The Uncomfortable Truth About an “Easy” Practice” (Episode 87)
Easy to start doesn't mean easy to succeed. In a market where AI and other tools have made it easier than ever to launch a practice, create a website, and start seeing clients, Anna explores why the ease of getting started says very little about what it takes to build a full-fee, premium practice. The work required has changed, but that doesn't mean success is no longer available.
In this episode, Anna challenges the idea that if your practice feels hard right now, something must be wrong. She talks about perseverance as a skill, the danger of relying on easy tools that make everyone's marketing sound the same, and why building a "craftsman-style" practice requires more than pressing the easy button. If you've been questioning yourself because your practice isn't growing as easily as you expected, this episode is a reminder that the hard season may actually be part of the process.
Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:
1️⃣ Why easy to start is not the same as easy to succeed—and why a hard season doesn't necessarily mean you've done something wrong.
2️⃣ Why perseverance is a skill you can build and why the therapists who succeed aren't necessarily the ones who took the easiest path.
3️⃣ How relying on the same easy tools, including AI, can create a "sea of sameness" and make your practice forgettable.
4️⃣ Why building a "craftsman-style" practice requires thoughtful marketing, continued effort, and keeping your expertise and humanity at the center.
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Hey there. Welcome back to Marketing Therapy, episode 87. We are coming up on 100 episodes of this podcast, which is absolutely unreal. I've said before that if you told me a year and change ago that I was making a podcast, I, I wouldn't have believed you, and yet here we are. One of the best things I've ever done.
Now, this episode, I'm excited about this one. It's might be a little more tough love style. It's more off the cuff in response to some conversations I've had recently and just some things I've noticed out there in our industry. I feel like it's a message some folks need to hear. That makes it sound like it's all gonna be negative.
But I just... I, I wanna comment a little bit on some of the cultural messages we're seeing out there when it comes to growing a private practice right now and share maybe a couple shifts or reframes that I think can serve you well right now. Now, in last week's Perfectly Fine Website Problem workshop, one of the rules we talked about when it came to becoming the obvious choice and being chosen by premium fee clients, is that easy does not equal effective.
That the things you can do to, in that case, create a website, but in the case of this episode, create a website and do literally anything else related to creating your practice, there are a lot of easy things out there. But just because it was easy doesn't mean it's actually gonna work, right? So AI can write you a website in, you know, four and a half minutes.
You could launch a practice in a week, right? Like, the ease of creating a telehealth-only practice right now, easier than it's ever been. You get a couple of things set up. You hang your shingle. You start seeing clients. So easy is available to us in ways it never has been before, but easy describes the process and yet says absolutely nothing about the end result. And often, I think we're being sold the message that if it's not easy, it's not worth doing, or if it's not easy, something's wrong, that everything should be easy.
You're being sold ease. And then being told that if it doesn't feel that way, you've, you've missed it. You've missed something. You're doing something wrong. You need this thing. There's so much content out there telling clinicians that if they're having to work hard, something is wrong, right? There's this culture in private practice, but also just in business ownership in general about manifesting and vision boards and calling in the clients and intention setting.
And these are all good things. Like, holy cow, do I believe in the power of intentions and intuition and mindset more than I ever have as a business owner. But that doesn't actually replace the work required. And when I sit down with therapists in discussions about our done-for-you services or talking about Confident Copy is a good fit for them, a lot of times they ask me what I've seen change, right?
What's true about the market now? Because the one thing we know is that it's different. And if I had to summarize what is true about marketing right now and about growing a practice, particularly a premium fee practice, it's that you have to be more engaged. You have to be more boots on the ground than maybe you wanted to be, or maybe you have been in the past or you expected to be.
You're going to have to be more engaged in your marketing than you probably thought. And that's a tough pill to swallow for some people. But the sooner you swallow it, the sooner you can actually start seeing success in this market. But I think we're told that that's a bad thing, and it's just not.
It's not a bad thing. It's just the reality. It's actually a very, very good and healthy thing. The anti-hustle culture out there says that if it doesn't feel easy, if your business doesn't always feel good, that something's wrong. But wanting something is not the same as working for it, and desiring is not a business plan, right?
I think sometimes we fall into a trap, intentionally or otherwise, that when things are hard, when you're having to work hard or you're in a hard season, that means you did something wrong. I mean, ask me how I know. This message is as much for me as it is anyone. But is that actually true? When you're having to work hard, is that a bad thing?
Or is that just something you've been conditioned to believe about your practice? That just because you want it, you get it? Now, wanting it is the first step, 100%, but it doesn't stop there, right? So just because you want something or just because something was easy does not mean it's gonna get you where you wanna go.
Just wanting or just doing the bare minimum isn't necessarily gonna get you where you wanna go. There's a lot of work there, right? There's a lot of intention and trying and failing between wanting it and starting it and actually getting the results that you're after. So maybe instead of hard meaning that you did something wrong, maybe hard is literally the mechanism.
When you rise to the occasion of what your business is asking of you, maybe that's when the results follow. Maybe if you're doing the hard work, that is exactly where you're supposed to be. If you showed me one hundred fully booked therapists right now, I could show you one hundred people who had persevered more times than they can count.
Right? Who had laid awake at night and thought about burning it all down and working at Costco. Again, ask me how I know. Who had considered if they'd done the right thing and then chosen to keep going. You see on Instagram, you're scrolling and you're seeing the people talk about their caseloads, you're seeing them talk about their incomes.
What you have no idea of, what you can't see, are the eighteen months of uncertainty preceding this, right? The big pivot they had to make in their practice. The huge leap of faith that they made. The old cringe website that they started out with. Everything that got them to that point. And unfortunately, I mean, we all know some of the pitfalls of social media.
I'm not telling you anything new. But I think right now we're at risk of seeing these things and believing that if we're not there yet, or if it doesn't feel a certain way on our way to those results, that we have done something wrong. But when you compare your beginning, your middle, to that person on Instagram's current chapter of having a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar practice or whatever it is, you're seeing the movie trailer.
You're seeing the sexy attention-getting thing. You didn't see the movie. You didn't see the plot twist and the ups and downs that led there, right? And you know this. Again, I know you know this. But starting a practice right now is easier than ever to get started. It's easier than ever to get a website.
The barrier to entry to open up an online-only therapy practice, lower than it's ever been, and yet the effort required to build a full-fee premium fee caseload is requiring something new of today's therapist Easy to start is not the same as easy to succeed. And I think out there right now we're not seeing that talked about honestly enough. The greatest skill in today's most successful therapists, today's most successful business owners, is perseverance. And I say skill here intentionally, not trait.
That is something that you exercise, that you improve upon, right? You're putting in the reps. You're putting in the perseverance reps. Not when things are going awesome, but when you're needing to keep your nose to the grindstone even when you're not seeing the results yet, when you're needing to make investments ahead of time, when you're needing to trust your ability and the fact that you're doing the right thing even when it doesn't feel like it.
Now, I hope this episode isn't coming across as just Debbie Downer, because I've spoken to therapists in the last month who have raised their rates to four hundred plus a session, who've booked more clients in the last eight months than they did in the last two years, who are getting right-fit premium pay clients even from Psych Today.
Like, all of these things are available, right? People making 10K months who've never made them before. It's absolutely still possible. But I feel like the most kind thing to do is to be honest about what those people had to do to get there, right? And let's not lose sight of that. Let's not let the message out there that if you want it hard enough, you'll get it, keep us from the fact that hard work is still required and that that work has shifted.
The type of work you need to do now to get clients is different than the hard work you needed to do five years ago. But if you do it, the results are still out there. And so, like, like I said, I hope that's encouraging for you, not just all Debbie Downer. Nothing's wrong. If things feel hard right now, what if nothing's wrong?
What if nothing's broken? What if you're actually exactly where you need to be? Today, that is what builds a successful practice. I got an email last week as our Confident Copy Live cohort was wrapping up enrollment, and she said that she was scared of AI. She said that she was worried that she was gonna join Confident Copy and just be told to go use AI, 'cause that's what everyone else was doing.
And spoiler alert, that's definitely not what happens at Confident Copy. But she really lamented the fact that she's been going from therapist website to therapist website, and how they're all saying the same thing. That's where that easy doesn't equal effective is showing up, 'cause she's not wrong. You and I both know she's not wrong.
Websites are starting to sound identical. And it makes sense because everyone has access to the same easy tool, and because they want ease, and they want things to just feel good, and they're looking for speed They rely on that easy tool.
They haven't added anything of their own, or they don't know how to add anything of their own, and the output ends up being exactly the same. But we know that being forgettable is the most dangerous thing your practice can be right now because that sea of sameness is what your clients are wading through.
All of that output from those therapists who are just running to AI for their websites is exactly what your clients are reading right now. No wonder their skepticism is higher than it's ever been. If all therapists are doing is using that same easy tool and not adding anything of their own, then you're essentially just making yourself a commodity, and people are going to make decisions based on how cheap you are, where you're located, not fit and connection, which is ultimately what they do actually want and what I want them choosing you for.
I want people choosing you not because you're the cheapest. Of course, I want clients choosing you because you're the best fit for them When my husband and I got married, we decided to invest in an Amish-built dining room table. We'd moved into this really beautiful loft apartment in a really fun neighborhood in Philadelphia.
It was in an old factory. There was a spiral staircase, and an exposed brick wall. It was, like, the perfect place to live as our, as our first place. But we needed a table. We had this tiny little dining room nook, and we were there in the Northeast out in Pennsylvania, where there are a lot of really talented furniture makers.
So we came across one who built a custom itty-bitty table for our tiny little nook there, where we could, you know, have dinner and eat our meals and things like that. And I have no idea how much we paid for that. And the amount we paid obviously isn't the point here. But we chose to invest in a craftsman table, in people building something with their hands, and we expected something as a result of that, right?
We expected to pay more because of that. We expected that it would be a high-quality item. We expected that it would last. That's a lot different than the couch we bought from Ikea. All right? And we did buy a couch from Ikea.
We actually still own it. My husband is downstairs laying on it as he's recovering from back surgery because it's so stinking flat. It's literally just a piece of plywood with a little bit of cushion on top, which is apparently great when your back hurts. But that table we bought is a lot different than the Ikea couch.
I want you to have a craftsman-style practice. But what did that craftsman do in order to be able to create that table? They learned the art. They practiced the art. They had to get better and better. They honed their craft. They probably made tables or other things that didn't turn out right. They made mistakes.
It didn't happen automatically. I want you to have a craftsman-style practice. I want people to view you as a craftsman-style practice, because it's when they do that that they are going to be interested in paying your higher fees and, and whatever that might be. But there's work required there, right? We can't expect people to view you as the craftsman-style clinician that you are and operate on Ikea-style marketing, and maybe that's an entire podcast episode to come.
But I mean this even beyond the website. I mean just your attitude and your approach to how you're getting clients and what it takes to be successful out there. You can't become a craftsman-style practice on Ikea-style marketing. Times have changed, right? It's harder than it used to be, point blank, 100%.
But the success that is available to you, it's greater than ever. The way that I view it, especially with the onset of AI and things like that, is I actually believe that this has elevated the value of really, really, really high-quality, specialized therapy.
I actually think it's done a service when it comes to your potential and what's available to you as a clinician, but only if you're able to rise to that occasion. And rising to that occasion is going to require more than just manifesting or just wanting to press the easy button or just wanting it, right?
Hanging a shingle and expecting the clients to come. You're gonna have to have some of that tenacity and some of that grit, but that's how you hone a craft. You keep working at it. Mass-produced things, the IKEA couch, they do their job, right? But no one's gonna pay a premium for that, and I don't want you to be a dime-a-dozen practice.
I want you to have one that is a destination, something where I come to you expecting a high-quality service that does something unique and different and valuable in my life. Now this could sound like I'm poo-pooing AI, and if you know me, you know that that's not the case. I am not anti-AI at all. I'm all about using it wisely, right?
Increase efficiency, brainstorm, get unstuck, operationalize, whatever. But the danger here is outsourcing the thinking, right? A craftsman might still use power tools, although I don't actually know if the Amish folks that, that built our table used power tools, but, like, those things are still available. Use the tools available to you, but use them thoughtfully, and recognize that we can't outsource the very thing that people are going to choose you for, which is your ability to show up in that room as the human that you are with the skills that you have.
We can't outsource that to a robot or to anyone I hope I'm making sense here. This is more just something that's kind of been on my heart as I was having conversations with clinicians in the last week or two, but especially this year. For a lot of clinicians I've talked to, it's been a hard year.
They've noticed a slowdown in inquiries, or they felt uncertain in ways that they hadn't before. And it makes so much sense to doubt yourself, to question things. Of course it does. But then what do you do with that? Do you decide? Do you assign value, worth to the bad thing? Do you decide that because it feels hard or because you're questioning that something is wrong, that you've done something wrong, that success isn't available, that you can't reach your goals, that it's not possible to be successful?
Or do you take it as information? Do you take it as a rep in building your perseverance skill? Do you recognize that the hard thing, the hard season, is the mechanism to become the therapist you want to be, to build the practice that you want? If you were to show me one hundred fully booked therapists right now, I couldn't show you a single one who hadn't gotten there who had gotten there taking the easy route.
Not one. The success you want to see in the practice that you're building, the caseload or the premium rate, the de-paneling, whatever that might be, it's made of the hard work you're putting in right now. I think about seasons where things felt really easy in my business versus ones where things were harder, and I was having to lean in a bit more, and then I came out of and I look back on, on those.
Think of how much more satisfying that is. The amount of connection and satisfaction I've gotten out of my business after coming through hard seasons and persevering versus coasting and hoping the results came, it's completely different, right? Easy right now doesn't equal effective. Easy to start a practice doesn't mean successful practice.
Easy to write a website doesn't mean effective website. We can apply this to literally anything you're looking at. But the heart of this episode really is that the message you're seeing out there, that if something's hard, it's broken, I just don't think it's realistic or fair or kind to be telling you that right now.
Now, are there things that can make it easier? Sure. We love working with our done-for-you clients and creating a website and taking that off their plate, right? We love when folks jump into Confident Copy and finally have a process they can follow and know why they're doing it. They still gotta do it, but knowing what you're doing, right?
There are-- absolutely use the resources around you. It's not that you just have to sit and struggle and toil away
But getting where you wanna go, let's be honest, it's gonna, it's gonna take some work. And in this market, that work looks a little bit different. So where might you be able to differentiate yourself simply by not taking the easy way? Where could you be keeping your eyes set on the ultimate goal that you want instead of getting caught in what feels difficult right now and making meaning of it that isn't true? Because you're building the reps, you're building the skill, and that skill is what's needed in order to create the practice that you want As always, if there's anything we can do to make it easier while still supporting you in the hard work, we're here to do that, whether that's Confident Copy or our done-for-you services or just this free podcast
Remember that easy to start is not the same as easy to succeed. And if there's hard work between those two, between starting and succeeding, then you're probably exactly where you need to be. I hope you know that you have someone here in your corner cheering you on and wanting you to be successful.
I'll see you in our next episode.
Resources & Links Mentioned:
Confident Copy: https://walkerstrategyco.com/cc
Done-for-you services: https://walkerstrategyco.com/services
The Walker Strategy Co website: https://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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