Show Notes

Kayla: Welcome back to The Designer Practice Podcast, and I’m your host, Kayla Das. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss a topic that I think you may enjoy, especially if social media is not your wheelhouse. With the rise of social media, many of us think that when we start our practices, we need to immediately advertise our services on various social media platforms. And although it’s certainly a place you can advertise, you don’t have to bend under the pressure to post on social media if it doesn’t align with you or your practice vision.

Honestly, I created the Designer Practice podcast because I do not believe there is one way to start, grow, or scale a private practice. There’s only your way. And what I mean by that is when you design a private practice that you love to work in, you’re going to feel fulfilled, motivated, and accomplished. And to get there, you need to do the things that feel right for you despite what other people say you should do. And that includes how you market your private practice.

So today I have a special guest, Leslie Stevens, marketing specialist, dietician, and former private practice owner with us. And she’s going to share how she built a successful private practice without using social media platforms. And she’s going to give us some helpful tips on how we too can create a marketing strategy without feeling the pressure to post on social media.

Hi Leslie, welcome to the show. I’m so glad to have you here today.

Leslie: Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to share this message and hopefully relieve a little bit of stress.

Kayla: Yes, and social media is definitely one of those things that stress a lot of us out, and I’m going to say me too, right? I mean, even though I use social media as a platform of choice, it is definitely not the first place I started and it’s definitely not something that I encourage others to as soon as you start your private practice to get out there.

So, Leslie, you and I are in a podcasting community together, and when you reached out sharing your expertise and experience, I knew instantly I had to have you on the podcast. Social media is quite literally one of the biggest marketing strategies that trip therapists and coaches up. I often hear from my clients that so-and-so said that they had to start posting on social media to start getting clients in their private practice. And like I said, for true transparency, I do use Facebook and LinkedIn as two methods in my private practice, but I definitely don’t believe that everyone has to, nor is social media the first place to focus on. And I also don’t believe that any private practice has to be on every single platform, even if you choose social media as a method, because I’m not, I use specifically Facebook and LinkedIn because I know that I love them and use them personally.

Common Misconception: You have to Market on Social Media

Leslie: Yeah, I think it’s a common misconception that we have to be on social media to market our business, and one of the biggest reasons is because a lot of us are on social media all the time. So, it’s something we’re exposed to a lot and they always want to sell us, “Oh, this is the best social media marketing strategy to get more clients. This is how I got this number of clients with this post.” And we see it all the time. So, we think, “Oh, okay. That’s what we need to be doing. We need to be posting.” And I think that’s distracting a lot of us from focusing on what actually matters in our business and what’s actually going to connect us with clients.

So, the biggest thing when I start talking to people, I’m like, “Okay, what if we took social media out of the picture completely?” And they’re kind of mind blown. They’re like, why would I take social media out completely? And it can be such a distraction. You’re kind of building your business backwards. If you think, “Okay, I’m going to start a private practice, or I have a practice, I’m just going to post and hopefully clients will come to me.”

It’s like, okay, what’s your message? Who are you talking to? How are you connecting with them? How are you having conversations with them and building this Know, Like and Trust factor with them so that they actually buy from you.

And I want to be completely clear that social media marketing is a fantastic tool. It’s a great tool to use in your business, but like you said, it’s not the only one and it’s not necessarily where you need to start. So that is what I want to communicate to everybody, is that you don’t need to start there. You don’t need to use it. You have so many other options out there available to you, and you can use your strengths as a practitioner, as a person to build a business in a way that you like. Build a business in a way that doesn’t feel like an uphill battle all of the time. Because I know that I felt like social media was an uphill battle for myself every single day until I figured out, “Hey, I don’t have to do it to get clients.”

Kayla: A hundred percent. And actually, going back to the whole purpose of the podcast is going off of designing a practice that you love, right? You want to design a practice that you love to show up in. And if social media is not a part of that equation, it does not have to be there. And if at some point you’re at the point where you feel, “Social media is where I want to go.” Well, then that’s fine. But you have all of these other foundational marketing strategies to help you.

So, I’m super excited to get into today’s podcast, but before we dive in, please introduce yourself, where you’re from, a little bit about you, what you do, and your own private practice journey.

Leslie’s Story

Leslie: Yes, so I’m Leslie Stevens. I’m a branding and marketing strategist, and I specialize in supporting service-based entrepreneurs and getting consistent clients without depending on social media.

So, I’m based in the United States, I am in Oklahoma, and I started out as a registered dietician. So, my first private practice I had for five years and I started it right out of college. I had a lot of people tell me, “Oh, okay, you have all of your credentials.” I was a registered dietician. A licensed dietician. I had my personal training certification, I had my master’s degree, all of those things under my belt.

So, people were like, just post on social media and clients will come to you. And yeah, I got a few here and there from social media, but I was getting clients in different ways, but I didn’t realize that until far down the road.

So, what I was doing in that private practice was I was trying to post every day. I was trying to do what everybody tells you, be consistent, give value, show up on stories, do your videos, dance a little bit for the algorithm, you know, all of those. Things and I was showing up and I was doing it because as business owners, we want to be successful and we’re willing to do things that make you uncomfortable to create that success, to help people. And I knew that I could help people but I was going to have to be willing to put myself out there.

Now I thought I had to put myself out there like an influencer because all these fitness influencers were super successful. They would show how they ate. They showed their workout. They showed their lifestyle, all of these things. And all the recommendations I was getting was to do the same thing. So, I was trying to do that but I’m a person who practices what they preach. So, I wanted to show up, show people what I ate, if it was the healthiest thing or if it maybe wasn’t the healthiest thing for you. But I had my life designed around balance and I wanted to show people that.

Unfortunately, with showing people all of that, my whole life became content. And as an introvert, I didn’t like sharing much of anything at all. So, I was exhausted by the end of the day. I was completely burnt out after four years of doing all of these social media marketing strategies. And like I said yes, I got clients, but it was never consistent. It never gave me that sustainable foundation like, “Hey, I have this great business that I can depend on. I know how much income I’m going to have next month.” It wasn’t providing me that type of stability and success that I’ve really wanted.

Now, at that time I was also talking to my husband about moving on from the business because we wanted to have children. And I knew I could not keep up that lifestyle of trying to post all the time and keep up with all of the social media stuff, show people my everyday life when I didn’t know personally how I was going to cope with pregnancy or cope after pregnancy. I kind of was just tired and I knew there had to be a better way. So, I actually moved on to my branding business.

And I was completely booked first three months, no space. I did not have a social media platform. I did not have a website. I had no online presence at all, but I was completely booked and I had a friend reach out to me and he was like, “Oh, I noticed that you haven’t posted on social media about your new business. I just want to give you some words of encouragement. If it’s not going well. I believe in you. You can do this.” And I had to laugh because I was like, “He has no idea that I’ve been completely booked for three months.”

And I had this kind of Aha moment where I was like, people aren’t in the realm of reality of what actual success is because we only see what people are posting. And people are posting, “Hey, this is my program, this is my testimonials. I’m sold out, blah, blah, blah.” But you don’t know how much money they’re making. You don’t know how much success they’re actually creating. You don’t know how many clients that is for them. And then you have these people who don’t post at all and they might be completely booked. They might be wildly successful. So, we’re kind of caught in this world of like, “Okay, what is success?” If we’re not seeing it? Is it not real?

And that was the point in my business where I was like, “Okay, maybe I should post” because I got sucked back into the whole mindset of, “Oh, I need to be posting on social media so I can keep this momentum going.” Funny enough, that stopped my momentum because I stopped focusing on the things that were actually working for me. And that’s what led to the marketing branch of my business. Because not only did I burn out from my first business trying to be this influencer that I was not in my heart and soul. But I was also seeing other people be held back by social media. They weren’t starting their businesses because they didn’t want to show up, or they couldn’t stay consistent, or they couldn’t balance creating all of this content with actually seeing their clients and their patients. They couldn’t manage that, and it made them feel like a failure. And I felt like a failure when I didn’t post every day, no matter how many clients I had. And that’s not how business is supposed to be. Your success should be measured in the results that you create for your clients. And that success should be based off of that, not, “Oh, how many likes am I getting? How many posts did I create?” All of those things, those are just vanity metrics that we’re getting so caught up in.

So, I took it upon myself to really teach people that there are so many other marketing methods that you can use. And when I looked back at my own journey, I wasn’t actually getting any clients from social media. I was getting clients from making connections, having conversations. I was getting referrals. I was making partnerships with different businesses, different people. All of these different avenues that I was taking, that I was really, really, really good at. But I completely disregarded because it wasn’t posting on social media like everybody was telling me to do. So to break free from that, it’s really hard, especially when you see things all the time. When you have people coming to you saying, Hey, why aren’t you posting for your business? You will be questioned. But the success that you will create when you stop with the distractions is absolutely incredible.

Kayla: I love that you’re sharing your journey because if I’m hearing you correctly, when you first started your private practice, you were using Instagram. It sounds like I heard you say stories.

Leslie: Yes.

The Challenges with Social Media and Ethics

Kayla: I’m a Facebook girl. And with Facebook, like personally in my business coaching, I use it as a funneling system because even though people are finding me. And I do have a Facebook community myself and all of that. On social media, you build that relationship, somewhat. But you funnel it back to your own website or your own additional content. And like you mentioned, when it comes to always having to share content, social media has a very short lifespan, right? Usually, again, every platform’s different but usually within 24 hours, 48 hours, whatever you posted, it’s obsolete. Like nobody is seeing it, unless it has a lot of engagement.

And I think the other piece that’s really important to know, and this is especially for private practices under like privacy laws, it’s that there’s regulations that we cannot, communicate with our clients through social media platforms. And as a result that in turn impacts or influences the algorithm, so people aren’t going to see it as much.

Leslie: We have our own unique challenges, especially when we have a code of ethics and we have certain things we need to adhere to by law. And that’s one of the challenges of being a professional and trying to put content out there because social media really wants those polarizing topics. They want things that are going to get people having conversations, get them up in arms, kind of get them angry or be so passionate about that it is the way that it is.

But as practitioners, we know there’s a lot of gray area, and that’s something that. Sometimes social media does not work as well for us because we know about all the gray area. We don’t want to post the polarizing things. We don’t want someone who we can help not reach out to us because we posted something on another topic.

So, it’s really difficult for us to differentiate ourselves on social media and get the algorithm in our favor and all of those things because we have such a wide variety of things that we can support with, and there’s so much fine print in what we do. I remember I put disclaimers at the bottom of my post sometimes because I would help some people lose weight, but I also had some people with eating disorders that could not follow the things that I was suggesting.

So those were the things in my head that kept me up at night because I was like, “Oh my gosh, if this person sees this post, they’re going to think, oh, that’s how I should go about it.” And that is not right for them. So, it’s really, really hard for us to sift through these things and put things out on social media and kind of be that influencer when we know not even our own lives and our own experience is going to apply to everybody.

Funnelling Content

Kayla: Yeah, and I think this also goes into my point of, I funnel all of my social media content usually to either my blog or my podcast, like some sort of content that I have on my website. And even with that like disclaimer piece, it’s if you had a blog or if you had some other content that was helping you in the SEO department, you can funnel it and even have some of these interesting, engaging pieces for people to actually click on and go to your blog or your podcast or wherever you host that content. And clients can read all of that there, right? You can really go into greater detail.

Social media you can’t have a thousand-word post. I mean, you probably can, but nobody is going to read it. Whereas you can have a short little post bringing them to your website. That in turn helps your SEO And then also goes back into not having to worry about some of those algorithm engagement pieces.

Leslie: Yeah, and something you mentioned before was really, it’s part of a funnel. Social media is. So, the biggest thing that I teach people is to have more conversations. And I was actually talking to somebody on my podcast and she was like, I realized I was hiding behind my posts. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, that’s what I did for four years.” I was hiding behind my post because you can put that out there. You can curate it, you can say the right things. All of those things. Put it out there. You hope people come to you. But the people who you want to come to you to become your clients, you still have to have a conversation with them. They need to know, like, and trust you.

So, my approach now is what if you skip the social media approach? What if you skip that post? And just have a conversation with them. And there are so many different ways that you can have conversations. It doesn’t just have to be like a one-to-one conversation. You can start conversations with people in so many different ways. You just don’t have to worry about all the content that you need to post in between. And that saves hours.

Have More Conversations

Kayla: So, when you’re saying conversation, for someone who’s listening to today’s podcast, what might that look like for them?

Leslie: So, conversations could be anything from like a one-to-one conversation where you get a referral or you’re talking to somebody in a coffee shop about what you do and how you can help people. When you think of conversations, think of it as you are showing people that you are the answer to a problem that they have.

So, you can also do this through speaking. You can do it through workshops I put on events at gyms. I partnered with personal trainers, all of these different things. I was just having conversations with different people in different places to show them that I could support them with their health and wellness.

Build Connections and Collaborate

Kayla: That makes complete sense. And this goes back to what’s historically been, the number one way to get referrals is building referral relationships, right? Building connection. Collaborating. Right? And the reason you’re here is we’re collaborating. We are supporting each other and getting to know each other and all of those types of things, and that’s how you build relationships. That’s how you build referral partners. That’s how you build ways that you can get clients.

Leslie: Social media makes us think that we need to do it on our own. That we need to create the content, we need to put it out there, and we need to do that all by ourselves. And the way to get further faster is working together because you can provide so much value for other people in communities that are already created. So, like I said, I worked with a personal trainer. I partnered with him because his expertise was strength building and mine was nutrition. And I went into the grocery stores and I would talk to people about supplements and healthy eating, things like that. I would go into gyms, talk about gut health, healthy lifestyle, all of these places where I was having close-knit conversations with people who are already there. But because I was there, I was positioning myself as an expert because I was being backed up in these collaborations.

Common Marketing Fears

Kayla: Now I want to bring this back that when it comes to referral relationships or when it comes to marketing at all, therapists and coaches sometimes have some fears regarding that. So, from your experience, what are some of the common fears that you’ve noticed your clients experience when they try to get themselves out there and start marketing their private practices?

Leslie: So, fear of judgment is absolutely number one. We are afraid to put ourselves out there because we don’t want to hear, no. We don’t want to hear, “No, you’re not a right fit for me,” and that’s okay. You’re going to hear no. But you only need one, yes, to really start to build momentum, to put yourself out there, to connect with people. And you’ll actually be pleasantly surprised. I was very pleasantly surprised about the amount of people who said, yes. Most people want to help other people, they want to work with other people, especially when you’re leading with the value that you provide.

I was talking to somebody who works in HR for a big corporation. And I asked her what’s the best advice you would give somebody who wanted to come to you and support your employees with life coaching or something similar to it. And she said, “Go value-first.” So, show us the results that you can create and how it would benefit us. And that’s the element that we miss out on so much when we’re posting things on social media and when we are in the pursuit to get clients in our private practice. We start to make it about ourselves. I need a client. I need the income. I need this to work out kind of thing. And we need to switch it around and say, I can provide you with this support for the people that you already have in your community. I see that you do this aspect really well. This is what I do. And this compliments what you do to make it even better for your people.

So, when you take yourself out of it and you start to put the value into it, everything kind of starts to build on itself and connect.

Kayla: Yeah. And you want to show people that you are the right person to work with, not tell them. And often we use whatever platform we’re using, we use all of our marketing tools and we use it as a resume. It’s like, “I’m going to tell you how I’m going to be the best fit for you” instead of showing people.

And that, again, going back to that conversation piece, it’s having those conversations. It’s talking to people, letting people ask those questions for them to understand, “Yeah, I want to work with this person.”

Build the Know, Like and Trust Factor

Leslie: Absolutely. And that Know, Like, and Trust factor as a practitioner is so important because that’s one of the things I realized is that when people reach out to me to become my client, they’re nervous. Because when you know there’s something in your life that you need to change, it doesn’t come lightly when it comes to your health and wellbeing in any type of way. So, when somebody is reaching out to you, they’re nervous and you need to see it from their perspective. You need to position yourself as the guide to show them, “Okay, I see that you’re here and I am here to guide you along the path to create the result that you really want.” But it’s all about us being able to show them that path and that is possible for them.

Kayla: A hundred percent. And just for any new listeners, now we talk about the Know, Like, and Trust factor on this podcast, but just for anyone who doesn’t know what that is, it’s a very common marketing framework. That people, one, need to know you’re out there, they need to like you and your services and what you have to offer. And they not just need to like it, they need to trust that is going to be the best route for them to take to help them with a specific problem or issue that they’re experiencing.

Leslie: Absolutely. And the thing with that, know, like and trust factor is when you’re scrolling on Instagram, you get exposed to these people for 0.2 seconds or something like that. You have a very short span. Maybe they sit and they read your post for a minute, probably max. So, you’re getting this small, infrequent kind of connection with them to build that know, like and trust factor. But if you’re having a conversation with them, if you’re doing a workshop, if you’re providing that value over let’s say 30 to 45 minutes. And they’re getting to know you, your method, how you can create a transformation that know like and trust factor can get so much deeper, so much more quickly.

So, people think, “Oh, building relationships, having conversations, making connections that take so much time.” But in reality, social media marketing takes so much longer because you don’t even know if they’re going to see or posts. And if they do, it’s for a very short amount of time. So all of that has to build up over weeks, over months, sometimes even years until they get their know, like, trust factor to the place where it could have been if they just spent 30 minutes talking to you.

Marketing Your Practice without Using Social Media

Kayla: So, I’m sure many of our listeners are wondering how can they market their private practices without using social media? And I know you mentioned like having these conversations, building these referral relationships, but are there any others? And do you have any examples of this and how you’ve seen it grow either yours or others’, private practices.

Build Relationships & Referrals

Leslie: Absolutely. So, there are those again, referrals. So, make sure that you have such good results for your clients, that your clients start to market your business for itself. So, if you create a powerful transformation for somebody, they’re going to talk to their friends about it. So, you don’t have to do anything if you’re creating incredible results. Just from that one element. I don’t want to say you don’t have to do anything at all. But when you’re creating results, then the referrals will start to come.

As practitioners having a referral system and things like that, it’s typically more difficult because their friends don’t want to say, “Hey, you need to talk to somebody about depression,” or “Your anxiety is getting out of control here.” Most people are not going to do that, and most people won’t come to you for referrals in that way. But that does not mean it’s not possible for you. So first, make sure you have a really, really good service. And then I talked about those collaborations, building those relationships, partnering with people.

One of the things that I did in my practice was I partnered with a therapist because a lot of eating disorders, a lot of GI conditions are actually linked to your mind, the gut brain connection, it has got a very strong connection. But there are some things that are out of my scope of practice, so I had no problem partnering with people, referring people to other people if they could support them better in different elements.

So, think about the people that you would work with kind of like on a clinical team. Can you go to doctor’s offices and say, “Hey, I’m a practitioner in this area, this is what I do. This is how I can help people.” I worked with a dietician during my internship who did that, and she would bring gifts to the doctors and just be like, “Hey, a little reminder. I’m here to help any of your patients if they need a referral to a dietician.”

Work with Corporations

You can also work with corporations. So, one of the things I did as I had a corporate contract for health coaching, so I would go in and anybody who wanted support with their nutrition in this business, they would come to me and I would take them through a program. And that’s how I was getting exposure to a lot of people was that corporate contract. And I mean, there’s so many different things you can do speaking. You can do interviews. Anything that positions you in front of the people that you know you can help.

So, let’s think about it this way. If you were in your client’s position, where would you want to hang out? Where would you be looking for information? Where would you want to start your journey to start improving yourself or start to get healthy? Anything like that. Where would those people be hanging out? Go there first because that’s where you should start your partnerships, your collaborations with, because you can create their transformation for them and support them through the journey. So, if you think about it like that, you can get very, very creative about the way you can begin to market yourself and then have those conversations, make sure that you have a clear path that they know they can become your client and you can create that transformation.

Don’t let fear hold you back

Kayla: Yeah, and I want to go back to something you mentioned before was that usually people want to create relationships with you. And I am going to say that even though it’s one of those fears that show up, it’s, “Oh, I can’t reach out to someone. What if they say no.” I’m saying that I have never been declined from anyone that I’ve reached out to that said, no, I don’t want to partner with you. Now I’ve had people like not return emails and potentially we can count that as a no. But I’ve never had anyone actually say, “Hey, no, don’t want to partner with you.” And I would assume, even if that would happen, it’s usually for some relatable reason, right? Maybe it doesn’t align with their clientele.

And I think this goes back to where does your ideal client hang out is obviously, if you’re going everywhere, someone might say, “Well, I don’t really see how that benefits my clients.” But if you know who your client is and you know how you can help them. You know how you can reach out to organizations, connections, professionals or whoever it is that you’re creating these conversations with. You know that it aligns. What they need help with is what they are seeking. And as a result, you can help them in that way. And they’re not going to say no because you are actually actively helping.

If you specialize in a specific area and then you reach out to someone in a different area that might say, “Well, I don’t see how that benefits my client.” It might be a no, but it’s relevant, right? How can we partner, if we’re totally misaligned?

Leslie: And honestly, that gives you the opportunity to refine the way that you’re reaching out to people. Like if people are saying, “Oh, maybe not right now,” or “This doesn’t seem like a great fit.” Look back at the way you’re reaching out to them. Is there something that you need to describe better, illustrate better, show better that you can really, really help them? So that’s kind of putting it back on focus in on your message.

This is something that I help people with about those strategic connections and how to communicate these things so that you are providing the value and putting your value foot first, and not just being like, “Hey, I want to talk to your people.”

Kayla: And that’s sometimes how we come across, it’s like, I need clients, “So please refer me clients because I need clients. Thank you sincerely, Kayla Das,” right? But that is not a conversation and people don’t necessarily relate to that. And if you sent it in an email, you’re probably going to get deleted. Whereas, “How can I help you? Or how can we help each other in supporting our mutual clients,” whoever that might be.

Leslie: Absolutely. And you’re not going to be great at it the first time. Maybe not even the second or third time, and that’s okay. You have to be willing to be bad at it. I think a lot of practitioners have this perfectionism tendency because we want to get things right. And I mean, that’s because we’re clinically trained, we need to get things right a lot of the time. But when it comes to business, we’re not going to get everything right every single time. Especially when it comes to marketing. And that’s okay.

Yes, we want to make sure we’re diagnosing and prescribing things perfectly. But we need to be okay with being bad at other things. Our expertise is in a different area than marketing, but if you’re going to have a private practice, you have to be willing to learn marketing and learn other elements of a business.

Kayla: And it’s through putting yourself out there that you grow. I am not where I was last year. I am not where I was the year before. That I am not where I started. And neither is any of the listeners listening. Put yourself out there and create these connections because it becomes more easier over time. And it goes back to the fear. The fear is showing up, but taking that action and putting yourself out there, reaching out, making that connection will show you that it actually isn’t that bad.

Leslie: Yeah, I was actually talking to somebody earlier and when I started my branding business, I was completely sold out and I actually got connected with a woman who did the branding of like Versace and the Met and MasterCard and all of these extremely successful brands. And she kind of took me under her wing and taught me her ways and I was actually getting more clients than her. And I was–

Kayla: Wow!

Leslie: –astounded because you see her with all of her great brands, all of her experience years, like she was incredible at what she did. And I started to think about the difference between the ways that I was marketing and the way that she was marketing. And it connected with the way that I was actually getting clients in my first business. And I figured out, It was because I was making connections and building relationships and having conversations, and I was listening. So, I was listening to people on the other side. I wanted to know, what do you need support with? What do you thinking about? What do you need for your business when it came to branding?

And that’s what I would also do with nutrition, I would listen to them. Where do you feel like you’re struggling? What do you feel like you need all of these things. That allowed me to then use my expertise and put them down the right path. But it was those connections and those conversations that I was having that it didn’t matter how many letters I had behind my name as a dietician or how many great brands I worked on in my business. It all came down to the relationships. And that is what led to clients and having that realization was just this huge Aha moment. Like it’s all about the people. You have to focus on the people and humanize what you’re doing. Humanize yourself. Be approachable. Listen, answer questions. That’s what you’re here to do. You’re here to be in service and to support people.

Be Your Authentic Self

Kayla: Yeah, and I think our listeners can really relate because they’re therapists and coaches for a reason. They’re in very service-based professions because they love creating relationships. But sometimes I think we get in this mindset that we have to be that salesman. And we do not have to be, that we can be our true selves, we can be authentic. And that’s why when you design the practice that you love to work in, it might not be the same as your colleagues. It may not be the same as your supervisor. It may not be the same as the professor you went to school with. But that’s okay.

Leslie: Yeah, there’s so many different ways to create success and you might try a bunch of different ways that you find out you don’t really like, and that don’t actually turn out really well for you. But I guarantee you there are methods that will work for you and that won’t feel absolutely horrible doing because we have to market as practitioners as private practice owners, we have to market ourselves. But people can tell in your personality in different elements of marketing that you do that they want to work with you.

Kayla: Agree. A hundred percent. So, do you have any advice or insights for any listener who is trying to market their private practice but knows deep in their heart that social media is just not the place that they want to show up?

Focus on Conversations

Leslie: So, I would challenge them to step away from social media completely. Just step away from it and focus on having conversations. So, for one week, let’s say one week, don’t post anything but have five conversations. So have them with anyone. You can have it with people who might want to work with you. You can have it with past clients, you can have it with friends and family. Just start talking about what you do and how you explain it and how you explain your transformation. Because the more practice you have, not hiding behind anything and actually reaching out, talking about what you do, you’re going to become better at it.

And you never know from all of the people you talk to who’s going to tell their friend like, “Oh, this person is fantastic. You should work with them.” Or, “Oh yeah, you sound like somebody I actually needed, I didn’t even know I needed you.” So just get out there and start having the conversations. Just take that leap and go all in with something else. If you already know social media is not the way you want to go.

Kayla: This is so inspirational. Even I’m taking some things from this and I’m like, I think I want to leave after today and just make more connections.

Leslie’s Free Training

So, Leslie, you also have a free training to help our listeners take the information you share with us today a step further, don’t you?

Leslie: Absolutely. So, I have a free training over how to book consistent clients without having to post on social media. And this is where I teach you the in-depth client connection method, which is the method that I created when I became fully booked and kept those clients coming in our repeat.

So, I teach you each of those elements, and it’s a simple three steps. It’s about getting very clear on your brand, how you communicate it, and how you show people that you can help them. So essentially how to create a path of least resistance for a stranger to become a paying client.

And then we talk about conversations that convert. So where are you going to have these conversations? What type of conversations are you going to have? How are you then going to turn those conversations strategically into somebody who wants to become your client. And then we turn it all into a system that keeps them coming in on repeat, so you know exactly what actions you need to take every week, every month, and every year to hit your client targets so that you don’t have to keep searching for the next best marketing method or try and keep up with some algorithm. You get it broken down. So check out that free training. It’s only about 35 minutes.

Kayla: Fabulous. So, to sign up for Leslie’s free training, learn how to book consistent clients without having to post on social media. Check out kayladas.com/lesliestevensfreetraining.

That’s kayladas.com/lesliestevensfreetraining. Stevens spelled with a v.

Or you can simply scroll down to the show notes and click on the link.

Leslie, thank you so much for taking the time to shine a light on a common myth that we have to be posting on social media. You are a true inspiration, and I am so, so, so grateful that you took the time to be with us today.

Leslie: Thank you so much for having me. It was joy.

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.

Credits & Disclaimers

Music by ItsWatR from Pixabay

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