Done For You Services: Jessica Tappana Chats Therapist SEO

Do you have a talent or service you're good at that you've thought of charging money for?

I love hearing success stories from those who have taken the leap and actually started their own side hustle.

So many times the end result goes BEYOND what the person imagined in their wildest dreams!

Tune in to the latest podcast to find out how therapist Jessica Tappana’s interest in SEO went from a side hustle to a full-fledged business with multiple employees.

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Full Show Notes (Transcript)…

Marissa Lawton (ML): Hey, risers. Welcome back to the show. I am just really thrilled to be here today with one of my really good friends, somebody that I have known in the therapy space pretty much since I started my business... what like, three going on four years, four going on five years now? However many years, whatever, several years. 

Always been a steady presence. Always been somebody that I can check in with and rely on. We get along so well. And just a real rock star in her own regard of her knowledge base and just what she can do for us. So we are going to be talking with Jessica Tappana today, who is a practicing clinician and owns a booming business called Simplified SEO.

So Jessica, if you could introduce yourself a little bit for us, let us know where you're at. Tell us a little bit about your clinical practice, cause it's not a small practice. And then also tell us about Simplified. 

Jessica Tappana (JT): Absolutely. I'm so happy to be here. Any chance to talk to you makes me happy. And then when we get to call it work as well, that's even better, but yeah, it has been fun. And you've gotten to see a lot of my evolution as well as I've seen yours. And we've both been on this journey. I have two businesses. My private practice is in Columbia, Missouri, and so right in the middle of the country.

And I started out solo. I was supposed to work 10 hours a week and that grew to be too much. And so we've steadily grown and now have seven clinicians. And then Simplified SEO consulting that helps therapists with their search engine optimization. It was my Side Hustle. It does now just as well it's depending on the month. Sometimes bigger than my private practice. 

And we both offer SEO training where we help therapists with their own learn to optimize their own sites, as well as done for you where we have a team that will do a lot of optimizing for you. We try to keep practice owners pretty involved too, but yeah, no, it's fun.

And I'm balancing both and growing both and it's really been fun to try to figure out how to do that and still be really true to myself. I love doing trauma work, and used to do a ton of trauma work myself with clients and have 30 clients, half of them we were actively doing intense trauma work.

And now I've had to accept that I have less time for that. I'm doing more anxiety work, which is probably similar for anybody that does trauma work is. But yeah, they're really similar. So yeah, now I just work with primarily anxiety and occasionally some of that more intensive trauma PTSD work as well.

ML: Yeah. I love that I've already picked up on a few different things and that first one that I want to dive into is we have this notion of opportunity costs, right? If you say yes to one thing, you're automatically sometimes consciously or not saying no to something else. And as Simplified grew, and as it became a bigger presence in your business life, you had to make shifts to your practice.

You had to change the clientele you were seeing, the amount of clients you were seeing and the type of work you were doing. And so what was that like? Take us to as you were transitioning: was there guilt for letting go of types of work or letting go of types of clients? Was there, was it like a relief to not necessarily be doing heavy trauma work anymore?

JT: I talked to a lot of people who talk about it being a relief, like when they become a group practice owner and are seeing fewer clients themselves. There's something in me that's not... that was not my experience. Mine was a lot of guilt and even a bit of like mourning, if that makes sense, like total grief over having to make these changes.

And actually, you and I had a couple of conversations a couple of years ago that were really impactful. And I still think about where I've had to think about what are my values and how do I, how does that show up with my time? And do I have to do something? Because just because that's the way it said does it have to be, even the fact that I still have my own caseload, I theoretically don't need to.

And that's been very intentional and very purposeful, but I have had to change the number. I have had to change the type of clients. I used to really like to take on the clients that have been in therapy for years and years, and still had PTSD. And those clients were so intense that I don't, I had to acknowledge that's not maybe what I'm at this phase of my life going to have to do.

And the big thing that's helped me really is thinking of everything as a phase and like in this phase, I'm making this choice. And at this phase, I'm making this choice even right now. There's some things that I'm making some changes to this summer. And I've said hey, we have one summer. This is going to be my focus. 

And I think that being... I'm extremely transparent. You probably know this well enough about me now, that I'm... this is the way it is. And I'm very transparent with both of my teams and with both of my teams, I've had to say there are times essentially where when one business gets more attention and again, I have to think of it as phases and that there is that opportunity cost.

I discovered pretty quickly that I can't really actively grow both businesses at the same time, because making huge changes at both at the same time was really stressful. And so it has been more like get one to a place I'm really happy with and then put more energy somewhere else while. Doing what needs to maintain that.

And so when I'm thinking about systems, when I'm thinking about things that we're taking on, it really always is in that this is a phase. And if this is going to be longer than a phase, that this requires this level of intention, how can I make sure that I'm putting the systems or the people in place so that it doesn't always require this level of my attention.

ML: Yeah. I love so much about that. A couple of weeks ago I did an episode about decisions, and a lot of times we think a decision is permanent and sometimes that can be really like trapping for people or can feel really confining for people. And then, on the other hand, you're supposed to detach from the outcomes of your decisions.

Both of those are extremes, but this idea of phases to me sits right in the middle because it's okay, I'm making this decision, but it's for this period of time, for as long as this period of time makes sense for me. And so it almost combines both. It makes the decision not feel so confining, but it also helps you see "I can change my mind at any time. I can make a shift at any time when the season or the phase is no longer a fit". 

JT: It's funny when I was growing my solo practice, I kept redoing doing my personal schedule because like in private practice you're supposed to get to have your ideal schedule, right? Isn't that a huge part of why I started this?

And so I kept reshifting it. And then I would get so frustrated when baseball season would start and my family's needs would change and I'd have to change it again. Or it felt like there were several times where it would change. And I would feel like I had somehow messed up by not creating the perfect schedule last time.

And finally, I realized that the way that my life works is that it will never be a hundred percent consistent. So I started telling my clients and setting the expectation that like, I change my schedule every semester. I see a lot of college students, what works really well. I live in a college town and it's three times a year, my schedule changes and I have one schedule for summer.

I have one schedule for fall and one schedule for spring. A month or two before the new season I'm sitting there and I'm saying, what is that schedule going to look like? And so I had that going in my private practice, this idea that it would change. And then of course COVID happened mid-spring semester.

And I was like, oh, guess what? I now have no, my availability completely changed. And we're taking you online at the same time. But I think it took a lot of thought, with a lot of thoughtfulness too, with as Simplified was growing that yeah, it had to be part of that too. Sometimes it required flexibility too.

And so I don't always think as much in terms of semesters anymore, but I do at least with my counseling clients, like they get a spot and that stays pretty consistent, but for my counseling clients, like even then, like I call Fridays my flux stand, like whichever business needs me on Fridays gets me. 

ML: Yeah. I love that. And what I'm hearing is... I'm picking up on this transparency piece that you already mentioned. You said I'm very transparent and that's what you're doing with your counseling clients is you're saying like, here's how it is. And I'm being very upfront with you and being very transparent with you.

And I'm going to effectively communicate this to you. Going back before we hit record, we were having a boundaries conversation and all this stuff. So it really feels the integration of all those things that we were talking about, intention, transparency, boundaries, communication but it allows you and has allowed you to be able to fit multiple puzzle pieces together.

Cause like me, you've got a family and your kids are young. My kids are young. You're a spouse and you own two businesses. Like I only own one business, you've got two. So it's like all of these pieces of one puzzle required different amounts of time at different periods and being able to fit those together. 

I've been reflecting a lot personally on compartmentalization a little bit, and not necessarily emotional compartmentalization, but time compartmentalization. This is the time where this goes, this is the time where this goes, and it helps me see them more as blocks or puzzle pieces that do fit together. 

JT: I think that's so important. That's one of the things that I've really found is that for me, I do better when it's like a full day as one business and a full day is the other business that can compartmentalize it in the way that you're using it is really helpful for me.

But I think, and then combined with, you have to have some flexibility. I think you can probably, I mean in any business and certainly in parenting, I've learned you have to be flexible. And I would say that's probably not my natural tendency - to be real flexible. I think I tend to think of things in like "right" and "wrong".

And luckily I think so many of us in the mental health field, going into this field has really helped me be more flexible in general, but I think that's why I gravitate towards being flexible within some structure. And within being able to say "okay, for this semester, this is what I want", and I give myself that permission to be really flexible with changing it. 

Then the semester, again, things come up, my schedule changes mid-semester, or somebody out sick. We had somebody out last week and I did some things to help with that. And so those things happen. But for me, it meets my natural tendency of wanting structure with just that flat out acknowledgement that our needs change.

Our business needs change. Our kids need change, our spouse, our friends and all these different areas of our life can throw a curveball, and then we have to be flexible. COVID can happen, and we'd have to have that balance without it tearing us up as much as changes used to tear me up sometimes.

ML: Yeah. Now in both of your businesses, you have a client aspect, which we're going to dive into with simplified in much more deeply in just a minute, but so you're working on your flexibility - what happens when you come across a client - either a therapy client or a simplified client -that might not have that same flexibility as you do? Have you encountered that?

And then what do you have in place if you encounter that? I've had to work heavily on my own boundaries and just being able to acknowledge what my boundaries are. So I, in my practice getting a VA, which I just have a local one that helps with some of the personal stuff too, but having those positions in place.

JT: Actually right now I have two, they're both college students and they share it and they're fabulous. They're really amazing. But having that aspect of it was life-changing because then I tell them I do have an opening for a clinical case, I say, "Hey, you can tell the person on it is 2:00 PM on Tuesdays.

And that's when my opening is, if I'm not available, then refer them out or give them to one of our other clinicians". And I really had to come down for I had to make a hard boundary of: don't come tell me about them because then I think they're fabulous and I make the time for them. And that kept happening for a while. Like "this is your ideal client". 

"I think that you're right. What can I move around to be able to serve this client?" And so really we had to take the me out of the client. Know from that first phone call with her when the opening will be, and we do our consultation. Call at the same time that their appointment will be so that I know that is the time.

And again, there's flexibility. And I tell them that I'm like, "Hey, this is your time. If I'm sick or if you're, if we can't, if...". I recently had a client that's going through the graduation festivities and they were going to miss an appointment, told me ahead of time and we changed times.

And so we can do that but within our flexibility. And so again, I think it really, that's been really important is the clients knowing from day one, what that is. And in simplified, similarly, we have different SEO specialists that work different hours. Like the super cool thing about our team is that we are, we were remote before it was cool to be remote before COVID.

Even though I have a physical office space and sometimes we would meet at the conference room for a meeting or whatever. It's for my private practice, not for Simplified, so it's not here a lot. And therefore it's really interesting. We all have different work styles. This morning I was talking to one of my staff who woke up in the middle of the night, worked for two hours and then went back and took a nap and slept again.

And that used to be when she would tell me she did that, I'd be like, oh, I don't expect you to work at 1:00 AM. That's terrible. It's yeah, Jessica, you were imposing on me. What works for you? For me, if I wake up thinking about something, I'm quite frankly better off just getting it done and then sleeping in.

And so this job offers lots of flexibility, but it also means that our staff each have slightly different boundaries. And so we've had to talk a lot about that when we're trying to match even one of our staff with a practice that they're working with. 

I have one staff who mostly is a stay at home mom, and she's incredible and works almost full-time hours. Amazing. But her availability is nap time and evenings and weekends. And then one week a month, she has a little bit of extra help. And so when we're matching people with her, we have to have that really frank conversation beforehand and make sure that they're a good fit because even if interest wise... she's really amazing at fine-tune details.

Like she'll catch every spelling error on a page. And so even if they say they want that attention to detail, if their availability doesn't match up, we need to be aware of that. And considering that, and being again very, just transparent and open about this is what it looks like here.

ML: Yeah. Okay. So I have so many questions. So what we're titling this episode is "Done for You Services", which for those of you who are listening we talk a lot about online programs here. We don't talk a lot about one-on-one because my goal is to move you away from one-on-one eventually, but there are a couple of one-on-one options online that work, and the main one that we all know about is coaching. 

However, done for you services is something that I actually started my business doing. I started writing blogs and websites for other clinicians, so they would hire me: "I'm getting my website set up. I need all of my copy written" and I would literally write it for them.

And I was working naps and weekends and after bedtime. And I knew it was always a stepping stone. One thing that I tried to do, which is what Jessica has done and that I want to unpack a lot, is I tried to go for the agency model, which is very similar to a group practice. So just like in our practice where we're like, we're getting really full, let's bring someone on someone else on or into the practice, give them a bit of the workload.

And then you continue to do that. I tried to bring on writers underneath me and give them kind of the smaller projects or the easier projects to start, and then work them up to some of the full websites or some of the bigger projects. I know that I am a) not a very good manager and b) It was more important to me to get out of done for you altogether, which you can, as you bring on employees, you can absolutely work yourself out of the job, which is what you've started to do, Jessica.

However, it wasn't the way that I wanted to grow, but I think it's fascinating that you've been able to grow this way and that it works extremely well for you. And you've added on a course component and an education component. So you have the done for you and you have the education piece, both still going.

So I'd love to just take us back to the origins of simplified and like when you were literally learning how to do SEO, and when you offered to do it for other people all the way through now you have a team, you have a team in both businesses. 

JT: It started with when I started my private practice. I kept hearing that networking and having coffee with everybody under the sun is how you grow a private practice.

And for the record, I'm a people person in that I really truly loved going on all these coffee dates, but I also had a very tight budget and very little childcare. And typically we just paid a nanny for like the exact time that I was seeing clients. Like sometimes she didn't even meet me at the office five minutes before.

And so it was very difficult to network that way. So it started when somebody mentioned, I told them "I'm getting to website dealer" and she said "SEO". And I didn't know what she was talking about, but I nodded my head and I went and I looked it up when I got home.

And so for about a year, I just taught myself SEO by listening to every podcast episode I could, having to go outside our field a lot, because there wasn't a ton out there in our field and buying all these books and reading all these books and listening to podcasts late at night. And then trying to have to translate that into: what's that mean for mental health? 

Sometimes probably frustrated because sometimes the advice I was giving is just not going to work in our field with our code of ethics. I figured it out and my website was ranking. Then I started helping some friends. I went to a small conference slash self-care type thing, and some friends and I were staying up late at night, working on their SEO and it made a big difference. I remember being really amazed.

 I had a friend in the Atlanta area who, for one of her specialties, she had a URL that had been around for a few years. We got her from page 10 to page one over the course of a week.

She was so excited, and I was amazed because I'm like, whoa, like I always just assumed it only worked because I'm in mid-Missouri. And so that was the beginning of it where other people there started saying "hey, we would pay you to do this". And I'm like how about you pay me to teach you to do it.

And so it was supposed to start with training, but I found that a lot of people. Sometimes even more so after I started training them one to just pay us to do it because some of us get excited about SEO, cause it's like a puzzle. Other people don't get excited about it, even when I'm teaching now.

And so they wanted the done for you. So I started doing that. It was very time consuming and quite frankly, like when I'm doing it and just working through, and I'm still seeing way too many clients and trying to do the group practice at first. I think I got good results for people. But I was more like, our contract to this day has something about typos because I was making terrible titles.

 So eventually it just became clear that I think I thought SEO would only be like a couple of months. Like, I didn't even get its own LLC at first because I was like, this is like just something I'm doing for fun for a couple months. And it didn't go away. And so it became to a point where it was I'm either going to have to bring other people on.

Or I'm going to have to make a tough decision about, do I keep doing this and have my group practice? And so I brought a couple people on. The first two people I hired, neither one stayed with me past six months because quite frankly, I don't think I knew how best to use them. And I don't think I knew how best to communicate that.

And so the next two I hired were two people that are still with me today and have both been promoted or like leading the team. And they're amazing because I think I had learned a lot with those first two people that I tried to bring on with how it works. And so we've come up with a really neat system now because I'm also on the Enneagram.

I'm a type two with the one wing. And I would say my one wing that like wants things to be done. And wants fact things and sees all the errors. Like it's actually really strong, even though I want you to like me, I also really need it to be done just right. And so it was really hard to do, to bring on a team because what if they didn't do it the way that I did? What I discovered is if I bring on people with a mental health background, because I can't teach that, I have to refer people with very little SEO experience. 

Like, it's okay. If they know a little bit, they built a couple of websites, but the less they know the better because I can really teach them my way. It's more important to me that they have been in a social work or psychology or something related program and have that code of ethics and understand the basic concepts of mental health.

And then I teach them my process and it really honestly takes me almost three months to get somebody really up to where we want them worth of training. That's quite an investment that we do when we're bringing someone on. Because again, that type one, it's they've got to do it. And now we have every single page has at least two, if not three levels of review.

And so it's pretty intensive, the amount of work that goes into it, but it has to be because that, that perfectionist part of me is I can't say at all for lower quality, because I'm bringing people on that. That just doesn't work for me at all. And so I'm still, I am doing a lot less. I have a director of SEO services.

We actually got our bachelor's degrees together, and then she got her master's in social work and policy and administration track. So a little bit different take on it. So I tell people, I tell our whole team, I'm like, she is a better supervisor than I am, but she's overseeing the done for you.

And I still step in where needed. I still, I think I told you, review about 20% of the pages at the end of the month. One of the two of us has an eye on every single page, usually multiple times throughout the month. I show up to most team meetings unless there's a really good reason not to. 

So every week I'm hearing about the pages and the clients and that sort of thing. But they're able to do so much of it with you. On most pages, we have an SEO specialist and then we have a review. So we have one person that's talking to the client, that's doing the first level of work. Then we have a second person that has eyes on it.

And then by the time I see it, it's had at least two eyes on it already, usually. And I'm able to just make some extra tweaks or, again like the perfectionist part of me, we try to reserve the last few days have all of our work done and the. Websites that aren't responding the way we want to, because Google is very unpredictable.

So the last couple of days of the month we try to block off some of my time and a couple other members of our team's time to really like those trouble websites, go in and see and be like, where can we push the envelope a little bit? What other ranking factors that maybe are outside of our normal ones might help this particular website?

Can we give the client, the practice owner, additional ideas for other things? Because every month there's a few websites. Cause Google we can't control. And those eat at me in time. Like we have to throw everything we can on them. 

ML: And so there's a couple of processes going on. We have the initial, like getting the website to rank initially, but then we want to maintain that ranking.

And so these pages that you're talking about, are these the pages to get it to rank initially or these, the page, are these the ongoing pages? Or how do you what services do you offer on the done for you side? Are you helping therapists rank? Are you helping therapists rank and then maintain that.

JT: Yeah. And that's the unique thing about SEO is like some people are different and people structure it different. The way that I do it is for us, what we do is we charge a lot more early on when we're trying to get it ranking. And so that's generally what I'm talking about with our done for you services.

We do have three different levels of alumni though. Once somebody is ranking as well as they have, or they've set the foundation. And one of those levels is just we call it SEO tools. And so the alumni tools package is literally just they get access to their data dashboard. We have alumni office hours where they can pop in and ask questions.

We have a closed Facebook group where we do a Facebook live every week. And they get like a newsletter and a site audit. So they have all these tools, but they're not, it's not heavy on our time. We have some expenses associated with those tools, but like I give an hour of my month to alumni office hours, but so do three other people.

And so you have a lot of opportunities for face-to-face time with us, if you want. But so that's the lowest level. And then there's two other levels, basically for people. One is for people who are blogging, but maybe in a more competitive area where we come in and we do a little bit of work each month just to make sure that the blogs are doing what we need to for SEO.

And then the last one is for somebody that their site clearly still needs blogging, but there's no way on earth they're going to do it. And so we actually have one that includes copywriting for the blogs and that one is still really intense. And so we've played around with that package, and now we have it where once every three months, once a quarter, they'll meet with their SEO specialist, with the person that'll be writing the blogs to basically plan out the next three months of blogs. 

Because we tried just emailing back and forth with those plans and when you're copywriting, you need to do more than just email back and forth. And so we've altered a little bit recently. 

ML: Yeah. I love what you're saying here, because when I was doing done for you, what I tried to make the transition a little bit easier was done with you. So I had three coaching packages and we would meet and write the websites together.

And we still used the exact templates that I used. And then I would have them like, okay let's literally, sentence by sentence, let's write it together. And I wasn't like writing at midnight or writing and trying to nurse the baby at the same time, but it still was time-intensive, but I think you hit a nail on the head.

When you talk about the transition from done for you to education or training, because those are two different people, knowing your ideal customer is huge here. And it sounds like some of these support programs walk a line between that. Some of them are done for you. Some are them are a little bit more done with you.

JT: Yeah, we try to have options. My favorite thing to be honest is the SEO training and teaching people to do it themselves. I just find that so exciting, but I also know it's not for everybody. So we have those options. I have the courses, which is like all the information I wish was in one place, but that wasn't in one place for me.

But that doesn't teach you to apply it to your own site. Then we have some options. We've tried in a couple of different formats for working with you and training. I have one where I meet with people six times or Alyssa meets with people six times to really fine-tune it. Like how do you apply that to your site?

And then we have the complete done for you, and figuring out how to offer those three different levels has been really interesting. And trying to figure out how to make each of those worth it. Where it gets people the best possible results for that level of care, but also is really individualized to the need of that of that practice. 

Because quite frankly, every practice is different. Even if two people do the exact same thing, we describe it differently. We have different needs. One website might be older and one is newer, and we have very different approaches for that. And I think that it's been a process again with the flexibility.

It's what I love. It's why you don't think either business can ever grow too big. Because I really went big on some last month - we tried something really new with how we divided our staff responsibilities at simplified, because we're like, oh this person's really good at this until we keep pulling them in on this.

And this person's a lot better at this. And so we keep on them in here. How do we share that? And I really appreciate that. We're able to be like: something needs to change. Now my tendency is to go: something needs changed? Let's change it tomorrow. 

And my director of SEO services has to remind me that it needs to change intentionally. So you and I both see where that it needs to change, let's talk about a plan to implement so that it doesn't have to become a complete disaster. 

ML: Do you guys do the KOLBE? 

JT: No. What’s the KOLBE? 

ML: Yeah, K O L B E. It is a measurement - it's used in corporate a lot. But it measures your project management style and your decision-making style.

So there's Quickstart, which I am very high on. There's researcher. There is follow-through, which I have very low on. And then there is, I always forget the name of this one, but it's basically, it means hands-on. Do you have to be like up to your elbows in the project? How hands-on kinesthetic do you need to be with the project basically?

And in corporate, you use it when you're hiring people. So that if you're like, okay, there's a hole here, the follow-through isn't happening. We're going to hire for follow-through. Or projects are taking a really long time. We're going to hire for quickstart. And I think that'd be fascinating for you and your team to do.

It's 65 bucks each. So you have to pay for it, and you just write it off. But it can be really helpful when you're bringing on a new team member, but it also can help assess the current team dynamic oh, we are all very high because you're more likely to hire somebody who's like you.

But then you get a lopsided team. You get a skewed team cause everyone's high in one skill set, and then everyone's low on another skill set. 

JT: Oh, that's so cool. We're totally going to have to try that. It's funny. I like to think about like now versus then versus a couple of years ago, and I feel like clients get such a better result now because we have this team approach.

Again, I care a lot about getting good results. And so it really helps to think of it that way, is how can we while adding more people not view it... A client once told me when I started my transition from solo to group practice, but who wants to see your associates? Because theoretically, they're like, less motivated. 

And I was just appalled, absolutely horrified that he would think that. I'm like, no, I bring on people who just don't want to deal with the BS of owning a business. And I think that I still very firmly feel that like each of my clinicians is better than me in some way.

And I think of it the same way with Simplified, is like to have a really strong team. I have to hire people that are better than me. And one thing, like in different areas, we all know in our team that there are some technical things. I can figure out technical SEO pieces, but it's not my strength.

The content you hear me as I talk, like I'm really good at giving a lot of content and saying the same thing 20 different times which was great for SEO. But the technical stuff, like my director of SEO services, 20 times better at that than I am. And so I think that having that diversity of strength has been really critical for how I built my team as a whole.

But again, for the done for you services, like having that variety of strengths means that we can speak to each person's strength and I'm like, cool. So now they're getting a little bit of this person's strength and a little bit of this person's strength. And then eventually they get my overarching, very opinionated self looking at it.

And like I'm really big on making each practice unique. And I'm great with people coming to me and being like, hey, they don't like how we typically do backlinks. I'm like here are 12 different other options for how to do this, and that sort of thing. 

They get a little bit of each of our strengths, each level of the way. And I'm like, Sometimes, I think back to my first clients who all were very happy and really cool thing about SEO is some of them, I actually still see their data cause they're part of our alumni programs and I'm like, okay, it's still working.

It's still going really well, work for clients. And so that's great. But at the same time, I have moments where I'm like, I have such a better system now, because now it's not just my strengths. It's also using these other people that do other things that I'm not so great at. Watching all my misspelling.

ML: So I had a crash course in management because I brought on my first team members last year in the pandemic. And I mismanaged...  in the fall, and I've shared it on this show before and all of my alumni know, but I mismanaged one of my employees and it was, it sucked really bad.

So do you enjoy management? Is this a skill that you have acquired gotten better at? Did you learn managerial stuff as you brought on people for the group practice and then did that translate to simplified? What's been your experience with being in charge of people? 

JT: Yeah, no, honestly I totally hate it.

I think the only reason I started a group practice was because there was such a need in our community and I was having such a hard time turning people away. And my husband said you can't just keep seeing more and more clients. I was at 30 some when it was supposed to be 10 a week when I started, I was like this doesn't work.

And I'm like, but I refer them, everyone else's full. And so I started adding people just out of a sense of obligation, but they were contractors. And just now I'm working on transitioning some clinicians to employees. My attorney in town has helped me with making it to where I can actually have some clinicians, employees, and still some contractors right now. 

But I purposely brought in contractors, not because it was cheaper, which I think is why some people choose contractors. But because I was like, I don't want to manage people like people that aren't employees. I want to be as hands-off as possible. And because I did not see that as a skill, my mom has been in management most of my life.

And so there's been a lot of conversations with her. Mom, how do you do those? She actually has an MSW as well, and I'm not clinical, but I've had a lot of conversations with her that have been really impactful and not a lot of harsh reality type moments where I've been like, oh, I am in leadership now.

And that does mean that sometimes I have to be the one to make a decision, or I have to draw a boundary, even though I don't want to tell people how to. But then there are other times where I've drawn boundaries. I think I told you like I have one employee that's part of how she works. Sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night, works for a couple of hours and then sleeps in.

And I used to tell her not to do that. And then she had to explain to me that know that me drawing a boundary of her not being able to work on a website in the middle of the night would actually make her less productive because she just wants to go out and then she can sleep more soundly and I'm like, oh, okay.

Her style is different and it's not going to cause her to burnout just because it's different. And so I think a huge part of it has been like, where do I need to draw boundaries because that's what good management is? Because I have a tendency to really struggle with doing that. How do I be clear when something is a boundary? Because I avoid it. 

Because I don't love giving boundaries, I think sometimes it sounds more like a suggestion. And so I had to learn to be more clear. And then when do I maybe feel tempted out of the goodness of my heart is on cases like the hours, like one to draw a boundary, but there's actually no boundary that's needed.

It just needs to be clear in the expectations. And so that's honestly, I would say that the managing of people is probably my biggest stress or stressor. And so it's really funny. I have two businesses and I thought about not scaling. But again, it comes down to wanting to be able to help people and be very intentional and being very slow.

I say very slow. I've only been doing this for four years. I would say it's still is slow in that everything has to be well thought out. I don't take somebody on because we're full. I have to first figure out what's their role going to look like, and then they'll change when they're on set because we find out their strengths.

But I know that it's hard and I think that, having Simplified, the nicest thing is that I do have actually now two leadership positions under me and that I see as very equals like, yes, it's my name that owns the LLC, but they're there. I can't function without them and having their strengths and being able to have somebody when there's a personnel issue something's or bounce things off of and be like, wow, I thought I was clear in this email, like what my expectation was and being able to look at it together.

And then the counselor looked at him like, no, you thought that he didn't explicitly say that, like having someone that I can bounce those things off of has been really incredible. I don't have that yet. I don't have a clinical director. I've looked at that and that's definitely in the long-term plans was to get what I'm calling more of a clinical team lead.

But I do have really amazing VAs, and one has been with me for a couple of years. And so not personnel issues, I certainly don't discuss with them, but there are some things where I'm able to be like, hey, I'm thinking about changing, how we set up the rooms this way? What issues do you see that might what am I not thinking of that might come up when I do that?

Or things like that I think are really important because not everybody wants to be the lead the way that I would. And so trying to lead people to me, I think early on, I was like, this is what my dream supervisor would be like. And I tried to be my dream supervisor, And then you're woken up with the reality that like, it doesn't work with me. In fact, purposely I've hired people that aren't like me. And so of course they don't want to be managed the way that I would.

ML: A hundred percent. I love that you've dropped the word leadership in here because who's actually really helped me with this is Josh because he is in the army. And it's talk about leadership, talk about managing people and needing 400 people to be in one spot, doing one task all at the same time and like all this stuff. 

And so he is the person who I leaned on extensively in the fall. And it's funny because I had another leadership thing that I had to lead through this week, actually last, it was last week. And I told him what I did and he was like, that was awesome. Like you've learned, he was able to say, like you learned through this process. Like the, you in the fall would have probably not have done it that way and blah, blah, blah. 

So it was really cool. But I like the idea of seeing it as a leader versus a manager. It's just semantics, but it really makes a difference in my head of what the role is.

JT: And I think it makes a difference with how you view things. Because truly, I think that if we're being a truly effective leader, again, we've talked a little bit about wanting people with diverse abilities. Then I think that the difference in saying "I'm their manager" versus "I'm their leader", I think for me leader feels, I don't know, maybe it's just what I've associated with the words over the years, but for me, the word leader is more of that, like I see them as equals. 

It's again, yes, I might technically have my name on the tax documents, but I'm in no way, shape or form better than any of my employees or more skilled or whatever, and differently skilled. And I need to see myself as like a leader that's helping them reach their fullest potential and make up for my missteps often. 

And yeah, no I love it. Just thinking about it as like bringing people together and my private practice, I often will say in group means I'm like, look, any decent idea around here about the way things run came from one of our team members at one point in time or another I really try to empower people to be very blunt with me.

And I'm very blunt. If I'm not happy about something, I'm not mean about it, that I don't beat around the Bush or wait for it to become a huge problem. I'll call you up or send you an email depending on what it is and the time of day, but you're going to know. And so I expect the same of my team to be able to tell me like, "hey Jessica, last week, I guess I'd been less clear that I wanted our new office space”.

Like I created this document for everybody to block off time, and I guess I was less clear. I had things in my head that I hadn't communicated that I thought of course you can do this, right? No brainer. It's a... one of my clinicians - they're all my favorite -they all have different strengths, but one of them and I were talking one-on-one he just was so nice about telling me how basically how he's was doing it made no sense. 

And I'm like, okay, tell me more. What's not made out of that conversation. There were two clarifications that became really clear would be helpful. And one of them like, really, I thought I'd been clear about it. And I just wasn't, I didn't communicate what was in my head.

And so I was able to then send out an email and be like, oh, in typical aspire fashion, we've found, that there changed that we want to make and things that we need to be more clear about. So here's this, let me know what other thoughts you have. Because I think, I don't know anybody that has a group practice knows that office space, I think is one of the most stressful things.

And so I've also been very clear with them all along. I'm like if somebody thinks of a better way of organizing this, please tell me. In this case, it wasn't. They didn't have an idea about a better way to do it, but at least we're able to find what it was that was causing stress. And we were able to clarify it and I'm still waiting.

Like I hope somebody tomorrow emails me like a completely different system that's going to work even better. That would make my day. But the best ideas often just come from listening to my team to help implement them and I get to help make their ideas a reality. 

ML: Yeah. Let's talk about the education side. How did you - because the training part is your favorite part - did you wait till... cause you said you wanted to start that way, but it didn't really work, you had to reverse engineer that part. 

So did you wait until a certain point in the business to introduce training? Does your team help with the training or is that more your baby? How is that side of Simplified? 

JT: It's been my baby, which means that it hasn't been scalable. It hasn't gotten bigger because I only have so much time.

ML: You are your own bottleneck 

JT: Very much, and I really struggled with letting go of that. But I don't because I'm like, but it's fun.

And I truly think one of my biggest things that I have to recognize about myself is truly that I just get really passionate about whatever I do. I'm really passionate about my clinical work, which is why I like early on, I told you when we first started, you're like, oh, why are you still doing a lot of work?

I'm like six to eight hours at this point. And you're like, oh, that's more than a lot of people do. And I'm like, oh yeah, I guess it is. But if it was up to me, like I'd still see 20 clients a week. And so I get really passionate and this training, it's one of those things where I have so much fun, like helping people problem solve.

And I teach keyword research and then I realized, oh, it's way harder than I think it is. And so we have to come up with a different way, or we try some keywords and we get them to the first page and they're still not getting calls. And so we have to, you know, that strategy piece and helping them best learn that strategy piece is so fun that I've really struggled to give it to anyone else. But now if I want it to get bigger, I need to. 

And so literally this week I'm doing interviews for a training coordinator who's going to come on and help. But we've tried different ways. Right before COVID last year, 2020 was supposed to be the year that I was going to do four different weekend retreats, learn SEO in a weekend.

ML: I remember that. 

JT: Yeah. And the first one went really well. It was so much fun. All four people that came made huge gains. It was like, it was fun and effective. And some of those people since then have done little bits, but they just think it was amazing. And I was like, this is the model. And then COVID happened.

And I was supposed to have one like the next weekend and we had to cancel it and no other has gotten on the books. ’Cause it is a big commitment. So we've tried that. My standard that I've been doing all along is like a 12-week training program where we meet six times one-on-one and that gets great results.

I've added a course and I've added a lot to it. But we check in later on but that's been the standard. And then we've also tried one where, and I'm not doing this but I hope to again, where we do like a short term one for you, we give them a jumpstart for a couple of months and then they come on and do the training.

And that was effective and worked really well. Now we don't have a formal thing, but some people do still do that. And then this summer I'm gonna try my first, like short-term mastermind next. So excited about that. Going to be a more affordable version of what I've been doing for years in the 12-week program. But I'm going to try, I think I can scale it a little bit and have just a handful of people and working really closely with them.

But yeah, I think the training has been a lot of trying different things and see how people learn and see what works, what doesn't work. And then I think it's been a lot of reality checking on my part about what's the time commitment and can I give 110% to them? 

ML: Well and what I love about it, and this is almost how, like I have my business structured, Side Hustle Support Group. That's my bedrock; that is my base revenue. I need it to make this much money for the year and that's what it does. 

And then the other projects that I have we're recording before. I don't know when this is going to go live. It's going to go live right before Summer Slow Down, or it's going to go live right after Summer Slow Down.

But Summer Slow Down is like a fun thing for me. It's going to be three workshops, one in June, one in July and one in August. And of course I'm monetizing it. Of course, it's going to bring me revenue, but it's more let's play together. Let's have fun. Let's do this one thing. That's going to be really fun.

And the bedrock of my business is taken care of. So it frees me up to do, from an energy standpoint, from a financial standpoint, it frees me up to do some of these funner things.

The education stuff might not have to scale for you. It might be like your passion project. That of course brings revenue because this is a business, but it's also really fun for you.

And it's just like, see your eyes light up when you talk about it. Like it could be the fun part of your business that doesn't have to be the bedrock of the business, if that makes sense. 

JT: Yea, I think that SEO is so individualized like in working with my staff and training them on that has been really critical. I can teach them the basics of these eight ranking factors we work on, to really the magic comes with getting to know the clinician that you're working with and figuring out the best way to apply these eight things to that private practice and what makes them unique.

Because again, every private practice is unique. You can have two practices that both specialize in DBT and like the same general size, but they're going to have different feels when you walk in. And in some ways, even different ideal clients and figuring out how to apply that I think is where the magic happens.

And so I've trained my staff to do that as much as possible, but I don't get the feel of doing that as much because I'm a little bit more removed now. I get there, but that is where I go to. Right when they're struggling, I'm like, okay, tell me more about this practice. Tell me about this client, about this clinician.

What's the superpower of their particular practice? What is their brand feel? Like all of that. But that's where I love training because I'm like, I do get passionate because I'm like, I'm teaching them to do what my staff tried to do, which is figure out how to take these things and really apply them to that practice and bring the heart to it.

Like the big excitement because you know your brand, your practice, the best. So of course when you optimize, in some ways it's going to be better because you're able to write a meta description that is really authentic to you. We do three different versions, essentially of a meta description in a single month, usually where we try to capture that practice.

But the clinician that's working in it or the owner is going to get more. I love the training piece, but yeah, it has so far been the passion project. And I'm hoping that in the next year with bringing on a training coordinator, that the plan is to spend, again, three months training and do a lot with. That we'll be able to offer more of these opportunities where I'll still be able to be involved. 

Because I'm interested to take the KOLBE because I have a feeling that like knee-deep in thing, like that's going to be me. And that's why I do like alumni office hours. And I'm still really active in our Facebook group for our done for you clients. But I think that I'll also be very active still in the training. 

ML: Show me your results. I'll send you a picture of mine after we're recording. I want to see if we're similar or different. 

Going back a little bit, what was it like when you were very first monetizing this? You did it for yourself, you got some results for some other people. How did you start charging? I'm betting money you were probably undercharging. What was it like to admit that you were like going to make money from this to claim some sort of expertise or to step out and say, I do this? 

JT: Oh, you talk about imposter syndrome. I just went to school to be a mental health provider. I did not go to school to do SEO. I think that, again, that transparency, that has been the biggest thing.

Cause I don't claim to know everything about SEO. I don't claim to be, I don't have a degree in digital marketing. But what I have is a deep understanding of how I've gotten my practice ranking. And so I just am very transparent about that. But it was interesting at first I think again, I had this mindset that this was a very temporary thing.

And so at first it very much was like, this just has to fit in on top of my private practice and I didn't take much of anything from it. It was like anything I got from it was like icing on the cake. And so it was really interesting when it became clear that again, I was working too many hours, my priorities, my family, they weren't necessarily always looking a priority if you looked on paper and so we had to step back and be like, okay, I need to reduce my clinical caseload.

I need to even probably set aside specific times that are like... at first, I didn't even have specific time set aside for simple coffee shops at night after kids went to bed. And so then once I started setting that time aside that I needed, then I very slowly started increasing the income that would come from Simplified.

But I actually did not give myself a raise. What I did is I took money. I gave myself less from Aspire and more from Simplified for a very long time. It eventually it reached the point where I was like, okay, the accountant tells me, and I finally believe them. I can give myself a raise, but for a long time, there was no sudden increase in what I made.

It just was a shifting of where my energy went and where. Where I drew that paycheck from. In that respect, the good news is I never had to rely on Simplified to make a dollar, because I already had a private practice that made enough to meet my family's needs.

And of course there are other wants, there are lots of wants, but my family's basic needs were already taken care of. So it could grow slowly and it could be very focused on the things I wanted to focus on getting good results on working with clinicians and authentically. Because it wasn't about the money. Because the money was my private practice was okay. I hope that answers your question, but it was just very gradual. 

ML: That's what I'm picking up from you too, is you're less money motivated and more impact motivated, which is again the opposite of me.  

JT: And I think both are good. But yeah, I think that's that type 2 part of me. That it's not just about wanting to make other people happier like me, but it is about wanting to feel like I'm doing good in the world.  And so I do like money. I really like traveling and that requires money.

And I really do meet my kids' needs. We were talking about my journey homeschooling this year. And that's something, let me tell you, that can get expensive if you let it. And having some money is important and meeting the needs of my family is important. But at the end of the day, the only way that I feel good about that personally is when I then relate it back to oh: this is the impact I'm making.

So at Simplified every week have at the beginning of our meeting, a point where people bring back the quotes that their clients have sent them about "I've had to stop intakes because I'm getting so many" or like "all those nice things you guys have passed, you really get my voice" whatever nice comments we have from that week.

Everybody gets to drop them in a Google doc and we read them at the beginning of the meeting. That's cool. Because that keeps me going. And I'm like, okay, that's why we did it. Like somebody is now only taking their ideal clients or somebody has transitioned a group practice and is making a bigger impact in their community. And that really keeps my motivation going. 

ML: So what do you think is important for the listeners of the show, clinicians who are looking at a side hustle? How does good SEO help them, or what's important for them to think about in terms of having good SEO? I have an idea, but I want to hear yours. 

JT: I think it has to do with knowing always who your ideal client is. And knowing the best way to reach them. Because some people, it's different things. I actually, I'll never forget - you and I were talking about people, we were meeting at a conference and you said something like that. I should just tell people, just Google SEO for therapists.

And that would give me the credibility because they Google me and I show up or whatever. I think we were talking about I didn't have business cards and you're like, oh, tell them just Google you. And it really stuck with me that oh. I will say a lot of times a huge portion of our clients, that's just come from our practices that we work with, just come from referrals, my friend used you guys or whatever. 

But there is also an element of thinking about oh, is that social proof important in my private practice? It's very much Google, I would say actually Google SEO is way more important for my private practice than Simplified because people look for mental health providers. But know who your ideal clients are and how to search for them.

Similarly, like about knowing your ideal clients. When we're talking about search engine optimization, a lot of people want to like rank for really general terms. Counseling practice or, we've started branching out and work with some other things, but don't go for the most general terms.

And I'm like, what are your ideal clients? We look into that cause like my ideal client and my private practice for me personally, it would probably be looking up help for panic attacks. Versus if they're just looking for a therapist near me. Do they really want me, or do they want somebody that does not have some of the specialized training and focus that I have?

And so I would much rather rank for "panic attacks" than "counselors near me". That's a big thing is if you know your audience, you can reach them through SEO. 

ML: That's the thing that comes to mind for me is let's get your practice on SEO and automatically getting clients because then you don't have to market it and you'll have all the time and energy you need for your Side Hustle. So hire Jessica. 

JT: That's what I love. I hear people talk a lot. I'm like my SEO over there has run on autopilot. Every now and then I'm like oh wait, I haven't done  SEO for six months on my private practice. So I better go do some things just so that I'm a better example because it cracks me up how many people are like "I looked up your private practice" and I'm like "do, as I say, not as I do."

You're in New York City? I'm sorry, but the approach you have to take in New York City to rank well is way different than in mid-Missouri. And so I have to update my website just to keep up with that, but it's great.

Like people call. We always are going to refer you out tons and I don't have to give much thought to marketing and I still do some networking. I know somebody who's just starting their private practice here in town. Cause it sounds super cool. Their niche is so needed.

I was really excited to meet with them, but I met with them because I was excited and I wanted to hear about their services. And I think they're doing a cool niche that I've not had any good people to refer to. I'm not meeting with them because I really need clients or because that's my heart. And so the other things that I do that could be considered marketing for Aspire are more like fun and fit into my schedule and don't stress me out.

 And actually Aspire when it does work on SEO, typically I'm actually outsourcing my private practices, SEO to my SEO team. My one LLC pays the other and everything. Cause my team can do what I want them to do. And I'm like, look, my VA wrote some blogs, go optimize them for me. That's cool.

ML: Awesome. So if anybody listening is thinking, okay, let me get my practice optimized and then I'll be able to give more energy to my side hustle. Where should they go? How should they learn more about Simplified? 

JT: Yes. So our website is simplifiedseoconsulting.com, and you can get a free seven-day email series.

That of course gets you on my mailing list with basic tips to teach you the overview we have. If you're interested in the done for you, book a consult, we love to talk about it. And if you are interested in the training, we have other opportunities on there. But the best way to start is with our online courses.

And if you use the code empathy, you will get a 20% off any of our courses to dip your toes in the water and figure out who you want to do it yourself, or would you like to outsource them? 

ML: That's so sweet. Just for Empathy Rising listeners. So that's how you remember empathy is the code to get 20% off. That's nice of you. 

JT: Like you said, I love that. Not everybody does love doing their own SEO and the best way to try it, try a course. If you love it, great. Then lets you in with our 12-week or a mastermind. If you hate it, then that's okay. We have other options for you.

ML: Awesome. Jessica, it's been a pleasure. I know you have another meeting to get to, I want to give you a little time between this and that to go, chill out. 

Cause you've had a busy day, but I miss you friend and it was so cool to catch up and your story is so cool and hearing about done for you, which we don't talk a lot about, but it's obviously a viable option because it's gotten both you and I where we are today. I think it's really fascinating for the listeners to be able to hear about that.

JT: It's viable and people like it. Not everybody wants to learn everything that we want to teach. They really do want the done for you. 

ML: And you can charge a lot more for it. Awesome. Alright. I will talk with you soon, friend.

JT: Yes, you too. 

ML: Bye. 

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