Michael Ceely on How to Hyper-Niche | PoP 398

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Michael Ceely on How to Hyper-Niche | PoP 398

How do you find your hyper-niche? How can you combine your passion and your practice? What are some of the steps to take?

In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok speaks with Michael Ceely about finding your hyper-niche, combining both your training and your hobbies and becoming an expert in a very particular area.

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Meet Michael Ceely

Michael Ceely | How to find your nicheMichael Ceely is a licensed marriage and family therapist and sport performance consultant, serving clientele in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Prior to his career in counseling, Michael raced bicycles professionally. He holds two state championship titles, and twice competed in the Olympic Trials.

Currently, he maintains a psychotherapy practice, and also offers mental performance coaching for athletes.

Michael also supervises a peer education class at a local high school in Berkeley, California, where his students teach mental health awareness and behavioral health skills.

Michael also enjoys helping other therapists identify and create unique “hyper-niche” services to generate additional income.

Visit Ceely Sports and Ceely Counseling, or take a listen to his own podcast.

 

In This Podcast

Summary

In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok speaks with Michael Ceely about finding your hyper-niche, combining both your training and your hobbies and becoming an expert in a very particular area.

If you’re passionate about something else, how do you incorporate it into your practice?

A lot of therapists have different passions and hobbies that they can turn into their second income streams. With a passion for bicycle racing and sports performance, Michael combined his skill-sets in order to have a second income stream.

It could be your hobby like board games, or perhaps music. There are many different ways in which you can incorporate it.

If you have something that you are naturally passionate about, that energy is going to come through and people are going to notice that.

Take the pressure off and think, what can you really offer people? It’s not about you, it’s about them. How much service and value can you give to your clients?

Once you’ve answered those questions reach out to people and test it. People will generally say yes, if you put the energy into it.

What are the next steps people can take when discovering their niche?

Start talking about it. Share it with friends and family and other therapists to bounce off your ideas. Keeping it a secret is the worst thing you can do, get as much feedback as possible.

Start researching your future competition. Get inspired by it, or figure out whether it’s already been taken.

Then try and experiment right away. Offer to speak somewhere in your community or something of the likes. Or even make a one-page website to test it out. But most importantly;

Believe in your unique self. You have so much to offer.

 

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Meet Joe Sanok

private practice consultant

Joe Sanok helps counselors to create thriving practices that are the envy of other counselors. He has helped counselors to grow their businesses by 50-500% and is proud of all the private practice owners that are growing their income, influence, and impact on the world. Click here to explore consulting with Joe.

Thanks For Listening!

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Podcast Transcription

 

 [JOE SANOK]: Small businesses across the country love running payroll with Gusto. Why? Because Gusto automatically files and pays your taxes, it’s super easy to use. Plus, you can add benefits and management tools to help take care of your team. But here’s the thing. It’s almost 2020 and switching to a new payroll provider can be tricky. Fortunately, Gusto can help as long as you get in touch now. Try a demo and test it out at gusto.com/Joe. You’ll even get three months free when you run your first payroll. That’s gusto.com/Joe.
This is the Practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sanok, session number 398. I’m Joe Sanok, your host and welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast here live in Practice of the Practice world headquarters at the base of Old Mission Peninsula in Traverse City, Michigan. I hope that you are doing amazing today. You know it’s been quite a season of transition as I sold my counseling practice in June and then wrapped up counseling in July and moved out of that office: the Radio Center II building that you had heard me talk about for so long and now I am working out of Practice of the Practice world headquarters on the second story of the Sanok household. So, we’ve been working on figuring out sound a little better in here and have been soundproofing and hopefully getting things to sound even better than they used to in the old building.
It’s been awesome, you know, in between things that I’m doing, I’ll go get a cup of coffee, say hi to my family and pop back into my office. I’ve got two whiteboards and planning some really big things for 2019 and 2020. We are in full planning mode for Killin’It Camp, which is happening in October. 120 something people are signed up right now. It’s going to be an amazing conference. I can’t wait for that. And then in late 2019, early 2020, we are launching Podcast Launch School to really think about helping people that have businesses that maybe they never considered, whether they could do a podcast. So people like you, but even people outside of the practice space, because there’s a lot of people like John Lee Dumas or Pat Flan or kind of the big names out there but having a really kind of micro niche to really say, “I’m going to study what it is that I’m super passionate about and I’m going to dive deep,” really sets you up in a way that you normally wouldn’t be able to be set up as an expert.
So, I actually put together a guide for you guys; it’s smart strategies for starting a podcast. That’s over at podcastlaunchschool.com. If you opt into our early bird lists, you also get that guide and it’s just things to think about before you ever even jump into podcasting. I think a lot of you are saying, “How do I take these skills that I use in my practice and level them up beyond just kind of what I’ve been doing here to really reach a broader audience?” Podcasting really can be that thing. You know, there’s only 600,000 active podcasts compared to around 25 million YouTube channels and even way more than that in regards to blogs. So, it’s still the early days of podcasting, you may not realize that.
So, go check that out if you want that. That’s over at podcastlaunch.com. We’re going to have tons more about that coming up but you know, it really fits in with what we’re talking about today with Michael Ceeley about kind of having a hyper niche to really zoom in on a very particular area and become the expert in that area. Can’t wait for you to meet Michael and to hear more about his approach and how he can help you to figure out your niche even more. You know, the people that do this well, really, their practices thrive so much faster. They can charge more, they see their ideal client and then, their education level goes up so much quicker too, because they’re focusing on just one area. So, without any further ado, I give you Michael Ceeley.
Well, today on the Practice of the Practice podcast, we have Michael Ceeley. Michael is a licensed marriage and family therapist and sports performance consultant serving clientele in the San Francisco Bay area. Prior to his career in counseling, Michael raced bicycles professionally. He holds two state championship titles and twice competed in the Olympic trials. Michael, welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast.

[MICHAEL CEELY]: Hey Joe. Great to be here. Thank you.

[JOE]: Yes, it’s awesome to have you. I always love when people have taken things that they’re interested in and somehow turned it into a career. It sounds like just from your bio there and from the little bit we’ve talked that’s really been what you’ve been able to do.

[MICHAEL]: Yes, definitely. Yes. So, I have a private practice here in Berkeley and San Francisco Bay area. And then I decided, you know, I was really very passionate about bicycle racing and sports in general, and then I thought about how can I sort of combine my skill sets or my passion, my skillsets and offer a second income stream. And for me that is sports performance consulting and so yes, I’m excited to talk about that because I think that a lot of therapists have a lot of skills, passions, hobbies that they can sort of leverage into possible new offerings, new income stream and great services and products for consumers.

[JOE]: Well take us through a bit of your story in regards to how you went from professionally racing to then having that be part of your business.

[MICHAEL]: Yes, sure. So, my bicycle racing career, I basically did it all through high school into my early twenties and retired, decided to go to college, kind of like around age 24. So, I really started the academic game kind of late. During my time bicycle racing, I was really fascinated a lot with sports psychology and you know, how certain athletes can be really physically talented, but when it comes down to crunch time something happens. Classic example is like free throw shooting in the NBA. So that always fascinated me and so I think it’s just been in the back of my mind that I’ve always wanted to do something with athletes, that sort of that venue of performing, showcasing your talents and how psychology plays into that either like you, puts you at the, it gets you in the zone in sports, or you’re not in your zone. There’s some sort of blockage there. So, I guess yes, to answer your question, like it’s always been in the back of my mind, I’ve wanted to do something with like sports psychology.

[JOE]: Yes. And what was the process for you of really niching into that area?

[MICHAEL]: I think the process was, you know, I went to grad school, I was told like, “This is what you do to set up a private practice —,”

[JOE]: You were actually told that in grad school? You’re one of the lucky ones.

[MICHAEL]: Yes. Well, they didn’t give me a lot of pointers. Typically, you know, grad school doesn’t do that. But the program I went to at San Francisco State University, what I thought it was great, so there was a little bit of advice about starting up a practice, but I, there’s sort of this notion of like this is sort of like the template, the generic way that you do it. You should do it like everybody else. I was, and so when I established my private practice, I was kind of playing it safe. I was like more of a generalist and I was really kind of scared to niche down like, “I’m not going to get clients. What will people think of me?” A little bit of imposter syndrome going on there.
But then when I decided to do is create a second website, which is This is Ceely Sports and it’s basically; it was a place for me to experiment. Like, the site wasn’t live for a long time; I was kind of playing around with it and I just decided to create this sort of second, not identity but like a second service aside from my main website and got good response from it. So, it was just, I think trying and experiment. I thought to myself, “I’m going to try this side sort of hyper niche and just see what happens. I have nothing to lose.”
So, I went for it. So, I guess that was the process of just kind of having the courage to try something that I really love, and seeing what kind of feedback I get.

[JOE]: Yes. You know, it’s interesting. I was just doing a consulting call with someone that’s in Next Level Practice and she was talking about wanting to help first responders, but that didn’t, it was going to be difficult to figure out how to do that with kind of her current practice website. We talked about having a spinoff website to just really dive into that and zoom in, because you know, that group in particular has very unique needs compared to the average person. I see that a lot where people really zoom in on a specific specialty area and it seems like when you launch another website, which I know for a lot of people, they’re like, “I can barely launch my first one site, let alone a second,” but it seems like then you can just dedicate all of the content to that kind of specific area.

[MICHAEL]: Yes, absolutely.

[JOE]: When you were playing around with that idea and saw it as an experiment, which is definitely a mindset that I think helps take the pressure off, what were some of the things that you were trying out? What worked? What didn’t work when you were testing that out?

[MICHAEL]: Yes. So, like I said, I had the site not live for quite a while, so I was on my web builder on the back-end kind of building and getting feedback from friends. That was helpful too, you know, just sort of sharing it. So, yes, I just, I think I got a lot of feedback, just friends on like mentors and stuff and said, “What do you think about this?” So yes, putting it out there before I made the site live was helpful, and then I guess also like my mentality mindset was, it doesn’t have to be perfect. Like you don’t have to have the perfect website the first time. Obviously, like all therapists I’m sure have gone through several iterations of their website and then when they look back at their old, you know, they’re like, “Man, this is so much better now.” So yes, I think it’s really, it was like I took a risk and just built it and I would say the things maybe that didn’t work was, let’s see, can, really, everything was working fairly well. One thing I did add recently was my own podcast and that was really a lot of fun, and we’ve gotten good response from that as well. So, yes.

[JOE]: Yes. So, was it really like you’re blogging on it about that specialty? What were some of the kind of core things you had on there?

[MICHAEL]: Sure. Yes, I did do quite a bit of blogging and then I realized I was getting good response from that. And then also is just, I made separate business cards as well, so I’d be just hanging out with friends and like, “Hey, check this out.” So, there’s another thing I did. I put like a quiz on the website as well. So, it’s a way to engage viewers of the site. You can take, this is called a pre-competition mindset quiz. So, you can go there and it really, I think is just a standalone service, like not necessarily even to attract clients, but it’s a way for people to kind of learn sort of strategies for pre-competition before, you know —.

[JOE]: Did that go into any sort of email list or anything or was that just kind of met as a service?

[MICHAEL]: That did go into like people who subscribed to my blog, went into an email list, and then also on social media; so, on Facebook and Instagram. That went out as well. So yes, it’s kind of blasting it out there and that was basically what I did. Yes.

[JOE]: Awesome. So, when did you decide to kind of make it go live and when did you start seeing more kind of results that that specialty is starting to grow your practice?

[MICHAEL]: Yes, so went live about a year ago, a year and a half ago and it was a slow build. I still honestly considered kind of a slow build. My main income is my private practice, my standard private practice. And then, so the Ceely Sports, the mental performance coaching for athletes has been a slow build and I’m actually okay with that right now. Like, I just love doing and adding content to it. Like I would almost do it not expecting money. So, it’s been a slow trickle in and I think it’s going to continue to go that way. I think at some point I would want to get some consulting services on how to really up the game and get the message out there and more. So that’s kind of where it’s at right now. It’s not like a huge income stream at the moment, but it’s there.

[JOE]: Well, and I know we were talking before we got rolling about kind of some special, like if you’re interested in something and how to incorporate that into your practice. Maybe talk a little bit more about that.

[MICHAEL]: Yes, just you know, I know a lot of therapists friends who have hobbies or skills that they’re really interested in. Like for example, there’s a therapist here in Berkeley, California who is really into board games, you know, like playing monopoly and stuff like that. And he actually decided to create his own therapeutic board game for people with anxiety and things like that. And I thought, “God, what a great thing to do?” Because he loves doing this without getting paid anyway, and so for him, like he created this board game, and created a website for it, did all this stuff and it was just like effortless for him. Like he just did all really quickly and has gotten good response from it. And so, I guess my message is like, if you have something that you just naturally are passionate about, that energy is going to come through and people are going to notice that.
So like, yes, if you have some sort of a hobby, like you’re in a chess club, you love chess or like I have a friend who is trained in classical music and is offering some services around that with specific tunes, musicians; like how to deal with anxiety jitters before playing in a concert, things like that. So, I guess what I’m thinking is like, most people have some sort of a little hobby; a thing they really love to do. And why not combine your training, your grad school training with that particular interest. So how can you help chess players get in the zone? How can you, I don’t know, like a, another therapist I know used to be a dancer and she works with dancers. So not necessarily doing therapy, but adding some sort of your skillset that you’re trained in around psychology and helping people get better at what they do on this.

[JOE]: Yes, I think, what it makes me think of is oftentimes I get the question of, it kind of comes from a place of not feeling worthy or imposter syndrome from people. And when I walk through with them what their life experiences are, just having a master’s degree right away compared to the general population. I think the current stats say you’re in the top 9% of U.S. citizens. So right then, and then if you look at genders and you look at your own kind of racial background or you look at your own experiences or sexual orientation or any of those kinds of things, it sets you apart in so many different ways where you really are one of only a handful of people that could speak to a specific issue. I even think about how my own wife, she went to Interlochen Arts Academy, which is a big feeder for Julliard as a high school kind of boarding school.
We went to her reunion and some of the original cast of Hamilton was in her graduating class and like the producer for Transparent and all the, I mean, these people are just, I mean, it’s insane. It’s so cool. But even just having my wife who started playing violin when she was 18 months old; you know, before she gets speaks, she was playing violin, to experience what that feels like for her to not really ever have known not playing violin and, the anxiety that comes with performance and all of that. When I was doing more of my counseling practice it was a lot easier to kind of pitch myself to Interlochen Arts Academy to say, “Hey, I can help your students. I get it, I’m a musician. I’m not at the level of these folks, but my wife was and she’s an alumni,” and you know, to be passionate about music and be passionate also about young people and the pressures they put on themselves while also understanding what are their goals versus their parents’ goals just set me apart in a way that I was able to attract these students to come to my private practice in a way that very few people really could have had that kind of voice.
And I wouldn’t have really even considered that an asset to have been married to an Interlochen alum until I started really kind of understanding. I really do understand this because I get to live with an Interlocken alum all the time.

[MICHAEL]: Yes. So, I think, I mean, like you say that we, everyone has a unique history, unique talents. You are who you are. And I think there is, I mean for me, like there was definitely some imposter syndrome and starting in my sports performance site and getting that going. But then when I think about it, if I take, what worked for me was taking the pressure off of me, like I have to perform or I have to look as good as other people, or I have to do it a certain way. Like if you ditch that and kind of flip it, what can you really offer somebody? So, like these, you have so much to offer other people with your unique background and skillset. You’re making people’s lives better. So why not market yourself? Get out there.
It’s not about you, it’s about them. So, when I took the focus that way and really thought of myself like a consumer of my service, you know, what would I want? When I kind of flipped it and thought about kind of helping so many people and helping so many athletes, making their lives better, that really shifted it. Like getting away from that imposter syndrome and just really focusing on how much service and value can you give to your clients. And that just fills you up and it just like naturally, you start marketing more then because you realize you’re helping people in society and that really takes the pressure off of you. At least that worked for me. It was kind of flipping in that way.

[JOE]: Yes. And I think that, you know, especially when people are first starting a practice or even starting a certain direction of a practice time is usually one of your best assets because if you’re not full, then you can put in so much time into your own education or reaching out or networking. I always recommend to our consulting clients and Next Level Practice people that if you want to do 20 sessions a week, that means it’s 20 sessions plus maybe five admin a week that’s like 25 hours a week. If you only have two clients, then you should be putting in 23 hours a week into networking, marketing, getting out [crosstalk]. Work the number of hours that you eventually want to work. Don’t just get used to going and doing shopping at noon on a Thursday or getting your groceries done. Although it’s nice to not shop for groceries on the weekend.
So, I often recommend that. And then even just thinking about kind of where you’re at. There’s so many opportunities for sports psychology you know, as people prep for marathons or, I’m sure there’s different shoe stores or hockey clubs to even be able to go and say, “Hey, I would love to, you know, before your group runs their 10K run on Thursdays, could I stop by for the next three weeks and just talk mindset for a couple of minutes?” I imagine that would make it just continue to spread more and more the more that someone has that time and says, “I want more of my ideal client, ” and just putting in that time to connect with those people that are doorways into audiences that already exist.
Because it seems like a lot of people will say, “Well, I got to start from scratch. I’ve got a blog about mindset of running or mindset of whatever.” And that’s true, that’s helpful, but there’s already huge pockets of athletes out there. There’s huge pockets of gamers, there’s huge pockets of whatever specialty you want to go into. And it’s like you’ll find those influencers, connect with them and see if you can add value to their community so they look good.

[MICHAEL]: Yes. And I think that’s really key, Joe. It’s just like, how can you add value to the community? One thing I did is I went to just some local, like running shoes stores, athletic stores and just walked in and started a conversation with the people there, gave them my business card and then like, I was surprised. People said, “Yes, what are you doing next week?” I’m like, “I’m coming, I’m doing a presentation in your shoe store.” And I didn’t have anything set up, but I just, I did it and I was just, I was surprised at like when you offer this service and you start talking about what you do and yes, just like walking into brick and mortar stores worked for me as well. And, you know, I wanted to be on your podcast because I really like what you offer, you know, value on your podcast.
So, I just said, I’m going to email you and here we are. So, like doing things like that, like reaching out and just and pitching yourself, not in terms of like, “Hey, look at me,” but more like, “I can offer this, this, this, and this and I want to make your life better.” That kind of mindset and focus. If you put that sort of energy and vibe out there, you really, people will say yes. At least that’s been my experience. I’ve gotten a couple of people say no, but it has been more like they were too busy or something. So, yes.

[JOE]: Yes. It’s like if you do it enough, even if you get nine no’s, you might get that 10th yes. I love that idea of saying yes and then figuring it out. I think that’s one of those key things that people that I see that are successful are the ones that, they say yes and then they’re like, “Oh my gosh, I don’t know what I’m going to say to these running people.” I remember when I was first asked to be on local radio, it was a onetime thing to talk about this therapeutic sailing program I had started. We were promoting it and doing some fundraising where we were taking these at-risk kids out on this big 50-foot wooden cooner, schooner. I don’t know what a cooner is. That sounds like a terrible [inaudible 00:22:20]. Oh my gosh. I should probably edit that out. But I’ll leave it in so people know I’m human.

[MICHAEL]: That’s right.

[JOE]: So, a schooner, a wooden schooner and at the end of the show I just said to him, “You know, I’ve got some other ideas of different shows. I’d love to email you some ideas.” And we were just, you know, they had it a minute between segments and got her email, sent an email to her. And I assumed that local therapists were on radio all the time, and they weren’t. She had no therapy person. So, I sent probably five different, very compelling different topics. So, it was like the five things that most parents don’t know about their teenagers, but probably should or you know, the seven things that most couples get wrong and usually lead to divorce. And so very kind of like, “I want to know that.” And she emailed back and she’s like, “I want you to talk about all these. Will you come in every week on Tuesday mornings?”
So, before I would go to my foster care supervisor job, every Tuesday morning or every other Tuesday, I would go into the Mary in the Morning show at like 7:00 AM and talk about whatever our topic was. And then I repurposed all of that into a print book that I could give out to my clients. And so, I think that idea of, “I’m going to say yes and then shoot. I got to figure this out.” It forces you to move faster than maybe you naturally would if you just tried to have it figured out first.

[MICHAEL]: Yes, I think that’s great. It’s like, just saying, “Yes, absolutely,” and then like when you’re telling that story, it was making me think about how as trained therapists, we kind of, I wouldn’t say make assumptions, but we kind of think that like, “Oh, if I talk about dynamics of couples, like everyone knows about that o, everyone knows about the basic sort of parenting skills.” Like, it’s been done before. People aren’t really craving this. But that’s because we live, I think in our sort of our therapist bubble, but like the general population, if you offer them these things that you think are not like super hyper focused or whatever, that, if you offer them, people are going to be super interested in like, like you’re saying this radio show, like, “We want to know about all of that stuff you’re talking about.”
So, yes, just offering value and not making assumptions that it’s, people are going to be bored by it or whatever. You’d be really surprised at how people respond to, I mean, you have these, all the skill, all this training, like we all went to grad school and paid all this money and it’s like you were saying before, you’re in like a top certain percentage of education in the country and it’s like you have so much to offer and just don’t assume that people know what you do in. Don’t assume that people don’t want your knowledge and skills.

[JOE]: Yes, I mean, even the basic things, is like if I asked any of our audience, “Well, what are the three tips that parents should use to make sure that their kids have a little bit better behavior?” They’d probably say, “Well, I don’t know.” Actually, describe the behavior, give positive and negative consequences, make sure the kid knows that they’re loved, whether or not they perform and you know, all these like safety and security. For us, we could just rattle those off. But that’s because we’ve been through eight or 12 years of school, you know, post high school but the average person, they’re like, “Oh, I never thought of that, that I should make sure that I give a positive or negative consequence if they’re misbehaving or set those expectations ahead of time during a neutral time instead of in the heat of the moment.” That’s just mind blowing to the average person.

[MICHAEL]: It really is. Yes. It’s amazing, and like even in my private therapy practice, I worked with some parents and, I had these assumptions like, “Okay, they’re educated, they’re doctors or lawyers or something. They must be smarter than me,” sort of, or having these assumptions. Then I’ll make like a real simple suggestion. Like, what about if you praise your kid at least three times a day for no reason, or for whatever reason. Like, “God, I never thought of that,” and I was thinking like, really? It’s like, “Oh wait, that’s because I went to grad school and studied this.” So yes.

[JOE]: Well, I think it just shows how much, if you drill into anything, you’re going to outpace the average person and your peers. And so, you know, I even think about how Nicole, who just bought Mental Wellness Counseling, she just came in here and we were working on switching over all of the G-suite to her G-suite she had to jump on the phone with our hosting company to have them verify to Google all that, like, she has no idea what, I think it was DMX code, is. But now she knows that that’s something, and it’s like, we learn these things by going through it, and then you are now more of an expert in that area than other people would have been.

[MICHAEL]: Absolutely, yes. I think that, again, everyone’s so unique and everyone has hyper-specific skills they can offer. And like you say, you drill down into something, whether you play a sport for 10 years or you play chess for 20 years or if you play violin your whole life or whatever. Like you have so much to offer people by, it’s really specific knowledge that, and if someone can be at that too, you can get that to someone one on one as opposed to making them go to school or doing even an online course. Like if you do a consulting and one on one service, like you can just download all this knowledge into them like in an hour and blow their mind and is going to be tailored one on one.
They’re going to be asking you questions, so you’re going to be giving them the information that’s really relevant to them. So yes, as therapists, doing some sided hyper niche kind of service, like set it up, just do it, build the website, figure it out later, you really don’t have much to lose by that and just get feedback. And again, you’d be really surprised by how people respond to all the skills and knowledge that you have. Don’t make assumptions. You have a lot to offer. So,

[JOE]: Michael, what would you say if someone asks, “Are there certain markets that you can do this more in, so for example, Traverse City in Northern Michigan versus the Bay Area?” Is this only something that’s for people that live in cities? Or would you make an argument that almost any market could have some hyper niching?

[MICHAEL]: I would say it pretty much, you know any market could just thrive with the internet. I mean, you can offer video modules to talk about something. Like you could do it all through video these days and you could get people to subscribe to it. So, I don’t think it’s really dependent on where you live. You can be in the North pole if you’ve got good internet and blast it out to the world. So yes, I think you could be international about if you speak another language, like you can, with the internet, you can just offer it everywhere. And so, you don’t have to live near a big city. I don’t think that really matters.

[JOE]: Yes. Well, and when you think through maybe some of the major bullet points of discovering your niche what are just a couple maybe questions people should ask themselves if they’re like, “Yes, I like this idea.” What are their next steps that they should think through in discovering what their specialty should be?

[MICHAEL]: I think just sharing it with friends, family, other therapists like get together for a happy hour or whatever and just bounce the idea around off other people. Keeping your, like little secret dream secret is like the worst thing you can do because you’re bouncing around in your head and you’re not really thinking out of the box. And if you can get other people giving you feedback on it, don’t let them steal your idea, but get really, just get a lot of feedback on it and it gets the creative juices flowing. That would be the first thing I would say. It’s to start talking about it.
Second thing I would say is start researching like your future competition. So, like, “This is what I want to do. I’m going to scour the internet for someone who’s doing my service already.” And if it’s really hyper-specific, you may be the only person out there, which is really cool. Or you might find other people are doing exactly what you want and you can get inspired by that. So that the second thing, as I would say.
Third thing to do would be try and experiment right away, like offer to speak somewhere in your community. Reach out there and again, you’d be surprised by how many people would say yes or it would be interested. So, try a little experiment. It could also be you set up like a one-page website and make it live and test it out. And then you can always take that down before it gets index, but like, the third thing would be like, try and experiment, just to get a feel for it. So those three things right there, talking about with other people, getting feedback, brainstorming. Secondly, when I say a second, I forgot now

[JOE]: So, talking to other people, I think kind of throw up a website and then do some experimenting.

[MICHAEL]: Yes. So that’s basically it. That was my process and it’s been working, so, yes.

[JOE]: Awesome. Well, Michael, the last question I always ask is if every private practice owner in the world we’re listening right now, what would you want them to know?

[MICHAEL]: Oh wow. I would say believe in your unique self. You have so much to offer. Your history before you were a therapist informs your skillset. Be your unique self, advertise that, be proud of it and things will follow like that. That is the key, I think. It’s just being genuine and not being afraid to offer value to the world because a lot of people are going to say yes, lot of people are going to say no. But what matters is when you connect to that client who really can benefit from your skills and services.

[JOE]: Okay. So awesome. If people want to connect with you more and see how you’re kind of doing, your website, what’s the best way for them to connect with you?

[MICHAEL]: So, you can just Google my name. I should show up, Michael Ceely. Last name is spelled CEELY. So, we can find me at ceelycounseling.com and also ceelysports.com.

[JOE]: Awesome. And we’ll put links to that in the show notes as well. Michael, thanks so much for being on the Practice of the Practice podcast.

[MICHAEL]: Thanks Joe. It’s been a pleasure.

[JOE]: So, no matter what your passions are, clinically or just hobby-wise, I hope you feel inspired to go after that kind of life where you can really mix the two together if you want it to. So often we think that just everything we learned in grad school or through formal education are the only things that we can do but we live in a world where you can create things that are amazing, that you can find a population that maybe hasn’t been served in the past and you can really focus in on helping them to grow in a way that in the past you just couldn’t do it. Creating an audience is easier than ever and so, if you are looking to do that, coming soon, Podcast Launch School is going to be one of the best resources for you to be able to look at how do you launch a podcast? Should you launch a podcast? How do you grow that specialty while building an audience and then extra income? You know, we don’t want all of our income to come just from our clinical work. We want to kind of diversify it a little bit. So, go check out podcastlaunchschool.com.
And we absolutely couldn’t do this podcast without our sponsors. Gusto is our sponsor this week and they are amazing. I personally use them. I love it. It’s so much easier and actually I’m saving a ton of money compared to when I had my accountant running my payroll. I wish I would’ve done it years ago. Head on over to gusto.com/Joe to get three months for free when you run your first payroll. That’s three months for free. Actually, when I signed up and I got that for three months for free, it’s kind of a tongue twister there, the salesperson actually said, “I rarely see three months free. How did you get that?” And I’m like, “I don’t know. They’re offering it to my audience.” So, check that out over at gusto.com/Joe.
And we’ve got some big questions coming next time. In the next episode I’m going to be covering the five questions that I get all the time and we’re going to be talking about those soon. So, thanks so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have an awesome week.
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 publisher or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or other professional information. If you need a professional, you should find one. And thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music. We love it.