Badass Therapists Building Practices That Thrive
Welcome to Badass Therapists Building Practices That Thrive, the ultimate resource for mental health professionals ready to step into their power, grow their practices, and create a career they love. I'm Dr. Kate Walker, a Texas LPC/LMFT Supervisor, author, and business strategist who's here to show you the path to success.
Formerly Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses, we’ve rebranded because, well, we’re way too big for Texas now! This community of badass therapists is growing nationwide, and we’re here to help you create a career and practice you love, no matter where you are.
Every week, you'll get practical advice, proven strategies, and motivation to help you build a thriving practice—one that gives you the freedom to live your life on your terms. From mastering marketing to designing scalable systems and becoming a clinical supervisor, this podcast is your roadmap to leveling up without burnout.
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Badass Therapists Building Practices That Thrive
149 Creating Profitable CE Courses: What Topics Actually Sell?
Get your step by step guide to private practice. Because you are too important to lose to not knowing the rules, going broke, burning out, and giving up. #counselorsdontquit.
no-transcript. Welcome to your Tuesday coaching and it's time to let everybody in so we can learn what topics are actually good topics for continuing education, courses that you want to sell and make some money on. I'm going to approve our AI notes. So interesting story. I'm giving an intensive for our Step it Up members. Everybody else can join too. They just have to pay for it. But our Step it Up members get it for free, as well as the replay. It's called Teach, train, get Paid, and I don't know when this will air as far as a podcast or YouTube, but for our members they're going to get it next month and I'm pretty sure we're all going to kind of be in the same boat.
Speaker 1:And that is sort of flopping around a little bit because of the economy right now. And so I'm seeing a lot of things online in our Texas counselors creating badass businesses online and our Texas counselors creating badass businesses Facebook page and our Texas supervisor coalition Facebook page People looking for ways to number one, increase client flow. But that's another training. I did that in June, so step it up members, you guys should get access to that any day now, if we don't already have that for you, but adding an additional stream of income when times get slow, and to add to that, summer's generally slow for most counselors, I mean I realize there are probably some niches that stay pretty consistent over the summer. Maybe there's a little bit of a difference with cash, pay and insurance and things like that. But overall what I and other folks who are sort of working with people trying to build their practices are noticing everybody's going. Where have all the clients gone?
Speaker 1:So the intensive I did in June was about marketing and incorporating simple tools, not starting all over using what you've got to make sure your marketing is up to date with what SEO and the Google machine are doing. Today is all well. Actually, this whole month is about getting your courses online and when I do the intensive in a couple of weeks it's going to be so July, july 23,. It's going to be two hours and I go through everything with screen shares and telling you you know like what software I use, all the things. But what I notice is things. But what I notice is sometimes it's confusing, because people are asking you know how do you do an online course, but what they're really asking is you know how do I market the course? So I'm trying to be really, really careful that when we talk about building a course it's going to be a little different than how to market a course. But not today. Today I'm actually going to talk about ways to make sure that you're creating a course that you can make some money on, because it's a lot of work.
Speaker 1:I mean the hardest part is, you know, making sure it's nice and edited. And I think you know the general consensus in the industry is sorry about that ding, turn that off. It's maybe two hours for every 30 minutes. I know that's sort of my rate. I mean it can take a while to get things edited for public consumption, but it starts with this what topic should you choose? And I know a lot of folks who talk to me and ask me questions.
Speaker 1:They kind of have it backwards. They're like I have this thing and I'm very passionate about it and I want to turn it into a course which is, you know, great and I want to respect your passion and it may not sell. And you've heard my metaphor before. It may be like opening a Canadian restaurant in downtown Brenham I don't know and maybe Brenham's full of Canadians, but if you're not creating a product where there's already an established market, you could have the most beautiful, well-edited course on the planet and put in hours and hours and hours of work and nobody's going to buy it. Right, it's like writing a book. If you write a book about a topic that doesn't have a huge following, it becomes a passion project, which is also a beautiful thing. But with courses it's a little bit different, because you are producing a thing that you're hoping will improve the lives of your fellow counselors, that you're hoping to make some money on.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to give you two ways that I recommend that you do this. And of course, we're going to start with my favorite, which is chat, gpt. So of course, of course, we're going to go to chat and we're going to see what the chat machine says. So I will share my screen and if you are listening to me on a replay, I will, of course, talk you through what I'm doing. I'm also letting more folks in, just making sure I get everybody All right. So the thing about chat is the prompt. You have to make sure you give it a good prompt. So I'm going to say I'm just going to start off with kind of a generic prompt what topics would be great for a continuing conversation.
Speaker 1:Education course that sells well, all right, just very generic. Let's see what it says. Here's the real deal answer. I love it. It's got that little. I don't know what it's being sassy.
Speaker 1:Ce courses that sell well hit the sweet spot between compliance requirements, hot button trends and practical tools therapists can use immediately. Bonus points if they help therapists feel more confident, avoid liability or make more money. I'm actually really surprised by this response because it's dead on. So if your passion project meets requirements for licensure or has practical tools for therapists, then yeah, you're going to do well. But if it doesn't, if it's just kind of you giving factual information about how to you know let's and I always use this as my example how to process grief over the holidays that might not be something that somebody, even a mental health professional, gravitates toward. If it doesn't give them a CE at the end, or if it doesn't give them practical tools and if it doesn't give them a way to do more after they're done. So high-selling CE course topics, ethics that don't suck, supervision hello trauma, informed care and private practice essentials, cultural competency, clinical documentation, couples counseling skills, new and emerging therapists, niche specialties and AI tech and automation.
Speaker 1:So as I'm looking at that, I would, even if you were going to prioritize these, always start with the courses that are required. If you and that is continuing education, that is, you know, health and Human Services is the agency that authorizes, pre-approves the human trafficking course. So it's not BHEC, it's not our licensing, it is Health and Human Services. So if you could get with them and provide the human trafficking course? If you have a relationship with the justice system in your community and you develop an anger management course or something about sobriety that a judge would mandate for someone who is having to do certain things in order to stay out of jail those types of things that are required for licensure or to keep you you know our parenting classes, same thing If it's keeping you compliant with a judge's order, then you're going to have a course that's in high demand. Remember, it's basic economics. I had to take economics in high school. Supply and demand is all I remember from that class. So if there is a high demand and you are giving the only completely online course and it offers a certificate at the end and you have a relationship with the person like, for instance, the judge who is doling this course out or mandating it. That's a good course.
Speaker 1:If I'm looking at the second priority here, I would say, for instance, trauma-informed care and couples counseling skills and AI tech and automation. Now I'm just going to do couple counseling and trauma-informed. These are probably my least favorite. Trauma-informed care and couple counseling those are absolutely needed but they are not something that, unless you can give someone a CE or a tool to download, those might actually come in last and kind of lean more toward the passion project. Casey, you typed the same thing in and got a different response. Thank you, absolutely. Casey makes a great point.
Speaker 1:This chat knows what I do for a living. It absolutely knows the content that I create and I've hidden my menu over here. So, yes, if you type it in your and that's why we got another way we're going to search. So as chat learns you, it will give you these answers. So if you're giving it lots of things about your passion project, it's going to say no, no, that's a wonderful idea. And you're like always. I went to a training I think I told you guys about it and it was like a $12 training on AI and one of the things the presenter said was always ask the question in another way Like, why is this a terrible idea? And then chat will start to give you kind of that counterpoint.
Speaker 1:All right, so then I guess my second is anything having to do with documentation and private practice, and this is just for me gleaning the conversations, gleaning the information from the conversations on social media. So, looking at private practice essentials, clinical documentation, ai, tech and automation niche specialties If you offer a certification, a legit certification that someone can get by taking your course, that's in high demand. So it always goes back to supply and demand. So yay, thank you, good job AI. You actually made me skip one of these things because it knows me, it reads my mind. So, if it has anything to do with a requirement, continuing education and if you're a supervisor, remember your courses are like the organic section in the supermarket. Your courses will give someone that 50% that will help the course taker meet their 50% requirement. And then, if you can get on board with Health and Human Services, remember that's the only agency that still approves providers for that human trafficking course BHEC, lpc, lmft, all that they don't approve anything.
Speaker 1:All right, yes, obviously you could go to Google and ask the same thing, but I went ahead and I'm going to take you to. Am I still sharing? Y'all can see my screen still, right, yay, no, yeah, okay, so we're going to. This is called vidIQ, so I have a YouTube channel and so this is. You know, I don't have an affiliate link for this, I don't work for them, they don't work for me, but vidIQ offers suggestions based on, of course, what it knows about me, and so this is a good place to go.
Speaker 1:Also, if you are offering, like you're just like Kate, I just want to offer some CE courses, all right, well, let's look at what people are interested in. So, if you're not offering a certification, if you don't have a passion, if you're not networking with judges saying, give this anger management course, then go here or a place like this and you see these very high conversations that change lives, connecting with clients. That's desirable. So if you had a catalog of CEs that met these kind of had these topics navigating career paths with purpose I don't know what that is Engaging purpose, I don't know what that is Engaging community conversations Don't know what that is. Financial freedom for mental health pros Well, how do you make that into a CE? Well, incorporate ethics. Explain the ethics of a no-show policy. Explain the ethics of charging someone if they no-show a first appointment of charging someone. If they no-show a first appointment, explain the ethics of charging a fee at all.
Speaker 1:I see a lot of stuff out there about people who want to offer packages and bundles. What are the ethics behind that? If somebody doesn't want to come anymore, or if they're done mentally but they still have six sessions left right, what else left right? What else? Mastering the art of supervisor, support, unpacking, connect and all of these things you could dump into ChatGPT and say, give me bullet points for a continuing education course. So if you are starting from scratch or you had a passion project until you heard my voice and then you're like, oh, I'm not going to do my passion project anymore, then you might be starting from scratch.
Speaker 1:What I recommend for chat GPT, if you're going to use it, is treat it like your Wharton MBA graduate, right? You're going to say, hey, here's the topic MBA graduate. Right? You're going to say, hey, here's the topic bullet point this. And I need one and a half to three hours of words that I can say for a video presentation that I want to sell online. Once you have that now we've got something to work with.
Speaker 1:Right, if you're still kind of beating your head against the wall with I want to offer trainings that I can sell, you've got to get past this block, this idea that it's got to come from inside you. I love you so much, I want you all to succeed, but what you want to sell, that's like me saying I'm a good cook, I'm not right. I don't want you to eat my spaghetti or whatever. It's not good. So find a way, find a recipe. That doesn't mean you're cheating. This doesn't mean that you're plagiarizing, right. It's like in music you can't patent the 12 bar blues, right. It's just everybody plays the 12 bar blues. They just put different words and different solos in there. That's what you're doing.
Speaker 1:So going to something like ChatGPT or vidIQ then saying, hey, this is the idea I want, let's see transforming mental health practices with innovative strategy. Let's just grab that one, because that sounds kind of boring and nebulous. I have no idea what that is. So let us say, copy paste, give me an outline for a, let's say, one and a half, 1.5 hour CE course, and I'm going to make sure I say delivered through video, because, depending you know if you're doing something where and I used to do this.
Speaker 1:I used to sell CEs that were basically other people's stuff, like National Institute of Mental Health, so they would download an article and then I would sell the exam or the quiz, the quick quiz, and the CE. That's okay, you can do that. You don't have to come up with all original material. You can say, hey, read this article, I'm going to test you over it and then give you the CE. I don't recommend you do that anymore. It's I don't know that's. It's sort of like what the American, what is the ACA Journal? Remember when we used to get paper magazines and it would always have a CE that you could. If you filled out all the stuff and you mailed it in, you would get the CE. Well, they didn't write that article. Somebody else wrote that article. They were just the CE provider of record. All right, so let's see. So I'm going to say video.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's why I went down that tangent, because if you did something in print, you'd have to be mindful that about 6,000 words is an hour, and that's one of the things regarding ethics. Right, if you're going to provide a CE course hour for hour, you've got to have one hour is one hour. If you do it via print. There's nothing really in the rules about print. So, looking at NBCC, their requirement is 6,000 words. Written words is about one hour. That's why it's very complicated. When you're like, okay, well, I'll just offer a transcript of a video as my CE, well, it may not be 6,000 words, so, but that's a topic for another day. So here we go. Give me an outline. Oh, absolutely, course overview. Okay, so, it's still a business course. Okay, so, it's still a business course.
Speaker 1:And I was kind of skeptical for a minute, because you really can't call it a CE if it doesn't address sort of counseling and client care, right, but here's improved client outcomes, all right. So we've got objectives, we got our outline. It's still a lot of work, isn't it? But you see, it even gave you a minute by minute breakdown and then the add-ins, which are not optional. I don't think it's. The board doesn't get into your business about whether you offer a quiz. If it's an asynchronous, I offer a quiz. I think that just sets you apart. And then we'll talk about systems that deliver a CE certificate, All right. So that's, I'm going gonna stop the share and take your questions. Maybe stop the share there, we go all right now I'm gonna hit pause.