When you're trying to grow your counselling private practice, it's tempting to think you have to be the best to be successful. But maybe that belief is holding you back.

In this episode, I explore an online trend of defining your service by comparing it with others. Is this a true sign of confidence or does it reveal a deeper sense of scarcity and self-doubt?

And if you believe that you have to compete and be the best, what impact does this have on your confidence, your marketing and even your nervous system regulation?

Perhaps the real key to attracting clients isn't trying to be better than everyone else. It's trusting that who you are is already enough to connect with the people you're most able to help.

Takeaways:

• Why believing you have to be the best is part of a scarcity mindset
• How comparison can undermine your confidence and marketing
• The difference between the "best" therapist and the "best-fit" therapist
• How being more yourself, rather than trying to impress everyone, can help you attract the clients who resonate with you
• Why your uniqueness is one of your greatest strengths in private practice

Reflection:

Do you believe there are enough people out there who will choose you - simply because you're you?

Spend a few moments noticing your answer. If it's "I'm not sure", my resources on niching and marketing for therapists, together with Therapy Growth Group, may help you build your private practice in a way that feels authentic.

If you're looking for practical marketing advice for therapists, private practic etips and support to attract more counselling clients, you'll find links to all the resources mentioned below.

To find out more about my short workshops, click HERE, and for Therapy Growth Group, click HERE

Setting up in private practice? Download my free checklist HERE

Need ideas for how to get clients? Download my free handout 21 Ways for Counsellors to Attract New Clients HERE

You can also find me here:

The Good Enough Counsellors Facebook Group

Josephine Hughes on Facebook

Josephine Hughes on YouTube

My website: josephinehughes.com

Keywords: therapist marketing, marketing for therapists, private practice marketing, counselling private practice, private practice therapist, how to get therapy clients, attract therapy clients, counselling business, therapist confidence, imposter syndrome therapist, therapist mindset, comparison trap, scarcity mindset, confidence in private practice, Therapy Growth Group

The information contained in Good Enough Counsellors is provided for information purposes only. The contents of this podcast are not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of this podcast. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this podcast.

Josephine Hughes disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this podcast.

So the question that I've actually been asking myself is, do I genuinely believe that there are enough people out there who choose me simply because I'm me?

Whereas I think if you can stand in the knowledge that you are enough, that is naturally going to draw people to you, the people who resonate with you.

And I'd just like to say at this point that you don't have to attract all the people to.

You don't have to attract all the clients.

Welcome to Good Enough Counsellors, the podcast for growing a private practice without the pressure to be perfect.

I'm Josephine Hughes, counsellor and creator of Therapy Growth Group, helping you get the clients you want and create the practice of your dreams.

Foreign.

Hello, and welcome to the summer series of the Goodenough Counsellors Podcast.

What I'm going to be doing over the next few weeks is sharing some shorter new episodes together with sharing some of the interviews that that we've recorded.

It's always worth hearing them again, I think, and especially if you've only started listening to the podcast recently, you may have missed them.

I hope that you'll find something that will inspire you and encourage you.

And if you do and you're not already following the podcast, just press that follow or subscribe button and then you'll get notified when new podcasts come out.

Now, today, what we're going to be thinking about is about how you can approach your marketing, especially if you are in a crowded marketplace, which is, I think, applicable to us as therapists, because we're quite often advertising alongside lots of other therapists.

And when that's the case, what can we actually do to make ourselves stand out?

Now, one of the things I've noticed, and this isn't true of the counselling community, but I see it elsewhere, is I see a couple of different approaches.

I think people who are confident in what they've got to offer are able to be very clear about how their service helps people and what they're doing and the difference it's going to make to people's lives.

And then I see a contrasting approach, and this is where people seem to be emphasising that they're better than other people by pointing out the gaps in someone else's service.

And that approach really got me thinking, and that's what this episode is about.

What is it that makes that happen and how can we think differently about it?

I hope you enjoy listening.

I really got thinking about it and I began to wonder what it is about us as people that makes us, in a way Try and emphasise how we're better than other people and what does that say about us?

And this is what I'd really like to explore with you today.

And I'm going to use me as an example, because believe me, I am not anybody who's going to sit in judgment over anyone else.

And I'm just going to tell you something that came up for me a few years ago, and it was sort of like how threatened I always used to feel if someone came into my space if they were doing something similar to me.

And, oh, my goodness, I have had to work on this for years and years and years, still working on it.

You know, I'm okay at the moment, but who knows when I'm going to fall off and, you know, end up comparing myself again with people?

But what I realized when I was actually doing some tapping on it, some eft, is I realized that I've had this unspeakable unspoken belief.

And my unspoken belief is that I have to be the best to be successful.

And that meant that I was always trying to compete with people.

And it meant I felt incredibly insecure because I thought, if I'm not the best, then people aren't going to choose me.

And actually, it's really, really nice when you can relax and think, you know what?

I don't have to be the best in order for people to choose me.

Just like to really sort of expand on that a little bit.

Because if you believe that you've got to be the best, that's just going to create what we call a scarcity mindset.

It means that everybody else becomes competition, and it feels like that there's only a few clients to go around, and you've got to really show them that you are better than everyone else.

And you sort of wonder if there's going to be enough opportunities and enough work and you're trying to prove why you're different or even, you know, why somebody else isn't enough.

But let's stop for a moment and just think to ourselves, is that belief that you have to be the best to be successful really true?

And if you think about it, clients don't necessarily choose the best therapist.

I was just talking to someone today, and they were talking about their supervisor and choosing a new supervisor and how they'd looked at one supervisor and they had all the qualifications and everything, but then they spoke to another supervisor and there was just this complete meeting of minds, and that's the supervisor that they went with.

And I think often we tend to forget that we Sort of think somehow we've got to have the best qualifications, the best training, the best experience, X number of years or whatever.

And we forget that actually what people are looking for is that connection and that relationship.

People are looking for someone who just feels right for them, not necessarily the best that's out there.

So the question that I've actually been asking myself is, do I genuinely believe that there are enough people out there who choose me simply because I'm me?

And I think when you begin to think that you have to say what other people aren't in order to show what you are, that's actually sort of suggesting that perhaps you don't believe that you are good enough, that there's enough people out there who will actually like you.

It's almost like, oh, you know, I'm not going to be very popular unless I can prove all these things.

Whereas I think if you can stand in the knowledge that you are enough, that is naturally going to draw people to you, the people who resonate with you.

And I'd just like to say at this point that you don't have to attract all the people, you don't have to attract all the clients.

There's probably lots of clients out there who wouldn't be the best clients for you.

And I think this is true for me as a coach.

I work really well with particular types of people.

I would say that I work really well with maybe neurodivergent people and I attract a lot of neurodivergent people.

I work really well with people who don't feel terribly confident.

Those are the sorts of people I want to attract because I work well with them.

Those are the sort of people who do choose me.

Now, for others, they might just think, oh God, there she goes again, going on about confidence.

And they'll choose somebody else who's different because they don't need that.

And that's fine.

And often what can happen, and it makes me smile sometimes.

I had someone recently and I've been talking about how I've.

There's a particular strategy to follow that really works well.

And honestly, I must say this so many times over and over again, and one of my clients said, oh, well, I was reading on one of the forums and someone said, this really worked.

And I tried it and it really worked.

And I thought, how many times have I told you that?

But sometimes, you know, they need to hear it from someone else and that's okay because ultimately what's happening is something's working for them, and that's fantastic.

You know, and if you can be expansive, if you know that you're enough, you know that that's all right, that it's okay for people to be helped by others, that doesn't mean that you're not good enough.

It's.

It just means they needed to hear it said in a different way, and that's absolutely fine.

And I think we can so easily get sucked into this scarcity mindset where we think, oh, there aren't enough people around.

But I honestly think that it's because we're thinking I am not good enough to attract the people who are actually out there.

And I think just in the same way that I'm talking about my possible clients in terms of counsellors who might come to me, let's just think about the clients who might be coming to you.

When someone comes across a profile or a website and they're reading it and they choose someone, yes, qualifications may play a part in that, but actually it's because, you know, they might read something that that particular therapist has said and they might think, yeah, this really speaks to me.

This person really gets me.

This person understands who I am.

I like the way they explain things.

I think I'd feel comfortable talking to them.

So just as I might attract my particular clients, I think you can attract your particular clients as well.

You don't need to worry about all the clients.

It's thinking about the clients who will really love to work with you.

I'm just going to say in passing at this point that this is how I can help you with things like my niching workshop that I'm running on a regular basis, my beyond the Basics course, which talks about different aspects of your outreach to clients and how you can write and how you can reach them.

And also it's a lot of the work that we do in therapy growth group.

So I'm going to put all those links in the show notes.

You'll be able to have a little look at them, because that's really what I love to help you with, is helping you be more you so that you can really stand out to the clients who'd love to work with someone just like you.

So what I've sort of come to realise in thinking about this is that actually the best way for me to be is to be myself.

I don't need to put others down in order to market myself, because I can just be me and I will attract the people who want to work with me and who I resonate with.

And I've stopped sort of Thinking that I'm some sort of weirdo who must be very different from everybody else.

And that means that somehow I have to prove myself.

What I've come to realise is, yep, I am quite quirky.

Yep, I probably am, whatever you want to call it, a geek or a nerd or neurodivergent.

But that's okay, because there's lots of other people who that will speak to who'll either be like me or just think that that's the approach that they want.

And it's okay just to be me because that will bring in enough people.

There's no need to prove myself.

I don't need to compete with others, and most importantly, I don't need to be like them.

I can be me, and that is good enough.

I think it's about trusting that who you are is enough, and your people will find you.

And whether you're a therapist or a coach or you're somebody who's marketing an online course, be you.

That's the most important thing.

Be as much you as you can possibly be, because that will attract people to you.

I always remember my tutor saying, you can't take someone.

You can't take a client somewhere that you haven't been yourself.

In other words, in terms of your personal development, if you haven't got there yourself, how can you help your clients to get there, too?

And I just think it's worth asking yourself that when you're choosing someone, whether it be a therapist, a coach, or a supervisor, is this someone who's going to be able to help me grow and develop in the way that I want to grow?

So let's just circle back to that belief that I was talking about, about I have to be the best to be successful.

And I still sometimes get caught out by that belief, especially when I find myself comparing myself with other people and I'm feeling insecure.

But I have to keep coming back to the truth that the more I am me, the happier I feel.

Actually, you know, trying to be a inferior version of someone else doesn't really work.

It doesn't really fit with who I am.

But when I can be me, that really enables me to feel joy, because I feel fulfilled being me and feel joyful speaking out in this podcast, for example.

So I don't have to be the best to be successful.

I just need to be me.

And I don't need to resent other people's success because it just goes to show that, you know, there's people out there.

It works.

I think we know with with the work that I do that, you know, we don't differ hugely in what we're saying.

You know, marketing is essentially about the same sorts of things.

You know, it's things like trying to work out who it is you're trying to serve, trying to communicate that to them, learning different ways of being visible to them.

It's all the same stuff.

But I think it's about choosing the person who you just feel you could get alongside and get along with.

And it's not about trying to prove anything, it's just there.

So if you want to work with me, that would be great, but if you want to work with someone else, that's great too.

And maybe I'm just going to be that voice occasionally that helps you to see things a little bit differently to the way your coach has said it, and that's fine.

I'm quite happy with that because the most important thing, as far as I'm concerned, is that therapists are learning how to market themselves, how to get out there in the world so that people who are looking can find us.

Because I think there's a lot of people looking who never actually choose therapy in the end because they don't really know it's there.

So that's my mission, is to help more therapists be more successful at reaching clients.

And frankly, if there's another coach who helps you do that, I don't mind, because the overall mission is that, you know, we get out there and we help people to heal.

That's what it's really all about.

And the rest of it is just ego.

So I'm going to finish there.

Thank you so much for listening and I'll be back next week, possibly with an interview.

I'm not quite sure when this is coming out, or possibly with another of my sort of ramblings.

Thanks so much for listening and bye for now.

Thanks for listening.

Do come and join my Facebook community.

Good enough counsellors.

And for more information about how I can help you develop your private practice, please Visit my website, JosephineHughes.com if you found this episode helpful, I'd love it if you could share it with a fellow therapist or leave a review on your podcast app.

And in closing, I'd love to remind you that every single step you make gets you closer to your dream.

I really believe you can do it, Sam.