Have you ever looked at another therapist’s thriving practice and thought, they’re just lucky?

It’s an easy story to tell ourselves when someone else seems to be attracting the kinds of clients we’d love to work with. But the truth is, what looks like “luck” on the outside is almost always the result of clarity, connection, and consistency in how someone shows up through their marketing.

In this episode, I’m guiding you through a short visualization to help you reconnect with the real person behind your marketing. Not the vague idea of an “ideal client.” Not a demographic profile. A real human being—the kind of client who reminds you why you do this work in the first place.

When you write your website, your Psychology Today profile, or your next post with that person in mind, everything changes. Your words become clearer, your message becomes stronger, and marketing stops feeling like a performance. It simply becomes an extension of the work you already care so deeply about.

Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:

1️⃣ How to ground your marketing in a real client relationship instead of generic advice or templates.

2️⃣ A simple visualization exercise you can return to anytime your marketing feels forced or unclear.

3️⃣ Why the clinicians who seem “lucky” are usually just the ones who communicate the most genuine connection.

Resources & Links Mentioned:

1. The Walker Strategy Co website: https://walkerstrategyco.com

Connect + Subscribe

Enjoying the podcast? Subscribe so you never miss an episode—and feel free to share it with a fellow therapist who’s building their private practice. Explore more marketing support for therapists: The Walker Strategy Co website: https://walkerstrategyco.com.

About Marketing Therapy

Marketing Therapy is the podcast where therapists learn how to market their private practices without burnout, self-doubt, or sleazy tactics. Hosted by me, a marketing coach, strategist, and founder of Walker Strategy Co—each episode brings you clear, grounded advice to help you attract the right-fit, full-fee clients and grow a practice you feel proud of.

Hey y'all, welcome back to Marketing Therapy episode 60 and happy St.

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Patrick's Day.

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Hopefully you remember

to wear green today.

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Maybe you're doing something big.

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Maybe you just like this.

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As an excuse to eat a

Ruben sandwich like me.

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But I thought it would be

appropriate to talk today about

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this idea of the lucky clinician.

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And I see people use this language or

similar things out there in the world

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as they talk about other clinicians.

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You know, we all know the therapist

that is fully private pay and

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they're raising their fees regularly.

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You see these stories in

Facebook groups of people making.

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200 k, whatever in their practice.

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They've got this flexible schedule and

you just can't help but maybe envy them.

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If we wanna talk about green, maybe a

little bit green with envy sometimes.

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And from the outside it looks effortless.

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These clinicians look

like they have it made.

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Like they got lucky.

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Maybe because they have been in the

game for longer, maybe because they

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picked the quote unquote right niche,

you know, like they cracked some

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secret code that you didn't know about.

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And I think if we're honest

with ourselves, sometimes we

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use the idea of luck to explain.

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What we don't fully understand.

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It feels easier to slap that on than

to really look at the whole picture,

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especially when often we don't

have access to that full picture.

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So I wanna look underneath the surface a

little bit today of the Lucky clinician.

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And as I prepared for this episode,

it really held in mind a handful

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of clinicians I know who you

would probably look at and think.

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Have got it made.

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What are they doing?

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What are they not doing?

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What can you see?

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What can't you see?

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And what can we learn here?

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Mm-hmm.

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I really wanna unpack in this episode

where luck is real because I think you

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know what sometimes it is but where it's

also often overstated or misunderstood

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and what might actually be happening

for those clinicians who appear to

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have it made, but in fact are working

really, really hard to stay there.

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So let's be real.

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First and foremost, there are

absolutely examples of real timing

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advantages when you decide to

start a private practice, right?

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March, 2020 hits and you

already do online therapy.

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You're already ready.

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I'd say that was lucky timing.

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Maybe you started your practice in the

middle of the peak pandemic demand.

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Now we saw more clinicians than ever begin

private practice during the pandemic, and

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it was a glorious time in a lot of ways.

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It was quote unquote, easy

to grow a practice in those

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really urgent pandemic times.

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We even talked recently about

sort of the pandemic mindset.

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And what was leading folks to

decide to seek out therapy.

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So yeah, if you decided to start a

practice in the boom of the pandemic

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times when demand was so high and people

were desperate, understandably for care.

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Yeah, I, I, I would call that lucky.

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Maybe you were trained in EMDR

right when it exploded culturally.

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Right before Miley Cyrus talked

about doing it right before it

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really took off and you were

able to take advantage of that.

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Mm-hmm.

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Sure.

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We can call that luck.

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Maybe you were the first person in

your local area or something like

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that to be trained into specific

modality or specific niche.

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Now we could go on and on.

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There are absolutely examples of getting

lucky, being in the right place at the

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right time with your business to take

advantage of what's available to you.

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What's true of these lucky timings is

that they explain quick acceleration.

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But they don't necessarily

explain longevity.

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So you can capitalize on the moment in

time, but it's if you stay there that

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we know that this went beyond luck.

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Does that make sense?

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So for the folks that started

their practice in the early

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pandemic years, for instance, yeah.

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Marketing was objectively easier.

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Demand was high.

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It was really common to have a wait list.

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And it created like it or

not, an expectation that, oh,

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marketing is kind of easy.

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Once I'm full, I'll stay full.

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If I build it, they just keep coming.

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I used to use the language autopilot

in my own marketing to talk about

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getting clients on autopilot.

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I have since stripped that

from our marketing because

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it's not as factual anymore.

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But in those early days, it

sort of created that feeling.

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It was an unusual season.

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Mm-hmm.

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And lots of folks were able

to take advantage of it.

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But like I said, luck, good timing.

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That's a moment in time.

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That's a blip on the radar.

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Mm-hmm.

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It's if you keep it there,

that something else is at play.

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Now when we say someone is lucky or got

lucky, what are we really doing there?

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I think sometimes it protects us from

comparing ourselves from looking at

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what maybe they're doing that we're not.

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Examining our own marketing, our own

decision making, asking some hard

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questions about why they've been able

to get there, and it's just easier

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to slap a label on that Facebook

post or that Instagram following

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or whatever and just call it that.

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But here's what happens there.

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When we say someone is lucky, then that

meant that their success is random.

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That they benefited from

something out there, something

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abstract that we can't touch.

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And if success is random,

then it's not replicable.

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And if it's not replicable, we

don't have to change anything.

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I think that's the danger

of misinterpreting other

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clinicians' success incorrectly.

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Is that it actually leads you to

staying more stuck than becoming

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inspired and taking more action.

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It removes agency from your ability to

be a success story because, oh, well,

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they just had something I don't have.

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Just benefited from something

I didn't have or get.

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But we know that success leaves clues.

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I've talked about that before.

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Success compounds over time.

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It's not a blip in the radar.

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So like I mentioned, as I was preparing

for this episode, I was thinking

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about some of the really successful

quote unquote lucky clinicians that I

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know, and some of them have benefited

from good timing here and there, but.

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As I thought about them at the picture of

a duck paddling came to mind, and you've

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probably heard this metaphor, but ducks

appear very calm on top of the water, but

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if you see their little feet underwater,

they are a going and a going, right?

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They are paddling and

paddling and paddling.

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And so I have the benefit of having

a bit of a different vantage point

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than most clinicians because I stay

in touch with our past clients.

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Some of them have turned into friends

that I get to voice note with you

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know, on the weekends, I see behind

the scenes and confident copy.

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I sit down with our done for you

clients in one-on-one settings.

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Like I see what's happening on a bit

of a deeper level under the water,

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under the surface, if you will.

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And you know what I see?

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This is not passive success here.

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Right.

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And so on the surface, those

clinicians you're looking at, they

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might seem elegant like the swan.

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You know, they might seem calm

and steady and unflappable, but

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underneath those people are paddling.

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And I don't mean paddling in a

super frantic way, like it's not

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like a duck only paddles when

they're running from something.

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Like these people are not frantic,

they're not chaotic, they're not hair

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on fire, but they sure are consistent.

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They sure realize they

have to go somewhere.

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That effort is involved.

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Right.

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And so that's what I wanna remind

you here is that the clinicians

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that you're seeing out there,

the Facebook posts, the whatever.

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They're not just experiencing success,

they are maintaining it actively.

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Just like getting there was

effort staying there is two.

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You wanna know what kinds of things

I'm seeing happening under the surface.

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They are adjusting how they think

about and approach their marketing.

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They are improving their

directory profiles and tracking

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their referral sources.

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They are having follow ups with

their networking conversations.

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They're tweaking their messaging as

they learn about who they are as a

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clinician and who's resonating best

with their website or their marketing.

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They're adding new modalities.

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They're updating specialty pages.

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They're being thoughtful about the

actions they take next in response to

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the market and the culture that we're in.

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I mean, I'm thinking of just

one clinician in particular.

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If I asked her what she was doing

six years ago to market her practice,

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it would look vastly different

than what she's doing today.

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There has been a sense of responsiveness

and forward movement action being taken

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for these therapists that again, appear

a very certain way above the water

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and a very different way beneath it.

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You could also think about

it like an iceberg, right?

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You see their premium fees, you see

them talk about being fully booked.

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You see their revenue.

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You see the amount of money that they're

making or that they want to make.

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You see all these success stories,

but what you don't see underneath

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is the consults that didn't convert

the fee, increased anxiety that

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they also had the website rewrite or

redesign that took months of work.

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The experimentation with

SEO and AI and social media.

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The investment that they made,

time, money, energy, whatever,

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into their marketing, the awkward

networking conversations they had,

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the pivots they made in their niche.

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Success is usually the visible tip of

the invisible consistency and willingness

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to keep going wing, and it's way too

easy to assume that only what you see

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above the surface is what's happening.

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We mistake the visible things

for the whole entire story.

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Now there's long been an idea that

once you are full, you're done.

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You've arrived, right?

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You can freeze your marketing in time.

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If only.

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That clinician I was mentioning that I'm

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She has adapted so many times.

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She has refined her point of view.

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She's gotten clearer on

what she brings to the room.

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She's updated her

language and her approach.

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She's changed her strategies as AI has

come onto the scene and SEO has changed.

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She's adjusted who she talks

to and how she talks to them.

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She's the same therapist.

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And she's doing very similar work,

but it's been this constant state

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of refinement both in who she is and

how she's putting herself out there

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and what she's doing to market it.

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The therapists who are sustaining

premium fees right now are responsive.

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They are paying attention to the industry

shifts to the client behavior shifts.

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We've been talking a lot lately about

how client behavior is different.

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They're more discerning, more skeptical.

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They're paying attention to those things.

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Cultural changes, search behavior,

and this might feel a little bit

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overwhelming, like you have to stay

on top of so many things at once.

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You might imagine yourself as the

duck with the frantic paddling under

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the surface, but there's actually a

way to do this really thoughtfully,

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and it only happens when it's

consistently invested in overtime.

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So rather than clinging to what used to

work, that strong desire to just pause

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your marketing where it is and for it

to work the same way it always has been.

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These clinicians are a picture and

an example of what it means to evolve

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and what's required to be successful.

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I've shared before 2025 was a really

interesting learning year for me because

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I was confronted for one of the first

times in my time in business with the

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fact that the marketing that I was doing

wasn't working the way that it used to.

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And as someone who does very much clinging

to what has always worked should continue

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to work, man, I had to grapple with that.

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I had a bit of a reckoning in early

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With myself and look in the mirror and

say, if you're gonna be a business owner,

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you gotta put on your big girl panties

and you gotta be willing to change.

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You have to be willing to look at the data

to respond to it and to make decisions,

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and that is what I see today's most

successful, lucky clinicians doing.

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Now, of course there's

mindset happening here, right?

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We've talked a lot about strategy

like this, willingness to

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evolve and try new things and

experiment and tweak and whatever.

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But there's also just an underlying

mindset here that I see in clinicians who

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are super, super successful right now.

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And here are a couple of those themes.

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One, they assume growth is still possible.

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They assume success is still out there.

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Deciding ahead of time that you can be

successful is absolutely fundamental

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because then you are not at the mercy

of the economy, at the mercy of your

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client's behavior, at the mercy of

whether or not someone decides to

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book with you or not after a consult,

because you've already decided

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ahead of time that this is possible.

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There are also very okay

with taking imperfect action.

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They recognize that not every single

investment of their time, energy, or

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even money is necessarily going to.

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Give them exactly what they were

hoping, but they trust that they're

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gonna learn something from it anyway.

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These clinicians are raising their

fees before it feels 100% right.

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I don't know that it ever does.

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I've heard from clinicians who

are prepared to step into the

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300 400 plus session fee range

and the anxiety that comes with

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it, but they're doing it anyway.

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They're doing things scared.

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These clinicians are also

investing in learning.

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They're deciding where their expertise

stops and where another's begins,

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and they're willing to either learn

something to fill that gap or bring

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someone on to do that for them.

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They are not afraid of investing

in their business because again,

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they know that success is possible

and they recognize that investments

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are required to get there.

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These clinicians are

also tracking their data.

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We've talked before about data.

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I will link our past episode in the

show notes about this, but data,

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data, data tells us something, and

that's where I had to have that

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reckoning back in 2025 because the

data was saying, Hey Anna, Hey Anna.

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Hey Anna.

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We need to look at this.

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These clinicians are tracking their data.

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They're paying attention to how consults

are converting or not converting.

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They're paying attention to their

website analytics and their.

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You know, SEO performance, they're

looking at numbers so that they're not

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just operating off of vibes because

how easy would it be to make long

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lasting decisions based on how you feel?

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Sometimes you feel like things are

slow, when in fact everything's okay.

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Sometimes you feel like things are okay,

when in fact the numbers would show you

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that you need to be making some changes.

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These clinicians are

open to looking at data.

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These clinicians are also

staying very, very consistent.

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Even when inquiries dip,

not if they dip, but when.

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No therapist, no practice, no

business is immune from the ups

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and downs and ebbs and flows of

inquiries and referrals and bookings.

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These clinicians are still showing up.

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They're not losing their mind.

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They're not panic hair on fire, burning

everything down and working at Costco.

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Been there, but they're

staying consistent.

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They're up for the uncertainty.

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They recognize that that's what they

signed up for, and because of that,

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marketing is part of their job.

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They recognize that they are more

than a therapist, they are a business

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owner, and that they've signed up as

a business owner to market themselves.

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This isn't a side chore or something

that they do when they have time, but

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it's part of the rhythm of running this

practice and it's what's gonna get them

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to the success that they know is possible.

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These are some of the things that

I see, some of the trends that I

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see in the clinicians who have.

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Absolutely weathered some serious

ups and downs in the last two

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years, in the last 2, 4, 6 years.

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Again, not because they are

immune to them, but they're

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not waiting to feel confident.

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They're not waiting for certainty.

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They're not blaming the market.

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They are owning their

ability to be successful.

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They are trusting themselves

and they're taking action.

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Accordingly and that mindset

that compounds over the years.

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Mm-hmm.

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You build a muscle of being able

to tolerate the uncertainty.

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Right.

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You can teach your own clients how to

tolerate uncertainty, how to expand their

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capacity for uncomfortable feelings.

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These clinicians work at

that in their business.

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I shared last week in an email

that I watched the recent

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Gordon Ramsay documentary.

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It's called Becoming Gordon Ramsay.

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It's on Netflix.

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One of my husband is traveling, which

he is doing a lot of this month.

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And leading up to my maternity leave, I

always watched the docuseries and things

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that he might not be so interested in.

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So I, I was watching the Becoming

Gordon Ramsay documentary and it's,

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it's a really, really fascinating

miniseries if you haven't watched it yet.

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A camera crew followed him

for a year as he opened up.

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Four restaurants and a culinary

school, I believe it is in one

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of the top buildings in London.

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So this was understandably one of the

largest, if not the largest project of

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his career, like truly the highest stakes.

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He was funding it himself.

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The stakes were really, really high.

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And so this camera crew follows him

around as he makes decisions and

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you know, yells at people, but is

also a really sweet father and dad.

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You get some cool glimpses into that.

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But Gordon said something really

interesting in the very first

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episode that just really stuck

with me because it hit home for

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me and I deeply resonated with it.

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He said he's still afraid even today,

that all of his success could go away.

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I mean, we're talking about a dude

with multiple Michelin stars, right?

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A global empire, massively successful,

lucky some might say, and he's still

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afraid that it could all go away.

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Now, there are two ways that that

thought could operate because

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maybe you two have felt that, and I

guarantee that those therapists that

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you admire have had that thought.

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What if it all goes away when you

reach a certain level of success?

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What if it all goes away?

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And that thought can

do two things for you.

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One, it can be destructive because it

leads you to operate out of anxiety

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and scarcity and fear because it's like

failure is always around the corner, and

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so you're operating out of that place.

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That's where it can be destructive,

but that thought it could all go away.

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I think it can also be incredibly

constructive because I think that comes

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from a place of stewardship where you are

trusting and believing that what you've

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created is real, and also recognizing that

it's not permanent, that it's not passive.

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It's about protecting what you've built,

and I think those lucky clinicians, those

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happy ducks that we see, you know, moving

along the surface, like they're probably

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having this thought and they're not

letting that thought, keep them stuck,

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but instead it is leading them to respect

their business enough to stay involved.

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To not become passive just

because things are good

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and to protect what they've

built to, to recognize and kind

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of stay humble a little bit.

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That mindset, I think is

incredibly powerful too.

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So maybe there are therapists who look

at, and you think they're, man, they're

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lucky to be where they are today.

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Maybe they started earlier.

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Maybe they stayed engaged, maybe they've

adapted, maybe they've compounded,

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maybe they just didn't give up.

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Remember that luck is that blip

on the radar, like it can open a

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door, absolutely, but consistency

is what keeps that door open.

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It's what makes continued

success possible.

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If you're looking at someone else's

success and calling it luck or

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just admiring the heck out of it.

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Ask yourself, what might

you not be seeing here?

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Where could you potentially be evolving?

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What steps could you be taking and

is there anywhere that you perhaps

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have gone passive in your marketing?

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Again, not from a place of fear,

not from a place of hustle culture.

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But from a place of engagement and

willingness and thoughtful action about

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what it takes to grow a practice in

this day and age, keeping your head

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down, continuing to paddle long enough

for these things to compound over time,

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because that lucky clinician out there,

she's not just lucky, she's responsive,

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she's invested, she's evolving.

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And the cool thing is that that

exact path is available to you too.

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Like I said, one of the best parts of

my work is this cool vantage point.

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I have this insight into other

clinicians' practices and I hope that.

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This episode provides you a little

bit more of a glimpse into what's

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going on under the surface for those

therapists, and an invitation to

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get honest about the places where

perhaps you have let someone else's

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success or luck tell you incorrectly.

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That that same success isn't

possible for you because I

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deeply, deeply believe that it is.

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Happy St.

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Patrick's Day.

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I hope this one got your gears

turning in some good directions,

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and I'll see you next week.