 We demystify what goes on behind the therapy room door. Join us on this voyage of discovery and co-creative conversations. This is The Therapy Show, behind closed doors podcast, with Bob Cook and Jackie Jones. Welcome back to episode 100 of Pride with myself, Jackie Jones and the wonderful Mr Bob Cook and we are on the therapy show behind closed doors. One of the things, I think we've touched on this. So many things. Yeah, but in our training, I think it was touched on, you know, advertising and marketing ourselves as therapists, which is the title of this. It's really important. It is. And I just said off air, and I might have said it at the end of the last podcast, how well known I was in the area of advertising, because from the word dot, I've probably put 10 to 12 percent, maybe even more, will say to 10 to 12 percent, because I think that's a fair truth here of money I earned back into advertising. That's quite a high percentage that, isn't it, Bob? That's why I said it. But if you go to go to any book, well, not any books, but I think if you wonder, well, maybe I'll be wrong, actually. But anyway, if you went to a book that talked about marketing, they talk about eight to 10 percent. And I've always done more. So let me break this down a bit, Bob. Because if you're saying 10 to 12 percent, yeah, of your income, and then we look at, you know, the the insurance that we have to pay and the room that we have to pay, and, you know, being a member of the BACP, if we need to do that, and, you know, being a member of a governing body and all this sort of thing, it chips away at the income that we actually end up with at the end of the day. Yes, it does. But it's important because if people don't know who we are and what we're doing, we're not going to get any clients anywhere. So we're not going to get any clients anyway, are we? It's, it's, there's a fine line, isn't there, in how we market ourselves? Yes. And of course, there's a psychology behind it. Yeah. So if you're somebody who doesn't invest in yourself that much, you might find it hard to invest yourself externally as well. Yeah. So in other words, you know, when I've given seminars on this over the years, and I talk about the psychological part of advertising, linking it to a person's personality, you know, many, many, and people go into groups, discuss it. Many people say, well, it just isn't me, you know, it just isn't me to do XXX. I can tell you, Jackie, in my earlier days, I, wherever I was, I used to talk about my job. I'm not talking about a whole day's particularly, but I suppose I'm really talking about networking. Yes. Yes. I would go out of my way to network a tremendous, tremendous, tremendous lot. Before the, before the whole event, advent or, you know, of social media, internet phone, you know, phones and all these mobile phones and internet and all that sort of stuff. The question is, where did you advertise? Now, back in those days, when I started off seeing clients, I advertised in so many places, but I remember spending a lot of money, if you talk about eight to 10% of income, in what was called yellow pages back then. Oh, I remember the good old yellow pages where they used to have, let your fingers do the walking or whatever the slogan was. And I used to take big pages and spend a lot of money on it, and people thought I was mad to spend that money on it, but it got, I, it all, I can't explain. My name got no. Yeah. Yeah. And I got clients from it. And I realized then that the only way people know you're actually there is to tell them you're there. Yeah. And you might have to do, spend a lot of money to do that. I used to go around universities, colleges, putting my leaflets on the boards, accounting course boards, if you like, is to go to many of the naturopaths, the places that had cafes and places that where you could put, you know, your cards up or leaflets about yourself. I used to take smiles doing this. And I also, in 1986, started to teach the fundamentals of transaction analysis at the, what was called the extra mule department of Manchester University. So 630 to 830 every Wednesday, where people who are interested in continuing education and history or politics or psychology or whatever it was, yeah, look in the university, extra meal, handbook, and there's find something to say, explore and take charge of your life by Bob Cook, learn the principles of transaction analysis. And from that, two hour, you know, teachings that I did for eight weeks or whatever it is, I might get three or four clients. Or am I from there, take me into another workshop that I did on understanding your own life. And from that becomes that, be like a rolling stone. Absolutely. And you touched on it at the beginning. I think it's really important. It's been vulnerable enough to tell people what it is that you do. And, you know, now on my hand up to this, it's 10 years since I started training to be a psychotherapist. And it's only this year that I felt comfortable advertising myself to people that I know and can speak to. I joined a networking group this year, a women's only networking group, which is absolutely amazing for support around that. But yeah, I felt really conscious about blowing my own trumpet and all those sorts of. Yeah. And that's because what I said earlier and you're saying personally, so thank you for saying that it's linked to self worth. Absolutely. That's my own personal experience of it. Definitely a hundred percent. Yeah. It's linked to what is often called nowadays, imposter syndrome. Yeah. I hold my hand up to that one as well. We did a podcast about four months ago on the imposter syndrome. Yeah. So what you're talking about is very, very true for a lot of people, not feeling they're worthwhile or I've got to do, you know, not just do four years of training. I've got to do eight years of training. I've got to have seen at least 50 clients. I've got to X, X, X, X, X before I can worthy enough to be able to advertise. And that's for running a group that has to ask for running a teaching group about what I've learned about for the last 10 years. Well, that's a step too far. You know, it's linked into self worth linked into our own ego, if you like. Absolutely. Yeah. Completely resonate with that. And I think, you know, I don't know whether it's just me or not, but psychotherapy as a profession is I found it to be quite clicky. Do you know what I mean? It was very professional and quite hybrid when I never felt part of that. You know, it's very academic and all those sorts of things. So from the get go, I think I felt not worthy somehow of having the title of being a psychotherapist. You know, people say to me now, so you mean you're a coach? I said, well, no, I'm a psychotherapist. I'm very proud of it. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's important one, the psychology of all this law. If I had gave some, yeah, we have to address the psychological process that we just talked about here. If I had to give some practical tips, though, number one would be networking. Yeah. Without doubt. And what I'll be mean by networking is networking with your colleagues. I don't know you networking in areas like you've just talked about one, which might have, I think you said a business club, is it or? Yeah, it's a women's only, it's called unique ladies and it's women entrepreneurs and business people. Yeah. Networking there. So you're prepared to go and I see networking, even more of a step forward, but you're prepared to go and give little talks. I did that this week. I stepped out of my comfort zone and did a 10 minute talk. So it's those sorts of things, whether it's at a golf club, whether it's at a university, whether it's in areas you talked about, but you take the opportunity to talk about what you do. Yeah. Might have peer groups, might have support groups, all these different areas. So networking. Secondly, and this is again linked to psychological processes by talking about it on a practical level as well. Be proactive. If you end up, if you're invested in passivity, then your business will stay passive. Yeah. And no one's going to know about you. That's the key, Bob, is people need to know about you. They're not going to find you unless you're out there talking about what it is that you do. And I struggled with that a lot. Yeah. Thirdly, get a mentor. In other words, look around and see, a professional psychotherapist that you admire, that is all the things that you'd like to be, all the things that we're talking about here, and phone up or nowadays email, social, lots of things. Or just think how they would do it or how they've done it all. Don't have a way to want to look at this, or even a mentor, somebody who's been successful in other areas of their life. Are you looking for another stream to your ball or arrow, Bob, that you can be a business mentor? No, I don't know about it particularly, but I don't mind. I've done it for 40 years. But look for people who have been successful in other areas. Yeah. You don't have to be an Alan Sugar of this world, but you could think about always being successful. I'd like to perhaps have as a mentor and they might never know about it. Yeah. But at least you've got some sort of model to think about. Yeah. Absolutely. You've got no, you don't know why you're going in a way. No. For me, one of the things that I know works for me is to be accountable and to have an accountability buddy. So somebody that I can kind of work with on the journey, I'm much more likely to do it than if I'm just self-motivating and doing it on my own, if that makes sense. Great. And I love the term accountability buddy. Yeah. That's a great term. And I think what you mean by that is somebody you're accountable with or to for the levels of proactivity or what you're doing. Absolutely. 100%. Yeah. It's like, you know, I did quite a lot of walking and I'm probably quite frustrated with the amount of joggers that come along, but that's another story. But I see a lot of joggers with their friends jogging along and talking to each other. Yeah. The same journey. And I think, are they preparing for a marathon? Are they just jogging along? Is it a friendship duo? Yeah. I have fantasies about what the joggers are doing as they're talking to each other and everything else. But, you know, they're probably just on a journey together, whatever it is. Yeah. And maybe, maybe they're accountable buddies and they get the person up at six o'clock and say, let's do it. Yeah. That's what you mean by accountability. And I like that term. Yeah. I think that's a really important tip. Yeah. I also, that's all the practical stuff, how important it is to go website. Websites. Why they're useful is, well, they're useful if you, again, it's about mentorship, isn't it? Just getting people who are successful and look at their websites and everything that goes with that. And I know that takes a lot, perhaps learning some of the Google algorithms and various other things, how you can get top of the list, da, da, da, da. But in today's world, if you're a counsellor therapist, you need to join, just starting off, you need to join the online directories. So when the psychotherapy world, I think the most popular one that gets clients, people might say, yeah, this is counselling. It's not counselling directory for counsellors, but psychology.com or psychology.co.uk for therapists. They're very important. I can think of many directories that I think we can need to put ourselves in. And then, of course, when I say this to trainees, they come back and say, well, it's all very expensive, and if I've got to put this into counselling directory, and I've got to put this into psychology.com, and I've got to get insured. And so all the things you said about half an hour ago in the podcast world is, I've got no money left for myself. Yeah. So you have to be selective, I think that is true. Yeah. I think at least five directories, but I know the two that I would go in, and that would be counselling directory.com and probably counselling directory, no, psychology today, isn't it? That's right, psychologyday.co.uk and counselling directory, probably. Networking, I'll be doing. So these are all the practical things, but you know, the most important is to be proactive rather than passive. And if that's a therapeutic issue, take it to therapy. Yeah. And it can be an issue, do you know what I mean? For some people, like you're saying about imposter syndrome or, you know, being vulnerable and laying yourself open and talking about yourselves and everything, that's scripted stuff a lot of that. Being successful, talking about how much you charge, do you know what I mean? And the money things can be a real hurdle for some people. It is. And I think it depends, people listening to this, maybe people who are still, you know, training, there might be people who have just started off their clinical world and might be people who've been, you know, working for a while. So they can help people who perhaps just coming into our world. But many of the things that we're talking about here, I think, especially the psychological things, I think are important, but I do know something else. And that is that, well, I've just said it, productivity rather than passivity, but it may be a psychological issue. You just said that, didn't you? Impostor syndrome, all these sorts of other things. I think nowadays as well, that it is quite important that we are our brands, you know what I mean? And I think as psychotherapists, we are all unique and individual. And it's about you embracing your uniqueness, you know, what's your area of expertise, what's your niche, you know, and using that to your advantage. You know, you spelt out, well, I was going to pinch it off your bobs. It is your unique selling points. Yeah. And you need to become a specialist. Yes. And your specialism. Yes. You've said it completely. And I've seen you a bit on Facebook recently, and I've also known it. No, Jack is some of your own unique selling points. And I know you do it yourself. It's took me a while to get there. Yeah. And you know, I always struggled with what my niche was, you know, some people go to it off the bat and they know the type of people who they want to work with, you know, and sometimes we're told to not throw a net out and try and attract everybody, but to, you know, narrow it and have a niche. I always struggled with the niche. I never knew what my niche was. Well, but you don't worry any well. I've noticed you haven't. Okay. Another area I just want to cover on this podcast though, it's personal, but it's also professional. And it's also for people to be aware. As you start following some of the things I'm talking about, and you start to be ready to success rather than failure. And as you start to become successful and you start to put your abundance theories into practice, you will probably attract unconscious envy from certainly other professionals and people who aren't as successful as you. And they may not even realize that, but I know something over the years and it took me a long time to just understand that that's part of what I felt for a long time and probably not going to change and to live with the process. But for a long time I used to feel a lot of people's envy of my own success and particularly the Manchester Institute for Psychotherapy success. And a lot of it was unconscious. Yeah. Some people say to me, well, a lot of it wasn't, but when I feel a lot of the envy in my stomach from other people that are projecting onto me, for a long time I struggled to learn how to live with that unconscious envy. But I think it can happen in a minor way for many people when they start to be successful. Yeah. Yeah. I can see that. And it's a shame. It is a shame because a lot of people think it's overnight success. You know, what they've got that I've not and why do they deserve it. But I don't think there's such a thing as overnight success. You said you worked really hard and putting, you know, 10 to 12 percent into it and walking the streets and putting posters up and, you know, teaching and training and everything in order to be where you were successful. But some people would probably have thought that you just, it just happened. They didn't see behind the scenes at all the work that you did. Oh, you are 100 percent correct. And for most people, that's how it is. Yeah. A lot of people that are successful over time, that's exactly how it's been. That with the success I'm talking about comes a lot of work. Yeah. A lot of learning by my mistakes. Yeah. A lot of dealing with unconscious empathy. A lot of, well, I don't know where my work ethic particularly came from, but a lot of work, certainly, certainly did not come overnight. But I now enjoy my success, by the way. And that's taken a whole thing to learn. That's another whole story. Good. And I'm glad. But I think, I don't, maybe I'm making this up. I don't know. But for me, psychotherapy is one of those rare breeds that it's like a rolling storm. It takes a while to get it going to get, you know what I mean, word of mouth that spreads and people recommending you. And it can be two or three years down the line before you start to reap the rewards of the things that you do in the early days. Absolutely. You know, and I never really really realised it, Jack. It sounds stupid now. Perhaps people listening to me might think, gosh, how come we didn't realise that? But I didn't realise exactly what you're talking about, because in the world of psychotherapy, one of the reasons, one of the sort of ways you become successful is by recommendation. I think it's the best way to get clients. Yeah. But of course, you have to be going a while to get recommendation, to get recommendation, to get recommendation. You can't suddenly say this to trainees all the time. You can't suddenly, just suddenly become, you know, where people know you to that level. Yeah. You know, as you start, you're probably right, three or four years, at least, because then people start recommending friends, recommending peers. Have you gone, have you gone to Jackie? She's really good in this area. I've used her services before. You know, XXXX, but that takes time. It's a bit like a rolling stone, as you said. And I think the unfortunate thing is that some psychotherapists give up before that three-year point. Yeah. When they just hung on for that little bit longer, things would have started to get better. Wonderful. I mean, you know, the amount of, absolutely correct. If they have expectations above their own means, they may well give up. Yeah. Which is a shame. It's a terrible shame, because I think three years is a good, I think three years, probably, is a good timeframe to say this. If you look, get the three years. Yeah. How many people are recommending you, and you'll see that you've done pretty well. I'd say it was definitely the three-year point that I noticed that people were coming to me via somebody else that I'd seen. Do you know what I mean? That I'd recommended them or me to them. Yeah. And almost the way in the type of business, where it has to be that way. Yeah. And you are right again. Unfortunately, and I don't know the research on all this, but it's certainly worthwhile doing some research, I would think. But quite a lot of, quite a lot of stuff is duke about before the three-year, before games of the year, Mark. Yeah. And it's a shame, because it is, it's a hefty investment that we're making in ourselves to become qualified. And, you know, to then say to somebody, well, it could be three years before you actually start making any half-decent money from it. It's a lot to take on. Yeah. But, you know, I'm always saying that sort of thing. I don't know if people heed it, but I think, you know, one of the worst enemies will be if they have these expectations, which are so high, they will be disappointed so quickly. Yeah. And I think it's worth mentioning that, you know, I'm biased in talking a lot about being self-employed and being in private practice. You know, a lot of psychotherapists will be employed by somebody else where they don't need to advertise and they go in and do a job and they get paid a wage and it's completely different. It's a completely different ball game. Yeah. It was a teacher for eight years. I lectured at a couple of colleges and the last college had been there seven years and I felt so trapped in the job. I didn't want to be a teacher anymore. But I also got trapped in the bureaucracy, the amount of work that I thought was just about bureaucracy, like I said. And I just decided to go myself and I've never looked back since I decided to do that at 36. Now that's so I've carved my own destiny out and thank God I did have to do it my own way anyway. But you are right. A lot of people like the safety, the security, the stability of being in an organization and having got these hoops to get through, all these barriers to get through. But if they're in that place, I think it's hard for them to appreciate the world we're talking about. Yeah. There are two different things completely, yeah, because it's like a guaranteed income if you're employed, whereas for somebody that's self-employed, we are the face of our business and we need to be out there. You can't sit back on your laurels. You're constantly, like you're saying, advertising the Manchester Institute, the leaflets, the training that goes on in there, not just everything. Well, I am no disrespect to all my trainers, but in terms of the public face, Nippie's Bob Cook. Exactly, yeah. This has taken a long time to get to, like you said, said. So we're saying a lot of things, but you know, through activity, and I know the psychological issues here around needing to work, needing to work to taking ownership of success rather than petrification of fear. Yeah. Because if we go to a level of petrification, we tend to freeze. If we go to that place, we end up passive. And if we go to that place, we end up static. And that's not a good place to be. We may need to go to our therapist. We may need to have our support networks. We may need to have our mentors. We may need to do what you said in terms of expectations. We may need to, all the things we've been talking on this podcast, are important to reflect on. Yeah. And when you were saying about being a mentor and things like that, ultimately, I'm not a businesswoman. I don't think I'm very good at marketing myself. So I need to go to somebody that is used to marketing a business and is a business person for me to progress. So it's not always about talking to other therapists. It's about getting somebody who's going to be of use to you to market your business. Yes. That's what I was saying about being a good mentor. Even if they don't know you are a mentor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I'm a rubbish business person. I'm the first one, I would hold my hand up, you know, to me. My son is the one that gives me a bit of a shove and a nudge and says, you need to be doing more of this month, but it doesn't come naturally to me at all. No, I don't think it did for me. I know one thing though, you know, yeah, yeah. I think I was going to say learning by my mistakes has become very important for me. I've very said things, but I do think having a mentor, having something to talk to, doing networking, putting your stuff in all the places you need to put your stuff in. They're all the practical stuff. And then it falls down maybe to the psychological process and that you might do fantasies, dream work, imagining work, all sorts of things about being successful and what is life being successful. Yeah. Then you probably need to look at how come you're still sabotaging yourself being successful. You know, you know, in the end, Jackie, what it comes down to really, really comes down to and that's the capacity to invest in yourself. I like that. You invest in yourself at the psychological level first and that will then lead to the capacity to invest yourself at a practical level. Yeah. And that's what it comes down to. We are investing in ourselves and we need to do that. Yeah. And maybe this podcast could have been called investing in yourself, but that's what it boils down to in the end and investing yourself in many areas, your own psychological therapy, your own success, your all the things we're talking about, but it boils down to that. Yeah. And also to get people, colleagues, friends, support systems to enable you to invest in yourself. It's part of the same process. Yeah. And I think sometimes we think that there's an awful lot of therapists out there and there isn't enough room for us. Do you know what I mean? There's too many. And I don't think that's true at all. I think there's a place for all of us. Yeah. If you are in a street where there's one shoe shop. Yeah. You might have a fear of other shoe shops coming along, but I tell you what, if eight more shoe shops come along in that long road, you'll get more people because more people will come to that road because they know it's a good place to go to get shoes. Yeah. Yeah. But I understand that people don't think that way. Absolutely. Yeah. Do you know, it's like I can remember when I, because I trained at the Manchester Institute and I don't know it was, but it said if you throw a stone, you're going to get a psychotherapist in this area because there's a lot of them around. Do you know what I mean? But that's good because, you know, that's where people are going to go if they want to psychotherapist because they know that there's a lot of psychotherapists there. Absolutely. And if we really look at the figures of a great Manchester, one and a half million people, maybe it's two, three million greater Manchester counting Bolton and Preston and all this life. And then you start looking at many therapists. There are many cancers. There's not many compared to two or three million. Yeah. But where I live in South Manchester, where my institute is in South Manchester, there's many, many, many, many there because then many of them are because they're attracted to my institute and perhaps others. And so therefore, South Manchester is a really good place to get clients. It sort of all goes together. If you have a fear, why you just start it? So it's fears, isn't it? It is. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And competition. Yeah. You know, fear of competition. I think, you know, maybe I'm biased here or not, but I think sometimes psychotherapists aren't very good at having competition around them. No, they're not. And usually they're not very good at business. Yeah. Yeah. We don't promote each other. Do you know what I mean? It's, yeah. It's like, there's just a few people that need therapy and we're all chasing the same thing. And it's not, you said it yourself, you know, in my area, the Greater Manchester area, there's three million people. There's a lot of people there for us all. Steph said, many times I've said, oh, over the last 30s, I'm not very good at business. But you know, Steph used to ask my wife, she said, well, you know, the sort of shows you're most attracted to, Bob, I said, no. And she said, Dragon's Den, The Apprentice. I said, you acted to business shows. Yeah. And if you watch The Apprentice, you will really see the epitome of people who actually aren't very good at business at all. But they probably look up to Alan Sugar. And they probably have got some sort of mentor that really helps them there. So, but I do know one thing, and maybe it's the ending of this podcast, I don't know, but investment, the capacity of investment in yourself in all the areas we've talked about is the key to success. Absolutely. I love that. And don't give up, keep going. That's absolutely, just keep going. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So again, Bob, I've made notes on that, you know, networking, be proactive, get a mentor, all these sort of things. Yeah. Great. So what I've got for the next one, Bob, I'm not sure whether you want to do this one, but it was on your list, was the top 10 questions clients asking therapy. Oh, I would love that. I just, I would love that. And I'll tell you why I would love that, is because, well, it's great for podcast listeners to listen to that, I think. But it would remind, I know this is a bit ego centric, isn't it? But it's going to remind me of all the wonderful clients that I've been honored to meet in my clinical life who've asked me so many questions. Yeah. So that's one for the next time, is it, Bob? Yeah. I love talking about those sorts of things. Right. So that's what we're doing on the next podcast. Yeah, because you see, I don't want therapists or people who are listening to this podcast to be afraid of questions that they might have to answer or think of it in terms of, oh, you know, there's stuff in women being in a pasta syndrome and all that sort of stuff. Because it's part of, part of a relational psychotherapy is to clients who ask questions. Yeah. And it's good to be challenged sometimes. You know, I've been asked questions. I know we can't talk that much about this because it's in the next podcast, but I'm okay with saying, do you know, I'm not actually sure what the answer to that is, but leave it with me and I'll get back to you. Let's not sort of take our thunder, as I say. No, I'm quite happy talking about that. It's obviously what I put in the title list. It's obviously, you've seen your list, Bob. So until next time, we're talking about questions in therapy. Thank you so much. Thanks Jackie. Take care. You've been listening to the therapy show behind closed doors podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'll be back next week with another episode.