 syndicated on about 40 different sites. You can find us on Pandora. You can find us on iHeart, on BBS Radio, on Radio Public, as well as Spreaker, Stitcher, Apple and Google Podcasts. If you love the show, and by the way, thank you so much for writing in about the show. I actually do read everything that you guys write and it's so meaningful to me. Please recommend this to your friends, subscribe, leave a review. So people like you can find the show as well because this is the number one transformation conversation. And as always, it's an honor to be with you. I wanna talk a little bit today about the power of empathy and understanding. And I'm gonna be bringing on a guest in a little bit, Joe Sannock. And Joe talks about the practice of the practice. He took his clinical practice out of the corporate environment, which for many people who are clinicians or counselors, that means that you're basically living on what insurance will pay. And we all know that story. It's not great for the people who pay for insurance and it's not great for the medical people who are supposed to be receiving from insurance. So he found a way to create a very thriving practice and he does things. And I want you all to stay tuned for this. So for those of us who are entrepreneurs and business people, he found ways to make a thriving practice we can all learn from. And I'm very excited to learn from him. I chose the subject today of the power of empathy and the power of understanding because I thought it was so perfect for therapy, if you will. And the therapy maybe that you're going through with yourself right now and the ways to be a little bit more kind to yourself and maybe a little bit more kind to others. What I know is that there's a lot of power in shifting things, right? So wherever you're headed, whatever's going on that when you can instead imbue it for yourself or for another situation with compassion. I mean, something I play with sometimes when I'm driving in a car, we all know that feeling like you're trying to get somewhere and someone's in front of you or there's a lot of traffic and it could be maddening. I live in Los Angeles, so let me tell you that's sort of like all the time. But I will say that I try to play around with the idea of compassion. And I sometimes think to myself, what if the person in front of you is pregnant? What if the person in front of you just lost their job? What if the person in front of you is, and fill in the blank, something that might move your heart, might move that needle and cause you to have a second thought instead of that it's an animate object in front of you that is completely meaningless and move the heck out of my way that something may be going on and to have some compassion. And by the way, so we should for ourselves too because we can also paramountly be very difficult on ourselves and why not have a lot of breath and capacity and compassion. And what it does is it basically when we allow that capacity between ourselves that allowance between ourselves and somebody else is it's about communicating to another soul and having an open heart and an open mind. It's much easier, things go much better. There's so much power in empathy and acceptance. And it really is the transformative power of love we're talking about. It's interesting, I'm going through a situation right now and my mother has Alzheimer's and caregivers stressful. I'm in a world I had no idea I'd be thrown into. And I'm constantly coming up against the learnings therein. What I know for sure with my mom or with anyone in my life is it is not necessary for me to try to heal or change someone. Not gonna happen anyway, it's just gonna make me crazy. And it's not me. They used to say, they probably still do in 12 step programs, you have a God, I'm not it. And I think it's really helpful to remember that. It is enough that I listen, that we listen. It is enough that we speak. It is enough that we act from an open accepting awareness because in this present moment consciousness has clarity, receptivity and love within it. I love the word receiving. I remind myself every day sometimes to just stop and receive. There's so much gratitude and just receiving this moment, this breath, the nature, the sun, whatever is happening. So when we are being our very deepest self, we naturally feel and understand another person from that same deep level of awareness. So I offer you this thought for today, which is I am true to myself when I have an open heart and an open mind. It was John Steinbeck who said, you can only understand people if you feel them in yourself. Well, this show has been nominated for two people's podcast choice awards. And I thank you for those of you who have been voting. This show is sponsored by Dr. Dane Heer, D-A-I-N-H-E-E-R, drdaneheer.com and accessconsciousness.com. They do amazing work out into the world. Check them out. They're anywhere you are. And I am so excited today to introduce you to my guest. Ever wonder how to slow down so you can spark innovation? Do you know how to build your consulting business solely from speaking gigs? My guest today is Joe Sanuck. Joe is a speaker, mental health counselor, business consultant and podcaster. Joe has the number one podcast for counselors called the practice of the practice podcast. And Joe is a rising star in the speaking world. Joe is a writer for Psych Central. He's been featured on the Huffington Post, Forbes, Good Magazine, Readers Digest, Bussell and Yahoo News. Joe is a keynote speaker, author of five books and a top consultant. His website is practice of the practice. And I am going to bring on the fabulous Joe Sanuck to the show. And Joe, welcome to Dear to Dream. Let's bring this little guy. Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure. So you have interviewed some pretty profound people over time on your show. And I really am curious, how did you fulfill that wish list? How did you get to these people and get them to say, heck yes, I'll be on the show with you, Joe? You know, one person that, for me, it was just, I wanted him on the show so bad was Pat Flynn, smart passive income podcast. He was one of the first people I really followed. I reached out to him via email a few times and really nothing came back. But then I noticed at the time that he was on Instagram quite a bit. And on Instagram, I noticed that he was actually posting a lot of kind of personal things. And so it got a little stalker where I noticed what time of day he was typically on there. But I did a personalized video for him around the time of day that I guessed he was gonna be there. I said how much of an impact it was on me. And that was a public video that I tagged him in, how much his podcast had really impacted me, what it had inspired me to do. And then I sent him a direct message as well. So then he said yes to it. And he was really kind of the first big name that I got from my podcast. And I knew he was connected to John Lee Dumas and to Chris Ducker and some other people. But it all started with that just personal reaching out to Pat. And I think that at the time, I overestimated how much a kind of big name would mean for the podcast. I thought as soon as I get a Pat Flynn on there, I'm gonna be the next Pat Flynn. It's gonna make everything just erupt. But the hard work of podcasting, the regular content, in the regular person's stories are usually actually what people tend to resonate with most of my podcasts. And so now when big names come along, it's great to have a lot of people that are New York Times best sellers or people that are really respected. I love having them on. But a lot of times they're talking points are the same as what's been on other podcasts. And unless they're willing to get vulnerable and show something new, it's really similar to a lot of the other podcast interviews. And so I actually now prefer those kind of rising stars that have some really great content but are yet to be discovered. That's where I love putting my energy into who I interview. Oh gosh. What I really appreciate about you, Joe, is how much you use technology today and what's available, all the different platforms. And you have brilliantly used them to change your life. So I wanna talk about that because what you do today is you consult with people, you help them start to grow, to scale private practices. And I've got a quote from you, which is, we don't usually talk about money and how to make it in an ethical way. OMG, I so agree with you. I was just coaching a client the other day. And one of the things she talks about is money. And I was coaching her on her story, right? Cause I'm helping her get interviewed. And so she's got her story and out of nowhere, she's just sharing with me as an aside off the record. You know, Deb, one of the things I grew up with was the idea that money is a secret. Like nobody talks about money. How do people get money? Then I got into the entrepreneur world and no one's talking about money and you all assume everybody's making all this money but you don't know. And I had to stop her and say, that's the story. Like let's drop that other story about you growing up. This is this compelling story, the secret about money. So I wanna talk about that because there are people listening and watching and they wanna increase their influence. They want to increase their income. What are recommendations you know for creating more money that is ethical and that is maybe unknown to us right now? Well, I wanna start with talking about a date I just had with my wife. So we're going through this book called Eight Dates put out by John and Julie Gottman. And the last date, what you do is you read through this chapter and then you answer some questions. The last date we did was all on money. And it was really interesting because the exercise that it took us through was to look at our grandparents. What would they like? What were their mindsets? So then those four grandparents come down into our two parents and then come down to us. And it was really interesting to look at how hardworking my grandparents were, my grandpa worked for GM and then had a family store and so hard work and kind of being cheap and getting a deal was all four of my grandparents had and then my parents both acted that way. And then I am usually the brakes in our relationship. And so if I didn't know that about myself in my relationship, that would be tough but also in my business, that would be tough because if I'm always being the brakes rather than saying, well, maybe I should reinvest maybe I should stretch myself and hire a coach to do something. If I don't first address kind of the core values that I'm given and don't say, well, should I keep those? Should I not keep those? Should I challenge those? Is that true? Then everything else is gonna be really difficult to do. And so I start with that because if I hadn't addressed that I would have stayed at my full-time job. I was working at a community college five years ago. I had this side gig of a counseling practice and doing a podcast on the side. And I waited and waited before leaving that full-time job because I had a state pension. I had full health insurance. I had, for counselors, one of the best paying jobs in the area and my limiting beliefs were a therapist can only make about $80,000. That's about where it caps out. Now I had to, and we talked about this actually on my show when you were on about the idea of moving outside of the role that you see yourself in. I had to move past just being a full-time job person. Both my sets of parents and my in-laws all worked for the school system. So work hard and have somebody else hire you was the message I received. I didn't know a single entrepreneur except for one. And he kind of seemed a little kooky. And so that was a really big thing to overcome. And we all have these stories. And so I start there because if we don't start with like where, what's my starting point? It's gonna be really hard to figure out how to make money. So then to your question of how do you level up? How do you make more money? I think that we need to start with what's already working. Too often people start with the product that they want to pitch rather than the people and the pain. So I encourage my audience and your audience to start with the pain in the people and then you can pitch the product. And so for most people being involved in podcasting in some way is gonna be essential to you leveling up. Right now I'd say there's not a better way to quickly get a national stage. From there you want to have a very clear call to action into an email course. And so this is a nine-part email course we've figured out. And then once you get at least a hundred people on that you're gonna reach out to them and say, hey, could I sit down with you for 15 minutes over Skype or Zoom and do a 15 minute call? Let me ask you a quick question. When you say the nine email course are you referring to a funnel? Or are you referring to a different system? Yeah, so I think we would also call it a funnel but the system that we've created walks through three specific parts. So the first part is how did we get here? So we're normalizing whatever your specialty is. So say it's how to be seen. I mean, you talk all about visibility. So why are you basically set up in our society to not wanna be visible? And so we're normalizing it. We're saying, so here's some national stats. Here's how schools teach us. Here's what we learn in college. Why do people have these fears of speaking? So the first three emails are really saying, you were set up for failure and that's normal but you don't have to stay there. Then the next three emails, that next part is all quick wins. And so here's some experiments that we're gonna do to challenge what you feel is a very true way of living that I shouldn't be seeing, that I shouldn't be visible. Let's actually challenge that a little bit and see if the data comes back how you think it's gonna come back. And so we might give them a few quick wins, a few quick experiments for them to do over the next three weeks. And then the next three emails are long-term habits. So we've deconstructed how you think about the world. We've challenged that and now we're gonna say, let's build some long-term habits. It's gonna help you grow. Now by doing that, you're immensely building that know, like, and trust that we know is essential in the business world. And rather than just have an email newsletter or an email funnel, there's all product, product, product. We're saying, I'm gonna walk you through a transformation process in this email course. People don't want another newsletter. They don't want another email sequence. They wanna go from this pain to this transformation. And if you have that as your mindset when you build on an email course, it's completely different than how most people are approaching email marketing. Yeah, that's incredible. I love that. I'm actually involved in somebody's transformational process right now because she's going to be a guest on my show and her publishing company sent me her book. And I thought it was so brilliant. And in her book, as you're following along, it says, here's a URL. So here are some audios that will help you actually do the process in real time. And I thought, just had a curiosity. This is pretty cool. So I went on and God bless her heart. They're four minutes each. Like, that so works for me. How could you not do three to four minutes, right, of a process? And I love it because that know, like trust factor for me with her is up. My connection, that intimacy with who she is and what she provides is up. Her personality, I'm connected to it. So this is really smart. And I love the idea you're talking about getting away from the salesy thing because it's not working anymore. We're inundated with that everywhere. Me, me, buy for me, my this, my that, but why you? Because I've got a lot to choose from and this much time and capacity. Yeah, and I mean, how many times have you heard from your consulting clients? I don't open email. Why would I create an email course? Yeah, we're all busy. But if you had a specific goal, like for me, I've never been a weightlifting, like athletic type of guy. I just, you know, I'll move enough that I burn my calories for the day, but it's never like, I've never been bulky. So say I wanted to have a six pack by the time I turn 41, if I subscribed to an email course that says have a six pack by the time you're 41 and it legitimately worked, like I would open that email every single time. You know, and so people have goals, people have pains. It's just the way that we tend to give content isn't structured enough. It isn't clear enough and it's not small enough steps. And so if we can break it down where we walk through this process, we see that our open rates are through the roof. So our typical open rate, depending on the email is 60 to 80% open because people actually want it. And then when we put a link to click on, it's usually 25% or so click on it. And so then when you do have something to sell or something to ask of them, they're ready to do it. And that's where that next part of it of saying, let's jump on a phone call to hear what that pain is. We have a process that we go through that every product we've launched has sold out right away. And we can walk through that too if you want me to walk through that. Okay. Yes. I want to know how, I mean, I was getting somewhere else but the moment, you know, you talk about that, that's huge at a time when I think for most people's sales have gone down nearly because it's overrun, you know, this whole arena, it's constant, the barrage. There's more entrepreneurs than ever. So I want to know how we can stand out and how we can actually sell something. And I always have to end with this because I have people come to my workshops and take my programs and they always leave and say, you're the first person I've paid money to and I left with what you said I would and 100% more than you even promised. Like thank you. And that is so important to me. And I'm even a skeptic about what I'm going to align myself with, because I've done, I'm not someone who runs to do things but I've had a few experiences as well. I'm like, I don't think that moved my needle. So how can we sell a product and of course something that's actually going to move the needle for people out there make a difference in their lives. Yeah. So we've done this. So the last two times that we've done this, the first time was to launch our membership community. So that's grossing us about 15 grand a month in passive income. And then we just did an $80,000 launch with four sales using this exact process. And this is all recently. So what you do is you reach out to your email list and you have an automated scheduling system like acuity or Calendly, something like that. And you say, I want to figure out what's going to help you move forward faster with whatever the pain is that you help solve through your transformation process. So then what you do is you say, I'd love to jump on a 15 or 20 minute phone call to ask you three questions. And so when you do this, you're being upfront. I'm not going to sell you anything on this call. It's literally me digging in to understand your pain more. So the first question I'm going to ask you when we meet on this call is, what has it been like to find visibility? Like for you, what has it been like? What's that experience been like? So we'll talk about that. Second is if there was a dream product that I offered maybe it's a mastermind, an e-course, a membership community, individual coaching that would answer all of your questions, solve that faster for you and help you get results. What would that look like? And then third, what would you pay for it? So every time we've done this, we have learned how our customers speak about their pain in a completely different way than we expected. And so the first question there is them saying, oh my gosh, launching a counseling private practice has been so hard. I feel so alone. I don't know what to do next. My mind feels jumbled. We didn't learn this stuff in grad school. So these are all actual quotes from people that I interviewed. Second, hey, if I created something that you would love to start your private practice, what would that look like? So people said, you know what? If we had a deeper community than your typical Facebook community, that would be awesome. So what did we do when we launched it? We have small groups that they're assigned to of groups of 10. They have an individual accountability partner. And then we also still have the Facebook group. And then the second thing that they said that they really wanted was ongoing knowledge. So we don't just have an e-course. Every single month we're doing live events. We're doing a new e-course every month. And then the third thing they said was tools of the trade. That they wanted just things that they knew that they needed. So for example, a free logo, blog images, infographics that they can put their branding on that they can use on Pinterest. And so, yeah. And so then how much would you pay for? We had people that said $400 a month. We had people that said $20 a month. And the $400 a month, you know, I knew that that was probably more than what the average person would pay. There's no way we could do this for $20 a month. And so we landed at our very first cohort was $55 a month. They locked in that price forever. But they also knew that we were gonna screw up a lot of things in the first couple months. So they were our beta test group. We went through five webinar systems in the first month and a half. And though people were locked out of it, one of them didn't work with iPads. And it's like, this is why you're getting $55 a month. But those first 20 people, almost all of them bought it because I had interviewed them. I have my first cohort now. And I can say, hey, remember how we had that conversation two weeks ago? Here's what I found that everybody pretty much says that they universally want. They want these three things to be included. They want a price point of somewhere between $50 and $100 a month. I'm gonna give you guys it at $55 a month. And now we're at $99 per month. And so being able to do that then allows you to sell to your customer exactly what they want to solve their pain rather than you create some e-course that you're trying to sell people into. And when you say you offer them as part of this monthly membership, live events, what does that mean exactly? Yeah, so every month we schedule three to five live Zoom calls. And so one of those is a what's working call. And so we'll say what's working in marketing. So we have 350 people right now that are in our membership community. We have a new cohort starting soon. And so in any call, 20 to 30 people will show up for it. And so in Zoom, we can divide them up into small groups and then bring them back together. And so we'll have a topic like marketing. What's working in marketing your private practice? We might haven't asked the expert. And so we had camera confidence recently with Molly Mahoney. And so she came in and Molly rocked it out of the park. But they then get access to these people that they never could afford to pay Molly's hourly rate. But they get the behind the scenes. But then we record all of those and also put those into teachables. Every single month, we've got a good five hours of new content. So we say that we're like the Netflix of private practice because there's more content than you could ever keep up with. We also do live Facebook lives within the group and Q and A's and things like that as well to help them just keep moving forward quickly. Yeah. I taught for many, many years the red carpet interview mastery course. And when I wanted to give it a facelift I did exactly what you're talking about. I set up calls, 20 minute calls with people. And I basically said, I'm not selling anything. I literally want to know what it's like to be you. And I had these questions you're talking about. And what was amazing to me is out of all of that, first of all, the connection, the understanding of people that was important to me. I learned something I never would have known which is there are so many entrepreneurs out there who do not know how to message themselves. And that shocked me. And I realized I've got this great course. It's everything they're saying and their pain points they need. That's good. But what they don't have in that course is how do I speak who I am, what I do, what the problem is that I solve and how I solve it, like why me? So I had to retool my course and start with the message merely because of this research you are talking about, it is genius. And I will say too, what Joe's saying in the process is you create a real connection with people. And it makes it easier for them to come aboard and work with you. So I wanna know about CEO, I wanna know about what SEO has to do with promoting ourselves, establishing a plan about SEO. And I also wanna go a little bit into hourly rate because I know these are your specialties. So I wanna deep dive. Yeah, so around SEO, I think the biggest thing is to make sure that you are creating content that's first authentic to you. But the way you name that content doesn't have to be your first idea of it because the way that you think about your content is probably different than what people are Googling or what other people are searching or thinking through. And so even just doing some basic work, going on to Google and starting to type in something that's related to what you're speaking about. So say you're talking about public speaking, just type into Google, public speaking and then see what it says are the most likely second, third and fourth searches. That alone will put you ahead of most of the pack. Most people aren't taking the time to say, well, how do I optimize this blog post? How do I optimize this Facebook live? How do I reuse content? And so if I do a Facebook live that I do some research on. So say I wanna talk about five tips for public speaking and I go and I look and I see that public speaking, master tips, maybe that's what's trending right now. So I name it public speaking master tips or something along those lines. I do this Facebook live, then I download that video and I upload it to Dropbox. At that point, my team takes it over. They then take that and they take that video, they make it look pretty, they put it into YouTube as well. They then pull the transcript from that and make a blog post out of it. They then embed that YouTube video into that. They also add it to our email list and then they also build a Pinterest graphic off of those five steps. So now I spent five minutes creating content and my whole team then has put all of that up there. And so the big switch for most people is that when it comes to creating content and ranking in Google, you are the master of the content. You are smart and you are the only one that can do that. Whereas all the backend SEO, all of the transcription, that is a terrible use of most consultants time. And so figuring out those systems and paying someone $14 an hour to do that while you create a bunch of content, that's how we create so much content because I'm not focusing in on the meta description. I'm not focusing in on the internal linking and the external linking and all of that to rank higher in Google. I'm saying the best use of my time is hanging out with Debbie right now because only I can show up for this. Only I can provide this content. Whereas the rest of my team, they can be on social media sharing that's getting it out there. And so even though we're talking SEO, the biggest thing that an influencer can do is focus on the thing that only they can do. Yeah, I'm such a hell yes. Thank you. That's beautifully laid out story about how it can work and how you can make the best use of your time. And I love that. So I hope everybody's taking notes because this is tremendous information and content that Joe is offering all of us. I'm gonna keep it a little bit of a cliffhanger because when we come back, we will talk about hourly rate and I know this is a pain point for people. I was just being interviewed yesterday on the show and this came up one of our conversations about how we're trying to manage and figure out what's going on in the other person's space. What do they make? What can they afford? What should I charge? Should I discount it before I say it? Should I go for it? OMG, so stick with us. We're gonna talk with Joe about this when we come back and folks, if you are interested in supporting and I hope you are in supporting this show, please go to patreon.com. Patreon.com is where, for price of a cup of coffee for a dollar or more, you can donate to the show and be part of the Dare to Dream team. This is your number one transformation conversation and this show has been around for over 12 years for one reason, my curiosity because I love, love, love learning and connecting with people like Joe where it's a masterclass and I want to inspire you to live big and bold to create your dreams, to feel free enough to know that in this lifetime, you can do it. You can create whatever is right and light for your soul to be and have. And so go to patreon.com. I thank you in advance for supporting the show and I love you. I am interviewing Joe Sannak and he is the dude behind the practice of the practice and that is his website as well and also I'll talk about a debbyd.net slash visibility you'll see here. That is the new course that's rolling out. It's not new, it's been around but this is the new incarnation. You get to work with me live and I teach you how to be interviewed on radio and podcast shows and 60 days or less and get great results. You don't need publicity knowledge. You don't need to know where the shows are. You don't even know how to be interviewed or if you've been interviewed and you're ready to really get great results like filling workshops, like selling books, like getting clients, finding your community or doing some of the steps, having a database that you can even interact with people like what Joe's talking about. You'll wanna be part of this course. I've got specials right now and they're only good for the next couple of weeks. So you wanna get in on this amazing price plus for folks to sign up, you get a free $500 value session with me private strategy session on media. So love to see you there and we always attract some really magnificent people. And thanks for joining us today and thanks as always for posting and being involved and I am again speaking with Joe Seneck and Joe, okay. We are talking about hourly rates. This is big. So how in the world have you found a way to help your clients have peace around this conversation and have the confidence to name and claim their price? Yeah, so I think there's a couple of things here in regards to private practitioners kind of having their price but then online influencers or consultants. And so I do wanna differentiate that a little bit. So for someone that's local in a private practice doing private pay outside of insurance then they can set whatever rate they want. And so being able to understand a few different things that go into their price. And so I had this one consulting client who was in kind of the Eastern kind of Washington, DC, Baltimore, somewhere kind of in that area. And she helped people that were dealing with narcolepsy from a psychological point of view. And usually within four or five sessions she could solve their narcolepsy. They were sleeping normal, they were back to normal. It was all psychological techniques, no medication. And so she was having a very hard time in her own beliefs of herself in charging more than $200 per hour. So what did we do? We looked at, well, the typical person dealing with narcolepsy, how much time would it take with a normal therapist? So it might take 20 sessions. Now someone that's dealing with narcolepsy then doesn't typically drive because they might fall asleep. So they'd have to have a support person come. Now if we just look at the time off of work plus the time for parking, plus the time that's saved, when we actually broke it down her hourly was closer to $900 per hour of the value that she was offering because she was doing it such a short period of time these people then weren't missing work. Their friends or support system wasn't missing work. They weren't losing all that time driving. So even understanding that I think is really important for clinicians. Now I think that people that are online for consultants they have a lot more freedom and a lot more ability to raise their prices. And so most of my consulting clients are making between $500 and $1,000 per hour when they're doing consulting because they are looking at it from a spectrum standpoint. And so when we say, all right, I'm for 45 minutes, I'm $1,000 you're gonna lose in that game but the way we look at it is if someone's brand new, they listen to the podcast and they say, yeah, I wanna start a practice but I don't have a whole lot of money. What is the yes? Well, we have a $17 newsletter where they get a email every single week walking them through how to start a practice in a year. One $17 investment. Now what if they say, hey, I wanna grow faster than that. Well, then we have next level practice which is an $88 a month commitment and that's gonna be, we have live events, our e-courses, we have things that we give them. Now they're still in a large community with 300 plus other people. Say they wanna move faster than that they wanna start a group practice. Well, then we have a mastermind group that Allison or Whitney, they run those and that's small groups of 12 or so that meet twice a month and there's an e-course that goes along with that. Well, what if they wanna grow faster than that? Well, then we have individual consulting and all the way up to when we have the done for you podcasting that's a $20,000 investment. Now, all along that range, people don't lose what's below them. So for example, if someone's in our membership community and they upgrade to Allison's mastermind group, they still get full access to all of this. So they're never saying, well, do I stick with this cheaper product or do I do this more expensive product? Now that does something important psychologically for people because if someone does consulting with me and I have say nine sessions over nine months and we're only meeting monthly, if I just said, you know, we're gonna meet monthly for an hour and it's gonna be $9,000. So wait, that's $9,000, that's $1,000 an hour. I don't wanna pay that. But if I say, okay, it's over nine months, we're gonna meet nine times that first month, we're gonna split that into two 30 minute sessions. Also, you're gonna get text and phone support. So between sessions, if you feel stuck, you know, of course on the weekend and hanging out with my family, you can text me and if it's a quick five minute call, we'll jump on the call. The reality is most people only make about three or four of those phone calls over nine months. You know, most people underutilize that. And so I'm not having people flooding me with it. If I also say, you get access to over 30 e-courses so that you can save time in consulting to learn how to blog, to rank in Google, to learn how to market on Instagram, all these other things. Also, you get my designer at $50 an hour instead of her normal $95 an hour. Also, you get all these other things. So now it's, I'm answering the question they have. How do I grow a private practice or how do I start a podcast? I'm answering the question and it's not just based on here's my hourly for that. But my bottom line is, you know, for every 45 minutes of my time, I know I'm making about $1,000. Now that's really important so that you know that, okay, I need to raise my game. I need to have more things to offer that I can give to people for free at that highest level but that I can also then sell at the lower level. Yeah, that's amazing. So, and I just want to reiterate, so you said something about providing podcasting the entire package for people. Can you just talk a little bit about that? Yeah, so we have a done for you service. One thing that we did is we surveyed our highest end clients and said, okay, you've gone through a mastermind on how to launch your big ideas. You're doing one-on-one consulting with me. What do you wish we did? And I realized that they said instead of having a hot seat where I direct it, I know you've done this stuff, Joe, just do it. Just tell me what to do. Like be more directive than you've been. And so by listening to our highest end clients, they said we would pay three times more if you would just tell us what to do or even better, do it for us. So then I went to my team and I said, hey, you know, if we had a cohort of eight podcasts come through one at a time, could we handle that with our show notes, with our transcription services, with our audio editor, with our backend coordination with guests, with literally everything except showing up and recording the podcast? And they said, yeah, we could totally do that. We do need some audio engineers. So I reached out to the local community college. We hired four audio engineers from their audio engineering program. Boom, now I have a program. But the thing is I didn't start hiring all those people until we had cash in hand. And so I wanted to see, these people just said, I would love to do it. I'd give you the money, will those people actually buy? And so then as I did pre-consulting calls, I started pitching the done for you services to people saying, oh, you know, what you're talking about, it sounds like, you know, you're making $300 an hour as a therapist. Is it worth it for you to learn how to transcribe a podcast? Not really. Is it worth it for you to even find a transcriber? No. Why don't I, you know, we have a done for you service. Here's all the bullet points that are included. You know, it's an $18,000 one-time fee or you can break it up over four, you know, to pay $20,000. I think this would be a really good fit. And so then when people bought, then that's when I hired the four audio engineers because we've got eight podcasts now that we need to launch. And so it's a lot easier to do that once you have the money in hand. What is the platform that you put the podcast out on? Yeah, so we start with, we make sure first and foremost that the host always owns the content and there's never a question. And so we have them set up their own hosting through Libsyn, we do it all through their website. We help them submit feeds to a variety of services. We do all of the kind of, all of the video editing. We do all of the show notes, all of the downloads that go with it. And the email sequence, the email course we talked about earlier. And we help them build that entire thing out as well. So when you say this is a one-time fee of $18,000, what happens once that money is done and the podcast is still going on and the emails are still going out, how do they still interact with you financially or otherwise? Yeah, so after those nine months, they'll have 26 podcasts out. And then at that point, they can switch over to just hiring us to do the ongoing marketing of it and all the show notes. So there's a much lower fee for that. Or if they like how fast they've grown, they can continue doing consulting with me and then having kind of the backend services. So we can get more into a catered approach. They also get included within that some transition consulting as well. So if they wanna have their own team members manage it, I am all about letting people be independent if they want to be. That's why we have them buy their own music. That's why we have them set up their own hosting, have it all on their website. Cause a lot of consultants out there, they'll get you going, but then you're locked into their system and it's a pain to get out of their system. And I would rather we come in and support it within your system, but we have very specific ideas of where we have, you know, all the email marketing or what types of websites we work with. Cause we don't want our team to have to relearn every single time they get a new podcaster. That's so cool. I know one of the things that you're really big on is slowing down. And I love this idea of contrary action. Cause the thought process is generally, oh, and my God, you should see, I have books. And this is like my daily to-dos. Like it's banana-rama, right? And it never ends. And a lot of times my to-dos have to go on to the next day and the next day and the next month. It is what it is. But I feel intimately the idea of making a choice that isn't logical because logic says, no, let me just make my way down this list and see if I could chip away at almost everything. But I believe energetically that something else calls to us and can be created in a contrary fashion. So I love for you to talk about how running a successful business actually means slowing down. How do you coach us to get off of the hamster wheel? Yeah, you know, I'm totally off the hamster wheel. I'm out of the hamster cage now. You know, I think that we know this intuitively. Our best ideas come when we're in the shower or we're on a long drive and we have the music off or we're on a hike. That's when our good ideas really come to the surface. And we see this at slowdown school, an event that we host in the summer where we spend two days hiking, hanging out on the beaches of Northern Michigan. We bring in an executive chef. We spend time in nature and tell people, don't turn your phones on unless you wanna take a picture. I mean, that's really, we have campfires for the first few days. And then it's amazing how Wednesday, Thursday and Friday morning, people run full tilt towards their business goals because their brains have sorted through the most important use of their time. The problem with a to-do list, a problem with an email when you open your email is everything looks the same. But in reality, if you get an email from the Today Show that says, can you be in New York tomorrow? We wanna spotlight your podcast. That has a lot more weight than if I just email you. Or if someone is trying to sell you something. And so the big thing is our brains need to be able to have the capacity to really focus on what's important. Now, we know that the stress on a brain is not when we make decisions that are good. We make decisions when we're stressed, but usually they're not the best decisions. I remember there was this time when I was in Nepal between my undergraduate and graduate school and we were on this hike in the jungles of Nepal. And our guide had said to us, if a rhino chases us, climb a tree. And I joke with my friends that there's times in life you should ask a follow-up question or two. Like, what kind of tree should we climb? Could we practice climbing a tree? How often does this happen? So we're going through the jungle and we come across the rhino. And this was before digital cameras and I took a picture and then I had the like. And I take a step forward and I don't know if this is a good picture. Take another step forward. And this rhino charges. And I take off running, blatantly disregarding the climb the tree idea. And my friend Todd, I knew he was a distance runner and I was a sprinter. So for at least a hundred yards, I know I've got Todd beat. And I just like outrun Todd. And I know after that a hundred yards, like he's got me. Now we come back and the guide comes down the tree and he yells at us, why you know, run up tree. And it's like, why didn't I try to run up a tree for the first time when a rhino was chasing me? Well, it's because when we are stressed, we don't try something new. We don't take risks. We go with what we know, whether we think it's gonna be effective or not. And that's so true in our businesses as well that when you're stressed, when you're burned out, when you're not getting enough sleep, when you're not eating healthy, when you're not exercising, when you're not socializing with your friends on the weekend, when you're thinking about business all the time, even if you love your business, that's not when you have your best ideas. And so when people learn this, it's this hack that so many people know. Winston Churchill had a non-negotiable afternoon nap. Steve Jobs, one of his most important times was when he would walk with people instead of sit at a boardroom table. Timothy Ferris and Tools of Titans showed that most CEOs meditate. Like why is it that our most influential thought leaders actually slow down? Even the most recent Netflix documentary about Bill Gates, how he has think week, that he goes out into a cabin and he thinks and he reads and he gets away and that's when he's had most of his breakthroughs. So we know this intuitively, but it's one of those things that it's like, we need to be reminded of it, that slowing down actually is the key to sparking big innovation. Any idea for people saying, man, that sounds good, I can really feel what he's saying, but how the heck do I start? Where do I start? Yeah, I would set one clear boundary. So it could be that this Friday, you're gonna put your phone down and you're not gonna pick it up till the next morning. It may be that you aren't gonna check work email for a certain period of time, that you're gonna take all of your social media on your phone and put it into a folder that's called social media. So there's one extra click to get to it. Just so that you say, should I be doing this? Is this intuitive that I need to go onto Instagram right now? I did an experiment a number of summers ago and this was when I had already left the college and had my own business. So I was working five days a week at that point, very fearful of, I don't wanna go back to this full-time job, so I gotta work all the time. I said, summer in Northern Michigan is beautiful. We live two blocks from one body of water, two blocks from another body of water. I wanna spend more time out in nature this summer. So I did an experiment where I took every Friday off for the summer and I said, my wife and I said, if at the end of the summer, it's a disaster, I'll go back to work on Friday. Guess what? I made more money that summer in four days, not working longer hours, working the same amount of hours on those days as I had when I worked five days with that full extra day. Why? Because I was focused on the things that mattered the most and I dropped the ball on the things that didn't. So then I had to start outsourcing the things that were important, thus making me use my time in the very best way possible. So then I did that all the way through that winter in the next summer, I did the same experiment where I took Mondays off. And I continued that experiment. To this day, I don't work on Mondays or Fridays, I pack it all into a Tuesday, Thursday schedule. But what's the small step? What is your experiment that you can do? Because we know the top people that are really moving and shaking, that they do experiments, it's not pass, fail. If I had to go back to work on Friday, I would have just had information, okay? That's really hard for me to work four days a week and get as much done, okay? I'm not gonna beat myself up over that. That experiment was different than I expected. So I'd say do some sort of experiment that challenges how much you're working and stressed out. So let me ask you a question. Somebody like me, I've got a situation, elderly parent, Alzheimer's, fairly lucid, but definitely some issues. We're looking for a facility for her. I'm the only one here in the West Coast. So tag, I'm it, right? Yeah. And as much as I would like to unzip myself from my human suit most of the time around the subject and fly far, far away, I'm here and I'm the one dealing with it. On the East Coast, I thank you, God. I've got an amazing uncle. That's the therapist I mentioned to you earlier and an amazing brother who are really doing everything they can from the East Coast. They're definitely involved and I'm super blessed. However, when it comes to anything action-wise, it's incumbent on me plus the multitude of texts that come through between the three of us, plus her best friend, plus the caregiver, plus the bull. And it's very difficult. So I have some daily practices. I ensure every day I meditate and I'm doing, I'm incorporating various things that I'm enjoying actually very much. However, there is still that feeling often of stress and this is just all too much and I'm a creator and there's so much, I'm on the precipice of so many wonderful potential things but this is often dragging me back and taking away time and all of that. And I know it sounds horrible because this is a mother and someone you love but I feel it's difficult being in this caregiver situation. So I would love you to weigh in as a therapist and as a business consultant. What would you recommend for anybody like me whether it may be they have children that they're going through or a family or other circumstances where they feel that weight that mantle all the time. Yeah. Well, let me just start with that's super normal to feel that way when you're in the midst of so much. I mean, I think just having somebody say, yeah, I think anybody would feel stressed over that. You know, my mom while we're talking is in the hospital. She had cancer a number of years ago, some things went awry. And so that's something that weighs on my mind. And my oldest daughter, her first year, she was in and out of the hospital and needed open heart surgery. We have these phases of life where things hit the fan and it's unexpected and our business goals do need to be paused or slowed down. With that said, I would say, a couple of exercises can be very helpful to just start with, if I was to erase all of the ways that we get things done. So right now the family's texting each other all the time, the friends are texting, it's going crazy. If we were to say, I'm gonna create the system for this, what would that look like that would be healthiest? Maybe it's saying something like, okay, brother and uncle, you know, once a week, let's schedule a 15 minute phone call where we can all just check in and talk about mom. And if we need to text outside of that, let's try our best to do that between the hours of five and six or whatever it is. Just to say, I can't keep up with this. And I know there's sometimes things that feel urgent to you, but they really aren't. And maybe there are things that are that urgent that do need to be kind of real time. But being able to figure out, if I was to create my own system, when do I have the most energy to work in my business? So maybe with, you know, mom, maybe you're there late and so first thing in the morning, maybe isn't the best time like it used to be. So figuring out, if I was to just shape my entire schedule to align with what I'm feeling in my body, what I'm feeling in my emotional needs, the pressures from outside of me, I'm sure there's ways that we could tweak things. And if we make the texts with your brother, 5% different, and then this other area is 5% different, and another area is 10% different, all of a sudden we have a little more space where that yoga class we wanted to go to, I think I could actually go to that. And I could go there and do my best to not think about mom during that time. And that's not that you're a bad daughter by saying, I need time. It's actually saying, for me to be most present and most helpful and most energized when I'm here, here are the things I need. So like when my mom was in the hospital last time a couple of years ago, my dad got in this great habit of doing walks three times a day. And they were long walks and he'd be gone for 40 minutes to an hour. And when we visited, sometimes we'd walk with him, sometimes we'd be with mom. He realized that just sitting in a hospital room wasn't good for him, keeping up with everything. But he also knew that he needed to have those eyes and ears. So he talked to the medical staff and said, is there anything planned during my walk? I don't want the nurse or the doctor coming during this time if I'm gone because I need to have those extra eyes and ears on what's happening. And so he set very clear boundaries around when he would walk, how he would walk and not missing out on that information. Oh my gosh, thank you so much. There was such great information in there and I'm just absorbing all of it. But I love the sense of boundary that you're talking about. And I think that's easier than some of the, I've been doing a little bit of pasta lately, which is, you know, this is going on or I'm gonna be offline for this. And so that's not, it's fluid, but it's actually not creating a sense of, yeah, let's get together once a week, let's zoom. And then the other times, and there is constant when there's an Alzheimer's patients, if it's not the knee, it's the teeth, it's the phone, it's the credit card, it's the Amamamiya, it's constant with her every day, the drama, and yeah, and it's not good. I don't think for the cortisol levels. Well, I think that's, I mean, that's so true. Like you and I both really value self-development, we value being better people, but a friend of mine right before my daughter was about to have open heart surgery, he was a former hospital social worker. He said advice that he would give to his clients, which is so counterintuitive. He said, if you just stopped smoking, you should go smoke again, which is like, what? We would give that advice. But his point was, if right now, you're taking on something that you know is good for you, but is even an unhealthy coping mechanism. If you see it as, okay, my daughter is in the hospital, now is not the time to give up smoking. I can choose to do that when I'm stronger on the other side. That's what he encouraged families to do. And so for me, how that manifests itself is, you know what, if I feel like I need a glass of wine at the end of the night, then I'm gonna have a glass of wine at the end of the night during times of stress. Now, when it becomes a long-term habit and you actually notice, oh, maybe that glass of wine isn't that good for me all the time, then you wanna rein it in. But I think having a lot of grace with yourself and saying my tendency towards self-improvement isn't gonna go away when this is over. Even if I get into some things that got me through this that are unhealthy, I'm gonna pull myself out of that. But anything that can relieve that extra stress to help me be focused on mom and to help me be focused on what I need, that's okay to have a little bit of grace around that. I hope you folks will post your takeaways down below because there's so much here in a personal level and a professional level that Joe is providing. And again, Joe Sannak is at practiceofthepractice.com. Joe, this is Dare to Dream. What are your next Dare to Dream? What are your future dreams and goals? Yeah, you know, my dreams and goals, actually our family, my wife and I and our eight and five year old, about a year from now are planning to get an RV and travel the nation and podcast out of national parks. Oh my God, what is the subject you will do when you're in the national parks? What will you be looking for inspiration? Yeah, you know, I bought LeaveToFind.com a number of years ago just to, I think there's always stories of leaving one thing to find something else. So that's kind of our working title for it. But we're also, I'm gonna keep doing my regular podcast as well. And people who wanna connect with you, some of this amazing, the free things you're offering, you're offering even the $17 newsletter or the $18,000 fully done for you, mastermind plus podcasting, where can they find these things? Yeah, so practiceofthepractice.com is our main hub. If people are interested in talking about the done for you podcasting, they can go to practiceofthepractice.com forward slash apply. And then we also have a new e-course coming out for people that wanna kind of bootstrap their own podcast, but wanna save time and do it right. That's over at podcastlaunchschool.com. We also have a free guide there for people, 27 tips, tricks, and stats that will help you start a podcast faster. And anything you'd like to say to everybody, we covered so much ground and I am so grateful for this conversation. I could keep going with you very easily, so many questions. Thank you for all you provided. Thank you for your brilliance. And is there anything, Joe, you wanna say to people here at the end? I think the biggest thing is that I noticed that most people underestimate the skills that they have and underestimate how many people wanna hear about what you know. We all have areas that through life experience, through education, through our own learning that we're really good at. And you don't have to know everything. All you have to do is say, hey, I'm a co-learner, here's what I'm learning. And the more that you get out there and share these things, the more it's gonna positively affect the world. Because for the longest time, I thought that what my skills were, we're just in the therapy room, one-on-one with people. But I've discovered that there's a whole group of people that wanna learn these things. Same with Debbie. Her skill set is now getting out to the world. This isn't reserved for people like Debbie and myself. We all have access now. That's beautiful. My God, right. You're such a Titan. Skills indeed. So no better words that if we can do it, you can do it, that's for sure. I'm gonna end today's show with this quote from Michelle Obama. Becoming isn't about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn't end. Tune in next week on Dare to Dream. I'm going to be interviewing my guest, Corinne Grillo. She is the author. She's also a therapist, by the way. So there's a theme this week. She is a psychotherapist, and Corinne will be talking about her new book called The Angel Experiment. Subscribe to Dare to Dream podcast, your number one transformation conversation. And if you'd like to see the guests that I'm speaking with, go to youtube.com slash Debbie Dashinger. And for those of you who are ready for the next piece, you are ready to be visible out in the world and learn how to be interviewed on radio and podcasts, go to DebbieD.net slash visibility. I've got an amazing video there for you, full of content about how you can get started to do this right away. Thanks for joining us today. And remember the secret of success is having the courage to begin in the first place.