Show Notes

Kayla: Welcome back to the Designer Practice Podcast and I’m your host Kayla Das.

Do you aspire to write a book as a therapist someday, but haven’t the slightest idea where to start?

As an aspiring book writer myself, I understand the mindset blocks, fear, and ultimate procrastination that comes with writing a book.

That’s why I’m so excited to have Carly Hill, Licensed Clinical Social Worker, business strategist, and author of Therapreneur, on the show today to discuss steps and strategies for how to write a book as a therapist.

Hi Carly! Welcome to the show. It’s been a minute, but I’m so glad to have you back on the show.

Carly: I know. Has been a minute. It’s been, what, almost a year?

Kayla: you’ve actually been my first guest and that was like two years ago.

Carly: Two years. Where is the time?

Kayla: Yes, two years ago. It was March 2023. That’s when the Designer Practice Podcast started. So, yeah, and now it’s April 1st. So, we are over two years into the podcast. So, it’s been two years since you’ve been on our show.

Carly: I love it. Well, thank you for having me back.

Kayla: And for anyone who hasn’t listened to Carly’s previous episode, it’s episode 4: The Difference Between a Coaching and Therapy Practice. It was a great episode, and I’m so glad to have you back to discuss how to write a book as a therapist. As I know, there are many therapists listening who are aspiring to be a writer someday.

Carly: It is a hot topic. As therapists, we can do so much. Writing a book, being an author, being a podcaster, being a course creator, we can do all of those things. So, it’s something that’s very close to my heart, that I love to talk about.

Kayla: That’s amazing. So, Carly, before we dive into today’s episode, please introduce yourself, where you’re from, and tell us a little bit about you and your practice journey.

Carly: Yes, so I’m Carly Hill. As Kayla said, I lived in sunny South Florida. I’m a licensed clinical social worker. And my journey started in community mental health. I did a lot of play therapy. I actually got into social work for the kids. They were always my passion. I had nine to five therapy jobs. Worked in some brick and mortars. I did neurofeedback and biofeedback for a while. I started my own private practice. I actually moved on to coaching other therapists and helping them start their private practice.

I did a lot of hypnotherapy and energy healing. I’m a Reiki master and I did tarot readings and all of that fun stuff in my practice. And then I moved into coaching because I was really studying the online industry around that time when I became an entrepreneur. And I was seeing a lot of coaches and I was like, well, what is the difference between therapy and coaching? Like nobody really teaches us that in school. And I was also curious. Well, how are these coaches all so successful and what do they know that we don’t know? And this is not fair. I went to years and years of school. I have certifications, every letter of the alphabet, no offense to you, but I feel more qualified to do what you’re doing, but you’re making all of this money and you’re leveraging your time. I was really craving freedom.

Simultaneously, I recognize when I did understand the difference between therapy and coaching that I actually was coaching and my quote unquote private practice. I mean, I’m a therapist by trade and I had a private practice, so I thought I was doing therapy. But the reality was I was coaching. So one thing led to another. I started creating courses, digital products myself, and then I’m a natural teacher at heart. Anything that I learn and implement in my own life and my own business, I teach. And that’s when the Therapist to Coach Accelerator was born.

My mission is to just help therapists buy back their freedom, their flexibility, their security outgrow the office, because like I mentioned, there’s so much that we can do as therapists, other than just trading dollars for hours, getting paid when our butt is in a therapy chair. Having one-to-one sessions. There is a time and a place in a space for therapy, but we can also do so much. We can be a public speaker. We can be an author. We can be a podcaster. We can create digital products. We can create courses. We can do all of these things. And so that’s what I’m doing myself, and I’m also simultaneously guiding hundreds of thousands of therapists through this process as well.

Kayla: That’s so amazing. So, first of all, tell us what it was like writing a book as a therapist. I mean, were there any mind blocks, fears, or situations that arose for you when writing the book? And how did you overcome those?

Carly: 100%. First off, I just have to say, writing a book has been on my bucket list. I mean, I dreamed of writing a book since I was a little girl. Of course, I had no idea what I was going to write a book on. You either have it ingrained in you or you don’t that you want to be an author and you crave to be an author and of course timing is a huge piece of this. And maybe it hasn’t clicked and dropped in exactly what you’re supposed to write about yet.

But the first feeling I felt was like, relief that I was actually completing this mission that was deeply ingrained inside of me. And then fears came up because I’m like, okay, I’m, I’m doing it. I’m writing the book. I’m going to become an author. How am I going to do this? How am I going to birth this book? How am I going to get all of these thoughts out of my head on to paper? So it was a bit overwhelming at first, but I had support along the way, which I highly recommend.

One of the biggest struggles for me was rereading my sentences over and over and over again because of the type A perfectionism in me. And then I was like, I’m never going to get this chapter done because I would just keep rereading this one paragraph and it would take me for forever. And so, I was working with a book writing coach. I was working with a whole team of editors, proofreaders, book writing coach. And she said to me, Carly, I need you to just give me your shittiest rough draft version. I need you to just get it out on paper. And she gave me a permission slip for it to not be perfect. And I needed that so badly to just give her my shittiest work, basically. And when somebody says that to like a type A person, like, our C or D work is probably more like a B plus work, right? But I needed that to keep moving the needle forward in my writing journey. And then it gets easier after you write your first chapter to you kind of start to get in the groove.

I think another thing that really helped me was having deadlines, because there’s always an excuse that we can come up with. Everybody’s busy. But I would make sacrifices on weekends or I would be up late, writing my book because I had to hit that deadline working with my book writing coach. Had I not had that deadline, I probably would have pushed this project off much longer, but it only took me six months, start to finish to get this book out, which is fairly fast. And it was very doable while also simultaneously being a very busy entrepreneur myself. 

Kayla: I love that. And I can’t remember if I mentioned this on the podcast before, but that’s one of my goals as well as to write a book and I’ve started it, but like many writers’ kind of put it to the side because, you know, time happens, right? There’s always a reason not to do something. Especially for writing a book. And procrastination sets in because it’s so much work.

But I know that, and we’re going to talk about this at the end, you actually have a program that teaches people how to go through all of these. And yeah, having that mentorship, having those deadlines, having that support, that person to give you permission to not have to put out perfect work. Because that’s why you have a team so that they can edit the work. By the time it actually goes out to the world, it will be quote unquote perfect. And I say quote unquote because I’m sure there’s always a typo. I’ve even read books that had a typo, but do people really care? No, not really.

Carly: Right. Yeah, I found a major typo in my book. It’s kind of funny. I got vitamin C and vitamin D mixed up. And I’m like, how many thousands of people read this little typo, but you can just fix those things, right? And that went through proofreaders and editors and they missed it too, like, It just happens.

Kayla: Yeah. So, I know one thing for me that stops me from finishing my book is I write a page here and there, but then I leave it for like months on end. How did you manage your time so that you could finish your book within that six-month period?

Carly: I think this came from working with a team and having a very strategic process. So, the very first thing we do is actually the back cover copy of your book. Then we write your table of contents for your book so you know exactly what your chapters are. And then you have deadlines. You’re writing a chapter a week. And you have to hit that because you’re going to have your book in your hand on x, y, z date. And you want your book in your hand in x, y, and z date.

And I was also in a group. So, I’m doing this alongside other authors. and they’re writing a chapter a week. We’re responsible for giving each other feedback on each other’s back cover copy. I had to have my back cover copy done so that my colleagues and peers in the program could edit it for me.

So, I think the accountability plays a huge role in the process of becoming an author when you want to get it done in a certain time. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with picking it up here and there when you want it. But if you say to yourself, this is the year that I’m going to write my book and I do want to hold it in my hands by this date, you need to have the structure in place.

Kayla: Yeah, I appreciate that, and I agree with you 100%. So, I know for many people, the not knowing how to write, edit, and publish a book stops them from even trying. There’s so many steps along the way. What steps did you take when writing, editing, publishing your book?

Carly: So, the first part is writing, right? Like, a lot of people get writer’s block, but nobody really gets speaking blocks, or they get less of that. So, there’s many different tips and strategies that you can use to get over writer’s block and start to get in the flow and the groove.

And one of the things that helped me was actually just speaking into my phone and doing voice memos and just kind of free form talking instead of trying to put my fingers to the keyboard and type out my chapter. I would just speak and then I could change that and translate that into what I was going to type.

So that’s helpful as far as the editing process goes and the proofreading process goes. This doesn’t have to be us. This shouldn’t be us. It is to a certain extent. So like we’re going to write our first chapter, we’re going to do a once over and we’re going to catch things before we would send it to the proofreader and the editor.

And you will be like, so sick of reading your own work, I was like, if I have to read my book one more time, I’m going to pull out my hair. And then a long time went by and I actually will pick it up sometimes and I’ll reread things and I’m like, wow, that was good, like I actually enjoy it. But when you’re in the thick of writing your book, like you are rereading it constantly. And you can’t be your own proofreader and editor because you will miss things no matter how many times you reread it. It needs to go through multiple people’s eyeballs. And there’s professionals who can do this for you. And it’s also going to help you speed up the process tremendously.

Same thing with your front cover, the graphic design. And there’s a lot that goes into this on just the logistical side too, like the margins need to be a certain length and your cover photo needs to be a certain pixel, especially depending on where you’re going to put it for Amazon and your pages need to stop at this margin. If you can just let everyone else do that job and you can just focus on the words that you’re typing and the message that you’re trying to get through, it takes all of the headache. And leg work out of a process that could be much more daunting if you try to take on all of that yourself.

Kayla: I think that’s really great advice, and this goes back to what you said before. Put out your crappiest work and just type it all out. And I know that’s how I even do like podcast scripts and everything. When I create a podcast script or even a blog, what I do first is just write all of my ideas down. I don’t even look for grammar or spelling, half of my blogs tend to have a lot of like red underline under them because it’s all spelled incorrectly. And then after you have all of it down, then edit it. Obviously, everything is not going to sound great, but now you have the content down and now you can go through it and edit it. And that goes again with that perfection, looking through every paragraph and going over and over and over. That will certainly stop you from writing a book, starting a podcast, starting a blog, whatever it is that you need to write something for.

Carly: Yeah, just get it out of your head, onto the paper. In our last cohort of my book writing program, we had a therapist who was over-writing and her chapters were extremely long. So, she had the opposite of writer’s block. But this can also be a problem where you’re being too wordy. But had we had said you need to trim it down. You’re being too wordy. She would have been hyper focused on that and she probably wouldn’t have gotten enough words on the paper. So instead, it was just write, just let it flow. Write as much as you want and just have these really long chapters and then the editors help you pare it down. 

Kayla: No, I love that. A hundred percent. One tip, that I’ve actually started with my book as well, is if you’re someone who loves to write blogs. A lot of the blogs you put out can be the foundation of your book as well. So sometimes people think, like, what do I got to write about? Well, if you’re someone who’s constantly putting out, you know, 500, 1,000-word blogs and they’re all around the same topic. You can pull lots of that because a lot of that comes from a process or a system that you want to talk about. And that can be the basis. And I know some therapists who aspire to write workbooks. I tell people, well, why not create individual worksheets? You can even sell them on Etsy or sell them on your website. And individual sheets that eventually you can start creating and adding into a book instead of waiting for that one day where you want to just create a book and now you’ve got nothing to start from.

Carly: Exactly. Yeah. Meet yourself where you are. Just start with what you have and allow every little piece to be part of your journey that can come together to be a finished product.

Kayla: I love that. So, if you were to write a book again– actually I should ask you, do you plan to write another book?

Carly: I think I will. I don’t know when and I don’t know exactly what it will be on, but I have a feeling I’m going to write a book on money. Something around money mindset, overcoming money blocks. But it’s not the right time for me yet. Everything hasn’t fully dropped in, but intuitively there’s another book inside of me.

Kayla: So, when you do write this book again, what would you do differently this time around?  

Carly: I would one, give myself permission that it does not have to be perfect. I would not reread as much as I’ve reread the first time.

I think it would be a more seamless process for me, knowing that I can trust in the editors and the proofreaders. I probably reread so much, which is why when I sent it off to them, they came back and they said like, wow, this is really good. I’m actually scared because I don’t have that many edits to make. And I was trying to do their job. So, I think I would trust in the process more and I would just allow it to flow through me. I would allow myself to make more mistakes so that it could maybe be a less stressful process. And maybe I could do it even faster.

Kayla: I hope so. That’d be great. And then maybe you can get it done in three months. And then your next one in a month.

Carly: That’s typically how it goes, right? That’s how these professional authors have shelves and shelves of books because it just becomes muscle memory and easier for them. And they do trust the process and they are in the flow.

Kayla: Yeah, for sure. So, do you have any additional advice, insights, or tips for listeners about how to write a book as a therapist?

Carly: Yes, when you said you had a tip it made me think of a tip that I also got about the difference between showing and telling when it comes to writing. And this goes actually for anything you’re doing, whether you’re writing a blog, you’re writing a social media post. Even, as we’re sitting here recording this podcast, the more descriptive we can be, and we can actually show people what we mean, the more they’re going to feel what we’re trying to say.

So, for example, I remember I was writing about when I was in community mental health and I was just over it at the time and I was like, I was dreading going into work every day. And my book coach is like, that’s you telling me. But I need you to show me, I need you to paint a picture for me. So that’s really what it comes down to is painting a picture and describing.

So, then I would describe the situation. I would wake up every morning, I would put on my professional clothes and I would walk through those doors into a room with a whole bunch of desks smashed together. Nobody had their own desk and I had a view of the dingy parking lot. We had these old fluorescent lights above us. Only our supervisors had offices. We all shared a copy machine. I’m just like explaining even setting the tone and anybody who maybe has been in community mental health, they’re like, oh, yeah, like that was my office, right?

So, I would say the difference between showing and telling and a good place to practice that is social media. It’s like if somebody is a weight loss coach, for example, and they’re writing a social media post. They would say you’re frustrated because you don’t have any clothes that fit you, so then you don’t want to go to dinner. That would be them telling. But them showing would be, you’re standing in front of your closet, staring at all of your clothes, pulling an outfit off, one by one, off the hanger, stretching it, maybe putting it on, looking at yourself in the mirror, hating it, throwing it on the ground, stomping your foot and saying, that’s it, I’m not going to dinner.

So how can we describe and paint the picture? And this is really powerful and I would say too, like, okay, a great place to practice is social media, but pay attention to how other creators and authors are doing this when you are reading yourself. Oh, wow. I see what they did there. They didn’t just tell me this, they really showed me this, they described it.

And then you’ll start to pick it up in your own work.

Kayla: I love that, those are great tips. So, Carly, you offer a program to help therapists write their books and get it out in the world. Can you tell us a little bit about your program, when your program is opening up again for registrants, and just basically how they can sign up and work with you?

Carly: Yeah. So, it’s really exciting. We open once or twice a year, depending on the demand, but it is to help therapists, healers, conscious entrepreneurs take this journey of becoming an author and publishing oftentimes your very first book. It is an A to Z start to finish all-inclusive program. So, in six months, From the time that you start with us, you have your book in your hands. We take a lot of the headache out.

So, you meet weekly with your book coach. There’s one to ones, there’s group sessions, there’s working sessions, there’s an editor, there’s a proofreader, there’s a graphic designer. So, you’re getting the whole entire team.

We have somebody that’s called a book shepherd that actually uploads your book for you on to Amazon. We run a promo, so we help you become a number one Amazon bestseller. So that’s all done for you.

So, we’re helping you with the marketing even after your book is in your hand and how you can get it out to your people.

So, we will link the waitlist in the show notes so you guys can sign up for the waitlist and be notified when we open up again. Our authors are currently going through the program right now at the time of this recording.

Kayla: Great. So, to sign up for Carly’s waitlist for Bring Your Book to Life Program, kayladas.com/carlyhillprogram

Also tell us a little bit about your book and you know, what is it about? How can I help listeners?  

Carly: I would love to. So, it’s called the Therapreneur book. It’s all about helping therapists 3x their income. So unapologetically making more money. It includes chapters on transitioning from therapist to coach. So protecting your license and how to even really know and discern the difference between therapy and coaching. We talk about clarifying your niche.

This is something that a lot of my clients get hung up on. We talk about the business model of how you can leverage your time and buy back your freedom, how you can reduce your hours by 80%. We talk a ton about marketing. So, I call it my modern marketing master plan. We talk about writing your story, your hero’s journey, story sells, advancing your mindset, and so much more. So, it is really an A to Z guide for any therapist who’s looking to outgrow the office.

Kayla: So, to purchase Carly’s book, Therapreneur, head to kayladas.com/carlyhillbook, or you can simply scroll down to the show notes and click on either link.

Carly, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today to discuss how to write a book as a therapist.

Thank you for having me. See you next time.

Kayla: Thank you everyone for tuning into today’s episode and I hope you join me again soon on the Designer Practice Podcast.

Until next time. Bye for now.

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