If You Want to Charge More, Look the Part [Summer Slump #4] (Episode 12)
If you're raising your fees—or thinking about it—there's one piece that often gets overlooked: your brand. Because if you want to charge more, your brand needs to reflect the caliber of the work you do.
In this final episode of our Slaying the Summer Slump series, we're rethinking branding from the ground up—not as a design task or a “someday” project, but as a core part of how clients experience your practice. You'll learn what branding really means for therapists, how to bring clarity to the vibe you're putting out there, and how even subtle choices (like your tone or visual consistency) can make or break a potential client’s trust.
Whether your brand is DIY, outdated, or just due for a refresh, this conversation will help you finally align how you show up with the value of the work you provide.
Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:
1️⃣ Why branding is really about trust and emotional connection—not just color palettes or fonts
2️⃣ The subtle but essential distinction between your personal brand and your practice brand
3️⃣ Four common branding mistakes therapists make (and how to avoid them) so your marketing actually connects and converts
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Welcome back to Marketing Therapy and to our final episode in our Slaying the Summer Slump series. It's been a lot of fun this month of June looking at ways to make the most of this summer season. If you've been with me the last few weeks, you've hopefully already made some really powerful moves.
You've looked at where your marketing might be getting stuck. In episode nine, we did that self-audit to really point out where your areas of opportunity are. Then hopefully you did some reconnection to your authentic clinician self In episode 10 and last week we talked about networking and how you can be using not just this season, but any season, quite frankly, to be growing connections with people in a really effective and also authentic non slimy way. And today we're bringing it all together with something that's often overlooked, but absolutely shapes how you show up and who you attract, and that thing is your brand.
Now, I know branding can feel like one of those of buzzwords that gets thrown around a lot, and it might immediately conjure up images of logos or Canva templates or color palettes. Or maybe you hear that word and you think, Hmm, that's for influencers or product companies, not for solo practitioner therapists.
But here's the truth. In this market, if you want to charge premium fees, you brand needs to feel premium. And I don't mean expensive or fancy or over-designed. I mean intentional, aligned, consistent. You need a brand that is ultimately reflective of the caliber of work you do and the types of clients you want to be attracting.
Because branding isn't just about aesthetics, although that is a huge piece. It's about ultimately the emotional experience someone has when they encounter your practice. It's the tone of your Psychology Today profile. It's the vibe your website gives off. It is the impression your Instagram leaves, even if all they ever do is glance at at once, all of these things send a signal.
All of these things tell a potential client something about who you are, how you work, and whether they feel safe, investing their time, energy, and money with you. So in this episode, we're gonna dig into what branding actually means for therapists, the subtle difference to keep in mind between your personal brand and your practice brand.
A few of the common branding mistakes that I see, and then of course, how to actually start building a brand that's going to help you stand out and ultimately get paid for the absolutely incredible work that you're already doing. And of course, as with all of these summer Slump series episodes. We have a simple and creative challenge for you to end today's episode.
Alright, so let's start with the big question. What is a brand? We gotta make sure we're clear on that because if your only exposure to branding has been in the context of logos or fonts or tinkering around in Canva, you're not wrong. Those are all part of it, but you're working with a pretty limited definition.
Here's how I think about it. Your brand is at the end of the day, the experience someone has when they interact with you. Full stop. That's it. Lemme say that again. Your brand is the experience someone has when they interact with you. So that includes visual elements, of course, but it's so much bigger than just how your website or logo looks.
It's the tone of your writing. The energy of your headshot, the way your marketing makes someone feel, the emotional vibe that someone picks up when they land on your homepage or read your site today. Profile your brand is how someone experiences you before they've ever spoken to you. And that's huge because especially for private pay clients, that first impression carries a lot of weight.
Think about it from your client's perspective. They're browsing through profiles. Scroll, scroll, scroll, clicking through websites. Maybe they're comparing a handful of therapists who all say they specialize in anxiety or trauma, or relationships, whatever it might be. How do they choose? How does your client choose?
They choose the one that feels right, the one who makes them think, oh, I feel seen, or I'd feel safe here, or, wow, this person seems like they really get it. That feeling, that spark of trust or that kind of curiosity or connection that they have is a branding moment. And here's the thing that might surprise you and I might get some pushback on, but you already have a brand, even if you've never consciously thought about it, even if your visuals are scattered or DIY.
Or you've never gone through some brand values exercise, you already have a brand, because people already have some kind of experience when they interact with your practice. That experience might be calm and grounded and inviting, or it might be kind of hard to tell if they're trustworthy or a little bit scattered and inconsistent.
Whatever it is, it's happening. The cool thing about the fact that it's happening is that you have a choice. You can let your brand exist passively shaped by default or guesswork on behalf of your client, or you can start shaping that brand on purpose and not in a fake or performative way. I wanna be clear about that, not by pretending to be something you're not putting lipstick on a pig kind of situation, but instead by being intentional, by deciding how you want those people to feel when they interact with your practice.
By ultimately aligning how you show up in your marketing with how you actually want to be perceived. Because ultimately, branding isn't about decoration, although design is part of it. It's about trust, it's about consistency. It's about giving people a clear sense of who you are and what it would actually feel like to work with you.
Fortunately, that doesn't require being a designer. You don't need to run out right now and drop $5,000 on a branding package. It just starts with getting clearer about this. What do you want people to feel when they land on your website? What impression do you want to leave behind after someone reads your profile or watches a video of you talking about your work?
If you don't know that yet, that's okay, and that's ultimately what we're hoping to explore here today. But the thing is, once you do know this. Everything else can become easier. Not just the colors you choose, but the words you write, the images you pick. Each of these things become extensions of a deeper understanding of your brand.
And when that happens, when those pieces align, become not just recognizable, but memorable and if there's anything we are seeing the need for in this market, it is being memorable. So now we know what a brand is. It's that experience people have when they interact with you. Let's zoom in a little bit further because when I talk about branding with many clinicians, they have sort of this push and pull between the idea of their personal brand and also their practice brand.
And this is gonna look a little bit different. Depending on whether or not you are a solo or a group practice. So let's look at this a little bit more to make sure we're operating from a good place. Your personal brand is you, period. It's your voice, your personal values, the way you show up in the therapy room.
It's your perspective as a clinician, how you think, how you relate to people, the experience you create, how you guide your clients through change. That's you. So your personal brand is gonna come through in everything. If you are a solo practitioner, most likely, not just the way that you write, but also your body language in a video or a photo, it's usually more intuitive.
When done well, it feels like, oh, that's totally Anna. That's totally Sam, or that's totally sandy. You know when you can see something that just feels like that person, that's a personal brand. Your practice brand. On the other hand, that's the public facing identity of your business. So that's gonna include your name and your visuals, your website copy your Psych today, profile anything that represents your practice to the outside world.
So if you're a solo practitioner, these two things, your personal brand and your practice brand are almost entirely intertwined. That is perfectly fine. That works. Because when you are your business, it's gonna make sense that your brand would reflect your personality and your voice and your energy.
But if you are someone who is thinking about hiring or building a group practice, or maybe you're just wanting a little bit more boundary between you as a person and your business. Then your practice brand needs to become a little bit more defined and a little bit separate from your personal brand.
The way I think about this is an author who has a really successful business but decides to write a book about their own life. That author, if you imagine going to that author's Instagram, they're probably gonna have a pretty particular look and feel about them. Maybe they have a podcast or they have kind of this personal brand that's related to them and then their business.
Is likely in some ways similar in branding and feels consistent and cohesive with that personal brand, but it's distinct and it's different. That's the way I sort of imagine the difference between personal brands and practice brands. Like I said, if you're a solo practice, these things are almost entirely overlapping, and that's perfectly fine.
If you're sitting here right now attempting to brand a group practice, then you want to think a little bit more about that practice brand. It is that shift from branding yourself, marketing yourself to branding a team. So then you need to begin thinking about how the business shows up as its own identity.
One that's absolutely informed by you, but not fully centered on you. Now, I wanna be super clear here. I don't hope to add to the confusion. This is not about choosing one or the other. This isn't am I building a personal brand or a practice brand because. No matter what you're doing, solo or group, you are ultimately supporting both.
You're always doing a little bit of both, and they're definitely not separate entities. They're different facets of the same presence in your marketing. So you can absolutely build a personal brand that supports a strong practice brand, and you can also create a practice brand that feels deeply aligned with your individual values, whether or not you are the only clinician on the team.
So it's not that one is better. They're both just tools and things, ways that you can think about how you are putting yourself out into the world.
So as you listen to the rest of this episode, I want you to just keep both of these in mind, that your personal brand is the essence of how you show up as you, and then your practice brand is the expression of that essence through your business. So again, they're not different. They're not separate, but they're different facets.
Now that we're clear on that, I want to dive in a bit deeper to why this matters, not just in theory, but actually in practice. What we're seeing right now, how does this actually relate to your day-to-day effort to fill your caseload with RightFit client? When you are trying to grow a private pay practice, especially at a premium fee, your brand is one of the most important tools that you have, and I just don't see enough therapists thinking about it this way because here's what's happening, whether you realize it or like it or not, potential clients are landing on your website, your site today, profile your Instagram, wherever you are on the internet, and within seconds.
They are making snap decisions even in less than a second. Studies show us people are making judgements in less than one second, not about whether you're a good therapist, not about whether you're ethical or skilled. They're making decisions about whether you feel trustworthy, whether you seem like someone they'd be willing to invest in.
So if we're being honest, they're making decisions about whether your practice looks like it matches. Your fee. This is what we call brand perception, and here's what I want you to know. This is not shallow and it's not manipulative. Branding yourself well is not about tricking anyone into thinking you're more qualified than you are.
Of course not of what this is about. It's about removing friction. She charges two 50. She feels like she should charge two 50. She charges 300. She doesn't feel like she should charge 300. It's about aligning how you show up with the value of what you're offering, because no matter what you charge, no matter how you brand yourself, the work doesn't change, but the way that your client perceives it does, because you can be an amazing therapist.
Trained, experienced, effective, and still not get inquiries if your brand feels outdated or inconsistent, disorganized, or just off to your ideal clients. It's sort of like if you were to wear sweatpants to a job interview that isn't on Zoom. Of course you can wear sweatpants all you want to a Zoom interview, but it's like wearing sweatpants to a job interview for a role that you are 100% qualified for.
Are you still capable and qualified? Yeah. But does your presentation signal that you're not ready to be taken seriously? Yeah. So are you wearing sweatpants to your job interview with your clients? Because clients, especially full fee, private pay ones are looking for signals of professionalism, and your brand is sending some type of signal all the time.
It's the tone of your copy, the quality of your headshot, the clarity of your niche, the design of your homepage, the consistency across platforms. It's all working together to answer one big question that your client is asking in their mind, is this someone I can trust with my time, my money, and maybe the parts of me I don't usually share.
This is why branding is so much more than decoration. Like I said earlier, branding is about conversion because if you're doing it right, your website isn't just a digital resume of everything that you can do. Your Psych Today profile isn't just a billboard. Neither is your Instagram, your LinkedIn, your podcast, whatever it is, you do to grow your practice.
Your brand is either working for you or against you 24 7, and when your brand is clear and consistent and high quality, then you start hearing things like, I was thinking about working with a couple different therapists, but I chose you, or Your website really spoke to me, or you seemed so professional. I felt really safe reaching out to you.
That's the power of intentional branding. It doesn't just look good, but it connects and it builds trust, and it helps the right clients say yes to you. But the flip side is also true here. If your branding is misaligned, if your visuals feel too casual or your writing feels scattered, or your design looks like it hasn't been touched in 5, 10, 15 years, you know what I'm talking about, then even the most qualified therapist can end up being overlooked.
And it's not personal, it's just pattern recognition. It's your clients doing what all humans do, making judgements based on how something feels, whether or not those judgments are right. I've referred to it in the past as the halo effect. It's actually a proven psychological phenomenon that we assign greater value to a brand depending on our first impression of it.
It's like walking into a boutique where all of the hangers are, you know, three inches apart and there's a candle burning, and they come up to you and offer you a drink. You expect to pay a lot of money there. That experience is quite a bit different than walking into Walmart where you're just gonna grab what you need and self-check out and make your way out.
You are more comfortable paying money and you recognize that more money will be asked of you. In the boutique than in the Walmart, even if the price tags are the same.
That is why it's so important to treat your branding strategically. Not like an afterthought. If you're sitting here thinking, okay, Anna, that's great, but I'm not a designer. I don't know what looks good together.
I don't like these things. You don't have to be, you don't actually need a fancy logo. You don't need a brand strategist. You don't need a complete brand photo shoot. But you do need to be intentional here. You need to think about how you want your practice to be perceived, and you do need to show up very consistently across all of your marketing platforms.
You do need to choose visuals and copy and design elements that support your credibility rather than undercut it. And I get it. This is the stuff most therapists weren't taught unless you have proactively sought out guidance around how to brand yourself. This is all brand new. You're trained in ethics and interventions, not in visual identity and mood boards, right?
But if you want to build a full fee practice in today's world, then you cannot ignore the impression that your brand is ultimately leaving behind. But once you learn how to shape this, it gets a lot easier. Everything becomes more cohesive. Your website, your directory profiles, your social content, even your networking efforts, they all point in the same direction, and that's when your marketing can start to work without needing you to just do more and more and more all the time.
So branding these days, it's not optional and it's there no matter what. What are you gonna do about it? It's doing a job. I wanna help you make sure you're doing it well.
The thing is though. Most of the therapists I work with aren't out there intentionally building an effective brand. Of course not, right? They're just winging it. Or on the flip side, they're overthinking it.
They know this is important, and so they spin their wheel, spin, spin, spin, spin, spin, or just copy what they've seen other people do because they assume that's the right and only way. When they do that without meaning to, they end up making choices that actually lead them to continue feeling stuck and not getting the results they should from their branding.
There are a couple mistakes I often see in this, and I wanna walk you through those real quickly as we think about branding because it's important that you avoid these. They're pretty prevalent in our world. The first is letting a personal taste drive every decision . this is the biggest one. I see this all the time.
I had a client come to me and say, I love the color teal. Okay, awesome. Great. Teal's, wonderful. So she built an entire brand around that personal preference without thinking at all about what actually resonated with her clients. Now, don't get me wrong here, especially because like we talked about earlier, your personal brand and your practice brand have a lot of overlap, but at the end of the day, your brand is not for you.
Your brand is not for you. It is for the people you want to reach. And so letting your personal tastes and preferences guide your branding decisions may potentially be missing what actually resonates with your clients. You need to feel good about your brand. You should feel at home in it. It should feel reflective of you, but it also needs to reflect the kind of experience you are trying to create.
So just as thoughtful as you might be about what you like. In the branding process, you must also consider what your clients like and what is going to help them feel soothed, grounded, empowered, energized, whatever it is you want people to feel when they interact with you. Because remember, at the end of the day, that is your brand.
So that emotional tone, that vibe needs to guide your choices far more than your Pinterest aesthetic or the way you decorate your living room. Okay. The next one. This happens everywhere in marketing, but it's this attempt to be everything to everyone, right? And this shows up as really generic visuals and the stacked rocks and the stereotypical things we see in just about quote unquote every therapist website.
If your website looks like it could belong to any therapist, anywhere in any specialty serving any type of client, you're missing an opportunity there to, again, be memorable, which is so critical right now. So your brand should have some sort of clear point of view.
Clients want to feel like you see them, not just like you see everyone, right? Give them a sense of who you are, especially great at helping, what kind of work you do best, what sort of environment you create. This doesn't require niching all the way down into one particular population or presenting issue, but it should reflect something specific.
A style, a tone, a vibe, a philosophy, something otherwise you end up fading into the noise of all the other websites they've clicked into and clicked out of. The third mistake here is inconsistency across platforms. This is one of the biggest reasons even strong brands don't convert because you can have a gorgeous website, but if your Psychology Today profile.
Feels dry, your Instagram feels outdated or looks like an entirely different person altogether. It creates doubt. It creates friction. That gap between platforms that misalignment, makes people wonder which version is right? Why does this feel so off or different? Can I ultimately trust this person? And even if those questions are subtle.
That moment of uncertainty is often enough to keep someone from reaching out. So your brand, it doesn't need to be fancy or elaborate, but it does need to be consistent. Everywhere you show up should feel like you. That means repeating your tone, your look, your language, your message across every single place your clients might find you.
That consistency is huge.
The fourth mistake thinking branding only matters later once you're more established. I hear this a lot. I'll invest in my brand when I have more clients or I'm still figuring things out, so I don't wanna lock myself into any one thing or whatever that might be right now.
But the truth is that branding is how you get more clients. It's how you build that early traction, how you show up with clarity and how you make your practice feel credible even before you're fully booked. We've been speaking in recent episodes about the idea of operating like the fully booked, thriving practice owner You want to be not the still growing one.
You currently are. You need to be branding your practice like the fully booked thriving practice owner, you are going to be one day. It means showing up professionally from the get go. So here's the takeaway as you consider each of these mistakes and where we're at right now. Branding isn't just about looking good. Okay? It's deeper than that. It's about creating alignment. Alignment between how you show up, how your clients want to feel when they interact with you.
And the experience your practice actually delivers. When you get that right, you don't actually have to be the most credentialed, the most extroverted, the most active on social media. You just need to show up clearly and consistently as the right fit for the right people, and that is what branding helps make possible.
Now we're here in this summer season. That can bring up a little bit of nerves and stress and anxiety, but it's also a slower pace and hopefully a time for you to step back and ask the bigger questions related to this brand of yours that you have. Whether you like it or not, this isn't about how do I get more clients right this second, but how am I showing up in the places my clients are already looking?
What kind of impression am I leaving behind? Could my brand be quietly turning people away rather than helping them say yes.
If you spend some time in these summer months getting a little clearer on what your brand is, communicating how you want your practice to be perceived, you can ultimately make everything else you do next easier. Whether that's rewriting your site today profile or choosing images. Designing your homepage, your website, posting on social media, even showing up in console calls with more confidence because your branding gives you something to anchor into.
So if you're finding yourself with a little more space in your schedule this summer, use it. Use it to reflect on these things, and then to begin fine tuning how you are showing up to make sure that your brand actually matches the level of work. That you do in the room with your clients,
this is the perfect time to strengthen that trust. So if you're feeling inspired to finally get intentional with your brand without overcomplicating it, of course, here's what I want you to do this week. It's simple. It's hopefully a little bit creative as branding always is, and it's something you can do, even if you don't consider yourself a branding person or a designer.
I want you to head over to Pinterest. I want you to create a brand Pinterest board just for you. It doesn't need to be public. You can make your Pinterest boards private, start pinning things, images, colors, typography, textures, interiors, anything that visually resonates with the vibe you want your practice to have.
You want to be associated with how your brand and your practice is perceived. And I really encourage you as you do this, don't overthink it. Don't try to make it perfect. Just follow your gut if you like something. My mom used to tell me that growing up, she would often help us, design our bedrooms and that kind of thing.
She'd say, just choose what you like. There's something about what you like here, so just choose it. Don't think about it. We can always come back to it. Follow your gut. Then once you've got a solid board, maybe you have 10 to 15 things pinned there. Take a step back and study it. Ask yourself, what does this feel like?
If this brand were a space, what would it feel like to walk into it? That boutique example I talked about earlier. What would it be like to walk into this brand and what kind of clients would feel at home here? Study what you've chosen, and then from there, I want you to write down five to seven adjectives that describe this aesthetic or vibe that you're aiming for.
Not just pretty or clean or simple. I want you to go deeper. Maybe pull out a thesaurus or chat GBT if you need to. Maybe it's grounded, warm, professional, creative. Energetic, luxurious, bold, whatever feels aligned for you and the experience you want your clients to have. This exercise can really shift how you approach your brand because every choice that you're making can be aligned with this experience that you ultimately want to create.
Once you can name that feeling that your brand should evoke, you're not guessing anymore. You're making intentional choices about whether or not this choice reflects that feeling, and that's when your brand really starts to click. Now, if you wanna go even deeper than this, if you're really ready to define your brand personality, hone in on the fonts and colors to use pull images that create that clean, cohesive experience.
That's exactly what I built our therapist, DIY brand kit to do. It walks you through the exact process we use with our private clients. I've actually developed a handful of AI tools that are trained on the brands we have built for other therapists. They're deeply trained on what's actually working in private practice right now.
It's very, very therapist specific and also therapist friendly. You do not have to be a designer, really accessible process, even if you don't think you're good at this kind of thing. So if this episode got your gears turning and you decide you want that step by step to really bring that brand to life, check it out.
Walker strategy co.com/db k. I'll put the link in the show notes. But whether you use the kit or you just follow the challenge this week, remember you already have a brand. The question is,
are you shaping it on purpose? Thanks for being here today. Thank you so much for joining me for our slaying the Summer Slump series. I hope this has been useful for you, that you have started to take action in your marketing and you know I'm here cheering you on. I'll see you next time.
Resources & Links Mentioned:
DIY Brand Kit: walkerstrategyco.com/dbk
The Walker Strategy Co website: walkerstrategyco.com
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About Marketing Therapy
Marketing Therapy is the podcast where therapists learn how to market their private practices without burnout, self-doubt, or sleazy tactics. Hosted by Anna Walker—marketing coach, strategist, and founder of Walker Strategy Co—each episode brings you clear, grounded advice to help you attract the right-fit, full-fee clients and grow a practice you feel proud of.
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