Using Youtube to reach more people with Dr Clare Roberts

Dr Clare Roberts has gone from being a clinical psychologist in Birmingham, to a YouTube sensation in Florida, using her Generation Calm channel to post videos for people looking for stress management techniques, anxiety relief and relaxation methods. She is here today to tell us about how she made that transition, and also to give some specific tips on how we can start and grow a YouTube channel.

The highlights

• I introduce Clare and she tells us about how she went from being a clinical psychologist in Birmingham, to finding herself in Florida 00:17
• Clare tells us how she went about turning her vision into reality, and how hard posting the first video was 10:14
• Clare discusses the difficulties of coming up with a name 14:25
• Clare talks about why we should consider YouTube as a good platform for us, and takes us through how to make it a reality 17:02
• We discuss the importance of keywords for Google and YouTube, and talk about the importance of getting good quality content out there 22:32
• Clare talks about growing her confidence 30:22
• We discuss building a community on YouTube 33:33 
• Clare talks about how YouTube is evergreen and doesn’t have to take as much time as other social media platforms 41:36
• Clare tells us where we can find her 44:51

Links:

Where to find Clare:

www.generationcalm.com

Youtube: www.youtube.com/generationcalm

Instagram: www.instagram.com/generationcalm

Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/generationcalm1

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Do you sometimes wake up at 2 am worried that you’ve made a terrible error that will bring professional ruin upon you and disgrace your family?

I’m laughing now but when I first set up in private practice I was completely terrified that I had “missed” something big when setting up insurance or data protection.

Even now, three years in, I sometimes catch myself wondering if I have really covered all the bases.

It is hard, no impossible, to think creatively and have the impact you should be having in your practice if you aren’t confident that you have a secure business. BUT it can be overwhelming to figure out exactly what you need to prioritise before those clients start coming in.

I’ve created a free checklist (plus resources list) to take the thinking out of it. Tick off every box and you can see your clients confident in the knowledge that you have everything in place for your security and theirs.

Download it now from the new link:

https://psychologybusinessschool.com/client-checklist

TRANSCRIPT

SPEAKERS

Rosie Gilderthorp, Clare Roberts

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast, the show that helps you to reach more people, help more people and build the life you want to live by doing more than therapy.

I'm here with Dr Clare Roberts. So Clare's gone from being a clinical psychologist in Birmingham, to a YouTube sensation in Florida. And I can't wait to hear about how she made that transition. And also to get some specific tips for us on how we can start and grow a YouTube channel. Because I think this is a really powerful platform for psychologists and therapists. I'm really chuffed to have you here today, Clare.

Thanks, Rosie, I really appreciate you letting me come on the show.

So I think it'd be interesting to hear a little bit about your personal story. So how did you go from working as a clinical psychologist in Birmingham, to finding yourself in Florida?

Well, so yeah, I was working as a clinical psychologist in Birmingham, and I absolutely loved working in the NHS. And when I turned 30, I thought, you know, I haven't ever been backpacking. And I really wanted to be able to travel. So I thought, you know what, I saved up for a year, and at the age of 31 I went travelling with my backpack, just me around the world. And my manager was really accommodating, and they said that, you know, you can, we'll, we'll keep the job open for you for a year, and so you can come back. And so I had every intention of going back to my job, same job, same city, basically same everything, and pick my life up where I'd kind of left it behind. And a couple of months into the trip, absolutely loving it, but I was in Bangkok, and I was in this kind of a crossroads because I wanted to go to a quiet Island, travelling in Thailand. Because I was by myself, I wanted somewhere where it wasn't too much of a party atmosphere, which Thailand, you know, the islands have that reputation of being party places. So I picked up this leaflet by chance, and it had these gorgeous looking bamboo bungalows on a beach. And I thought that's where I need to go. So funnily enough, the place where I was staying, it was her sister's resort, and so she booked me a place and I took a two hour trip and on a you know, on the on this rickety old boat, and it was absolutely gorgeous, just what I needed, nice and peaceful, serene, you know I could read on the beach. But the first night I was there, I realised that all the single travellers were expected to sit at this long communal table, which is my absolute worst. I'm an introvert. This was my worst nightmare come true.

That sounds worse than Wagamama.

Yeah, exactly, it was just like that. You know nobody, they're complete strangers from all over the world, which I guess is what they want. They want people to come together and start talking and exchange life stories. So anyway, there was one seat left. So I sat next to this guy from America, who is at the end of his two week vacation. And it's no lie to say that time kind of stood still. Everybody else faded off into the background, and it was just me and this one guy from America talking and we just hit it off. It was, yeah, after a couple of days he said, you know what, I'm going to postpone going back home to America for a little bit. Let's go travelling. So we travelled for six weeks and he just kept postponing and postponing his trip, until eventually he couldn't, he had to go back home to America, back to his life. So I carried on travelling through, you know, Australia, New Zealand, until eventually I came around to where he was in America. And we kind of instantly knew we wanted to be together and I never went back home. I never went back to my home in Birmingham, I never went back to my job. You know, it sounds so simple and linear when I say it like that. But actually, you know, it was it was a hard decision to make. And I thought that I could just create this new life for myself in America. And so I started doing what you're supposed to do here if you want to be a clinical psychologist in Florida, which is you get your credentials all sorted, make sure that you are really who you say you are kind of thing. And then you have to do some work experience that's supervised, so you do a residency and then you sit an exam. So I found a place where I could work and this they agreed to do my supervision and everything, but although psychology is the same wherever you go in the world, in America I find it's so different to the NHS because everything is guided by health insurance. So the therapy is the same, but how many sessions a person can have and with how much their copay is, and all these other kind of factors start to play in. And so what the lady who supervises me do, it was it was her business, and so to kind of supplement money she would take on a lot of marriage counselling clients, which I knew nothing about, you know, I didn't, I didn't feel comfortable. But she wanted me to see people who, you know, are going through a rough time with their marriage, needed counselling, and there was a lot of other things where I felt like my ethical or my values were kind of being put in a strange position. I didn't feel comfortable with a lot of things that were going on. So eventually, what actually happened is I became pregnant and I found out that she was only going to give me six weeks maternity leave. And actually, in retrospect, when I look back, she was actually being very fair because in Florida there actually is no maternity law.

So she was going to be paying for that the whole time.

Yeah, by law, they, they do not need to give you any maternity leave. And certainly not paid maternity leave. But anyway, I made a big decision not to go back to working there after having my baby. So you know, now I'm in a strange country, but with a loving husband, got a baby, but I don't know if you know what it's like, but when you're a stay at home mom or stay at home parent, you suddenly... your identity's a bit of a blur. So now I wasn't a clinical psychologist, I was being called mommy by, everywhere I went I was no longer Clare, I was mommy. So I, you know, I, I kind of lost my sparkle a little bit. You know, I wasn't depressed, but I was kind of grieving for this old life that I'd had. I wasn't near friends anymore, I wasn't near my family, I didn't have this kind of job title. And so anyway, I fell into homeschooling. So that's what I've been doing this whole time I've been, as a full time job I've been homeschooling. And I thought, well, in between those little downtimes, could I be doing something else, where I can use this knowledge as a clinical psychologist, and YouTube was the thing that kind of, you know, I thought that would be a good platform for me. But it took me a year to have the courage to actually do it, because I just kept thinking well what will my ex colleagues think? Or, you know, what if it fails? What if I just look really stupid on video? And you know, there was just all these negative thoughts, and in the end, I just thought, look just go for it, what have you got to lose. And now I've got 13,000 subscribers, and I've had over a million views on my YouTube channel. And it's literally just to help people overcome stress and anxiety. And so I put out videos that, you know, and it might be about journaling, but it was actually the meditations that took off. And that's what people were searching for.

That is such an interesting story, I mean, on so many levels. I mean, just on a personal level, I think there's so much flexibility, so much psychological flexibility involved there and having to kind of take the pieces of your values and construct them into different identities, according to where you found yourself. I think that's really remarkable. And then to sort of pick up that thread that clearly never left you, but couldn't find a home for a little while. And to give that a voice on YouTube, I think that's really inspirational. I think that's really cheesy to say to somebody, but I really do. Because I think a lot of people listening to this, and certainly I can really relate to that feeling of who am I now? I hate it. Even now when I go take my kids to and from preschool and it's just oh, Robin's mum or Leo's mum. I'm like, hold on, I do have a name that you've never even tried to learn. And yeah, I think a lot of people will relate to that. And that's a really great reason to start a project, like a YouTube channel, or a podcast, or a blog. I think very often, I'm quite guilty anyway, of talking a lot about doing these things for your business for something else that you're developing, but actually, they have a lot of value in themselves. And it sounds like for you, this was a social mission, this was a project, something you wanted to give to the world. And that's just wonderful really.

Yeah. And also, you know, I think it gave me a little bit of creativity as well, because for a while I wasn't being creative. You know, even in psychology, you know, there's you, you kind of want to inject a little bit of creativity to some of the, to the sessions, but then you're kind of limited by the evidence base for that. And so, with YouTube you don't have any that, people don't care about that. The audience doesn't care about the evidence base for it, it's whether it works for them and in their life. And so having that little bit of creativity is really helped me find my spark again, I've got to say.

So how did you go from having the idea then to actually turning your vision into reality?

Well, like I said, it took me about a year of kind of thinking about it, and just starting to watch how other people were doing it. So you know, if you go on to... you can google anything these days, and, and that will take you to YouTube. And so I would follow people like, there's someone called Trina Little, who's an American, who, she just puts it out there for beginners. And, you know, you'll find someone that you connect with. And when you do, you'll think, okay, I can do this, I can follow her steps. And, and I also watch somebody called Roberto Blake, he's very good at explaining how to do like keyword search, and all that kind of stuff. But it was actually, I joined a lady called Justina Rosu was putting it out a course about Get Started with YouTube. And I thought, oh, my goodness, this is what I need. And actually, it was perfect. There was about, I don't know, maybe 10 people on it. And it was live calls for six weeks. And she actually used to be a, she used to work at the BBC. So she knows a lot of the background stuff, she has her own video production. So she could tell us a lot of what to do behind the scenes. But having a group of 10 people all kind of middle aged ladies, all kind of at that same point, of just being scared to put themselves out there, having that that camaraderie between us all really helped to push us and we'd go on to each other's videos and say, yeah, this is great. We'd put comments on each other's videos, it was just what I needed, at that very beginning to make the push.

It's that community. And especially because, again, something that you mentioned was that fear of your peers, and fear of ex colleagues in particular, I think, I hear that so frequently from people on Psychology Business School, As soon as I start talking about marketing or blogging, it's like, but what if I say something that my colleagues don't like? And very frequently, when you look at people's websites, they've written for other psychologists and therapists. Who are you writing for? Because this is not for the person you're trying to help. They're just going to look at this and go, what? And so I think sometimes having that group around you of people going, do you know what, this is good, this is good, and I want you to put out there because it's brilliant. Just having those cheerleaders makes a huge difference to overcoming that feeling.

Yeah, and what you're saying about ex colleagues, that was the one sticking point for me, even though they didn't even know I was thinking about doing a YouTube channel, even though I hadn't seen them for a few years. They were still there in my head. And I always have these negative thoughts of, oh, they're gonna think I'm selling out they're gonna think I'm, you know, just ridiculous putting myself out there, they're gonna think oh, that's not evidence based enough. They're gonna call me out and, and so eventually what I did was, there was a lady called Marie Holden, who was also part of this group, as she did EFT. So tapping. And she actually took me aside and did a session with me. And it was about getting over the idea that these ex colleagues even cared what I was doing, because they didn't, they absolutely didn't. And that's what I did that for like a couple of weeks where she recorded the session, and we'd just keep tapping on these negative thoughts that I had. I just thought eventually, it just kind of faded away. And I just managed to put my first video out there. And once the first video's out there, it gets easier and easier and easier.

I completely agree with that. When I put my first blog out, I like shook and cried and was just an absolute wreck. And now that must have been what, like nearly five years ago, and now I just hit publish and don't even think about it. Yeah, it's such a journey, isn't it? So was that one of the hardest moments then that first publish? Was there anything else that was really difficult?

Um, I think coming up with a name, actually was really difficult. You know, people tell you to niche, and, you know, if you're a psychologist, you probably already have a specialism, or you know what most people are coming to for, what the what the difficulty is. So you already kind of have an inkling, but then you start to think of, well, should I put my actual name out there? Should I have... and so what I, in my mind, what I was thinking is I'd like to have a brand so that you know, if I decide eventually I want to go back to psychology, I can, I can just say, hey, look, this is what I've been doing in the meantime. Or if the brand kind of takes off, then I can just work on that. So that was my idea. But it took me a long time to come up with the name Generation Calm. And so that was my other difficult thing, other than putting videos out there was just coming up with the name, the niche, all that kind of thing.

And I think, Psychology Business School actually starts with a free webinar about knowing your specialism. Because although we do usually have one, we're not always in touch with it. And sticking to it does mean sort of saying goodbye, and it means quite a bit of loss. Because we tend to, in the NHS or other kind of work have a bit of a broader spectrum. But then when you go private, that just doesn't, doesn't work as well. And I think it is the same for YouTube channel. You've got to have a reason to go to that channel, something about it has to jump out at you like this is for me. So I can imagine it would have been really difficult to settle on who you wanted to be right for, because that would always mean that you're not going to be right for everybody. And that is really hard. And names, they are just so tricky, and so subjective. And nobody can ever say that's a great name and you believe them, because there'll always be someone else who doesn't like it. I personally love Generation Calm, I think that's great, but I can see why it would ping around in your head for ages.

Absolutely. And also, then you got to start thinking about, you know, you need your social media handles that are going to be the same, and you need to have the website domain name, and you know, you got to make sure you can get everything that you need so that YouTube is just one part of it. You don't know if it's going to take off, in which case you need to have all the other handles as well.

Yeah, you always want to have that flexibility. Because I mean, you don't know what's gonna happen to YouTube either.

Exactly, absolutely. You want to be able to take it off of there if if need be, and, and be elsewhere. And people already know the name.

So I mean, we're kind of getting into the whole creating a brand thing, but let's take a few paces back, because I know that there'll be people listening to this, who are thinking, you know, actually, video is something I feel quite good about, I can see how people get a lot out of that style of communication. But maybe they've never made a video for social media before. Certainly not got their own YouTube channel yet. So could you take us a little bit through firstly, you know, who is this a good platform for? Who should be considering a YouTube channel? And then maybe some step by step on how to make that reality if you want to do it.

Absolutely, yeah. So I mean, the first thing is to figure out why you want it. So what's the purpose of it going to be? So if it's part of you as a private practitioner, is it to be an ex... seen as an expert? Is it to build a brand? Is it just that you want people to go to if they're on your waiting list, do you want them to go and see these other videos that maybe you already have, that they can be using or learning a little bit about whatever therapy you're going to be doing? You know, you need to think about what the purpose is. So for example, let's say with your hypnobirthing, maybe you want to put out some meditations out there or something or you want to let people know, you know, what it is what the actual hypnobirthing is all about. And so I think that's the biggest thing to do at the beginning just to figure out what your purpose is. Is it to bring people in to your world? Is it to get more clients? Or is it to build a brand or expertise? Do you need to sell a book and you want people to see you as the expert? So I think that is the first thing. And then remember that you don't need that much equipment. I still use my iPhone to record every single video. I've never splashed out and bought an actual camera although I probably should by now, but I haven't needed to, all I've really needed is the iPhone and a lavalier mic or because I'm doing meditations now, I do have a better microphone now.

So for the people who might not know... I can't ever say it...

The lavalier mic, yeah.

Yeah, that. Is that one of those little ones that clips onto your lapel?

Yes absolutely. Yeah, so you just put it on your t-shirt or whatever you're wearing and it makes such a crisp sound compared to the sound that you will get on your iPhone or or your camera. You really do need that because you don't know how people are going to use your videos. But most likely, then they're going to be on on their camera. I mean on their phone looking at it. And if they've got headphones on that's one thing, but you know it's going to be very difficult for them to see properly, but they will hear it, they'll definitely need to hear a good quality sound. So you need to have, at least at the very least a lavalier mic to plug in. And so that's what I do, I have my iPad with me, and I record from my lapel, my microphone on one thing, and then I record on my iPhone, the actual visuals, and then I put it together in editing. And that's really, but you could do it all from your iPhone, with no problem whatsoever. So once you found out what it is that you want to achieve from it, and you found out kind of a niche, then don't wait around, just start looking for keywords. So some of the things I do is I go onto Google Trends, and I start typing in whatever you think the keyword might be that someone might be looking for. So I'm gonna say hypnobirthing for an example. So if you type that in, what is it for the past year that people have been looking at and Google Trends will actually show you what's trending. So it might be something as simple like what is hypnobirthing? Or it might show a certain method. And so what you'll be wanting to do is figure out a keyword, that you can maybe do five videos about that area, you know, the the what it is the, the example of it or something, and so have a, because what would be nice is to have a series of videos, because then you can create a playlist and people go from one video to another video. And you, you know, you want to make a video around five minutes long, at least I would say. Because it's not like Instagram, where they're wanting short form videos that are vertical, you want horizontal, and you want to keep there, people there for a little while. You know, you you want to show yourself as an, your expertise or, but what they're looking for is not the why they should be doing something, but the what and how. So they don't necessarily want to know why they want to do hypnobirthing. They want to know what it is and how to do it.

That's such a good point. I mean, I'm going to pick up on two things that you've mentioned there. And that's firstly, the importance of keywords. I think what we often forget is and part of the power of YouTube is that YouTube is owned by Google, they're the same company. So if you type into your search engine, how to x, y, and z, you're going to get YouTube hits, as well as your standard kind of web page hits. And Google will prioritise YouTube, because it owns it, and it wants more people to be on the stuff that it owns. So that's really important. But also people use YouTube itself as a search engine. And so it's again, it's like most of marketing actually, it's kind of getting into the heads of the people that you're trying to serve, and thinking, what would they actually look for?

Yeah, I absolutely, and the thing is you're speaking to people every single day, you're speaking to your ideal audience every day when you're in therapy. So one of the things you can do is start to keep a list of some of the questions they ask, or repeated themes that come up, because you... Here's the thing, if if you've got a burning question, an embarrassing question, an innermost worry, there are two things, two sources you're going to trust. One is your therapist. And the next one is Google. If you look into Google, and you start typing, what is and then whatever it is, whatever the question is, you can bet somebody else has typed in something that you wouldn't dare talk to anyone else, but you'll say it to Google, and you'll say it to your therapist. So I think as a therapist, you're, or a psychologist, you're sitting on a goldmine of questions that people are asking. And they might not tell other people, but they are telling Google and they're typing into Google. And so you can literally just start typing into Google. You know how the person speaks. What is it that they're talking about? You don't need to do the whole keyword stuffing that people were doing like 5-10 years ago. People you know, Google has got AI that is making it very easy to just type in how they talk because they're going more towards you know people actually talking to Google now and and say what they what they want. So you can literally type into Google and it will auto finish what it is. So it will give you ideas for what questions people are asking. And here's the amazing thing. The other day I was looking for, I had a new preamp for my microphone, and I have no idea about these things, so I wanted to know how to attach it. So I typed into Google how to attach my FetHead preamp into my microphone. Lo and behold, the first thing they give me is this big video, big, big picture of a video. And not only that, they've taken it to the exact spot where this person is answering my question. In an eight minute video, they put me to exactly the right spot. So I just click on the video, and it wouldn't matter if that person, if if I had a YouTube channel or not, or if I had a YouTube account, or not anybody anywhere in the world can search on Google. And the first thing they're likely to give out to someone is video. And not only a video, but in the exact spot that answers your question.

It's just incredible, the power of that. And the fact that you know, you're out there putting out valuable mental health content, that people, because we all know, when you type in certain things into Google, sometimes some of the answers that come up are not that helpful. Especially, listen up any listeners who are in the personality disorder kind of area, please make content, please make good quality content and put it on YouTube. Or somewhere that Google can find it because I don't like what comes up when I type something like personality disorder into Google. And I think there are many of us listening to this who don't like it either. And if we don't like it, let's put out the stuff that we do like. I love, I love that YouTube has that power.

Yeah. And also, you know, we've been told for so long that we need to be boundaried as psychologists, you know, you don't put yourself out there, and I don't know when you trained Rosie, but I trained pre YouTube, there was no Facebook, there was no Twitter, there was nothing. So we didn't even consider that. But I imagine now that when you train, I think I've heard you mention this before, they've basically told you not to be on there. Don't be on those platforms, don't put yourself out there in that position. And we've kind of got to undo all of that, because if we're not, there are other people who are putting out content who are not qualified to be putting out information there. You know, I talked to you about, you know, sometimes there isn't evidence base enough. But some people are putting things out there that really aren't appropriate, and people are finding them and finding their own communities. And that's the worrying thing. And that that actually was the thing that pushed me over the edge. When I was seeing people, we're talking more about mental health, they're talking more about anxiety, but these influencers were able to say well I see a therapist, and this is what we do. And people just think, oh, well, that will work for me too. I think oh, no, no, it's so much more individual than that. And so that was what actually pushed me over the edge to start my own channel, because there aren't enough real experts out there. There are some people out there that know just enough, but we're the people that needs to be out there. And yeah, so I was getting, I'm getting passionate now.

Yeah no, I think we share that passion, I think we share that. And I hope that there are people listening to this, who will be inspired by your passion to the push that publish button themselves.

So, so yeah, the keyword research, you can you can use YouTube itself, you can use Google itself and just start typing in and it will autocomplete for you. I also use Keywords Everywhere, which is just like a plug in, and it attaches to your, your browser window. And it will just tell you how many people are searching for something. You don't want some crate, like I do sleep meditations. I don't use that as my keyword because it just, you know, I don't know, let's say 100,000 people are searching for that a month. I can't, I can't get my way through that noise, people aren't going to find me, because there are bigger youtubers than me out there. But if I find, you know, sleep meditations for people with anxiety, or sleep meditations female voice, I'm much more likely... it's going to be a smaller pool of people searching for it, but I've got more of a chance of being seen. So that's kind of why I use Keywords Everywhere, because it's given me an actual number of how many people are searching. And it doesn't matter if it's 1000 people or less searching for it a month. That's actually pretty good at the beginning because you want to wheedle your way in there with your specific content.

Yes, I definitely agree with that for the kind of content that we create as well. Because you will find if you do some generic marketing courses, like I did, the advice was never, never to bother making content for something that had less than 50,000 searches a month. That's terrible advice for us, it really is, because everything related to depression or anxiety or mental health in general, it will be saturated by people with very high domain authority, you've got the NHS, the BBC, I'm sure there are American equivalents of those things, you can't compete with them. So actually it's far better off finding something with a lower search volume, where people will actually see you because we don't go past page one or two. I mean, maybe it's page one. You don't really go past page one these days.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, and so what what I do, you know, so if I'm, I'm doing, I've already done my keyword, keyword research, and I've decided on an actual angle for what my video will do, then I write a script and people are mixed on this. I, at the very beginning, needed a script. And if you look back at my videos, there's probably only 30 people who viewed them. But at the very, very beginning, three years ago, I would have my husband hold up a piece of cardboard, a big piece of it with like, bullet points and whatever to remind me. And then I decided, Okay, well, that's, that's getting ridiculous. I'm not looking at the camera, I'm looking over there over the top of the camera, that's silly. People can't look me in the eye. And so what I started doing was writing a script on my iPad, and I would have it on my lap. And I would look down, say something and look up, and down again and write. It was awful. And I would edit spice, edit all those little things out. But I needed that.

Oh it must have taken hours.

Oh, yeah, I did. And I would splice it all out. And, but I needed that, I needed that crutch. I felt like I needed it. Now I just need bullet points. But you know, if you need a script, write a script, do it however you need to do it to get yourself the confidence to do it, it really doesn't matter. Because when you perform, that's, because that's basically what you're doing, you're going to be performing on camera, and you want to do whatever makes you feel comfortable and confident. And so of course, the recording and the editing, I can't go into too much detail because it's you know, that's a big area, but needless to say you can google anything, you really can. And that's how I've learned most of mine apart from Justina Rosu, who just put out another editing course. So who I'm working with, and she's helped me a lot. But once you put up your first video, and you learn how to upload it, I always put a large description, almost like a little mini blog post on mine, because it's all helping people find you. It's all helping the community, once they've found you, understand a little bit a bit more about you, and your voice and how you approach things. But it, but for Google and for YouTube, it's really helping them place where your video needs to be served up. Because people are already on Google, people are already on YouTube, they're already there. In fact, a vast majority of them go there to destress or to relax in the evenings. Some of them are there for education, entertainment, but they're already there. They, Google just need to know who to serve it up to, to keep them on the YouTube platform. And then once you've uploaded, and you'll realise that your world hasn't caved in, your ex colleagues are like talking badly about you behind your back, you'll realise that life goes on and about two people will find your video that aren't your mum, or you know, your husband or whatever. And life is okay, you can put on the next video in the next video. And eventually what you'll find is, you know, there'll be someone who comments who you have no idea who they are, they come from India, or Australia, or, you know, and they're saying thank you for that video that was so helpful. And that is the thing that keeps me going. I love getting comments from people. And I spend much more time doing comments than actually making videos. So the comments are the way to kind of build your community, build trust with them. You know, if you look on people's comments section, you can tell if people can't be bothered with their community. If you look in my comments section, and you'll see that I reply to as many comments as I possibly can. And I you know, I'm still a small YouTuber, so I don't get that many, maybe maybe around five to eight a day. But I take the time to go in and say thanks for commenting, here's something else you might find useful or, or whatever it is, because the comments are where people give you suggestions as well for other videos.

And I think there's so much power in community, and it's so much what people are looking for these days. I think we need to move away from the idea of creating content in order to build an audience and we're the performer and they're the passive consumers of that content, and think much more about building a community and linking people together. Wherever we do that, I mean, I, the obvious place that we're obviously doing that is in Facebook groups. But more and more you're seeing this happen around particular people on Instagram, around YouTubers. Really, it seems to be what people want everywhere these days.

Yeah, that community makes a big difference. And you start to see people are communicating with themselves then, between themselves and answering each other's questions. And it's just absolutely wonderful. And you know, your community, if you have one on YouTube, and you have your videos on YouTube, your clients can access that when you're not around, you know, you can't be around 24-7, but YouTube can and your videos can live on YouTube 24-7. So, you know, you know, for me, I do a lot of sleep meditations now, it's kind of evolved to that. But it wasn't at the very beginning, I was trying to tell people, you know, what anxiety is, how you can cope with it. People weren't really interested in that, you know, until I decided to do one on driving anxiety, because, you know, my mum came late to driving in her late 40s. So she's always been a bit of a nervous driver. And also, I have a best friend who's really nervous about driving. And so whenever I go back to England, we have a big faff around about where where's the best place to meet, you know, because it has to be comfortable for her to go to. So I thought, you know what, I'm just gonna put out a video about driving anxiety. And I knew as soon as I did it, that I was getting more views than I usually do. So I knew I'd kind of struck a nerve. And that's when the comments started rolling in. And people say, I thought I was the only one. And you know, there's just such a lot of value to that. And so I, and here's the thing, you don't need a lot of views. and you don't need a lot of subscribers, to be able to do something with this community as well. So what I actually did was, after about a year of putting out some videos about driving anxiety, I decided, you know what, I'm just going to see if I can make a course about this, and see what happens. So I put out a video about why it's important to get over driving anxiety. And I said, if you're interested to beta test my course, and I just put it up for a weekend this one video, I said, here's how to get in touch with me. And I had about 12 people, not a lot, but it was just what I needed to get started. But that's the thing, you don't need a huge audience. And I have people from Australia, and you know, Brazil, UK, France. And we all did this course together. And that's it. If you listen to some of the YouTubers out there about marketing, they're talking about getting millions of subscribers, they're talking about getting millions of views. You need it. You don't.

No, I think people get really hung up on that. And it's I guess it's because the the model that those people use is paying for, getting paid for adverts on YouTube channels, and that is pennies, pennies per 1000 or y'know it's not good money. So I guess it's from that perspective, but we're not offering that. Usually, if if we're using YouTube or any other kind of content, it's because we want people for a course, or we want people to buy our book, or we want clients. And in all of those instances we're not, we're not looking for massively high volume, we don't need hugely high numbers.

Exactly.

And also, I just think from a values point of view, it's like you were saying, okay, 12 people, so they all benefited from your course. And how many other people did they pass that on to?

Exactly, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that's the thing, I don't do any marketing. The only thing I do after I uploaded a video is I will make a pin for Pinterest. And I'll put it up there. I've already talked about being an introvert but I'm also kind of embarrassed about marketing myself, and blowing my own trumpet and all of that business. And what I found is that everybody's finding me by word of mouth now. So somebody said the other day, left a comment, oh, somebody told me to come here. You know, my friend told me to come here to try one of your meditations. And I think yeah, I'm getting like, hundreds of shares every month now. Actually 1000s of shares every month now of people just you know, sending in a message to someone or, or sharing it on their Facebook. And and so you, it's amazing, this this community that builds up and is helpful to many people, not just the one person you can see at a time in a therapy session, which is one to one interaction. You can now, even though actually YouTube is quite intimate, I think in some ways because it's video and most people are consuming it on their own. Often with headphones on, so it is very kind of intimate and so it is almost like a one to one interaction, but they can share that out to other people, and share that knowledge as well.

Yeah, I love that, I really, I think that what I'm taking from your strategy or with my strategy head on is that it's really about doing that one thing, your YouTube videos really well, doing the keyword research so that people are likely to find them. So that you don't have to be on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn and places that you don't want to be. And I think I've been talking a lot in the Do More Than Therapy community and the membership group, with people who are like I really don't like social media, and I don't want to be all over it talking about what I've had for breakfast. And it's like you really don't have to, but you just have to do one thing, you have to find one thing that you love, and that should sort of bring you fulfilment, and do that really well. And I think the there's a real benefit to that being YouTube, if you really don't like social media promotion. I get for example, the search engine behind podcasts is not as good. So anybody looking for podcasting strategy, I would definitely be saying you do need to promote that on Facebook or Instagram, you need another platform where you build an audience to promote it to. Because it's just really hard, in the early days to be found organically through podcasting. But YouTube, because of its link to Google, if you can just master keywords, then you're going to get found

Absolutely, yeah. The fact that it's evergreen. So the thing I don't like about social media, and the reason I'm not really on it, I have an Instagram account, I have Facebook, but I don't really use it. And the reason is, is because you kind of have to be on there all the time, you have to keep uploading, you have to keep putting up new content. And if somebody talks to you on one of these platforms, they kind of expect an immediate response. And I don't like that, I don't like that at all. I actually don't spend much time on YouTube at all, I will choose once a day, you know, every day just to go in at one time and answer all my comments in one big go. I upload only every two weeks, which feels manageable for me, but sometimes I don't, and it will be once a month. And I think that's what the problem is a lot of the time is that people think it's gonna take a lot of time, it doesn't have to. This is about, I used to follow other youtubers at the beginning. And they were saying you have to upload at least once a week, at the same time, very consistently, otherwise, you're not going to grow. And it's not true, it absolutely isn't true, you have to find what's going to work for you. And as a full time homeschooling mom, I had to just find the little bits of time, that would work for me, otherwise I was gonna burn out. I couldn't do what these other people are trying to tell me to do. You're a psychologist, you've got other things that are going on at home, you can't be there all the time on for these other.... you know, you can't be putting out YouTube videos all the time. So yeah, that's kind of where I wanted to kind of end today. Just saying you can do it in your own time, don't listen to everyone who is telling you, you got to do this, you got to do that. Do what works for you. And you're much more likely to do it and stick to it.

I completely agree. I mean, people listening to this will know that I sometimes try and make Instagram work for me. And the reason that I have never successfully been able to do that is because my lifestyle does not allow me to be there enough. Instagram does seem to be one where you need to be there a bit more. And I can't really manage that. My facebook group, I absolutely, I get so much joy from that it doesn't feel difficult to be there and chatting to people, but Instagram, it's just that I've never had the feels for it. And so it can't really be a core part of my strategy. And it is just about being honest with yourself, what can I do? And what do I want to do? And not setting yourself up for something that's going to feel like a weight around your neck.

Exactly. And YouTube videos will be there forever. You know, as far as we know, for the time being, but my biggest videos are ones that I did over a year ago. And it's still bringing in 1000s of people every day, which is amazing, you know. With Instagram I don't get that, with Instagram I put something up, it gets seen for an hour or something or a day. But that's the nice thing about YouTube. It's evergreen. And unless information changes, you can keep it on there and it won't, you know, it'll still be the same information whether you did one of those videos today or yesterday or last week, it'll kind of remain relevant.

Yeah, I mean, you certainly inspired me, I'm kind of feeling like I should go and do some research and do some more YouTube stuff because I've not on anything on there for really long time, and I'm guessing that there are going to be lots of people listening to this, who wants to look you up now. So I have more questions to ask you, but as we can see, we've kind of run over time a little bit. So I guess just before we go, where can people find you if they want to know more about what you're doing?

Absolutely. So obviously, the Generation Calm YouTube channel, but also at my website generationcalm.com. And on there, actually, I have a little widget that means every time I upload a video, it automatically uploads to my website as well, which is...

Oh, that's cool.

Yeah. So people don't actually have to leave my website if they don't want to to be able to watch my videos, which is another thing. That's the other thing about YouTube, you can embed all those videos onto your website.

And that improves your website's ranking, I believe, in Google. So that's brilliant. A really good tip. So thank you so much. You've shared so much value today. And I'll put all your links in the show notes so that people can go and find you.

Fantastic. Thanks so much, Rosie.

Before you go, I just wanted to check something out with you, because I don't know if this is just me. But do you sometimes wake up at two o'clock in the morning, worried that you've made a terrible error that's going to bring professional ruin upon you and disgrace your family? I'm laughing now. But when I first set up in private practice, I was completely terrified that I'd missed something really big when I was setting up my insurance or data protection practices. Even now, three years in, I sometimes catch myself wondering if I've really covered all the bases properly. And it's hard, no, actually, it's impossible to think creatively and have the impact you should be having in your practice, if you aren't confident that you have a secure business underneath you. But it can be really overwhelming to figure out exactly what you need to prioritise before those clients start coming in. So I've created a free checklist plus resources list to take the thinking out of it. Tick off every box and you can see your clients confident in the knowledge that you have everything in place for your security and theirs. You can download it now from psychologist.drrosie.co.uk/client-checklist, and the link is in the show notes.

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Business of Psychology podcast. If you share my passion for doing more than therapy, then make sure you come over and join my free Do More Than Therapy Facebook community where you can work on getting your big ideas off the ground with like minded psychologists and therapists. I'd also love it if you could leave the show a five star review wherever you listen to your podcasts. It will help more of the people who need it to find it. See you next week for more tips and inspirational stories to help you do more than therapy.