Marketing an online course for psychologists and therapists part 3: Promoting your freebie with Dr Catherine Hallissey

In this episode I talk to Dr Catherine Hallisey, who is a child psychologist, owner of the Reclaim Parenthood online membership, and creator of the Raising Well Behaved Kids workshop. I'm really excited to have Catherine here to inspire us as we hear about her workshops, because they've been wildly successful, and I'd really like to dive into the secrets of how she’s created that success.

The highlights

• I welcome Catherine to the podcast and she tells us who she is and who she helps 00:22
• Catherine tells us what inspired her to create her first workshop 02:03
• Catherine talks about how she promoted her in person workshops 05:15
• We discuss Catherine’s experience of setting up a Facebook page 08:16
• Catherine talks about the membership, which was sparked by the Facebook page 12:04
• Catherine tells us how she came to offering workshops, and the importance of the title 15:13
• Catherine talks about the free checklist she offers to promote her evergreen workshops, and how she uses her online community to test ideas 23:31
• We talk about the importance of building an community and building relationships on social media 28:23
• We discuss designing your ideal work/life balance 34:49
• I thank Catherine and she tells us where we can find her online 41:15
• Catherine encourages us, as psychologists, to bring our expertise and abilities to these spaces 43:17

Catherine’s Links:

Websites: 

https://catherinehallissey.com

https://raisingwellbehavedkids.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CatherineHallisseyPsychologist/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/catherine.hallissey/

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The truth is a lot of online courses do fail but that isn't because the content is bad. It is because the marketing strategy sucks. The truth is your marketing isn't a separate thing. Talking to the community you want to serve should be part of the development of the course. 

Getting to know them, giving them free resources and building relationships WHILE you build your course in the background is the key to success that most psychologists and therapists launching courses miss. 

Well not you! Because you can download my free course creation guide and get yourself on the right track to creating a course people actually want and need.

The guide talks you through the first, essential steps you must take when planning your course so you can avoid the expensive mistakes I see so many well-intentioned people making.

Get yours at PsychologyBusinessSchool.com (link in the show notes) now. 

https://psychologybusinessschool.com/creating-a-valuable-freebie-psychologist-course-creation

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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.

TRANSCRIPT

SPEAKERS

Catherine Hallissey, Rosie Gilderthorp

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.

Today I'm talking to Catherine Hallisey, who is a child psychologist, and owner of the Reclaim Parenthood online membership, and creator of the Raising Well Behaved Kids workshop. I'm really, really excited to have Catherine here today, because I think you're going to be really inspired to hear about her workshops, because they've been wildly successful. And I'd really like to dive into the secrets of how you've created that success today, Catherine. But before we do all of that, let's get to know you a little bit better. So first off, who are you? And who do you help?

It's so lovely to be here with you, Rosie. So who am I? I wasn't expecting that question. But I will start with.... so I'm a mum of five young kids, I live in Cork in Ireland, and my passion is everything to do with parenting, and child raising. And I'm really fortunate, I've managed to turn my passion into a career that I absolutely adore. So I have a therapy practice, The Parent Coaching Practice, an online membership for parents, and also I do live and evergreen workshops.

Wow. So you do a lot, you squeeze a lot into your time.

I really love the variety. I've intentionally designed my practice like this, so that I have some really, really intense therapeutic work, but also I have this lovely balance of being able to help a huge number of people in a way that's really fulfilling and easy for me, because I love it so much.

And it's so interesting to hear about the story of how you got to that point, because I know so many people listening to this would absolutely love to put out some online workshops, or to maybe create a membership, but it can feel like a really daunting task when you're starting from maybe just having a therapy practice, or even, you know, still in an employed role. So let's talk a little bit about that journey. What inspired you to create that first workshop?

So the first workshop was actually born out of my experience in my HSE role. So the HSE is similar to the NHS. And in that role as a waitlist initiative, I started doing monthly workshops for parents. So these were families who are waiting to be seen by our multidisciplinary team, and I felt that they, if they had a small bit of intervention, that it would make a big difference. And lo and behold, I discovered that I absolutely loved it. And when it came time for me to do the assessment, I found that people had made such huge progress and they already had a relationship with me, so we were able to get into deep work really quickly. And then as so many people were coming to me in my private practice asking for support with anxiety, and I simply wasn't able to help everybody. So I designed an in person workshop on anxiety, it was called building the brief. And again, I absolutely loved this. And I really identify with you know, somebody is listening, and they're thinking, how could they get started? I really get that because that, those six weeks that I was selling tickets, oh my God, it was the most anxious period of my life. You know, the irony wasn't lost on me; I was so anxious. First of all, I was thinking, oh my god, what if nobody buys tickets? What about the psychologists here? I'm doing this and they're thinking who is she to be doing this? And then once people started buying tickets, then I started panicking that it wasn't going to be good. The double imposter! And but it was just so wonderful, but that first workshop, it took me one full year to get over it. I felt that I put so much into it emotionally. And how I dipped my toe back in, it was actually charity. There were an amazing group of people locally who are fundraising to bring a family of Syrian refugees to Kinsale, my local community, and I offered to do a workshop for them. So all, all the money raised from the ticket sales would go towards this fundraising effort. And I don't know if I actually would have done it without this push. And I remember the moment; I was in France on my holidays, and I said to my husband, oh my goodness, I think I'm going to offer to do a workshop and he was like, oh my goodness, I'm not sure we can take it! Knowing what I'd gone through! But I did it and it was amazing, and the tickets sold out in four days. And I did another one the following day and they also sold out. I think it was maybe over 300 people overall, which was just amazing.

Wow. So let's think about that a little bit. So how did you promote those in person workshops to get that volume of people?

Well, the first one was, it was a, it wasn't really promoted, but because it was part of this fundraising project, everybody locally bought tickets. And then because so many tickets went within the first 24 hours everybody was talking about, have you got your ticket? Have you got your ticket? And they were all like, bumping into one another in SuperValu or Tesco saying, have you got your ticket? So those ones just went really quickly by word of mouth. And I have a very active Facebook page as well. So I just posted up on the Facebook page and maybe every couple of days, I mentioned it on Facebook. So those tickets went really quickly. And then I also did another anxiety workshop as well, that half day anxiety. And then in March 2020, I was due to have my biggest event yet, over 300 tickets had been sold for just this one night. And this was actually another promoter was doing it. I was, I was doing it, I was getting a speaker fee for it. And we all know how that story ended up. And yeah, it was such a disappointment. And I wasn't sure what to do, and you know, everything shut down. And I moved by therapy and coaching business online and I started researching, could I do it? Could I do it on Zoom? And bit by bit, I started learning more and taking courses myself and because I was enjoying learning online so much, that's probably also what gave me the confidence to do it. So my first one, so I think it was, I started doing actually a free Facebook Live every single Tuesday. Did it for maybe seven months during when everything was in lockdown. And everybody was so stressed. And I just started doing this for about an hour every Tuesday night. And that helped me build confidence with doing things live, you know, knowing that if I make a mistake, it's okay. The world isn't going to end. And it just helped me really get comfortable. And then in August 2020, I decided to launch my parenting membership. Actually forced myself to do it. I had been thinking about it for about four months, and so to force myself to do it I put a message on my Facebook page saying I was doing it. And I spent the next week questioning my sanity as I tried to get, you know, my payment system up and running. And I launched very simply, I just had a PayPal link and then people were able to join a Facebook page. And I've since moved on to Kajabi. And that's my platform now. So I use Zoom for the live sessions and Kajabi. And so I do one masterclass in there a month and one Q&A a month and we have a private members only community as well on Facebook.

Brilliant. I just want to pick up there on the fact that, you know, there'll be people listening who are thinking, Oh, my gosh, it sounds like it was so easy for her to get loads of people to come to events and to get people interested in the membership. But you mentioned that you already had a really active Facebook page. I imagine you'd been working on that for a little while?

Yeah, so the Facebook page was born, I actually didn't do that with a strategy, that started because there were so many people looking for my help, and I couldn't help them. So I, it was maybe coming from my own anxiety and bad feeling that I couldn't help everyone. So I thought, okay, what are some little things that I can do? And my, my friend just said to me one day in July 2018, he was like, Oh, my goodness, just start a Facebook page. So I did that. And I just started posting. And so that was, that was really started with no strategy. But I had a number of very lucky turns of events, you know, media work that that led to growth. And also I've always on my Facebook page, I've always just been myself. I haven't pretended to be anything. I am certainly not a perfect parent on it. And I think that that's what people relate to as well.

Absolutely. And I think when you set up a Facebook page with that intention that you're trying to serve people in a different way, and you're willing to show up, show your face, not your logo, not a meme, but actual you, and deliver value to people, then people have a reason to want to follow that. Like I could follow that because I'm going to get value from it. I think so often we set up a Facebook page or an Instagram page and our intention is to promote our services. And if that's the intention, why would anybody follow it? It just doesn't make sense, it's not what we're on social media for is it? Whereas what you created is exactly what people are on social media for. We go there for support, we go there for education, we go there for community. And it sounds like that's exactly what you built around your page. So it's not surprising, really, that when the time came, and you wanted to offer something to those people, they'd built up all of that trust in you already from all of that value that you've given them. So I'm not surprised that it took off so quickly, but I just wanted to kind of, you know, highlight that bit of the journey for people, that you already had that relationship with your ideal clients, effectively, you were already talking to them regularly.

Yeah. And there would be so much back and forth on the page as well so. And also, when I was picking workshops, they were things that people were asking me about. So rather than always answering questions about anxiety, I thought, okay, could I put something together? Or rather than always, you know, I think one big fear we all have, as parents, or most of us have as parents is, you know, are our children are resilient enough to withstand everything that they will go through in childhood and adolescence and come out the other side. And so that was another really lovely one for me to deliver, but it was really what people were searching for at the time.

Exactly. So you were responding to questions you knew people really had, because they were asking you them.

Yeah.

It's just perfect to have that relationship with your ideal clients, and then just create what they need.

Yeah. And you know, I could come up with something that I think is what they need, but if it's not what people are actually searching for, then it just becomes a vanity project for me.

Absolutely. So this sparked the membership and that's how it all began?

Yeah, the membership has been amazing. You know, so when I think about the evolution of this business, the membership has been one of the most rewarding things that I've done. So I did a founding members launch in August 2020. And that's just where I share the idea, I share the vision and invite people to come along. And then those founding members have a hand in shaping what happens as well, because I would always be checking in with them to see, you know, what's their key takeaway from every session? And that helps me see what's landing. Or it's really interesting, people who've been there from the beginning and when they have... when I hear that they've forgotten things that are core parts of the membership, I know that I need to drill down on those, I need to simplify more, I need to repeat more. So it's a two way interaction, and that's one of the huge benefits of the membership because I can constantly change and evolve, so that it's more likely to meet people's needs.

Yes, I love that about the membership model. Because in a way, it's pretty unusual to go straight for a membership, most people would start with a workshop and then go to a membership. But I'm, I started with membership as well. I started with the Do More Than Therapy membership and then later created Psychology Business School. And I think it's because that membership model does allow you to just keep building what people need. So when you feel like you're still in that phase of wanting to get to know them better, and, and work out what's the most effective way of teaching particular things, that membership model really gives you that freedom and flexibility to go, oh okay, so live workshops work better for for this sub-subject, or maybe pre-recorded might be helpful under these circumstances, and you can adjust what you're doing.

Very much so. And I think for me developing a big course, so developing a signature course feels a little bit intimidating, because a bit of perfectionism and wanting it to be just right. And that then can hold me back. Whereas if I have told myself that I'm going to show up live, I'll have my notes, and I'll just talk and just be myself, that it's so much easier because I can't think oh I'm just going to re record that, I'm just going to keep going until it's perfect.

Yeah, I always say that when people are thinking about launching, whether it's a workshop, or whether it's a membership or anything really, or a course. I always say do it live, don't try and pre-record it, because we're so prone to that micro editing of ourselves. And you just can't get away with it if you're doing it live. It's there then. And people usually give you positive feedback afterwards, which helps you with your confidence as well. But yeah, so okay, that sounds like a brilliant way to have gotten started. So that launch went well. How did you then come to be offering your workshops as well?

So in February of this year, so our schools were in lockdown again. And the schools closed, they didn't open up after Christmas. And parents were so stressed, it was our second school closure. And the first school closure was coming into the spring and summer. And, you know, there was the novelty and kids were getting outside. Whereas this school closure was really bleak. People were jaded, you know, they had been in emergency mode for so long at this point. And homeschooling was so, so tough. Every single day, my inbox was flooded with questions about this and talking about the stress. And so I developed a workshop, 'how to homeschool without losing your mind'.

I love that title.

Yeah, and it was really just about trying to make it as simple as possible and keeping the long game in mind, and that long game is your relationship with your child. You know, of course, schoolwork is important, but nothing is more important than the parent child relationship. So if I, if I had developed a workshop 'how to protect your parent child relationship while homeschooling' now that would not have worked, you know, but, but that was my, that was my kind of overall agenda was that I wanted to help people protect that. But I gave people what they wanted, which was 'I want to homeschool without losing my mind'.

I love that. I just think that's so important. I can't emphasise that point enough that we have to give people what they know they want. And then and then we can kind of put our agenda in while we've got them there. But it's so important to start with where people are at. And it just sounds like you nailed that absolutely spot on.

Yeah, and that was a really low cost one, I think it was seven euros. And the reason I went so low cost was because I just wanted to go really, really wide and just help as many people as possible with this. And it was my, it was my first big online one. So I was really nervous. You know, I was really nervous about all of the technology, I knew that, I knew the delivery would be fine, but it was the technology. Because when I'm doing this with my members, they already know me, they trust me, I trust them, we have this lovely interaction going, whereas this is my first time doing a big one with lots of people that I didn't know. And I was lucky that I had a number of radio pieces where I got to speak about this as well. And so it was, it was a really big, I don't know, maybe, maybe 400 people or maybe more. And so but I didn't evergreen, that one, I just did that one live. And I didn't, when I was recording it, I never had the intention of evergreening it because it was very much focused on school closures versus real home schooling. Y'know, so and I was quite clear about that. So like really, you know, it should be like how to teach your children at home while also holding down a job in the middle of a global pandemic without losing your mind.

I mean, that'd be a long title.

But it's more accurate. So, so that was my first foray into doing one of these big wide reach ones. And then this summer, I did the raising well behaved kids online workshop. And this one I did with the intention of evergreening. So I ran it twice, people were able to choose between two options, and what was great about that was in between, I was able to tweak based on what I had learned. And then I had a Q&A after each one. So it was a 90 minute workshop, plus the Q&A. And I stayed until every single question was answered. I answer hundreds of questions. And it ended up being, you know, each workshop it was like three hours of Q&A between the two.

Wow, that must have been exhausting!

You know, it's a funny thing. It actually wasn't exhausting, it was so exhilarating. You know, I took a picture of myself immediately after one of them because my eyes are just like dizzy. It was just so incredible. And it's material that I know so well. And I was so exhilarated because I could feel that it was bringing about change. You know those special moments in your therapy session when, you know when you just have this moment and you can feel the shift?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. And it's so incredible, and you're like, wow, this is why I do what I do. Well, I had that experience during this workshop. It was so amazing. And it was even, even during the Q&A, people were talking about that they were crying, that they were like it was really bringing up emotions, because it was also showing that yes, it's really hard and it can change. And it doesn't have to change in a hard way that feels wrong, like all of these behaviour management strategies often feel wrong. Whereas this was a gentle, nurturing way that actually is more effective. And people were so excited about that.

I can just imagine, you could feel a lot of hope, coming back at you.

Very, very much so. And so then I did a bit of editing and put it together as a package. And that's available to buy on I think it's raisingwellbehavedkids.com. So, so yeah, that's lovely. So I think it's about 560 people have bought it now. Plus, all my members have also gone through it, so over 700 people have gone through it now, and like the feedback is really amazing. So I'm very excited about doing more of this.

That's such an incredible achievement. And like you said, just to reach that number of people, and spread that message of hope to that many people. It's just something we could never ever do in person, like the online platform has made so many things possible that we couldn't dream of before.

My 11 year old daughter did an interesting calculation. She said, oh, let’s think, 700 parents. So if they have two and a half children each, and she did out the numbers, and she's like, that's over 2000 children.

Wow.

And like it was just it was, it was actually a really profound moment.

Yeah, I can imagine. Wow. And yeah, that's not even including your five that benefit from it as well.

Yeah, so it's our capacity to impact change increases exponentially when we as psychologists change how we think about our work.

Absolutely. I think if that doesn't inspire you to want to do more of this, I don't know what will.

Yes. So I have a list of, a list of these mini workshops that I want to do, these short workshops. And so this was kind of a big course, but for my next ones, I'm going to be taking district discrete topics. So I'm going to be doing one on raising a self driven child. So it's going to be all about homework. You know, the homework hell!

Oh, my gosh, yeah. I'm lucky because mine are five and three and a half, and so we haven't really got homework yet. Or she, she's still excited to like read her books, when she gets them and that kind of thing. I am not looking forward at all to having to motivate, or the other way, I was a child who was really highly motivated to do homework. And my parents actually had to dissuade me all the time from working too hard. And I'm a bit worried she might have that chip in her head. I don't know! But either way it's a huge challenge.

You never know what you're going to get with kids. And one thing about having five children is that it's made me very humble. Because I see that they come into this world, and they're fully formed. And your main job is to try not to change them too much, to guide them, and to allow them to unfold into who they're meant to be. You know, and it's, we think that so much is within our control, but it's, I think it's really about accepting who we get whether you've got the one who won't do their homework or the one who overdoes it. And then thinking about how can I protect the parent child relationship within that?

Oh I love that, and I'll definitely be buying those workshops. So I know that you use a free checklist to promote your evergreen workshops.

Yes.

How does that system work for you? How do people find that?

Well the... when I was about, when I was gearing up to do the raising well behaved kids workshop and I sat down and I was chatting with a friend actually, a psychologist, and I was saying, okay, what do people need to believe so that they can take my workshop and believe that it might work? So what's their biggest issue? And through our chat, because I was, I was quite stuck on what I should use as a freebie. And suddenly I said, oh, yeah, sure, people just want to know how how to get their kids to listen. And she said tell me, and I just like, you know, like said a number of things do, and she's like there's your lead magnet. So I just went straight onto Canva and found a beautiful template that resonated with me, that I felt I would like to download. And I just created this in a couple of hours and put it up. And what it was was, it was that bridge, that bridge to take people from where they were. They could try out one thing. And if this one thing worked, then they were thinking well maybe this bigger thing will work. So I put that on Facebook and Instagram. And so all these ticket sales have been organic as well, because I don't know how to do Facebook ads yet, maybe, maybe I will at some point. And so yeah, I just put the, put it out there that I had this free listening guide. And I often ask questions as well on Facebook, like, you know, oh yeah I put up, I'm thinking about creating a guide on getting your kids to listen, you interested? So I test everything before I create it. So this, I'm thinking about, so I had a, you know, initially when I was, when I was first thinking about doing the raising well behaved kids workshop, it was called a different name. It was, I was like, I'm thinking about creating a workshop on effective discipline, and some other thing. And like nobody really raised their hands, like maybe 30 people said they were interested. And I was like, okay, that, that topic isn't resonating. But it was actually just the title, because I knew it was a winner. You know, and I know all of us mums and dads really struggle with, with behaviour, you know, we want to have a lovely calm, happy home, but we're not sure how to do it in the everyday. So then, the same thing with the freebie, I just put up a message saying who was interested. And within maybe an hour like 100 people had said they were, so I was like, okay, I'm doing this. So then when it was ready, I just tagged everybody, you know, I just commented on everything saying you can download it here. And I sent a lot of direct messages as well, letting people know where to download it.

I just think it's such a good example of why we need to build those relationships with our ideal clients first, because then you've got people who talk to you so that you can say, would you be interested in this? And get feedback before you go off and create something. And I also think it's an important message in our personal resilience, because what I hear happening quite often is people will put out a post saying, would you be interested in this? Not that many people say yes, and they go ah, back to the drawing board, I'm rubbish. I've come up with a rubbish idea. I clearly don't know what I'm doing. And then they'll spend another year in that kind of quagmire of despair. But actually, all it took was a tweak of the title, it was just a little bit about getting the language spot on, how people would actually phrase it in their own minds. And because you were willing to kind of have those conversations, come back and try it again, with a slightly different angle on it, then you sort of hit the jackpot with it.

And actually the raising well behaved kids title, that's actually an old title. That was the name of the workshop that I was supposed to do that didn't happen because of COVID. And it was kind of tongue in cheek when I originally called it that because you know, we think well behaved kids are ones who are sitting up straight at the dinner table and are doing everything perfectly, and we think of traditional discipline. So it's kind of tongue in cheek. And then when I did it inside my membership, I called it effective discipline, it was an effective discipline masterclass. Because for me, that's what resonates. Because discipline means to teach. And effective just means what works. So what works when teaching your kids. But it just didn't resonate with people outside the membership because they weren't as used to me.

But you can't know that if you're not speaking to them. So I think there's a real message here about, you know, building up that community, and those kind of relationships with your ideal clients, and then testing these things out with them. I think if, if the listeners take home anything, I really hope it's that, that you need to do this with people rather than at them.

Yeah, the 'I'm thinking about, you interested' formula is, it's such a winner. So I will never create anything without that. And just getting to know what people are interested in, you know, so soon I'll put up a message saying, I'm thinking about creating a workshop on how to end the homework hell, you interested? And I'll see you then if people are interested, and you know, I've started sketching out my ideas, but I won't go any further without asking that question.

Yeah, I love that. And it's that genuine openness to change, that you're not, you're not asking it just for a social media like, you're asking it because you genuinely will change it if people want something different. And that's cocreation.

Very much so, very much so. And I think that, you know, it's so hard to resist the, the vanity boost of the social media likes, you know, I can feel myself slipping into it. And, you know, I have to actively pull myself out of it and keep just coming back to actually this is a relationship. It's an unusual relationship, it's online, but it is a relationship.

And I'd love people to go over and have a look at your Facebook page and see how that looks. Because, you know, there's not that many of us actually doing social media that well, I think it's hard these days to get a good community going on social media. And often as psychologists or therapists, we can kind of start to think, oh, it's not possible anymore, I can't do it. Or, you know, certainly there's a voice in my head that goes, oh, this is so difficult, I'm not sure I can do it. Or I'm not sure I can do it for this client group or that client group. But actually, if you're really listening to people, and approaching it with that kind of genuine desire to talk to them, I think that's the key to social media.

And to put up things that you genuinely find inspiring yourself. So I will often put up things that I find really funny, and I'll actually be cracking myself up and might not do well, but that doesn't matter, because it's still just me. And friends have said that they will read my page, and they say, it's exactly like talking to me.

That's always a good sign.

Which is, which is actually the highest compliment. But I get that thing about feeling it's hard, because I was never an Instagram user. And I've been trying to build this Instagram page, and I've no idea what works on Instagram. And, but, but it just, and it's like oh God, you know, it's such a slog, but I'm just gonna keep trying, keep experimenting, and if it's, if it's not fun, I won't do it anymore. So if I'm, if I'm bringing in intensity, to it that is, you know, obsessive, or self critical, you know, I'll try and, I try not to be like that.

Or because that'd be a bad start to a relationship, right?

Very much, so very much so.

Yeah, I think if we're thinking about it as genuinely wanting to connect with people, if we develop that relationship with it, then obviously, that would be a terrible friendship, or a terrible client relationship. So it's probably better to walk away and try it in a different format. And I think that's why I always say to people, you know, work out where you feel comfortable, if you feel like you can be yourself most authentically in a Facebook group, because that's a bit more closed, then focus all of your energy on that. If you feel like Instagram is the platform where you can kind of connect with the most like minded people, then focus on that, but give yourself permission to find the place where you feel like you can actually develop those relationships with people, rather than sort of trying to squeeze yourself into a shape that doesn't quite fit.

And that's a really good point. Because I know that it would make much more business sense for me to be putting my attention into a Facebook group. But it feels like it would be too much for me. It feels like it would be too much for me to manage, you know, because if somebody asks you a question, it's an open loop. And I would feel the pressure then to close that loop. You know, it's your serve and return. And if there were all of these people serving to me, and I'm not returning, I would feel, I would feel the weight of that. Whereas on my page, it's different, you know, you're broadcasting rather than having this intimate conversation.

Yeah. And you have to listen to what feels good for you. And what makes sense for the ideal clients you're working with. I had a group actually, for parents who were going through a separation over Christmas. I did it a couple of years ago, because it was a project that I was working on. And that was really, really intense. And, and it worked, you know, I'm using the air quotes, in the sense that it did well, from a business perspective, I hope that the people in that group got a lot of value from it, but it was too intense for me and I won't do that, again. I love my Facebook groups, but I have groups on topics now that feel lighter and easier for, for me, because of that exact open loop thing. I felt I couldn't be on top of all of the questions. I couldn't be on top of you know, people wanted expertise that I didn't have, so I was having to refer out to people all the time. And it was just like another job. So I think that's really valuable advice for people, you know, think about where you are going to be comfortable, and don't be afraid to stop it if you're not comfortable. If you try something and it's not quite the right thing. Yeah, we've digressed a little bit into social media, but I think it's really important because I know that when people hear about your your amazing checklist, they can tell that it's amazing. They're going to be thinking but how did you get people to see that it was amazing. And it sounds like social media was a big part of that for you.

Most of my business comes from social media. So all of my therapy work, well most of it I would, I suspect, and but I have a new filter question that might be helpful for people listening. So, you know, we all have this idea that when you have your own business, you've got to be always on and y'know you're always building, building, building and when is it enough? So my new filter question is, but what if it could be easy?

Oh, I like that.

What would the easiest day for me look like? So an example was just recently my son was playing a match in Kinsale and it was a beautiful day, but I had planned to work. And the whole family were going to the match. And my husband was like, well, do you want to come? And I said, yeah, I really want to come but I have to do X, Y, and Z. And I went into my office, and I asked myself my filter question. And I changed the schedule of what I was going to be delivering in the membership that week for this to make it easy, so that I could go to the match. And it was amazing.

I love that.

You know, and it was such a simple shift for me. And it was what's the point of being a CEO, if I can't design my own life? That's the whole reason I got into this was to be able to design my ideal work/life balance. And yet I wasn't doing it, I was choosing hard. So what if I could choose easy?

I think that's so powerful. And I think a few weeks ago, actually, I put out a podcast that was about having to make the decision, the conscious decision to design my business around the way that my brain works. Because I was forcing myself to do lots of things which were very, very stressful and overwhelming for me, because I'm just not very good at them. And I wasn't spending much time on the stuff that feels easy for me, because I just wasn't allowing myself that freedom. And actually, I do think it's one of the massive opportunities we have in independent practice to say, yeah, let's, let's design this job that I'm creating for myself, in a way that allows me to be the best version of me. And we are at our best when there's that ease there. But it's a huge mindset shift. Why do you think it is such a big mindset shift for us to do that?

I think, I think there were so many reasons for this. I think that our training is often generalist training, we have to do everything whether we really like it or not. If you work in the NHS or the HSE, you do what you need to do, what's in your contract. And then suddenly, often we start an independent practice continuing with that mindset. We may shape it to the things that we like, but not this conscious design. So right now I am doing, I'm really reimagining what my perfect week looks like. What does my perfect month look like in this season of my life? So in this season of my life, I want to be present to do playdates on Fridays. So just two weeks ago, I rejigged my schedule so now Friday afternoon is totally free. And it's so freeing, and that just that one tiny, tiny shift, I feel a lightness and an ease to the rest of my week, just because I have that.

Yeah, and I'm sure that your clients really benefit from it. Your one to ones and the people in your membership, I'm sure they picked up on that.

And I guess it then helps me be super present for the work that I am doing. And an example; I love doing dyslexia assessments, I absolutely love discovering. But I hate the reports. So I made a decision two years ago that I just wasn't doing them anymore. And it just brought so much freedom. And I was like, oh, can I really do this? Can I really say I'm not doing this anymore? And it's been amazing. And what it did then was I did that because I knew I didn't want to do it anymore. But I didn't know what I wanted to do instead. But it created space for the membership.

Exactly. So if you'd never let go of that thing, you never would have made space for the new thing. And I think we hear that so often, particularly with people who are stuck, seeing a quite high volume of client that maybe they're not getting paid enough for, and they say I haven't got time to create an online course, I haven't got time to write that book. How are you going to make the time? And things might need to shift, you might need to change your pricing strategy to make that work. I think I've talked on this podcast before, that was the journey I had to take. My prices had to go up to create some space. But it is about learning what you can say no to.

And I, I've heard you say that before Rosie about both the pricing and the space and I had a similar journey. I also had to raise my prices, and I had to get okay with that, so that then I could create space. And how it came about was It was a Tuesday night, and it was quarter to 10. And I was walking these parents out of my clinic. Yeah. And this dad, who I, who I, it was a parent coaching session, and I get on really well with him and he's in business. And he said, Catherine, just a quick question, why are you working at this time? And I was like, oh, you know, I just need to fit people in around work schedules and everything. He was like, no, no, my question is, WHY are you working at this time? And it was the way he said it. It was just this profound shift in my mind. And I was like, actually, why am I working at this time? And he, he's a business coach, as well. And he just sat down with me one day, and he said, design your week, tell me what's your vision? And then that then started me off on this journey. And, you know, he's the first one who said to me, what's your lead magnet? And I said, What's the lead magnet? I don't even know what you're talking about.

What a useful person to have come across.

Yeah. And it's just these chance conversations,

You had to be ready to listen to it as well.

Very much so.

That's a really powerful message for people and you've shared so many valuable insights in this episode. I can't thank you enough for coming on. I think there are going to be people listening who have just got light bulbs going off in their head left, right and centre about things that they want to create and things that they want to put out into the world now. And so I really want people to come and look you up and check out everything that you do on social media, go look, snoop at Catherine's landing pages, at the way that she writes for her audience, because it's all brilliant. So where is the best place for people to go and find you if they want to look you up and connect with you?

So check out my Instagram page. And what might be helpful for people with that is you'll see that I'm at the beginning of my journey on Instagram, whereas I'm later in Facebook. And you can actually even see the different way of interacting on both. So for anyone starting out, it's actually would be helpful to look at both. So it's just Catherine.Hallisey on Instagram. And it's Catherine Hallisey Psychologist on Facebook. So my website is CatherineHallisey.com. And then the workshop is Raising Well Behaved kids, you can get that on raisingwellbehavedkids.com, it's low cost, it's €29. And you can, you can just really see, I suppose how I have just taken this big pain point that all of us parents have and put it just into really simple, practical, actionable things. And you'll also see how much I love to teach it. So I will only teach something that I absolutely love doing. And I would really advise that to everyone you know, brainstorm, what are the things you a) love to talk about, and b) that people love to hear you talk about, you know, so that, and that will help you pick the perfect workshop.

Such brilliant advice to finish on. Thank you so much, Catherine. All of those links will be in the show notes. Please do go and check out everything Catherine does.

And Rosie, I just want to say one last thing. You know, we as psychologists have so much to offer. And this space is being filled by other people. Why not us? Why not bring our expertise, our ability to be with people, our ability to hold space for people, to hold space for change, and to do it in such a compassionate way. I can imagine if all of these spaces were filled with psychologists, you know how incredible would that be? So for anyone who's sitting on the fence, just do it. Just do it.

Here that? You've got your orders, do it! Perfect. Thank you so much, Catherine.

Thank you so much Rosie.

I'm sure I'll be inviting you back soon.

Thank you

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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.