Rebel Therapist Annie Schuessler

Today I’m talking about the most effective way to fill a signature program beyond private practice:
Creating and nurturing Ideal Referral Partnerships.
If I were to coach my clients to do only ONE kind of marketing, this would be it.
Another word for this is networking.
You’re probably already doing this, but you might not be doing it very strategically.
When I meet someone who says they don’t do any marketing, but they’ve got customers or clients, I know they HAVE been marketing. They just didn’t see their behavior as marketing.
I often find out that the marketing they’ve been doing has been networking.
If you have relationships with people who refer to you, even if you don’t do any of it on purpose, you’ve been marketing.
Maybe you’ve been networking with colleagues you met at trainings, at agencies you worked at, or from working with the same client at some point. You hit it off with these folks.
Some of these people have referred clients to you or introduced you to other people who referred clients to you.
If you're an extrovert, you might have experienced a TON of this with very little conscious effort.
It’s time to get strategic because your time is limited.
Michelle Warner teaches a course called Networking That Pays. She points out that we can each only maintain a finite number of meaningful relationships (between 100 to 250, according to British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, author of How Many Friends Does One Person Need).
We need to be strategic about WHO we spend our limited networking time and energy with.
You’ll also need to be more strategic when you’re selling a signature program because you’ll probably be serving MORE new people each year than you do in your private practice.
If you do long term work, you may only need 10 new clients a year to keep your practice full, or even less in some cases.
To keep a signature program full, on the other hand, you might need 30 or 100 or more new participants each year.
The math is a bit different, so the networking will be a bit more strategic.
I just peeked at my own statistics. This year, over half of my participants have come through my referral partners, NOT by stumbling upon my podcast or finding me through IG or google or paid ads.
But let’s look for a moment at the OTHER kinds of marketing activities I do and you might do too:
Sending out a weekly or biweekly email.
Creating a podcast episode.
Delivering a free live event.
Updating my website.
Creating a new lead magnet.
Setting up an ad funnel.
Posting on social.
Some of these things do help people find me, and I love that I can do these things in relative isolation.
AND… It’s a really bad idea to leave relationships out of our marketing practices. Networking will help to amplify the effectiveness of those other activities.
Dialing down your time spent on solo digital marketing activities and dialing UP your time and energy spent with ideal referral partners is going to grow your business WAY more quickly and more reliably.
Why is this kind of strategic networking so effective?
LOTS of your future participants are already in someone else’s audience.
The people who created those audiences are your Ideal Referral Partners.
By PLACE I mean things like:
a podcast, a free online community, a paid community, an email newsletter list, or a paid small group program.
When the person who leads and curates that gathering place invites you in and vouches for you and the work you do, you’re MUCH more likely to have the trust of members of that community.
Compare that to the trust that you can establish in a video on IG that is 60 seconds long.
I created a step-by-step process for this activity, not because it comes easily to me. Rather I created it because it is very important and does NOT come easily to me.
Here’s a quick summary of that process.
First, you figure out: Who are my Ideal Referral Partners?
They serve your niche
They probably serve

If you fear bothering people with your marketing, this is for you.
I recently got the worst email I’ve opened in over a year.
I’m gonna share the actual email with you and I’m gonna share my internal reactions and the decisions I made after.
In the context of life, this email is really NOT that bad at all. No trigger warning necessary.
I’m sharing this because I know many of you are really afraid of getting an email like this.
I’m hoping hearing about my experience will help you feel less afraid of getting an email like this. I’m hoping that you feeling less afraid will help you make aligned decisions. I’ll explain all of that in a moment.
The email I’ll share was a response to one of my sales emails promoting Create Your Program, the high touch program I run 3 times a year.
Here’s what the email said:
“Way too many emails with not much info. Blocking your email and please remove me from your waitlist.
Feels like clickbait.”
I said “ouch!”
My partner looked over my shoulder and said “that’s not nice!”
I had a moment of panic. I thought: Am I a fraudster? Am I a villian? Am I a jerk who never provides value?
AND…Does this person hate me?
And then paused and I said to my partner: “No it’s OK. She’s right to tell me. She’s annoyed.”
Now I did feel a little peeved with the email sender. I thought: “She could have just unsubscribed. There’s a link in every single email to unsubscribe! Why didn’t she just unsubscribe? Why be like that?”
And I wished I could write back to her and explain about unsubscribing and also say I’m sorry you didn’t get value…and maybe you should check out this or that free resource I provide.
But I couldn’t write her back because she told me not to contact her.
But you know what? She might not know that unsubscribing works. She’s totally within her rights to tell me about her experience and to set a digital boundary. She was clear. She did not call me names or behave abusively. She let me know that she’s withdrawn her consent to be emailed.
I very much WANT people to be able to withdraw their consent.
So as she asked, I went into my email platform and deleted her from it.
Then while I was there I looked into what emails I had sent her, so I could better understand her experience.
She had signed up for a free workshop through an instagram ad that I run. Then she’d gotten follow up emails reminding her to watch that free workshop, and then some sales emails about my program.
It’s likely that she didn’t actually watch the workshop…which is totally understandable. I’ve signed up for a free workshop or class and then not hit play on it.
She also signed up for the waitlist for Create Your Program.
She received the maximum amount of emails someone could ever get from me, about 2 a day for a handful of days. That’s because she signed up for my free workshop and then my waitlist, all during a launch of my program,
I took a step back and considered…is there anything I want to change about this email flow going forward?
In this case, there’s not much I wanted to change.
I want people who are new to my list to have a chance to jump on the wait list for CYP, which functions as an interest list. Often people find me right when they’re looking for a program like mine, and it’s important that they CAN sign up right away if that’s what they want. I only run CYP 3 times a year right now, so I don’t want people to have to wait months to have a chance to jump in.
I did make one change to my email flow.
I already have an opt OUT email that I send to my list when I’m launching. It basically says: “I’m gonna be promoting my program for a couple of weeks. If you want to stay on my list but you don’t want to hear about CYP this round, click here. I’ll be quiet for a couple weeks.”
I learned this opt-out approach from Kelly Diels, and I always hat tip to her in that email.
Here’s the change: I adde

I’ve had a hard time figuring out how to talk to you about this.
I never want to be a dream killer. Or a bummer.
If you’re thinking of creating and launching a signature program, I want you to do it. AND I’m gonna talk about one of the hardest parts of that today.
Then I’ll talk about how to handle this hard part. I promise.
In Create Your Program, I help a small group of therapists create their high quality, high touch, niched programs. And then I help them launch those programs so that they can actually start making money.
Those programs bring these entrepreneurs significant ongoing incomes.
Some folks choose to shrink or close their therapy practices or leave their agency jobs once their programs are established.
AND…one really hard part of that whole process is launching the program, especially for the first time.
Launching basically means sharing your program with people.
Launching involves two really hard things: being more visible and asking for help.
You have to be visible when you launch because you need to share your program with people so that they can sign up to work with you.
You have to ask for help because you need other people to help you spread the word.
Launching isn’t the hardest part of the process at all in terms of skills and it’s not the most time consuming part either. But emotionally it can be really hard, especially for sensitive souls.
We feel vulnerable and exposed when we launch, and we might even worry that we’re bugging people.
On top of that, most of the people in Create Your Program haven’t launched this kind of program before, so these are new muscles they’re using.
Launching can even give them queasy feelings.
And when something is emotionally hard, and makes one feel queasy, one finds a way to avoid it.
In Create Your Program, up until now I always walked people all the way up to that launching finish line. Participants got training and structure from me to create their launch plan. I encouraged them to take the brave final steps and even asked people to take some of that action on the final day of our program.
And some people did that! I ask participants to share their announcement emails with me, which are the emails they send out to their colleagues and communities.
I always received some on the final day of the program, and a bunch more in the following couple of weeks.
Lots of people would use the momentum of the program to follow through and continue implementing.
But some others would put it off.
They’d say they weren’t quite ready.
They’d say they started reconsidering their niche.
They’d say life started getting in the way so they didn’t get around to it yet.
Or many other valid things.
Side note:
As a very direct coach, I’ll tell you that these are people who really wanted to launch!
They were ready enough, and they had already done enough work on their niches. They had indeed done everything they needed to do in order to launch their pilot programs.
When I was describing this issue to my former business coach Claire Pelletreau, she said: “You have to walk them all the way over the finish line.”
And I knew she was right.
Immediately I made a change to Create Your Program.
And I’ll describe that in a minute.
Let’s talk about HOW we get ourselves over the finish line to accomplishing hard things in our businesses and lives in general.
Well, there’s accountability and support. Those help.
But you know what else helps?
A Hard Ass Deadline.
Accountability buddies usually don’t cut it for the really hard stuff. They’re helpful for getting focused, but not necessarily for getting over the finish line with the very hardest things.
Now I’ve got 2 short examples for you: Taxes and Art.
This just came up for me around my taxes.
I get intimidated by the process of my taxes every single year.
I’ve been trying to get my documents toghether to give my accountant for a while now. My accountant has a polic

Lea had been helping people with self-compassion for years, but when she started using art journaling in her program, it came together in a more powerful way.
Now she teaches art journaling in every session of her signature program, Everyday Self-Compassion. Once she integrated this practice into her program, she fell even more in love with her work. She’s got a feeling of presence, joy and even goofiness.
I deeply resonate with the need to feel like my full self as I do my work. How about you?
You’re about to hear how she transformed her program over the last several years, why she loves running it, and why she’s got fewer therapy sessions in her schedule.
Lea Seigen Shinraku is an artist, teacher, licensed therapist and founder of the Center for Creative Self-Compassion. Through her transformative program ~ Everyday Self-Compassion ~ she helps people who struggle with self-judgment connect with their innate creativity and joy, so they can feel more calm, connected, confident and playful in meeting the uncertainty of being alive.
Here's some of what we talked about:
Working with people who are finally ready to really learn how to do self-compassion An example of how Lea teaches art journaling How Lea designed her program Why including art in her program made her feel more joyful and present Creating a follow up program to Everyday Self-Compassion How she fills her program How she draws people to her work with free offers and events A tip from Annie (via Claire Pelletreau) on tracking your Meta ads Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/220

Do you ever dream of creating a program you’ll love running over and over again?
My guest Amy has run her program, Grief Medicine, at least 9 times now. Sometimes people wonder if focusing on grief brings her down, but you’re going to hear why working with folks around their grief brings her inspiration and joy.
As you listen to this conversation, one thing I want you to notice is how much Amy enjoys running this program and never seems to experience it as a grind. You’ll hear how she created her program and how she continues to fill it after so many iterations. And by the way, it’s mostly NOT through social media.
Meet Amy Hyun Swart, a therapist, writer, children's book illustrator, and entrepreneur who has been leading grief gatherings, rituals, and courses since 2015, both in-person and online. She was introduced to the healing power of grief work by way of her own life experience, the traumatic loss of a parent at an early age. As a grief activist, Amy views grief as a critical ingredient to move through these collectively heartbreaking times without losing our shared sense of humanity.
Here's some of what we talked about:
Why her program went from 6 to 10 to 8 weeks long How grief is handled SO badly in our culture Co-hosting local grief gatherings Co-facilititating BIPOC Art of Grief courses Creating safety and connection in her program How she fills her program each time How her program has changed over time Why she’s still feeling inspired by her program after 9 iterations Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/219

Today I’m gonna talk about one of the fastest and least stressful ways to start a group program.
Let’s say you’re excited to run a signature program beyond your private practice, and you know you want it to be a small group.
I relate. I LOVE running groups.
Just a few reasons you might be in love with the idea of creating a group program:
Participants benefit from each other’s wisdom and feel less alone. You make more money. A sense of accountability is often bigger in a group. Groups give you energy. You’re gifted at running groups. In a group, you get the richness of discussion. Let’s imagine this is you.
You’ve written up a sales page or registration page for your program. You’ve told everyone you know all about it. You’ve sent out emails to your small but growing email list. You’ve posted on instagram, in FB groups and anywhere else where it’s appropriate to post. You’ve reached out to every single colleague who might make a referral. You’ve even reached out directly to a handful of people who you think would be great participants with a no pressure invitation to check it out.
All your friends and colleagues are excited for you. You keep hearing: “People will want this!” You’ve got the outline ready. You’ve got the zoom link ready to share. The group calls are on your calendar. You’ve figured out how to accept payments. You are just SO ready.
You offer a free consultation to anyone who has questions about the program and might want to sign up.
And then the consultations start…
You talk to one person who might be interested but not right now and is wondering when you’ll run it again.
You talk to another person who might be interested and will let you know.
You talk to a third person who decides to sign up. Yay!
You talk to a fourth person who says they want to do it but then realize they’ll be away for the first 3 weeks of your program.
And then…no more consultations. No more sign ups. And your start date is next week. Arg!
Did you do something wrong? Is your group not meant to be?
First of all, you are not alone. This has happened to me. This has happened to many people who run successful group programs now.
This often happens when you’re transitioning to a new kind of business. Even if you already had a full therapy practice, this can easily happen when you step into selling a program for the first time.
Perhaps your mistake (if you made one) was to start with a group program.
Perhaps you should have started with a 1:1 structured, niched and outcome based program.
What?! We just talked about why you really prefer to run a group.
But you STILL might be better off starting your pilot program 1:1 and then turning that offer into a group when your business is ready.
Listen to the episode in which I break down why starting with a 1:1 structured, niched and outcome based program might be your fastest, least stressful way to create a group program.
Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/218