to attract more clients and apply easy SEO to your website, you can go to Thepracticeacademy.com. Don’t forget the “the” at the beginning of that. It’s Thepracticeacademy.com and once you’re there you can click the contact button and send me an email or ask me a question. Anything you like.

Perry: Jeff, you are a busy man doing a lot of great things for the community as a whole both in Portland and the greater national community of therapists here. So thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your experience with our audience. We appreciate all the great experience and knowledge you provided and the therapist experience that you have shared.

Jeff: Sure, no problem. It was really fun talking to you.

Perry: And thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have a question for us please email it to us at [email protected]. And of course, if you’re interested in launching a website please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. Brighter Vision is the worldwide leader in custom therapist website design. For less than 2$ a day you’ll get a website that’s as unique as your practice, provide you with unlimited tech support so you never deal with any of those website headaches. We do complimentary SEO so people can find you online. To learn more head on over to Brightervision.com and drop us a note through one of our contact forms. That does it for today, thanks again for listening and we’ll see you next week.