95: The Problem With Free Therapy Summits: Plus Tips On Ethical Marketing
The world of online business is bleeding into the world of therapy. Today I'm covering why you are seeing so many free summits in your inbox and on your social feeds, offering suggestions on making these summits more equitable and justice-oriented, and sharing some things I do to ensure my marketing is ethical.
Transparency first: I used to participate in some of the strategies and tactics I'll discuss below. I didn't know better then. I thought I had to follow these "rules" laid out by others and that I couldn't trust my inner wisdom and voice telling me something was off. I know better now. Because I see things differently, I've changed my energetic and financial boundaries. I imagine they may change in the future. So please let this serve as a reminder if I didn't believe people could change, that hearts, minds, behaviors could change, I wouldn't be a therapist.
Why There are So Many Online Summits
As an example of how some of the shadier elements of online business are spreading to the world of therapists, free therapy summits are all the rage at the time of this post. This podcast and corresponding post is not about a person or people; this is about a set of practices and a system of perpetuating unpaid labor. While free summits have been around for a while in the online world, I see more of them show up targeted specifically at therapists.
Before I even get to the underbelly of these online free summits, let me first say that I do participate in paid summits and conferences if they are first in alignment with my and my brand's values. Second, I believe all therapists and mental healthcare providers deserve sustainable compensation for their work.
Onto why you see these virtual summits everywhere: hosting a virtual summit is the latest trend in online marketing. A free virtual summit is a way to bring a large group of industry experts together as a way for the host of the summit to grow their audience quickly. In this post, I'm focusing on free therapist summits.
In online marketing, it is taken as a fact that people "convert" at 3%. This means that if a business owner has an audience of 100 people, three people are guaranteed to buy what they are selling. A 3% conversion rate in online business means that 3% of your audience buys what you sell. So if a business owner wants to sell 50 widgets and believes in the magic of a 3% conversion rule, they would need 1,666 people on their email list. Free summits are positioned as an excellent way for the summit's host to build their audience quickly so they can sell their widget.
Free summits are also built around teasing the audience with a part of the solution. They will say, "here is your problem, and there are five steps to solve your problem. Today I'll provide you with one of the five steps." For example, a speaker might show off one tip in their therapy toolkit, only to tell you that they need all seven tips to really implement the specific intervention. And to get all seven tips, you'll have to hire them or buy their widget.
The virtual summit host also gives participants free access to the summit but sells them on a paid upgrade. This upgrade is usually a bundled "VIP" or "Signature" package consisting of the summit recordings, worksheets, and potentially access to the summit host or the opportunity for participants to connect in a free Facebook group.
The hosts of these summits disguise them as free ways for their audience to improve their therapy skillset (e.g., quick presentations on therapeutic interventions, reconnect to your body or inner wisdom) or improve the business side of their practice. (e.g., brief talks on getting more clients, niching, money mindset, etc.).
To summarize, the reason you see all of these virtual summits is that they help the host or hosts do the following:
Earn financial compensation off of the free labor of their speakers by selling VIP packages of their free summit to attendees
To get their name, products, and services in front of a broader audience by "hosting" dozens of speakers who all have their unique audience
Use the newly excited (and probably anxious and overwhelmed) audience to sell something at a higher cost. This upsell sounds like, "wasn't this free summit so great? If you need help implementing all you learned, you should hire me/buy the VIP bundle!"
Asked to Speak at Free Summits
I'm inundated with speaking requests by these virtual summit hosts, so I'm familiar with how these requests look. These emails follow a cookie-cutter formula. Being asked to speak for free at a virtual summit looks like:
Praise for me/my work
Tell me how extraordinary their free summit is
Ask me to provide custom-tailored speaking, media exposure, and time out of my day to answer attendees' questions, and usually donate additional work for free (common asks are donating a free e-book, mini-course, or mini-training to summit participants)
Occasionally offer to pay me in affiliate links for selling my audience on the upgraded VIP version of their free summit. Usually, they only offer to pay me in "exposure" and the promise of getting "new eyes" on me and my work.
OR offer that I'll be allowed to "pitch" myself and my services as a part of the presentation
If you're wondering if this structure sounds familiar, it does. Look at any large corporation where the folks on the bottom should be "excited" to be there, and a few folks on top walk away with the majority of the profit. We're conditioned as people raised in a capitalist society to accept financial breadcrumbs while a few people at the top take the bulk of earnings.
If we want to stop the cycle that saps us of our energy and asks us to work for free, we have to stop participating in events like these.
The virtual summits are particularly appealing to therapists because we are reminded at every turn that our work doesn't deserve fair compensation. We are used to working for free or being underpaid, so speaking for free is something we rarely question. Plus, it can feel incredibly flattering to have a summit host reach out and shower us with accolades and provide us with the opportunity to be on the virtual stage with other therapy influencers.
I want to remind you that the field of psychotherapy is dominated by women and other marginalized groups, meaning we perpetuate the wage gap by accepting to do unpaid speaking work.
To be fair, some of these hosts have tried to make their summits more equitable by paying a few of their speakers.
In some of these more "woke" summits or summits with "woke" hosts, I was told they wouldn't pay me–a woman of color–to speak about money mindset. Instead, they reserved their funds to pay marginalized groups to discuss DEI issues. In other words, they would only pay queer, neurodiverse, disabled, and POC to speak about queer, neurodiverse, disabled, and POC issues. They were further shoehorning marginalized groups only to be experts on being "diverse" instead of recognizing that marginalized people have so much more to offer than just being tokenized as speaking on their issues.
And if you are thinking, "it's just the way it's always been done." I posit to you: do we want to keep doing things the way they've always been done? Or do we want to move things toward social, racial, and economic justice?
Saying no to speak a free therapy summit that profits off of the labor of others (usually other therapists who have historically been underpaid), is the bare minimum.
To paraphrase Kelly Diels, we have to include ourselves as participants and beneficiaries of economic justice.
Past conferences or summits that I'm happy to have participated in and would do so again, as a participant and attendee, were the Therapy Reimagined Conference, Simple Practice Summit, Mamas Talk Money Summit. All of these aligned with my values, and they paid the speakers to be there.
A free summit I participated in and spoke at that was 100% aligned with my values was Tumubo by Dr. Therapin*y. This summit was transparent that it was a fundraiser and the proceeds of this fundraiser went towards Therapin*y's online space. Therapin*y has been working on creating a premier online space for Filipino wellness, mental health resources, decolonization, and collective care. I could say yes enthusiastically to speaking at this summit because the ask was upfront, transparent, and aligned with my values.
Should I Attend a Free Therapy Summit?
You might be wondering, "so what now? Am I supposed to skip all these free summits?"
Well, no. I have two main takeaways for you before deciding if you want to attend a summit.
1) Will I get out of this summit what the hosts are promising?
How realistic is it for you to attend 20-60 talks over five days?
How likely are you to implement what the speakers are teaching?
Will this cause more overwhelm?
Do you have the energetic capacity to take on this information?
What are the odds you'll go back and rewatch the videos if you cannot attend the presentations live?
2) Is this free summit is equitable to those involved?
Are the hosts compensating the speakers for their energy, expertise, and labor? An easy way is to see if the summit is equitable is if the hosts charge an entry fee (note: charging an entrance fee doesn't guarantee that the speakers are compensated financially). It could be worth asking the hosts how the speakers are paid for their work.
Ethical Marketing Practices for Therapists
Ethical marketing practices are important in general, but it's imperative when you are a therapist. We do have to market ourselves as private practice therapists. Every time I record a podcast or publish a blog post, I market myself. However, there are a few things I consider when marketing my work.
Things that help me market ethically as a therapist and align with my values are below. See if any of them work for you:
Transparency. What ask will be made of the audience? When I offer something for free, I generally make an ask. So I say, "this workshop is 100% free, and at the end, I'll spend a few minutes talking about a paid way to work with me." When creating a paid offer, my audience won't be pitched on something else or be subject to an upsell. As I shared earlier, in many of these summits, the hosts will allow the speakers to pitch their goods or services instead of paying speakers. So is that clear from the top? Are you transparent that there will be a pitch? Or are you transparent that they won't be subjected to additional up-sells if they pay to hire you or buy your widget?
Consent & human dignity. Do they want to participate in this way? Do they know the price? Are they aware of other options? Lots of exploitative marketing relies on a "you need me/my goods/my service or else" mentality. I offer my work and say, "this may not be for you. There are other choices. Here's what I do and what I don't do." Doing this is a way to offer consent to folks to opt-out of working with me and honoring their inherent dignity as a human to make informed decisions about what works best for them. When you create your marketing, are you pointing out who/what you do and what you don't do?
Trauma-informed. Is the language riddled with pointing out flaws, problems, or "pain points?" Does the marketing trigger a person by flooding them all that's wrong with them, their life, the world, and then position themselves as the only solution? We have to be aware of the possibility of vicarious trauma–that hearing or seeing something can traumatize our audience. I do my best to offer content or trigger warnings and re-read or listen to my work to ensure it's trauma-informed.
Energy. Does it work for YOU? The person who is doing the marketing? Does it feel good, sustainable, and doable?
When it comes to how I prefer to deliver my free content, I use a CEO-Day Tracking Metric (provided to folks who join Grow a Profitable Practice From the Inside out) sheet that helps me understand if my labor is worth it. I track how well the different platforms work for me at Mind Money Balance on the tracking spreadsheet. Not only do I track the data, but I also measure how it feels for me. This emotional and data-driven approach helps me not spread myself too thin and helps me decide where investing my energy makes business sense.
My aligned clients come to me from my podcast listeners, email newsletter readers, and a teensy bit through Instagram. Therefore, that's where I put my efforts into delivering free content.
The Problem with Therapy Summits
I'm not criticizing the individual hosts or speakers; I'm encouraging you to think critically about these tactics and be critical of exploitative practices. To summarize why you are seeing these free summits everywhere, it’s because of this mythical 3% conversion rate. These summits are created to quickly grow the hosts' audience so they can sell attendees their widget once the summit ends.
A few suggestions to make these free summits equitable and more justice-oriented are below.
Problem 1: Therapists are asked to speak without being financially compensated. This perpetuates many therapists' inner beliefs that they should have to work for free or for poor compensation and cultivates a culture of “working for exposure,” dangerously common in the online space.
Solution: As I shared earlier, sadly, therapists are easy targets for “working for free” as therapists are conditioned to accept low or no pay for their labor. An easy way to honor and respect therapists who are asked to speak at these summits is to compensate them for their labor. Hosts could pay the speakers, and recoup the speaker fees by charging a fee for attendance. Many of these summits have sponsors, the summit hosts could also redirect some of the sponsorship fees to speakers. To further increase financial accessibility, hosts create an assigned sliding scale, or pay-what-you-can sliding scale.
Problem 2: In lieu of financial compensation for the speakers, speakers are allowed to “pitch” to the audience. This can cause audience members to feel “sold to” through the duration of these free summits.
Solution: In charging a fee for entry (point 1), the transparent trade-off is that speakers don't pitch their services. The speakers can trust that if what they said or offered resonated with summit the audience, the audience will seek out working with them (again, extending to the audience respect).
Problem 3: Free summits inundate the audience with information, creating urgency, anxiety, and overwhelm.
Solution: When charging an entry fee, the audience should have access to the recordings and corresponding worksheets or workbooks for a period of time, to allow them time to digest all of the information.
Problem 4: Diversity is used as tokenization or is performative.
Solution: Invite marginalized speakers to speak at the summit and speak about issues that don’t have to do with their identity. Dismantling systems of oppression means not putting additional labor on marginalized individuals. Pay marginalized people to talk about other things that they're experts in. Doing so allows people who occupy marginalized identities to be full humans: not just “the diverse one.”
Problem 5: Free virtual summit marketing language is riddled with pointing out flaws, problems, or "pain points." The marketing triggers a person by flooding them all that's wrong with them, their life, the world, and then positioning themselves as the only solution.
Solution: Incorporate ethical marketing. Consent-based and trauma-informed marketing means honoring the humanity of the audience, not leaning on frantic urgency, offering alternative solutions to the audience’s problems, and being transparent about what the summit will include.
Ethical marketing exists. Marketing is important for all businesses. For therapy businesses, online marketing has become more prominent and a more significant part of reality. It's important that the marketing is done in a way that feels ethical for the marketer and the consumer.
Growing Your Audience Through Organic Marketing
If you are a private practice owner and after reading this, have a desire to grow your audience through organic and ethical marketing, it might be time to consider or re-consider, developing your niche. Having a niche helps you stand out, solidifies you as a go-to expert, and reduces your risk of burnout by seeing non-ideal clients. If niching is stressing you out and you are struggling with the internal dialogue of "but I have to help everyone!" I'd invite you to join me in my group coaching program for private practice therapists. Besides learning about niching and the foundations of marketing, you'll get a beautiful and hardworking website from Hold Space Creative. Since most therapy-seekers turn to Google to find their therapist, investing in a therapy website is a great way to help your ideal clients find you. Monica of Hold Space Creative is a guest expert in the program, and she'll present a live module with even more ways to think about and carve out your niche! Learn more about my group coaching program, Grow a Profitable Practice From the Inside Out here.
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It's impossible these days to go on Instagram or to check your email without getting notified about a free summit. You know the ones--they are the ones that are having this huge roundup of people in your field and they are promising all of these amazing talks and tips and insights and connections, all for free. Today's episode is niche to be really clear, but I want to talk about how the world of online business, particularly this trend of free summits, is bleeding into the world of therapy by making unpaid labor, highlighting pain points, and putting a lot of overwhelming anxiety in our faces. Today, I'm going to be covering why you're seeing so many free summits in your inbox and on your feed. I'll also be offering suggestions on what are things we can do as speakers, hosts, and participants of the summits to make them more equitable and justice-oriented instead of just shitting all over them. And I will share some insights on some ways that I run my marketing through a few sets of questions to make sure that they feel ethical for me, your mild may vary. Ethics are obviously open to interpretation. But I hope that it helps you if you are getting ready to market your private practice or if you already have a private practice and are doing marketing, to ask yourself some questions about the way that you are showing up and the way that you are telling people that they can work with you. So again, today's episode is about the problem with free therapy summits and I will be offering some tips on ethical marketing. If that is not for you. If you are not a therapist, if you are not interested in why you're seeing so many free summits in your inbox, I would skip this episode. But if you are curious about it and want a deeper dive, stay tuned.
Full transparency, I used to participate in some of the strategies and tactics that I will be discussing throughout this episode. I didn't know better then; I thought I had to follow these rules laid out by others in the online business space. And any time I was questioning the tactics I was often met with, That's just the way it is, this is the way that things go, you know, that's your scarcity mindset showing. And even though I was like feeling this inner voice and this inner wisdom saying, Something feels a little bit off, I pushed it aside and trusted other people. I'm here to say that I know better now, because I've been in the space for a little while, I see things differently. I've changed my energetic and my financial boundaries around these practices. And I imagine they might change again in the future. Right? If I didn't believe people could change, people could change their their hearts, their minds, their behaviors, their thoughts. I quite simply would not be a therapist. So I'm not here to say like, oh, I'm holier than now I've never done this shit. I'm here to say, Whoa, I did not realize the beasts that I was participating in. And now I have a more objective lens. And I want to share that with you.
So an example of some of the shady elements of online business that are spreading to the world of therapists, free therapy summits are all the rage at the time of this podcast. This is not about a person or people--this is about a set of practices and a strategy that is being sold as the golden standard. Free summits have been around for a while in the world of online marketing, but I'm seeing more and more of them show up targeted specifically at therapists. Again, I want to be clear that nuance is important. I do participate in paid summits and paid conferences. If, first and foremost they're in alignment with my and my brand's values. I'll be talking a lot about financial compensation today. But that part, the alignment with my values and my brand values comes first. So if and when I see one of these summits or conferences come up, whether they're asking me to be a participant and sign up for them or whether they're asking me to be a speaker and speak on their virtual or real platform. First and foremost, before I even think about financial compensation, I'm saying, Are these in alignment with my values? Is this conference or the summit in alignment with my values? And then I think about the financial compensation for the people who are doing the labor. As a reminder here at Mind Money Balance, I believe all therapists and mental health care providers deserve sustainable compensation for their work. That's something I stand by and for and believe. And so obviously, that is going to impact the way I view these. So today's podcast will be broken into four kinds of sections. So first, I'm going to take you behind the scenes. Why are the summits everywhere? What are they? And why are they popping up all over the place? So I'm going to break down, you know, the marketing strategy behind it so you can make an informed decision about them, then I will be talking about what it's like to get these types of requests from free summit providers or free summit hosts, as a person who gets asked to speak on them all the time. Then I will talk about what can you do as a person who's being inundated with marketing around these summits and is being asked to register and sign up for these summits--how can you make an informed consensual decision about whether or not they make sense for you? And then finally, the fourth part is that I'll get into things to consider if you are marketing your private practice, just as a way to say like, Is this ethical for me? And again, I mentioned at the top of this episode ethics for you may differ from what I view as ethical. So take it with a grain of salt, I wanted to share how I decide whether or not something works for me and feels good for me when I do marketing because I market all the time. You're listening to me on a podcast where I often say, if you want to work with me, or purchase a workshop from me, here's how you can do it.
So let's first get into the marketing, why are you seeing these free summits everywhere? And when you see them, it looks like a freeway for you to improve your therapy skill set. So they're marketed as quick presentations on therapeutic interventions or for ways for you to practice self-care and reconnect to your body. Or they're marketed as ways to improve the business side of your practice. So the speakers will cover things like how to get more clients, how to niche, how to set your fees, things like that. And so at first glance, it can be really exciting to see all of these things lined out--these presentations on therapeutic interventions, these presentations on how to grow your practice. But the phrase that comes to mind, to pull from a pragmatic parent here is, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. So let's take a look at the back end of the summit's why are these happening all the time? Well, let me share with you some common knowledge from the world of online marketing, it is called a conversion rate. So a conversion rate is a percentage of which the number of people on your email list or in your audience converts aka the number of people who purchase your good or service. And the magical conversion rate that is sold in the online space, in fact, is 3%. So the idea is that if I have 100 people in my audience, three or 3%, three of them will purchase my widget. So in order to sell, say 50 widgets, I would need to grow my audience to 1,600 people or you know, 1,666.7 people to be totally exact. So that is why you are seeing these summits pop up all over the place is because the hosts of the summit are looking to increase their sales and are looking to have a good conversion rate. So in order to sell 50 widgets, they need to grow their list to at least 1,600. And so when they have all of these speakers who have large audiences join them on their platform, they by default are increasing their audience and hopefully increasing their conversion rate. Does that make sense? I'm making this up, I'm not picking on somebody, I'm going to be selling an online course or an e-book or, a set of downloadables whatever it is, but in order to sell that, I don't have an audience I have an audience of like 20 people or 50 people or 100 people and if I want to sell 50 of these, I need to have 1,600 people in my audience or if I want to sell a hundred of these, I need double that, right? I need like 3,200 people in my audience. And so a quick way to build their audience size without paying for advertising, though some of them definitely still pay for advertising is to use other people's audiences. So these hosts go out and talk to other people in their field and say, Hey, I'm going to be putting on a free summit, I would love for you to join me. And they know in exchange for that person's expertise, there also is a good chance that they will then get a portion of that speaker’s audience on their product, or their summit, or their good, or their service. Okay. These summits also are really set up to provide an amuse-bouche, and, quite frankly, they don't say this and when they like, teach you how to do these, but it also is about kind of leaning on the participant's anxiety in overwhelm, meaning they'll have 30-40-50-60-80 of these quick presentations--20 minutes, 40 minutes, 90-minute presentations. And then the audience members get all of this information and they're going Holy smokes, I didn't know what I didn't know, I need somebody to help me distill all this information. And then again, often the hosts are selling a way to distill the information, they are going to sell a VIP day, they are going to sell some sort of like signature package or private package, and that package or VIP whatever usually includes the recordings of, of the speaking so that way, the person the participant can go back and rewatch them, they usually are selling something that is supplemental or complimentary. So maybe you can attend the summit for free. But if you want the recording and the workbook, you'll have to pay for it. Or you can attend the summit for free. But if you want the recording, the workbook, and access to the host so you can ask them questions, you will have to pay for it. So when we think about why hosts are popping up all over the place and creating these therapy summits, let's be curious here, right? We, as therapists, we often invite our clients to be curious, to be a little bit not critical, but to think with a critical lens for sure. So when we think about why these summits are popping up everywhere, it's at these hosts want to earn financial compensation for free. They want to earn financial compensation by the free labor of the speakers, by selling VIP packages or a widget that often comes out immediately after the summit ends to these summit attendees. And in order to get their widget out there, they have to leverage their speaker's audiences. So to get their widget in front of more people, they need dozens of speakers who have a different audience or similar enough audience that would be interested in the widget that they're selling. So they host a ton of these speakers. And then they use this newly excited and probably overwhelmed audience, they use this time to buy when the participant is excited/overwhelmed by everything they just learned in this, you know, three day summit was 60 speakers at a higher cost. Right. So this is the amuse-bouche, they say, Our summit was great. If you love this and you want more, or if you need help implementing what you learned, or if you want help distilling the information that we just gave you, you should buy our widget, you should work with us, right. So that's why you're seeing them everywhere. And again, I'm talking about therapy summits, but you'll see them in literally every discipline.
So as a speaker, this is kind of part two of what I'm going to talk about today. As a speaker, I'm inundated with these requests. So I'm really familiar with what these look like. And my antenna goes up immediately when somebody is asking me to provide uncompensated labor and these emails or these DMs usually follow this formula. First. They praise me in my work; they say something like, Lindsay, we love what you're doing in the world of financial therapy or we love what you're doing to destigmatize earning money for therapists. So they they pile on some praise they tell me how amazing I am, which usually Feels great. And then part two is they tell me how extraordinary their free summit is that they're creating, they are so excited to invite me to speak or to host me as a speaker on their digital stage. So first they praise me, then they tell me what they're doing and kind of provide their proof of what they can offer me. And then they make their ask; they asked me to provide some sort of custom, tailored speaking. So they want me to speak on a topic. They also want me to email my list, they usually say something like, We would love for you to speak on money mindset, or fee setting, or whatever it is and in exchange for us giving you our amazing stage, we ask that you share with your audience, our summit. So they're asking not only of my speaking time, my expertise in an area, they are also asking for something custom to this audience. They're asking to use my email list, which I'm super protective over, I'm really picky about what I send out on that email list. If you know, on that email list, I send out these monthly roundups, where I say like oh, my God, here are things I'm loving. Those are things that I'm personally loving. And I'm really picky about what I share. So I'm really protective over my audience. And then they also asked me to share out on social and that might mean just sharing a pre-created Canva graphic, or it might mean going live with the summit hosts. And then I'm also asked to take time out of my day, to show up on the day of the summit, not just to do the presentation, but also to be available to answer attendee's questions. And they usually asked me to donate something else for free to go in with a goodie bag, or a swag bag, or a speaker bag. So common asks are things like we would love it if you could donate a free eBook, a free mini-course, or a free training to our audience members. So by now, you're probably like going, Lindsay, why the hell would anybody say yes to doing all of this free labor? Well, I will tell you why. Then they position. So this is the fourth/fifth thing that they will say. They'll say, Well, we can't compensate you financially, what we can do is guarantee that new people will find you, right? Because it's not just me on the virtual stage, it's me and dozens of other people in my field. And the idea is that those dozens of other people also have dozens of other audiences and that their audience may then find out about me. So it is exposure, they are offering to pay me an exposure. And occasionally, there are two other ways that they kind of get away with asking you to work for free: they will pay you via an affiliate link if I sell to my audience that VIP version of their summit. This is as standard, right? So I mentioned you can attend the workshop for free or you can attend the summit for free, but if you want access to the recording, or the workbook or the host or the online community, you have to upgrade to the VIP version. And if I as the speaker can sell that VIP version or that widget, I will get compensated. Sometimes they offer speaker bonuses of like, if you get 20 people to register, we'll give you $50, I'm making that number up, but that's how it works. So like if you get so many people to sign up with your unique leak link, then we will pay you. Sometimes the way that they offer to pay you is through allowing you, the speaker, to pitch yourself. So it'll look like we want you to do a 45-minute presentation and you can spend five of those 45 minutes talking about how people can work with you. So they're essentially saying, We want you to do this work for free, but we are giving you access to our audience and we are allowing you to pitch yourself so some of those people may then convert. There's that conversion rate again, they are not only selling themselves on the importance of growing their audience, they're also selling me on the importance of growing my audience and the importance of me getting their audience's eyeballs on my stuff. So I can also increase my conversion rate.
If you're wondering, Hmm this sounds familiar having you know, a few people at the top of some sort of organization getting a lot of money and offering to pay people at the bottom a little bit of money, yeah, this is like big corporations 101. Think about any like big corporation where the C-suite folks are taking home a big chunk of the revenue, and then the worker bees at the bottom should be excited to have like, a nice job at a cool place. It's the same shit, which is why this works so well. Our brains on capitalism are used to the structure. We are used to having a few people at the top, making a lot of money and a lot of people at the bottom make peanuts. So that's why for a lot of us, it doesn't register as being shady, because we already know this system, we are very, very familiar with this system. So uh, yeah, I want to stand this speaking thing for a little bit. So if you are being asked to participate in summits like this, you're being asked to work for free--you have to stop participating in events like these, like full stop. And if you're thinking, But, Lindsay, like, that's the way it's been done, that's the way it works if you want to grow your audience, you just have to like, work for free, and donate your time and hope that some people will convert. You're saying, It's just the way it is, it's just the way it's always been done. So I posit to you, dear therapist being asked to speak for free? Do you want to keep doing shit the way it's always been done? Or do you have an interest in moving things towards economic justice? That often means increasing social and racial justice as well. Saying no to speak at a free therapy summit that profits off of the exploitation of free labor of others, is literally the bare minimum. And let me be really clear here. Therapists are rife for this type of exploitation because our field tells us all the time that we don't deserve compensation. Insurance panels tell us we don't deserve to be fully compensated for our work. Our supervisors tell us you should be grateful to have this job. Our peers tell us you can't charge that much, right? So us therapists are used to being asked to work for free. So it also doesn't register as a total shitty, exploitative practice when people are asking us to speak at these events. To paraphrase Kelly Diels, we as therapists, as mental health care workers, have to include ourselves as participants and beneficiaries of economic justice. Meaning we have to start saying no to free labor. Okay, I cannot tell you how important this. This is so important to me, right? Like I tell you all the time if you're a therapist, and you're in private practice, there's no reason you can't have a sustainable living. So volunteering to speak and have your labor used and not compensated and honestly like compensating the people at the top, you got to stop doing that. You got to stop doing that. And I'm gonna get a little more irritated here. Now my blood pressure is rising. I'm gonna take a few cleansing breaths. And if you're listening along, you might need to do some deep belly breathing here too, because now you're probably all riled up. I can tell you, after the Great Awakening in the summer of 2020, conference organizers and summit organizers were scrambling to have somebody brown-looking on their website. And so my inbox became flooded. Because yes, they were looking to say Black Lives Matter but they're also like, Oh shit, if we can't get a black person, maybe we can get a brown-looking person too. So fucking transparent. Some of these summit hosts have tried to make their summits more social justice or more like woke by paying some of their speakers, some of the summits pay their speakers, but they only pay their speakers who are speaking on DEI issues. For example, me a woman of color, I was told, You know, we don't have it in the budget to pay you to talk about money mindset or therapist and fees. But we do have money in our budget to pay marginalized groups to speak about DEI issues. In other words, they would only pay queer neurodiverse disabled POC to speak about queer neurodiverse disabled and POC issues, further othering marginalized groups to only be allowed to be experts on diversity and equity and inclusion, instead of recognizing, like, Oh, duh marginalized people have so much more to offer than just being tokenized as the person who can speak about marginalized issues or DEI issues, so not that off, if you're doing that knock it off.
Alright, so let's move on to part two. Or part three, what part am I on? Let me see here, let me recap here. Where was I? So I was gonna first talk about why you're seeing them. That was part one, too, I was going to say what it feels like to be asked to be a speaker, or if you're being asked to be a speaker. Now moving on to part three, what do you do if you're a person who is getting marketed these summits? So what do you do if these things are showing up in your inbox and you're going, Oh, my God, but Lindsay, these summits look great, I actually really do need help with the thing that they're promising to help me with? So here are two main questions you can ask yourself, will you get out of the summit what the host is promising? And is this free summit equitable and in alignment with your values, and equitable to those involved in the summit? So question one, will I get out of this summit what the host is promising? Ask yourself, How realistic is it for me to attend 20 to 60 talks over five days? How realistic is it for me to implement all of the different things that the speakers are teaching? Will this cause me more overwhelm? Do I have the energetic capacity to absorb this information? And to implement this information? How true is it that I will go back and rewatch these videos or redo these worksheets or workbooks if I cannot attend them live? You may be saying It's very realistic, I've got a lot of time, I'm really eager to implement this, I can easily hit pause on working for three to five days or I can easily commit to rewatching these on the evenings and the weekends. I'm going to treat it like a course and I am going to treat it like homework and I'm going to implement it. Then cool, then you've got your answer for question one, I will be able to implement all that the hosts are promising. Now question two, is this free summit equitable to those involved? So, are the hosts compensating their speakers for their energy, their expertise, and their labor? An easy easy way to see if hosts are paying their speakers is to see if they charge an entry fee. And of course, paying a price to enter a summit doesn't guarantee that the speakers will be paid. So it's also fair to just say like, Hey, I'm really interested in your summit, can you tell me how the speakers are being compensated for their work? And if they tell you they aren't, or they are being compensated in, you know, selling the widget, that might be enough for you to kind of second guess, and again, it's not about me foisting my values on you. I'm just inviting you to think critically about how it is possible that all of these people are being compensated for their work.
Now, again, Nuance is important. I have attended and been a participant of, or a speaker of rather, several participants in summits that I'm thrilled to have joined, and I would absolutely do again, all of these were first and foremost in alignment with my values. The first three I'm going to mention paid speakers to be there. Therapy Reimagined, which was amazing. It was hosted by Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy and they brought together all of these amazing folks to talk about everything from the business side of your practice to therapeutic interventions. It was more traditional of a conference setting in that there were continuing education credits involved, but speakers were paid to be there and attendees paid to attend. Same thing, Simple Practice did an amazing summit in the summer of 2021. They compensated their speakers to be there and they asked for people to pay to join. Mamas Talk Money is a summit that is getting ready to kick-off, I think at the time of this recording. I'm not speaking about it this year, but I've spoken about it in the past and its mission is to help women, specifically, moms, feel more comfortable and competent around money and they break it into you know how to teach your kids about money, how to save for retirement if you are a stay at home parent, how to invest. They give people a lot of information without being overwhelming and they pay their speakers to be there. A free summit that I participated in and spoke out that was 100% in alignment with my values was Tumubo by Dr. Therapinay. The proceeds--It was a fundraiser-style summit. So we knew going into it, we the speakers knew that we were donating our time, but we also knew that it was a fundraising effort to help create Dr. Therapinay's ongoing effort to create an online space for Filipinxs wellness, mental health resources, decolonization and collective care. The goal was to increase accessibility and engagement for the Filipino community and that for me felt really good to do. So it's not always a financial compensation. But when you're thinking about is this summit equitable? It also is, what is the mission of it? And what proof do they have like, is the proof is in the pudding? If they're saying, Oh, we donate 3% of our proceeds to some, you know, whatever the trending fundraiser of the day is, that might also tell you that like that's, maybe they're doing that? I don't know. But just again, use your judgment, use your critical thinking skills, you're a therapist, you're allowed to think creatively and outside of the box.
Alright, and the fourth part of today's episode is what do we do? How can we as therapists make the case for marketing, because we have to market ourselves? And how can we do it ethically? And how can we do it in alignment with our values? I market myself every damn time I come on this podcast. So I'm not opposed to marketing. Every single time I come on this podcast, I'm telling you, you can purchase a workshop, or you can hire me, or there's, you know, something coming up that allows you to compensate me for my labor. And there are a few things I consider when I am marketing my work. And as always take it or leave it. If you are considering marketing your services, or you already have a marketing strategy in place. Maybe just spend an extra moment or two, asking yourself, Does my marketing strategy have these four things? The four things are transparency, consent, human dignity, trauma-informed and energy. Let me get into each of those. So transparency, what ask will be made of the audience of the podcast listeners of your email, letter news, subscribers of your social media followers? What are they giving of you in exchange for you being allowed into their inbox? So in general, when I offer something for free, I generally make an ask, which is why on this podcast, I generally make an ask for you to support me in a certain way, I usually say I'm doing a paid workshop, or I have openings for power sessions, or whatever it is. Whenever I offer something paid, on the other hand, if you then pay to join a workshop, my audience, you, will not be then pitched on something else. So if it's free, I will make an ask. if it's paid, I will not make an additional upsell, ask. Does that make sense? So when a lot of these free summits, instead of compensating speakers, the hosts allow the speakers to pitch their goods or their services. So is it clear from the top? Meaning does the summit host say, FYI, this is free, because all of the speakers will have airtime dedicated to telling them about how you can work with them if it's a fit for you. So are you transparent, there will be a pitch? Are you transparent that if they pay to work with you, they won't be subjected to additional upsell? So that's kind of transparency. And, and the other thing that kind of weaves between transparency and the next thing, which is consent is pricing. I make my pricing abundantly clear, I don't believe in hiding the cost to work with me. I think that causes another barrier. And that's a part of my value of transparency, but also is consent. So let me get into consent--consent in marketing. Do your audience members want to participate in this way? Do they know the price? Are they aware of other options? Lots of marketing relies on a You need me, you need buy goods, you need my service or else mentality. Right? I'm gonna pick on Google ads because I have no skin in that game. You need Google ads in order to have a thriving therapy practice. Otherwise, no one will ever find you and you'll never get a client. Right? It's a lot of, Either you hire me or you're doomed to fail. You get to decide if this is a value of yours. I will foist my values on you. So here's what I do and what I don't do as a way to offer consent to people who do want to work with me and consent to people who don't want to work with me, I first come at it from a place of, I trust this person's dignity, I trust that this person, as a human adult can make informed decisions about what is best for them. So for example, if you are a therapist looking to hire me for coaching to help you with your private practice, I am really transparent that like, for example, I don't have skin in the game on LinkedIn. I'm not a person to hire if you're looking to gussy up your LinkedIn profile or create a LinkedIn marketing strategy. Right? So I say, here's what I do. Here's what I don't do. I don't do Google ads, I don't do LinkedIn marketing, I don't teach you how to do Facebook marketing, that is not my jam. If you hire me to help you with a marketing strategy, I can help you with how to craft your message and your words and how to show up in that way. And then you get to decide what platform you want to take that to. Now, if you're looking to work with me, as a therapist, as a financial therapist, I'm not a person to work with, if you're solely looking for someone to be a blank slate in traditional psychotherapy, we've been sold on this idea that we have to be blank slates and therapists, as therapists, and I just I don't believe in that. I think that as a woman of color, I can't show up in the therapy room as a blank slate. When people talk about blank slate therapists are talking about a white male therapist who can hide parts of themselves, I can't hide that I'm a woman in the room, I can't hide that I'm a woman of color in the room. So by default, like, I'm not gonna fucking offer a blank slate. So if you're looking for a blank slate, that's not me. I'm very transparent about my values. If you go to my about page, I'm really clear about what I stand for and what I stand against. And that shows up in the therapy room. So if you're looking for somebody who isn't going to weave in elements of social and economic and racial justice, then you may need a different therapist, and that's perfectly fine. So when you are creating your marketing, I invite you to think about dignity and consent. Are you clearly pointing out other people that might be better fits or other places that might better fit and talking about what you do and what you don't do? Just to be clear, this is not I'm for you, if you're ready to explode your growth, and I'm not for you, if you're a lazy POS, like, that's not what I'm talking about. Anyway, alright, trauma-informed. Again, I mentioned earlier, there's a lot of, like, traumatizing and re-traumatizing shit going on in the world of online marketing, which is like, If you don't hire me, you will be doomed to be broke forever. Or, If you are a human with problems and pain and flaws. I'm the only person who can solve your problem. So does the marketing trigger a person by flooding them with everything that's wrong with them, all the things that are wrong in their life, all the pain and trauma of the world, and then position themselves as the only solution? As therapists, we have to be aware of the possibility of vicarious trauma, that hearing or seeing something can traumatize others. A great example of non-trauma informed marketing that has nothing to do with therapists, but I think this helps to paint a really clear picture is Peta, right? They may have a good mission or a good intent, which is to do less harm to animals be kinder to the planet, but they do it through a lot of traumatic marketing by showing a lot of graphic and painful images with the idea that you and you alone can contribute to stopping the pain and trauma of animals if you cut out animal-based products, right? Their intent, may be good, do less harm to animals, but their marketing is incredibly traumatic. I think it is not trauma-informed at all. Also, I've seen an uptick in people saying like, Oh, I am trauma-informed, but not actually like having done the work, right? This is like preformatted trauma-informed 101 they'll say things like, Oh, well, I asked for consent to put somebody's testimonial on my website, and that's trauma-informed, or I put a logo of MasterCard on my checkout page and that is proof to people on my page that I work with a reputable payment processor. I'm like, what the fuck? You clearly missed the memo, that's not trauma-informed. It's just like being a good human doing due diligence. Alright. Last thing is energy. Does the marketing that you're doing work for you? All marketing has its merits like, you know, LinkedIn works. Tik tok works, podcasts work, Facebook works. All of those things work, but does it work for you? Does it feel good, sustainable and doable for you? So again, not to voice my values, but I will share how I make this decision about energetic alignment.
I do a little bit of energetic alignment and a little bit of data-driven marketing, meaning I have a CEO day tracking spreadsheet. Everybody who joins Grow a Profitable Practice from the inside Out gets access to that tracking measurement and I also teach them how to use it. And that CEO day helps me to understand if my labor and energy on the certain marketing platforms is actually working. So I track how well is LinkedIn working for me? How well is Twitter working for me? How well is Instagram working for me, right? And that data-driven approach helps me to not spread myself too thin, and really helps me decide where investing my energy makes financial and business sense, right? So first, I look at the data and then when I look at that data, and I see Oh, this looks like it's working, I also run myself through, does it feel good for me? So me, personally, I'm not on Facebook, I'm not on Twitter, I'm not on LinkedIn. And when I say I'm not on Twitter or LinkedIn, I mean that like, I have a Twitter platform, and I have a LinkedIn profile. But I don't actively use those platforms. And maybe the only person in the world who goes to Twitter to like, find funny memes and tweets, like I don't use it to do scroll. So I have a Twitter like, do that, because the algorithm now knows that I just want to see like dog pictures and funny tweets. And I don't use LinkedIn for my business, not because those platforms don't work. There are plenty of people who can teach you how to use Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. But twofold. I tracked the metrics, those particular platforms did not move the needle for my business. And two, I don't like hanging out there. I don't like hanging out on Facebook, it makes me want to throw up to be quite honest, I don't like hanging out on LinkedIn, I find it like boring and performative at best. Doesn't mean those things don't work, it just means they don't work for me and they don't feel good for my energy. My aligned clients come through three different channels. One is you, my podcast listeners, two is my email newsletter readers. So if you have taken my quiz at MindMoneyBalanced.com/Quiz to learn about your financial archetype, you will see that you are added to the email list and I won't trick you, I tell you, if you take this quiz and get your results, you will be added to my email list, but of course, you can unsubscribe consent. You are always allowed to leave my email list and a little, little bit through Instagram. And if you're looking at my Instagram, and you're like, Lindsay, you have nine and a half thousand followers, how are you telling me it's a teensy bit through Instagram? It's because I track my numbers. Having a bunch of followers does not translate to having a bunch of clients. So that is how I track how the metrics are working. And also whether or not it feels good for me energetically in delivering that free content.
So to summarize today's podcast episode, as I talked about the problem with free therapy summits, these free summits are all the rage, because of this mythical 3% conversion rate. People want to grow their list so that they can make sales. Two. I'm not criticizing individual hosts or speakers. I'm encouraging you to think critically about these tactics and to be critical of exploitative practices. Three, an easy way to make these summits equitable is to charge a fee for people to attend, and to appropriately compensate speakers in doing so the transparent trade-off is that then speakers don't pitch themselves. So the speakers can trust that if what they said or offered resonated with summit participants, those participants will then seek out working with them. Again, this is like just extending human dignity and respect. Four diversity. If you're going to have it in your summits, which you should, duh, cannot be performative and cannot be for tokenization don't just pay people to speak about DEI and not pay marginalize people to talk about other things that they're experts in. Five, ethical marketing exists. Marketing is important for all businesses, we have to market in order to stay afloat. That just is the way it is and if you're like I don't want to do marketing, you're already doing marketing because word of mouth marketing is marketing. And for therapy businesses in 2022, online marketing is becoming a bigger part of our reality. So I encourage you to make sure you have your own lens or set of questions that you ask yourself. Again, I'm asking myself when I'm marketing, am I transparent? am I providing consensual marketing? And am I respecting the human dignity of my audience members? Is this trauma-informed? am I offering a trigger warning? Or am I being cognizant that something might be re-traumatizing? And then finally, does it work with my energy?
That is my spiel today, I'm really excited. Next week, I'm going to be talking about therapists and retirement. And then in April to provide even more consent for you, my dear listener, I am going to create themes. So starting in April, every single month in the world of Mind Money Balance, whether on the podcast on my social feed, or in your inbox, it will be themed and so the theme in April will be couples and money. And this is a great way for you for me again, to extend consent to you. If you're like couples, and money doesn't really resonate for me, then you can check back in with my work in May when I move on from that topic. But if you are like, Ooh, I do want to learn about couples and money, then you will know that in April, I'll be talking about couples and money. So I'll see you next week to cover therapists and retirement.
Do let me know what you thought of today's episode. Did you know all this about therapy summits or about free summits? Did you find this interesting? A great way to spread the message about me and my work and support my work at Mind Money Balance is by sharing this podcast with others. So take a screenshot and share it on Instagram. Make sure you tag me so I can see it and/or just like rate and review this podcast. That's also a great way for other people to see that this podcast was helpful. See you next week.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai