Hello. This is The Ask Juliet and Clinton Show episode number 47. Clinton, how are you doing?

Transcription

1 Welcome to The Ask Juliet and Clinton Show where you can get the answers to your most pressing marketing questions. Take your therapy or natural health business to the next level with these expert tips. Now, here are your hosts, Juliet Austin and Clinton Power. Hello. This is The Ask Juliet and Clinton Show episode number 47. Clinton, how are you doing? Hey, Juliet. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you too. We have worked at the end of the year and we're already at episode 47. That means we've been going for 47 weeks. Amazing. Five more weeks and it'll be a whole year, right? Yes. We're going to be popping the champagne on episode 52. Yes. We're going to be celebrating, except it's going to be early for you in the day when we do that. You'll have to have it with your orange juice like we said. Yes, I think so. We had Christmas and then New Year's is coming up in a couple of days. Do you celebrate New Year's in any major way? Not really. I'm a really low key and easy person. I don't like crowds. I'm not into being around people that are drunk or messy. I like to have a nice dinner and I'm often in bed by 9 or 9:30. What I do like is I like to get up really early on New Year's day and just feel fantastic and fresh, and go outside, and you see all those messy people staggering high and you feel fantastic. It's a great feeling. I like to enjoy the day. That's interesting because I'm usually sleeping before midnight as well, then what happens is I hear all the fireworks and I wake up at midnight and I go, "Okay, it's New Year. Happy New Year," then I go back to sleep when the fireworks stop. Oh dear. You have a fact about Australia that you're going to share with us today. Yeah. I've got some interesting facts about koala. Do you know what koalas are? Of course. Everybody knows what koala bears are. They're so cute. 1

2 They're so cute. They're so cute, but they are pretty dangerous if you don't know them. Yeah. Actually, they're not bears. They're actually marsupials, which means that they carry the young in their pouch. In Australia, at the moment, we think we have about 80,000 remaining in Australia, but we're thinking there may only actually be 43,000. Their habitat is declining and this is a major issue in Australia, which makes it really important for us to preserve the habitat that's left. Koalas live in gum trees. They love eating gum leaves, eucalyptus leaves. There are about 600 varieties of eucalyptus, but koalas in Australia only eat about 120 of these. They're a little bit fuzzy, and they generally are in a specific area, and prefer to eat only about 4 to 6 different types. To preserve Koalas, we really need to preserve their habitats. That's what so important. Unfortunately, eucalyptus trees are being filled for new developments, and koala populations are being decimated. They're beautiful creatures actually. I was in a meditation retreat earlier this year and I saw a koala in a tree. You just don't see them very often because they're often very, very high up in the trees, but this was a koala that was way up. I was doing my walking meditation. I could just look at this koala up in the tree. They are so beautiful. They're very slow, kind of sitting all day, and just munch on the leaves. They are nocturnals so they're often very sedate during the day, and they become more active at night time. They're only awake a few hours a day, aren't they? Yeah, that's right, and they only have young once every 2 years. They only produce 1 young every 2 years, so this is another reason why we need to be so careful because they just don't populate very quickly. There you go. It's the same with all of the animals all over the world. There's this huge issues with the habitat disappearing, and 1 of the biggest ones right now is the orangutan's and the palm oil. That's really tragic. I mean, they're burning all their forest for palm oils. Sad. Let's get to the first question here. This is is from Jess Mills, I'm not sure where she is. I think she's in Australia because she's spelling organizations with an S. Either that, or she's in the UK. Q1: I am a mature aged social work student with 12 years experience working in suicide prevention through volunteer and paid work. I intend to focus of suicide 2

3 prevention and bereavement as my niche. I listened to podcast, and have considered starting a blog and a website, but I'm reluctant to as I'm still a student and I'm concerned about marketing myself before I am ready to see actual clients. I'm a member of professional organizations, and I'm taking relevant professional development courses in my summer break. Do you have any tips for students who already know what they want to do professionally? Yes, get going. Get started because you're going to be busy by the time. If you have time right now, I would say, start your blog because you could start building content. Maybe you could start getting the copy done for your website. You could start planning your website depending on when you're graduating, and when you plan on starting, but all that can be done. You don't have to get it up yet, but you can get it all organized, written, ready to go, and I would get your blog up. You can get the website designed and maybe just have it as a blog, and start it as a blog, and start building content, put a subscriber form on there and start building an e-list. You can never do that too soon. By the time you start then, your blog maybe got an audience, you've got more content, Google's got more articles of yours there. I would say, do it, don't wait. Clinton? Yeah, my exact thoughts Juliet. Start blogging right away. Use wordress.org, and then what you can do is as you start practicing, then you can add on your services pages on the home page. To start with, you can just have it as a blog. You know, I would be writing about everything you're learning, but putting it in to laymans language, that's really user friendly for the public, that's helpful, that's valuable stuff that's very shareable. I think there's probably lots and lots of information particularly. I'm not sure if you still want to focus on suicide prevention and bereavement. That's a huge niche, and you've already got 12 years experience, so obviously, there's a lot of information that you probably have that you could start to create, and to start building an audience. You get that opting from day 1, so you can start building an list. That's really critical, and the planning. You can do lots of planning behind the scenes. I don't know if you notice this Juliet, but a lot of therapist, when they go to build a website, they think, "Oh, I just need to choose a design and bang, I need to go," but there is so much preparation you need to do, I think before you even get to choosing a design stage. I think the writing copy is one of the most time consuming activities when it comes to writing a website. You can start that as soon as possible. Well, in clarifying your niche and really getting your message clear before you start writing, I agree. One thing I just want to mention here too, suicide 3

4 prevention and bereavement aren't really 1 niche. Those sound to 2 different niches. If it's suicide prevention, who is your audience? You have to think about your audience if you're going to do a blog because if you're writing suicide prevention, are these people that are suicidal and suffer with depression, then you need to be writing to them. The bereavement, is that just general bereavement to anybody who's lost somebody? That's different, unless it's a bereavement around suicide. Again, if you're writing to an audience who's suicidal, you're going to write different kinds of blog posts than you are to somebody somebody who's lost a family member to suicide. They're different niches, they're related, but they're different. You need to think about that too because you don't want to lose people. Somebody's already lost their child due to suicide, they're probably don't want to be reading a bunch of stuff about suicide prevention. You really need to think about that, and how you're going to do that, and if you're going to have different blogs, or different sites. That's the problem when you have more than 1 niche, or a niche that's not really that distinct is that you have to decide on who you're writing to. It's more work if you want to try to reach both audiences. Good point, Juliet. Our next question is from Jodie Gale. We asked a question from here in the last episode, at jodiegale.com. Q2: She asked the 2nd question, which was when I opened up another day in my practice when my youngest goes to pre-school next year, what is the best way to let potential clients know who have joined my mailing list? It is my main list. I'm just thinking as I'm writing, should I have a separate list for this, and should I send a news letter to my main list noting that I have a space coming up? Yeah, absolutely. I think you need a separate list because this is just not part of your general newsletter list. You need to have a separate list, which may not even need to be kept. If it's not a very big list, you can even keep it as a group list in Gmail. You may not need to have it in Mail Chimp or whatever kind of service provider you are using. We said before, you have quite a wide list. The way to go with that is just to work your way through that waiting list, offering the space, and of course, if no one wants it, then you can broadcast it to the main list, but it's really important to segment and separate those list. What do you think, Juliet? Definitely, yeah. They're not the same. One's a permission based list, people wanting your information, and the other one is past clients. What you're going to say to them is probably going to be very different. If you do what 4

5 Clinton says and send out an to past clients in Gmail or your program, you have to be extremely careful. I just had a client who did that and ed me the other day because she forgot to use the BCC, the blind carbon copy, and exposed all the addresses to all her clients and past clients. To be safe, in Mail Chimp, if you're using, you can do this in the AWeber too, but we often recommend Mail Chimp because it's free to get started. You can created a whole list in there for your clients, and then just send it out via there, and then you will not be making that mistake. Also, some providers, they tend to limit how many group s you can send at once. I think Outlook does that, I'm not sure if Gmail does because they don't want you sending out a bunch of s through their system marketing. They want you to use a professional marketing e-list system. I think it's depending on how big is your wide list is. If it's small, I would just send individual s, but if it's starting to really grow, create a list in Mail Chimp, and you can add something that's called personalization, which just means you can add a bit of code to the , and it would automatically puts in their first names. It just makes it a little bit mire personal. Exactly. OK. What about our next question, Juliet, which is from Louise? We've got another one from Louise because she had 2 questions so just 1 last time, she's from... What's it called again? Launceston. Launceston, Tasmania, awakenhypnosis.com. She says, Q3: "I listen to a lot of podcast, and subscribe to s out of the USA. I've heard a lot about affiliate marketing, particularly Amazon links. Is this something that you think is worthwhile for a therapist? Is it even possible in Australia?" Well, you can do affiliate marketing through Amazon. You're not going to make very much money. If you have a book, or some things that you want to do, I don't know what the percentage is, at 10% that you get, or less than that at Amazon. I can't really remember. It's much less. It's really quite small. Yes, it's really small. I've never done it, but you're just not going to make very much money from it. Can you be an affiliate marker? It's going to take you lots and lots of work. You're going to need a big, big list. You're going to need really good products that people can't maybe get otherwise. I mean, sure, you can do it. It's not something that's going to be very easy for you to do. You're going to 5

6 have to really study affiliate marketing, you're going to need to build a list, you're going to have great site. It's going to be work. She's saying is it possible in Australia? Well, I can't see any reason why it wouldn't be possible there is you decided to do that. Clinton? There are on my market as a whole businessman who is just affiliate marketing, but these people have list of tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of people, and obviously dividing their whole business to just selling affiliate products. I am an affiliate for Amazon, and so far I recommend a book in a blog post, and I put the Amazon link, but seriously, I think because I didn't get cash, I just got a gift card, I think I get a gift card once a year for $17. It's such a small amount. It's almost below the time I just shared a link, I didn't bother with the affiliate link, it's just not worth it. It does take a little work, unless you really want to devote many hours a week to heading in that direction. I'm guessing, for a therapist, you're fairly busy with clients. Yes, exactly. OK, we're at the end of another episode, Clinton. Yeah. This has been a little bit of a short one, this one. Short questions, short answers. I just want to laid out this is no... Hope you are a member of our free members program over at askjulietandclinton.com/membership, and if you're not already, come on over and join. We're having a great time in the Facebook group. The Facebook groups has really taken off lately. Juliet, have you noticed that there's so much going on in there? Yeah. It's nice to see. I think people are really using it to get support, so it's great. It's great. It's really a plangent community, lots of therapist asking for support, sharing resources. We're heading certainly talking about all our episodes in much more detail over on the Facebook group as well. That's 1 of the benefits of becoming a member, as well as free transcripts to every show. Some people just love to read those transcripts, and I know I like to get a highlight, and underline when I get a transcript. Sometimes, it's faster than listening. Do you find that? Oh, I'm a transcript person. If there's a transcript, I don't listen to the podcast. I don't because it's just faster. You can skim it. Absolutely. 6

7 Unless I'm out doing something, then the podcast is good, but otherwise, I'm a transcriptive person. That's 1 of the goodies. We also do regular marketing trans videos. We just did 1, a few weeks ago. When you become a member, you can get access to all those resources and member goodies, so just head on over to askjulietandclinton.com/membership. Until next time. Bye for now, Juliet. Bye, Clinton. Thanks for listening to The Ask Juliet and Clinton Show. To get access to transcripts of every show, plus other members only benefits, sign up for our free membership program at askjulietandclinton.com/membership. That's askjulietandclinton.com/membership. If you have a marketing question that you d like featured on one of our shows, click here. 7