[JOE SANOK] Providing great therapy day after day can be challenging even for the best of us. At Blueprint, they believe that nothing should get in the way of you doing your best work, which is why they created a platform that provides therapists with an array of clinical tools, things like therapy worksheets, intervention ideas, and digital assessments that are designed to help you and your clients stay connected and confident throughout the care journey. Even better, Blueprint helps streamline your documentation so you can spend less time on your notes and more time on the things that matter. To learn more and request a 30-day free trial, visit blueprint-health.com. This is the Practice of the Practice Podcast with Joe Sanok, session number 878. [JOE] I’m Joe Sanok, your host, and welcome to the Practice of the Practice Podcast, 878 episodes. That’s a lot of episodes. Time flies when you’re having fun, I guess. Hope your summer is going amazing. Hope you’re taking some time off. I am headed out to Montana actually, when, right now, I haven’t bought my plane tickets at the time of this recording, but I’m heading out there for a wedding and then going to go to Glacier. Follow my Instagram if you want to see some Glacier National Park pictures. I’m sure I’ll put them there. That’s at Practice of the Practice. My team is like, you post a lot of personal stuff on that story, and I’m like, yes, I do. But we try to stay on brand with the posts, but it’s always a push pull. I should probably just start at Joe Sanok one for all that stuff, but I just don’t want to manage two Instagrams. I don’t know about you, but I like to do things in nature or with people more than be online for my fun. Well, that has nothing to do with what we’re talking about today, but I hope things are kicking off for you this summer and going well. I’m so excited today that I have Lisa Mustard with me. Lisa’s been on the show before. Lisa has The Therapy Show with Lisa Mustard, where Lisa talks with therapists to learn clinical information skills and introduce them to others who are doing incredible work in the field. She also teaches them professional development and much, much more. Actually, the previous episode earlier this week was a reverse podcast interview where it was Lisa’s interview of me about every single phase of practice, where to spend your time. We did that just two days ago. So if you want to hear Lisa interviewing me you can hear that there, or just go over to The Therapy Show with Lisa Mustard to check out that podcast. So excited to have you on the show today, Lisa. Welcome, welcome, welcome. [LISA MUSTARD] Well, thanks Joe. It is such a pleasure to be here. I haven’t been on your show yet, though. [JOE] What? [LISA] Yes. [JOE] That happened with David Hall, too, where I was just like, “Welcome back.” And he’s like, “I’ve never been on your show.” I’m like, “What? How? I do not know how that happened.” I feel like I’ve been connected to you forever. I’ve known your story. Maybe I’ve just been on your show so much that it didn’t come back. I’m sorry. I feel like that definitely should have happened before episode 887. [LISA] Well, man, 887 episodes, that is a lot of podcasts. Congratulations. I know you still going strong. [JOE] Well, I’ve spent 886 getting ready for this interview. I just needed to feel like a competent podcaster to have you on the show. [LISA] Well, I appreciate all the practice that you took to get me on your show. But I do have to tell everybody that when I started my show, you were a major influence on me, and you totally inspired me to start my show. So I got to just give you a big old thank you. [JOE] Aw, that’s so awesome to hear. What episode are you on right now? [LISA] Well, as of today episode 140 was released today. [JOE] Amazing. I feel like when you get to like 50 episodes, that feels like, okay, like I’m really into, I’m a podcast man. When you break a hundred, you’re like, okay, I’m in this. [LISA] Yeah, that’s how I feel. [JOE] Were there times you wanted to really give up on the podcast or what were times when you were like I don’t know why I’m doing this? [LISA] Yes, many, many, many times. In fact over the pandemic, I stopped it for a couple months because I was going through this whole, you know life was just hard. I had, my kids were home and I was home working, and I just, I only had so much bandwidth and the podcast took a little bit of a backseat, but once we got back into the swing of things and they went back to school and I went back to work or in the office again I found I love it. I didn’t want to stop and I realized that I’m all in. I am all in. Actually, beginning of this year, I’m now releasing two episodes a week. I love it so much. [JOE] Oh, that’s awesome. Last year we did four episodes a week just to test it, and this year we’re back to two. That’s awesome. I feel like you can get in a really good groove when you have two episodes a week. [LISA] Yeah, I like it. It’s really fun. It keeps me on my toes. I love creating content. I love hearing from my listeners, what they’re curious about. So the episode that I release on Wednesday is for therapists. It’s clinical stuff, it’s training, it’s personal development, professional development. Then the episode I released on Saturday, what I was finding is I had a lot of listeners that weren’t therapists, but they were listening to the show and they were asking me questions about all kinds of emotional health related topics and I said you know what, I’m going to do a second episode on Saturday and call it, put it into practice, where I just give you information, psycho ed, some tips, ideas for upleveling your emotional health. That’s been a lot of fun. So I’m really grateful. [JOE] That’s awesome. I like that idea of putting it into practice. That’s great, Now, before we dive like fully into what we’re talking about in the episode, who would you say should start a podcast and who would you say maybe should pause in starting a podcast? [LISA] You mean who should pause and start a new, new pod, start a new podcast? [JOE] No, sorry, who shouldn’t, who should and who shouldn’t start a podcast? I asked that in a super weird way. [LISA] Oh, no, gosh, that is such a good question because my gut reaction is everybody should start a podcast if they’re looking to grow their brand and grow their practice. But then my other thought is, whoa, whoa, whoa, don’t start a podcast if you don’t have the time to do it, and not, because pod fading is a thing but that’s, but at the same time, I also think, well, there is this idea of maybe doing a mini podcast where you do 10 to 15 episodes and you just share all your expertise and value. And because a podcast is evergreen and people out there are going to find you, if you market it right and SEO it correctly and do all the right things it could still be a marketing arm for you. So I have a lot of ideas on how you can use a podcast to grow your, your business. But I don’t think you should start a podcast if you don’t have a clear direction for it if it’s just, if you want it to be a hobby, then go for it if you don’t have any ideas of monetization or turning it into something. But if you want to use it as a way to grow your business, then definitely have a plan. [JOE] Yeah, for sure, like to just know who your target market is and even if they listen to podcasts. It’s amazing how many people are like, yeah, I live in a small town in Kansas and I’m going to start a podcast to market my private practice. I’m like, no, that’s a terrible idea. Whereas it’s like, if I want to go national with my brand and have a very particular point of view, like then sure, go for that. Cool. Well, you’ve been doing something really interesting with pod courses. So tell me about the origin of pod courses. How’d you get started? Just, yeah, tell me about pod courses. [LISA] Sure. So let me take you back to, I want to say it was 2018 in July. I was sitting in the audience at the Low Country Mental Health Conference in Charleston, South Carolina, which by the way is a phenomenal conference. If you’re looking for, they don’t sponsor me to say this, I’m not an affiliate, if you’re looking for some really great training, come to Charleston, go to the Low Country Mental Health Conference, it’s phenomenal. But I was sitting there on the audience and I was like, I’m going to be sitting here for eight hours in a chair. I am in Charleston and I would love to be at the battery or walking down King Street or maybe even taking a Harbor Cruise I don’t really want to be sitting in a chair for eight hours. That got me really curious about what if we could take these phenomenal speakers and put them in our earbuds and I could be out living my life doing something relaxing or enjoyable and still getting this training? That just got me really curious about, hmm, what would that look like if somebody were to do that? Because I didn’t think it was going to be me. I thought it would be maybe a national organization, a really big one that I had emailed Gordon and said, hey, I have this idea. I’d love to share it with you, and maybe we could partner up. They were like, eh, yeah, that’s really nice, but we’re not interested. So I thought, hmm, okay, I’ll just sit on this and I’ll just keep thinking about it and then finally, December of that year, around Christmas time, I was resting and relaxing, something that you encourage us to do because it gets our creativity going and I thought, why not me? I’m a curious person. I have this in me. I’m really wanting something like this. So I just created something that I needed, I was solving my own problem, I guess. [THERAPY NOTES] As a therapist, I can tell you from experience that having the right EHR is an absolute lifeline. I recommend using Therapy Notes. They make billing, scheduling, note-taking, telehealth and e-prescribe incredibly easy. Best of all, they offer live telephone support that’s available seven days a week. You don’t have to take my word for it. Do your own research and see for yourself. Therapy Notes is the number one highest rated EHR system available today with a 4.9 out of 5 stars on trustpilot.com and on Google. All you have to do is click the link below or type promo code [JOE] on their website over at therapynotes.com and receive a special two-month trial absolutely free. Again, that’s therapynotes.com and use promo code [JOE] on the website. If you’re coming from another EHR, Therapy Notes will also import your demographic data quick and easy at no cost so you can get started right away. Trust me, don’t waste any more of your time and try Therapy Notes. Just use promo code [JOE] at checkout. [JOE SANOK] Now how, so how does it work? So like, take me through, like people listen and get CEs or do they pay for it? Like how does all that work? [LISA] So what I do is I record a one hour interview with an expert. Today actually, I released one on sex addiction. What I do is we create the objectives, we create the quiz, we create the evaluation, the certificate of completion, but anybody can listen to the content at any time for free. It was really important to me that the therapist or anybody out there could listen to this information without having to pay for the knowledge or for the information. Then if the therapist decides, hey, I really enjoyed that, I really like it, then they go to my website and they purchase the pod course, which is really a self-study course, but POD course is a podcast audio plus self-study course, hence POD course. You just purchase it from my website and then you’re put into a portal where you can once again listen to the content, you take a self-study quiz, you fill out an evaluation, and then you download your certificate of completion and you’ve got one continuing education contact hour. I am, Muster Consulting is a NBCC approved provider and that’s wonderful because that covers most of the states here, that it will work for an LPC or an LMFT and some social workers as well as I think some psychologists too. [JOE] And how hard is that process to get NBCC approved? [LISA] Oh gosh, well I have the self-study course creation, NBCC credential. I don’t have the live event. Honestly, I think the live event is easier to get than the self-study. They call it ASAP credential. Because what I had to do was I pretty much had to create a pod course ahead of time. So I had to create the membership site, the portal, the dashboard, and then I had to load everything into this dashboard and put the content in there, put the quiz in there not knowing if I was going to get approved or not. I had to create all of that, send in this like paper application, send in a check also, and make sure that everything was consistent across marketing content and then you send it off to NBCC and then you wait, and then you wait and you hope that they’re going to approve you. But I will say that my, it did take a couple months because it was during the pandemic, so they were short staffed. They were all working from home too. But I did get approved and the good news is that they worked with me, so I had some things I had to change, some things that needed to be reworded, put, written differently. But they were very patient, they got back to me with like, okay, this is great. We need to see it look like this. Can you change this? It needs to be this and this over here. Then finally I got my approval letter after a couple times of going back and forth with them. So for me, it took about seven months from start to finish. [JOE] Then every time that you do a pod course, do they have to approve it or how does that work? [LISA] No, so once you’re approved, once they approve you doing one course and you say, this is my format, you have an idea of, you know what they need and you know what they need to see. So you can just recreate your next course with the guidelines that they give you. Now there is a three-year audit and I am coming up on my audit. So I think it’s in October this year I will be audited, but it’s not a scary process at all. But no, every, and I can just create, now that I have this blanket approval from NBCC, I can create the pod courses as many as I want. I can do any type of self-study course now that I know you know how to do it and what they want. [JOE] Then for the live events, so that’s two separate things, you haven’t gone through that process to do the live event one. [LISA] No, I haven’t gone through the live event mainly because I don’t, I just don’t have a live event to promote. But for me it’s, I enjoy the self-study. I like that it’s evergreen, the content’s always out there. For me it just makes sense. Maybe one day I will go down the live event path, but for right now I really am just focusing on self-study courses. [JOE] Now for the amount of work it is, the amount of marketing that goes into it, would you say the average clinician should, should be creating their own courses or should they be partnering with NBCC providers or? [LISA] Yeah, that’s a really good question. Something that I have been thinking about a good bit recently is there’s a lot of therapists out there who want to create additional streams of revenue and there are people, therapists out there that you can take one of their courses, which shows you how to create continuing education. They’ll walk you through the NBCC process, they’ll hold your hand, even, I think they’ll help you decide how do you want to present your course? However, what I’m noticing is that if you don’t have a grasp on how to market your course, it’s going to be tough to get it out there. And I only say that from experience. That’s something that I have really, really over the past two and a half years been working on. I’m a therapist. I love clinical information. I love counseling. I don’t necessarily know how to market these courses. So that’s something that I want all therapists who are considering creating continuing education, think about how you are going to market that course once you create it because it’s really fun to create the course, but it’s not as much fun if you’re not selling it. [JOE] So what are some tips you have for people to market a course? Say they have one going, I mean, I know that’s an area you specialize in. I had had David Hall on this show earlier this year, and you and him connected and so you guys are both in that world. How do you market a course? [LISA] Gosh, there’s a, I mean, there’s plenty of ways to market a course. You can, well, let me just back up and say, if you want to create continuing education, let’s just say self-study, but you don’t really want to go through the hoops of getting the NBCC credential, because it’s just time and more money that maybe right now you don’t have, you can always look to partner with someone who is already credentialed. So something that I’ve started to do is connect with other therapists who have continuing education courses already done, and they’re selling them already, but they want to be able to offer the continuing education credit to their clients or their customers. So I am partnering up with other therapists. I have one that is a holistic counselor that has a, she has a three-hour course that she has put together and she’s excited to now be able to offer continuing education. Then I have another therapist friend who is an eating disorder specialist, and she’s put together I think a four-hour training on how to get work with those who are dealing with eating disorders. So she and I are going to create the, I’m going to do the backend and administer the course for her. So you can always look to do that with somebody else. I’m here for you if that’s something you want to do. David Hall is available also. I’m sure there are plenty of other therapists out there. I’m starting to connect with other therapists who have courses and we’re talking about ways that we can collaborate. So I would just look to start networking with like-minded people, talk with them, see how they’re promoting. My podcast is a huge marketing arm for my courses. Maybe you want to consider starting a podcast. But you definitely want to definitely want to have an email list. You want to offer something to your potential audience. So when you have your course ready, you’re then emailing them and saying, “Hey, course is ready. Here’s a 20% off if you’re ready to go.” So I would say podcasting, email list, being a guest on other podcasts is amazing. What else would I suggest? I mean, social media, of course, you can run ads to your courses via Facebook and Instagram. You can go into those 18,000 Facebook groups that therapists now have, and you can, when it’s marketing Monday, you can put that in there. There’s a lot of different things that you can do. I would say the more creative, the better. Blogging about your course and then SEO, making sure that it all matches up and you’re getting, people are finding you on Google, I mean the basic stuff I would say. But it’s something that you should start thinking about now before you even start your course because like I said, the fun part is creating the course and the harder part is getting it out there and having people know it exists. [JOE] Now I know another area that you said that you’re growing is with life coaching and you’re also licensed. I think that’s a big question that people often have is like, should I go into coaching so I can transcend state lines, should I have an online practice and follow the like psych pack or any of that? How did you decide you wanted to do more coaching and what’s that look like as you’ve launched more of that? [LISA] Yeah, that’s a really good question. I think what it comes down to is that I just want to be able to help more people. Our state, my license is just in South Carolina, I’m also as, I guess my style over the years and my full-time job has turned more into a consultant and a coach so I really like how I’ve evolved as a clinician into doing more coaching and more consulting. So I feel like that’s a really great way for me to help more people, not so much doing the trauma work or the work around anxiety. Now those things definitely can come up in a life coaching session, but that’s not the main focus of coaching. I really love that coaching is more focusing on what’s going on right now, what do you want to achieve, what are your goals, how do you want to move forward, and let’s make a plan to do those things. I just work really well in that type of model. So I can do therapy, Yeah, I mean, I can do therapy here in South Carolina and you can do both. I mean, you can have a therapy business and you can have a coaching business, but you definitely want to keep them separate. That’s the advice that most people are going to give you. So if you were to go to my website, you wouldn’t see anything about therapy. You would see life coaching and consultation. But yeah, that’s been really fun to dive into. I focus primarily on women, 35 and up who are dealing with a midlife crisis or midlife challenges and they’re looking to live their best life as they move into the second half of their lives. That could be their, maybe they’re thinking about changing careers, maybe they’re unfulfilled in their career, maybe they’re unfulfilled in their marriage, or they have parenting issues. Maybe their kids are out of the house and they don’t know who they, who am I once my kids leave the nest? Or maybe they’re just not feeling good in their skin and they want somebody to help them navigate those changes that happen, I’ll say 40 plus, because that’s when I started to notice them. But also they maybe aren’t living authentically and congruently based on their highest values. So that’s something that I really like to explore, is helping women identify their highest values and working or living congruently and walking in alignment’s really been an important process for me in my 40, after I turned 40. I just feel like I have a great framework to help other women with those things. [JOE] Now where would you have most women start? Like, do you feel like you ha you said you have a framework, like where do you start with most people you’re coaching? [LISA] Sure. Well, I mean, of course listen to where they are, meet them where they’re at, get a full overview. And of course, if they are dealing with some mental health issues, then I’m going to refer correctly. I’m not going to hold onto them just because I want a client. But the first thing that I want to explore is how are you feeling? Like what’s going on with, tell me about feeling unfulfilled. Where is this coming from? Then from there take a deep dive into identifying their highest values because what I find is that we say that we put our family first. We say that we put our family first, but we come home from work and we don’t talk to our kids. We get right on our phone or we start watching TV or we’re drinking a glass of wine, we’re just zoning out. We might say our families are a priority, but we’re not in alignment with that. We’re not showing up and that’s causing issues for me not being feeling congruent and that might be causing me to feel some symptoms of sadness or symptoms of loneliness. So it’s really just identifying what are your values and are you in alignment with them? If you’re not, let’s make a plan to get you in alignment so you’re living happier, you’re finding more joy, you have more gratitude. A lot of women would say that as they age, it’s important for them to feel physically healthy and to have optimal and vibrant health. But if they’re not taking the time to feed themselves nutritious meals or they’re not focusing on their sleep, then they might say it’s important, but how are you showing up in that value? So it’s all about identifying the values and then making a plan, having action steps that you can take that you will be in alignment and you will move forward congruently and authentically. That’s what I love and that’s my hope for, well, all people of course, but, especially for women, 40 plus, because there’s a lot of expectations that we might put on ourselves or we think we put on ourselves or society puts on us. But we have the power to change our lives and to say what we want for ourselves and I think that’s a beautiful, beautiful thing. [JOE] And how, for people that are considering doing coaching in addition to their practice or in place of, how do you think through the difference between coaching and counseling? [LISA] That’s a really good question. Like I said, it’s more about, for me and how I think about it, is it’s not processing the past. It’s not processing your history or your trauma or past experiences. I mean, that might come up in a coaching session, but we’re not going to dwell on it? If the person is dwelling on it, like I said, I’m going to refer them to a therapist because that might be getting in the way of them being able to move forward with their values and like, so you have to know, clinically, I think you have to know what the limit is, what your scope is, your scope of practice, and your competency and expertise of course, but there’s a fine line. And I think as therapists we can walk that line a little bit better than maybe just someone who’s a certified life coach. So I think you just have to be, you have to define what your life coaching framework looks like and then you have to be very, what’s the word I’m looking for, aware of when you’re working outside of it, I suppose. [JOE] Well, Lisa, the last question I always ask is if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know? [LISA] I want them to know, because I talk to a lot of therapists who are looking to pivot their skillsets and they are maybe tired of one-on-one work, and they’re looking to grow another stream of revenue, so my advice is just stay open and stay curious and just be open to opportunities and possibilities. When I started this podcast, I never thought I would be where I am today. Things have presented themselves along the way that I never in a million years thought would cross my path. So yeah, I just say stay open, don’t be too rigid, be curious about your stuff. Go get your own life coaching or therapy if you’re stuck. But yeah, that’s my advice, stay open, stay curious, and yeah, just go down that path when you curiosity picks up. [JOE] Oh, that’s so awesome. Well, if people want to do your pod courses or if they want to listen to your podcast or connect with you, where should we send them? [LISA] Sure. Well, all of my pod courses can be found at my site, which is lisamustard.com/podcourses. You can get your first one half off when you go to my website. Then if you’re curious about my life coaching you’ll see, on my website on the About Me page, there is more information there that we can connect and see if I’m a fit for you. [JOE] So awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on the Practice of the Practice Podcast for the first time. It’s been awesome. Have an awesome day. [LISA] Thank you. [JOE] What an inspirational episode. It’s funny the David Hall episode and this episode, I recorded them only probably about a month or six weeks apart from each other, but for you the listener, it’s quite a ways away. And boy, it gets my wheels turning. I was telling Lisa that recently there was a University of Michigan study that came out that links Improv and mental health. As many of you know I’ve been doing Improv for almost four years now. I’m in the improv troop and leading some Improv things. I just find it so fun. It’s been so freeing and especially during my uncoupling, it was such a great way to just process through difficult emotions in a really, sometimes hilarious, sometimes sad way. But to bring those two together and even just like thinking about what would a Improv continuing ed workshop look like, either live or or something online? So my wheels are turning Lisa and David both have got my wheels turning about just fun things that I could create. But also I hear what Lisa said, that creating the content is often the fun part, but the marketing side is where we got to also build that interest. So maybe I’ll be doing some surveys to see if anyone would be interested in learning how to implement Improv in their clinical work. If nobody signs up, well, then I’ll just kill the idea before I go down the NBCC route of trying to get approved. So glad to have such good episodes here. We’re doing two episodes a week. If you missed it over the last few months we did quite a bit around clinical work. Before that, in early 2023, we went through every phase of practice, starting a practice, starting a group practice, growing a group practice, interviewed people that had actually done that. So go back and listen to some of those. There’s so many great episodes. Also we could not do this show without our amazing sponsors. Therapy Notes is a sponsor who’s been with us for so long. They’re the best electronic health record out there. They make it easy and streamlined for you to be able to do your billing, to do telehealth, to charge credit cards, all of that to stay organized. If you use promo code [JOE] at checkout you’ll get two months for free and if you’re in any of our communities and you’re new to Therapy Notes, once you sign up, just drop me an email and they’ll give you an extra four months so that you end up getting six months totally for free. That was a deal that we negotiated with them. They actually don’t even have a code for it because they don’t want it to get out there. So we have to manually afford that onto our contact of Therapy notes for them to get, for you to get six months for free. If you’re in Next Level Practice, Group Practice Launch, Group Practice Boss, or Audience Building Academy and you sign up for Therapy Notes, just let us know and we’ll get you that six months for free. Thanks so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have an amazing day. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye. Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music. This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publishers, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.