How a Prelicensed Therapist Built a Coaching Business (And Got 5 Clients Using AI)

Welcome back to the show, my friends. We have a special guest here today. His name is Nicholas. Honestly, I don't do these guest episodes very often, and when I do do them, they're pretty bomb. You're going to want to listen to this all the way through. Nicholas, I'll tell you, uh, before I just came into this room, I was reviewing the notes that you had filled out, and I was debating how I was going to introduce you, and I had came up with 3 different intros of how I was gonna introduce you. You're so freaking multifaceted. I scratched all of it and I said, you know what, I'm gonna pass the baton to Nicholas and I want him to introduce himself. So we're gonna start there. You're gonna tell us all about yourself, what you're doing, your incredible win that you just told me before I hit record. We're gonna talk about Carly AI in this episode as well. I think, Nicholas, you have to be the number one fan of Carly AI. Truly, uh, rant and rave, maybe a little bit of dependency on Carly AI. I'm, I'm cool with that. I'm here for it. So if you've been interested in, uh, purchasing Carly AI and wondering how this can help you in your business, then Nicholas can speak to that as well. So baton is yours, Nicholas. Tell us for everyone who's listening who you are and what led you to the work that you're doing today.

Yeah, thank you, Carly Hill. Hi everyone, my name is Nicholas Makris. Um, I am a 31-year-old queer, soon-to-be licensed mental health counselor practicing in South Florida. I graduated in May 2023 with my Master of Science in clinical psychology. Upon graduating, I quickly worked my way up into community mental health. Um, which is where I currently work at now. I started as a preventionist, which I was not excited about at all cuz I don't like community outreach and tabling and talking to people in that extroverted way. But I said, you know what, this is the way to get me in for my hours and this is the way to get me into my community that I wanna help and specialize in. And 8 months later I worked myself up into an associate clinical director role and that's the role I have been holding for the past, uh, 2 years there at that agency. I grew up in a small town in West Virginia. Uh, when my parents split when I was younger, my mom moved to Ohio, so I when I say I'm from the Ohio Valley area, the Appalachian kind of area. And ultimately, I found psychology in some shape or form. But I knew from the get-go that I was going to work with LGBTQ people. I didn't know why. I didn't know what that looked like. I didn't know how I was going to get there, but I just knew that was my calling in life. There was just something about the community that I need to be there for our community because our community needs to thrive. Our community has a lot of richness in it and we can't lose that. And so that was something that I recognized early on in my professional clinical career. Outside of my clinicalness, my graduate school program, I have a cousin who's been, I'm really close with, her name's Alessia and it still is. And she came to me, she has a private practice in Central Florida. She started a private practice right out of graduate school. She had a handful of professors tell her, yeah, good luck with that. And so she did it and she came to me and she said, hey, I'm hitting this like glass ceiling. And before we kind of knew what coaching was, She said, hey, do you want to help me expand my clinic into a— my practice into a clinic? And I said, of course, I need to know how to do that so I could do my private practice. And so I essentially operationalized, I systemized her private practice, which is now her clinic in Central Florida. I did the hiring for her, I edited her contracts, I created a student volunteer internship program for undergraduate students in psychology, social work-related fields. That were craving that kind of clinical, uh, private practice experience, but were being told, well, you don't even have your bachelor's yet. And so we created a really ethically informed student undergraduate program, uh, for her clinic. And then ultimately I graduated and I spread my wings and here I am today. Throughout the past couple years, I just want to note that my cousin and I, she came to me and she said, hey, the clinic's going great, but I want some more income. And there's something about coaching I want to get into. Do you want to? Stay as my admin and do you wanna, I'll just pay you to like help me with my coaching business, or do you wanna go into a coaching business together? And so her and I, 2 years ago, built what is now MindFit Coaching. We have an online coaching program. We're in the online digital space. That's been a journey in itself. But I guess in a somewhat nutshell, that's a little bit about myself. What I do, how I do it, and who I do it for.

Yes. Amazing. And tell everybody your win that you just told me before we hit record, because I am over the moon excited for you.

Yes. I took my National Mental Health Counselors exam this morning and I passed with flying colors. So that is a big win. Yes, I'm very excited. Yes. Thank you.

And you said, well, I don't know what the universe is trying to tell me, Carly, but I passed my exam this morning and then I'm sitting here on this podcast episode with you and it, it's just meant to be, right? And I remember studying for that damn exam so hard. I don't know if you had to study or you're just that type of person that does good on tests, but I was never a good test taker. I actually used to take them like back to front. I, I definitely had test anxiety and. I used up all 4 hours of my clinical exam, like, rechecking each one. But they pass you that paper right then and there when you walk out, and there's no better feeling when it says CAS.

Amazing.

And you walk out and you immediately call someone, you text everyone, you're planning your celebrations. You get to celebrate that and ride that high for quite some time. Incredible work. So Let's go back to coaching for a second because you launched coaching pretty early on. I mean, and when I say early on, it may not feel like that for you because it was a progression and you've been in other coaching programs, and I want to hear about how you describe this being a journey. But I wish I was as smart as you when I was a pre-licensed clinician. Nobody really teaches us that we can add coaching, or people just poopoo on the coaching industry. And even like that professor telling your cousin, like, good luck, uh, starting your private practice, right? So I think it's talked about more in today's age, and I do think that this is a movement that's happening right now— therapists adding coaching. I believe that therapists make the best coaches, and we should be on the front line of the coaching industry. And there's a time and a space and a place for therapy, just as there is a time and a space and a place for coaching, right? It's not meant to be a loophole of any sorts. They're, they're two totally different things, um, especially, you know, the coaching that you're doing. So I can see what inspired that move. One, because of the, the mission that you had, right? And wanting to impact more lives, but also your cousin coming to you and be like, I have a cap on my income. Is that right?

Interesting.

Yeah. So take us down this journey of, all right, we're gonna add coaching, here we go. What were some of these roadblocks that came? You did do another program, right? You're like, this is before I knew about Carly Hill. So what was that like? And what have you learned since then? If you could speak to somebody who's maybe just starting off or haven't even started their coaching business yet. Yeah.

So, you know, when my cousin Alessia first came to me, our first goal, once we decided we were gonna go into coaching together, was Okay, so who are we going to like invest in to teach us how to do this? And we spent a while looking for coaches. And what we realized were two things, right? It's hard to find coaches that are therapists practicing, that are ethically bound with their license, that are going into coaching. And two, all the coaches we were finding were healthcare, they were dietitians. It was the husband of the psychologist, it wasn't the psychologist herself, you know, and most of these coaching programs, as you're aware, like minimum $4,000 or $5,000 $10,000. We were fine investing that money, but we wanted to— we, we struggled feeling good about our coach and we eventually found a coach based out of Canada who's a dietitian. And the price was right. It was lifelong access. We had like a year in the program. She had a tech platform. Like she really gave us all the tools for the most part, most of the tools. The modules were, when we got into the program, it was a little overwhelming because we signed up for like build your online course program, but then we had all these other things pop up and we're like, oh my gosh, like what's all this? Um, but ultimately what we came out of it was the core skills on, you know, how to record, how to map out your, your modules, how to, how to do it, the strategy behind it, I guess is what I'm saying. You know, and my cousin Alessia, she's not, she's the first to say she's not super techie. And so, you know, when it comes to like our CRM platform, recording the videos, editing the videos, the thumbnails, all the moving parts, that's kind of where I came in. And, you know, our business coach was great for the most part. We had the weekly coaching calls and this, that, and the other. But I say the coaching was a journey because we originally went into a coaching program that was a high price point. That was what we were told, you know, to recommend. Um, you know, don't do a low price point, do a high price point, do a hybrid approach. And so we mapped out this beautiful, I think it was like a 4-month, 16-week online, uh, somewhat hybrid program for parents of LGBTQ children to provide parents of LGBTQ children the support and resources they need without having to schedule family therapy with the therapist, the mother, the father, and the child. And to be sensitive to this anti-LGBTQ climate that we were coming up against, to be able to drop this in little suburban pockets where there wasn't LGBTQ-affirming care, um, or resources out there. Biggest struggle that I think we've faced and most therapists face when it comes to the marketing. And we just didn't feel like we had good marketing strategy support out of all of those random things. When I log into that GoHighLevel program we bought, um, there's not a lot of strong marketing. It's really surface and shallow. And then we had some changes politically in the States and we weren't able to, to tag through Meta ads like those gender and sexual words, right? We weren't able to target parents of LGBTQ LGBTQ children like we were 6 months ago when we were building the program. There was some changes with Facebook. We got into Facebook groups and stuff, but we just realized it was so hard to market this program. There's so much fear around it. And so like, we gotta pivot, we gotta shift. And so I drove up to Orlando from Fort Lauderdale and I got me on I-95. I went up to, uh, you know, north of Orlando. I went into my cousin's house for the weekend and we mapped out a completely different approach. We said, what do we know is gonna sell? And we mapped out essentially an online coaching on-demand program, what we called it at the time, for pre-licensed clinicians nationwide to be able to provide them with something that we weren't able to find elsewhere. But essentially wanted to give pre-licensed clinicians nationwide an affordable program that's not only connecting them with pre-licensed clinicians in other states, not just their state, but also giving them templates and resources and a 24-page workbook that's going to help map out, okay, you have the degree, now what? What are you, how are you going to use it? How are you going to market yourself? What's your elevator pitch? What are you minimizing in your experience and how can we leverage that? And we did this all in 4 hours on a Saturday, recorded all of our videos, we mapped everything out. We didn't go into it with like a huge outline. We just kind of showed up and just spoke to our experience and what we just kind of let our experience kind of guide us. And now we have about 5 founding members in this program. Carly Hill is the reason why we have 5 people in this program because social media was never a thing for us and we always struggled with it. And Carly AI is the reason why when you go to the Registered Intern Roadmaps Facebook page, you see posts Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. We go live on Wednesdays. We have the structure, but it's not like I never thought I would enjoy scheduling social media and sitting down on Sunday mornings with a cup of coffee straight from my Breville. Um, and like going into Carly AI, and just in doing social media, it takes me an hour to schedule 3 to 4 weeks out. And it's wild to think that we're there, but it's made such a tremendous difference. So when I say it's been a journey, you know, that was all before we found you and Carly. I was great because I was like, oh shit, if I found Carly, who's in our backyard in Florida, licensed clinicians like ourselves, I would have went with Carly. But we can't, we already invested our money into this. So Carly Hill was a way that I was able to get what was missing from our current coach while feeling still good about protecting our license and having some type of a, a therapist colleague, like kind of in our kind of decision-making process, which we weren't getting from a dietitian in Canada.

Yeah, makes sense. So first off, thank you for saying all of this. I'm so incredibly proud of you. I, it's been an honor to guide you and I'm not even hands-on in your business. It's just my AI agents that are hands-on in your business, but I, I had to create them to, to create more of me, right? Um, so I'm just so pleased to hear that Carly AI is the reason you have these 5 paying clients. And also remind you that you're the reason. I know you know that, but you looked at everything and you pivoted and you put in the time and you've restructured everything and you dedicated the time to constantly put in the work and also reinvest in yourself. Not that you were burned, but maybe you didn't get what you were fully expecting. And a lot of people stop investing after that. They don't keep investing over and over again. So, uh, kudos to you. You're doing it. And this is just the beginning. I mean, 5 founding members, this is gonna This is gonna multiply and it's going to blow the F up. I started with 1 member and then 2 members and then 5 members, and I've coached, you know, thousands of clinicians at this point. So keep up the good work. You have a lot ahead of you and I will be here to guide you because there's a lot more support than Carly AI, and I know you know that. Tell me, let's go back to social media for a second. What's the biggest block for you? Not knowing what to post.

It was everything. It was what social— like, what do we pick? Do we pick one? Do we try to do— do we have to do it all? Like, is it a Facebook page? Is it just like a Facebook group? And then it's like the copywriting, and then it's like the call to actions, and then it's like automating the keywords. And it just felt like, you know, social media is just so much nowadays. And this is why we pay people to do our social media, and they have people that just do Facebook ads. But for us it was everything. We just didn't even know where to start. We didn't know what platform. Okay, we need to create posts, but like, like what does that even look like? Like, am I just recording myself? Um, and that's why we went like almost a year as we, you know, troubleshooted different programs. We still went a year without even like, we had such an avoidance for social media and now it's like the complete opposite.

I'm curious, have you tested regular ChatGPT? Versus Carly AI? Like, have you ever asked regular ChatGPT to write you a caption?

I do. I pull up ChatGPT, I pull up Manus, I pull up Perplexity, and I pull up, uh, Carly AI, and I test everyone. Um, but, but Carly AI is the one that, you know, Google and stuff will, will, will give you something, but it just seems like Carly AI just gives you more of a consistent strategy and consist— you can just tell the strategy is more consistent to it and it's more catered to how I would speak to my clients and what my clients are looking for to buy. Sometimes ChatGPT or Manus was either like too clinical or I don't know, it just didn't— there was something about Carly AI where I could tell like, all right, this is the hook, this is the caption, this is the call to action. It just felt like I didn't trust ChatGPT, which is why I invested in Carly AI.

Yeah, I told you guys, Nicholas is my number one fan for Carly AI. And it's true. And I want to say that the reason is because, well, it's because I've trained it, trained it in all of these proven copywriting frameworks, right? Uh, the PAS pro tip post, the two-step lead magnet post, the before-after bridge post. I mean, you probably don't know that on the front end of using it, but it has all of the trained copywriting frameworks and sale psychology weaved into it. But that's not even what I was gonna say. What I was gonna say was it's asking you questions first to make sure it's in your brand voice. It's asking you questions about your end goal and your program, so then it can reverse engineer it. That's why it sounds like you. That's why it has a sexy, compelling hook to stop the scroll, cuz we only have 3 to 5 seconds. Right? Sometimes these other AI tools, they're just spitting out an answer immediately without pushing back. It has to— Carly AI is going to push back until it has all of the information that it needs to then give you the final end result, whatever that may be, whether it's your emails, Emily, the email marketing assistant, or it is writing your social media posts. Like those are only two of the agents. Have you used it yet to audit your sales calls?

Carly, we just talked about social media. I'm pretty sure I may be the reason why Carly AI got a little overwhelmed because I put every single thing in Carly AI. Your whole AI team has audited my sales page, and if it couldn't, if it didn't take my link, I would send screenshots or I would copy and paste. It did my Facebook page, give me feedback on that. It looked at our upsell page for our coaching calls. I fed it my whole module outline. At one point just so it really knew what we're doing. But it has looked at every single— I think the only thing it hasn't done is create a webinar. Polly the Perfect Webinar. Yeah, she's the only one I haven't used. Yeah, because we're not doing webinars. But I have a 112-page Google Doc that literally has like, 60 days social media ready to go, and then it has my social media. Mondays we post this, Tuesdays we do this, And then it has all the feedback from the sales audit, all the feedback from the Facebook audit, like everything that Carly Hill has audited in our brand. I have a 112-page document so I can go back and reference it, um, as needed. It's like my Bible for my business right now.

Yeah. Incredible. And it's shortcut the time for you. Oh, 100%. And continues to do so. We have to be leveraging AI. We are in this AI renaissance. I think a lot of people are afraid of AI or they think it's, you know, just gonna be a copy and paste thing. Like, of course you need to look at it and I don't want you to copy and paste and we don't want it to sound like AI, but you're perfect proof that it works. It doesn't, you, you don't sound like robot on your social media, you know? Mm-hmm. And it's collapsing the timeline for you. I think you might use Carly AI more than I do. This is, this is so funny. I knew you were a fan, but I didn't know you had a hundred something pages of documents. P.S., you should be doing a webinar. You're not doing that yet, but that's gonna help you drive traffic. So definitely use the webinar creator and then you can market this, drive traffic to the live webinar, and then you can pitch right then and there on the webinar. Then you record it and you put it on Evergreen as well.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, well, let me—

so that'll be your next marketing move.

Yeah, maybe I'll have a date with Polly tomorrow night.

There you go. That sounds like a good date to me.

Yeah.

Let me ask you this. Why do you think so many therapists feel behind, or maybe not behind, resistant when it comes to social media or just visibility in general?

You know, I'll kind of speak for myself. What I struggle with the most You know, with like my therapeutic framework was really, um, you know, I don't reveal much about myself unless it's clinically relevant and like being mindful in this digital age that like everything we do digitally has a footprint. Um, and so for me, you know, I've realized with myself, it's, it creates a lot of anxiety for me to like put myself out there. Um, however, now that I've been putting myself out there, right? I'm like, oh, like this is not that big of a deal, but it, it, I think, you know, we have a lot of ethics and clinical considerations that other healthcare fields don't have to take into account. And so I think that just makes us think twice about being on social media. And if we do, like, what would that look like? Because also to the flip side of it, right, but there was just a medical professional that just got her license suspended because she was on social media talking about someone, not a client, had nothing to do with a HIPAA violation, but it was just like, you're projecting your beliefs, even if it's personal, right? That could like, go one or two ways. And so I think for me, and now other therapist friends that I talk about, I think it kind of goes back to like just that vulnerability and like, what if my clients see this? And that's like another factor I got to keep in mind. And like, you know, what if I say something and then I get like a spotlight on me for the wrong reasons with the wrong people? What if my video gets sent to the wrong Facebook group that's not necessarily the most affirming group of people? And then they have, you know, it's just a different world we live in. I think I'm obviously projecting my own stuff. But, you know, we think 3 times before utilizing social media and like, what does that look like for us? And for me, I use social media for my business and that kind of helps me stay focused on like, all right, this is like the messaging, this is the topic, and I don't go away from this.

I think you're speaking for a lot of clinicians. I think a lot of people are probably silently nodding their head as they listen to you speak and share that. I think there's a lot of undoing. We're taught as therapists, you know, don't be seen, stay small. They kind of want us to work for an agency and, uh, don't self-disclose. There's a lot of undoing when, one, you go out on your own as an entrepreneur in private practice, and then a second layer when you go out as a coach as well. And I see a lot of fear around, well, what are other therapists and colleagues gonna think of me? Not only am I abiding by my ethics, am I doing this ethically and legally? Yes, of course, you know, we always need to have our legal ducks in a row there. But is this the right message for clients? Am I going to fall on deaf ears? I'm, I'm scared to even post this. What if I fail at this? This is vulnerable for me to share my own story. And also what are other colleagues and therapists going to think of me too? I think that there's so many therapist Facebook groups that are meant to be supportive, and they're the polar opposite, and they're not supportive. And I think that whether people are active in that or not, they, they see it, and there is this subconscious fear of, well, what are other clinicians going to think of me? And, and if you're thinking that— and I always tell my clients, we just had a session today about visibility because this gets brought up time and time again. I have to normalize this, but I always tell them that go back to your why, go back to your mission, go back to your vision. The haters, the naysayers, the keyboard warriors, they will always exist. I have a training in my curriculum, Bye Felicia to the Keyboard Warriors, and the bigger your business gets, the more of that you will have, right? And so you'll never be able to mitigate it completely, And it's actually a good sign when you start repelling people and you're, you're getting a little bit of the trolls, right? It means you're playing big enough. People are seeing your stuff. You're becoming omnipresent in the online world. People are talking and it's not always about being liked, but that's when it's important to go back to your why and your mission of reaching those people and why you're doing this in the first place. Right?

Mm-hmm.

And it sounds like you've conquered that, like It's an ongoing thing, right, as you become more and more visible, but you just did it and you're like, oh, this isn't so bad. It's getting easier as I go along.

Easy.

Yeah. So as we wrap this up, I want to ask you, what piece of advice would you give to any clinician who's listening? Specifically, I would say the pre-licensed clinicians, already been licensed, they're in private practice like your cousin, and they're they're wanting to outgrow the office in some way, shape, or form. They're trying to make a pivot. You've been on this journey, as we called it. You shared some of these hurdles that you had. You've had a lot of wins as well. You're, you're in the thick of it doing it now. So what advice would you give to a clinician who's on that cusp of a, a pivot?

Yeah, you know, I think my recently I've been thinking back when I, when I first graduated as a therapist, I struggled with imposter syndrome, like horrible. I was like, I'm not a I'm not a good enough therapist. I'm not doing enough. They're not— I'm not giving them homework, but they say like, you know, that they had a good session and, you know, and then I had to shift my mindset. But it put a perspective on— it's not that I wasn't doing therapy. I just didn't think I was enough. I didn't think I was doing it. And I think as ironic as it is, we have a lot of those self-defeating beliefs that we work with our clients. But ultimately, honey, if you can get a master's degree, a PhD in counseling and show up for clients and the clients still show up the next session, You know, that's a huge accomplishment. And I think a lot of times we have the skillset, we have the drive, we have the determination. You don't know how to have, you don't have to know how to do something. You just have to have that drive to figure it out. And if you can figure out how to do a dissertation, a thesis, work with clients that you never thought you were gonna work with until they walked into your internship office or your private practice, a lot of times it's not that we can't do it, we just think we can't do it. For everyone listening right now, think back like before you were a mental health professional, before you had a degree or whatever, like what were you doing to survive? Right? I didn't know how to make coffee before I worked at Starbucks, but I quickly became a coffee master and worked my way up into leadership. I didn't know how to be as— I didn't have any formal associate clinical director experience, but I had all the core skill sets to thrive. But it was also part of my mindset too. I don't need someone to help me do something. I can figure it out myself. And I'm also aware of when I need to ask for help, when I need to delegate something. So for anyone listening, I would say just take the jump, right? You probably didn't think you were gonna have that private practice you have, right? I didn't think I was gonna hit all my goals at age 30, 31, and now I'm like, shit, I gotta make a whole bunch of new goals now because I'm doing everything I was set out to do. And I also have a lot more things that I wanna do, you know? So it's not that you can't do it, you just maybe don't think that you can do it. And so Uh, what I tell myself is it's not that serious. I took the exam this morning, right? I went, everyone was nervous around me, all the nurses and somebody with life insurance. And I was just there like smiling. I was like, oh, it's not that serious. It is multiple choice. We're gonna click through it. You either know it or you don't. It is not that serious. Just like get through it. Because what am I gonna do if I go in it and being like, oh my gosh, right? I'm not, I'm gonna be in my limbic system. I'm not gonna be thinking rationally and then I'm not gonna pass. Right? So sometimes if we just approach things and be like, you know what, it's not that serious. I'm just gonna pull up Carly AI. And I'm just gonna have it create like a, create a, some ideas for an online coaching program. And then you might see something and be like, oh, okay, well I have a group curriculum for that. So what would it be like to turn that group curriculum into an 8-week module online program? Right.

I love it. I, I love it. I'm gonna steal that. It's not that serious. It's not that deep. Like, what do you have to lose? Just take the leap. Just like you said, that mindset is what got you to where you are today, Nicholas, and it's gonna take you to where you're going. I will say it again, I'm super, super proud of you. I'm honored to be on this path with you. I can't wait to see how your success continues to unfold. Yes, you need to make new goals. We're here to go big, go big or go home. Thank you again for being on the show. Where can everybody find you?

That's a great question. With that being said, I have, uh, private social media. Um, if anyone wants to follow me on social media. My username's @theshadylittlegreek. For all business stuff, if anyone's interested in the Registered Intern Roadmap, which is what I've hinted at, our online program connecting pre-licensed clinicians nationwide, if you go to facebook.com/registeredinternroadmap, you'll find our Facebook page. You know, while we use Carly Hill AI, I vet everything through it and our lead magnets and everything is what I wish I would've had when I graduated. So if anyone's in the pre-licensed world or in their first year after graduation, please find the Registered Intern Roadmap. You don't have to join, but by all means, there's tons of free resources in there for you.

Yeah, love it. All of that will be included in the show notes. Much needed work. I wish I had that when I had graduated. So everybody go check that out. Thank you, Nicholas.

Thank you, Carly Hill.