In this special "Hot Seat" episode of the Thriving Therapreneur Podcast, host Carly Hill fields three therapist‑coach guests—Dana Spuck, Erin Smythe, and Michelle Lassane DeSantis—who each pose a burning business question and receive step‑by‑step guidance. Dana’s question centers on the absolute necessities for a brand‑new coaching business. Carly outlines an order‑of‑operations checklist: (1) form a separate legal entity (LLC preferred, sole‑proprietor as fallback), (2) secure attorney‑approved coaching contracts that protect licensure (mandated reporting, informed consent, board notification), (3) set up a professional email/domain (G Suite, GoDaddy, Name.com), (4) defer a full website until later, and (5) consider a unified CRM (white‑label GoHighLevel) to avoid piecemeal subscriptions. Erin’s question asks how to nurture and convert leads. Carly stresses that follow‑up is the revenue engine, recommending either a human touch or automation backed by a team. She differentiates organic marketing (personal brand, intentional social‑media posts, copy‑writing frameworks, strong CTAs, lead magnets, webinars, email sequences) from paid advertising (targeted Facebook/Instagram ads). She maps the client journey: awareness → opt‑in (lead magnet) → trust → consult call → sale → ascension to higher‑ticket offers, and explains outbound vs inbound lead generation, the importance of metrics beyond vanity numbers, and leveraging other creators’ audiences. Michelle’s question deals with narrowing a vague, broad service offering into a marketable niche. Carly walks through a systematic process: (a) list the top three problems you solve, rank each by skill and excitement, (b) pick a specific population you already have warm connections with, (c) ensure the problem is persistent, painful, and has high‑stakes consequences (financial, relational, health, etc.), (d) validate through market research (coffee chats, surveys), and (e) craft a concise problem statement for marketing. Across all three segments, Carly repeatedly emphasizes: legal protection first, then relationship‑based marketing, then scalable systems. The episode delivers a practical “business essentials checklist” that therapists can apply immediately to transition into coaching with freedom, flexibility, and security.
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Welcome back to the Thriving Therapreneur Podcast. This is a special episode because I brought in 3 volunteers to answer their most burning business questions. And I know for a fact that these are the exact questions that you have as a therapist moving into the coaching space, outgrowing the office, and you're wondering how can you really have more freedom, flexibility, and security as you start this new business venture. So without further ado, we're just going to dive right in. You're going to hear from 3 of your very own peers and their most burning business questions. I hope you take away multiple golden nuggets from this episode. All right, our first guest is Dana. Dana, can you tell us who you are and who do you help?
Hi, my name is Dana Spuck. I am a therapist and coach. I've been a therapist about 10 years, and I am a coach that works with working moms and overwhelmed moms with ADHD and executive functioning challenges to help them just stop dropping the ball on what's important to them without completely overhauling their lives.
Amazing. And what is your burning business question?
So my question is, as a brand new business owner, what are some of the absolute, like, necessities to just get started and get yourself kind of off the ground? You know, is it a CRM? Is it just an email? Is it a website? What are the things that are really necessary to get started?
Yeah, good question, because there is absolutely an order of operations in business, and I think too many entrepreneurs are spending their time on the wrong things up front, and this is causing them unnecessary frustration, burnout, overwhelm, and then they're giving up before they even get to the good part. So really wise question. Do you need a website? No. Definitely not. Put it on the back burner. You can have social media. You can get paying clients without social media just by fostering relationships. You do need to have a business entity in place. I would recommend getting yourself an LLC, especially if you already have a private practice. Know that you're gonna have a separate LLC for your coaching business. If you don't wanna file an LLC yet, that's fine. You technically would be a sole proprietor. LLC is gonna give you more coverage. Then the next step, if you are a therapist, which most of our listeners are, you are yourself, you need to have attorney-approved coaching contracts and you need to make sure you're abiding by everything that you need to do to protect your license. Attorney-approved coaching contracts that has mandated reporting, informed consent. Your website, when you do get one, has terms and conditions, privacy policy, disclaimer. You're sending a letter to your board. This is really just for a paper trail. I teach all of these things, give them all to my clients like copy and paste templates, right? But just know that one is filing your LLC, 2 is protecting your license, and then we move into the marketing phase and building relationships. Do you need a website? No. Is it something that you're going to want eventually? Yes, it is an asset in your business. Do you need a CRM system? Probably not yet. If you have the budget for it, sure, definitely get one sooner than later because it is a learning curve and then you won't have to switch things over from a separate platform. What happens when you don't have a one-stop shop CRM on the front end is you're kind of piecemealing everything together, right? So you're paying $60 a month for a course platform like Teachable. You're paying $10 a month for Calendly to get your consult calls scheduled. You're paying $20 a month for Mailchimp to send out emails, so on and so forth. And you have all of these different platforms and it really adds up to what you could pay for a one-stop shop CRM anyways. I recommend a white label version of GoHighLevel. When my clients use what I recommend, which is called my Profit Engine, they get my whole snapshot. They get all of my funnels and templates. You get a website template. And so really it makes changing just the words, the copy, the images, the colors, the fonts so much easier. Any questions based off of that? What you do need, what you don't need, piggyback questions?
I don't think so. I think that was really helpful. I think the biggest thing I was wondering was like, do I need a website? And I guess I'm assuming probably a business email address. Is necessary too. Okay.
Absolutely. You don't want it to just be a regular Gmail. We need a professional account. So just set up a G Suite and you can get a domain that way. You can do that right through Google. You could use GoDaddy, you could use name.com. It really doesn't matter. But that's also gonna be your website domain. So yes, getting a professional email address is on the list. And then it's going to market and selling and getting your first client, which you can do on social media. Thank you, Dana.
Thank you so much.
All right. Our next guest is Erin. Erin, can you tell us who you are and who do you help?
Hi, I'm Erin Smythe and I am a licensed therapist, a coach, and a former teacher. And I help burnt out teachers find career paths that align with who they are. So they have a clear plan on how to leave the classroom or find a better work-life balance within education without years of second guessing themselves before making that change.
Amazing. Definitely a need. So what's your big burning question?
My question is, what has been the most effective way for you to nurture and then convert potential clients? I've found as a therapist, have been trained over the years, that if a client doesn't respond, I don't have time to chase them down. And so figuring out, like, this is a new skill, what has worked for you and how have you made that transition in coaching?
First thing I'll say is fortune is in the follow-up, and if you don't plan to follow up, don't reach out in the first place. There are way too many business owners who are leaving millions, literally millions of dollars on the table just because they did not follow up. So if you don't have time to follow up, then you need to hire a team and they need to follow up. But someone needs to follow up, ideally a human touchpoint. Automation can help you with this. But ideally humans are following up with leads or they will slip through the cracks and you will leave money on the table. What is the best way to nurture and convert leads? You're either gonna spend time or money. This is what it comes down to with marketing. So we have organic marketing or we have paid advertising. I teach and use both in my business. Even when you have paid advertising going, you still need to know how to do organic marketing. It is a muscle that you should build in your business. What is organic marketing? What are you really referring to, Carly? This is building your personal brand. This is posting on social media. This is not posting for consistency or fluff. This is posting with intention and strategy to get a paying client. This means you're following copywriting frameworks. This means you have really strong call to actions. Believe it or not, people need to be told exactly what to do, exactly where to click, when to click buy, what code word to type in, how to type it in. Clear, concise, no like cutesy, clever, passive. I'm here if you need my help, right? So you do need to be top of mind as well. People will forget about you, so you need to be consistent, but you also need to be following a marketing plan when it comes to social media. Social media doesn't have to be a chore, and the same concept applies across all platforms, right? Facebook is actually still the number one platform despite all of the other platforms. But Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Substack, whatever, it doesn't matter. You need to be calling out to your population. You need to be hitting their pain points. You need to be hitting their desires, and then you need to offer them some sort of value, ideally in exchange for an email address. They're opting in, then you're building trust, and then you're leading them along in the client journey. It's kind of like you're dangling carrots and you're leading them to the next thing. So if you don't have lead magnets, if you're not doing live trainings, if you don't have a webinar scheduled, these are things that we need to get in place, assets that we need to get in place so that when we do post, we can lead them to the next step. The next step can then open up a conversation, and then the conversation can lead to a consult call ideally. And then the consult call can lead to a paying client. Can you also lead them to a sales page where you're selling anything from $7 to $197 products? Yes. But then you also need to have an ascension model and you need to have emails in place and follow-up SOPs in place. Hey, how did you like that thing? How are you getting along with it? How can I best support you? And then you're moving them up and up in the client journey to ultimately get to your higher tier packages. There's outbound lead generation and there's inbound lead generation. Outbound is you pretty much going and finding these people, starting conversations. Hey, I just created this new free guide on X, Y, and Z. I think you might like it. Would you like me to drop the link?
Mm-hmm.
I'm doing a free training on XYZ. Here's the link if you would like to join. No pressure. This is outbound lead generation that either you or your team needs to be doing until— and it's still a cherry on top— until you have inbound lead generation funnels happening where people are coming to you, they are finding you. Typically that happens through target paid advertising where you're saying, hey Facebook, hey Instagram, go find teachers, go find These exact people and show them that I have this free XYZ blah blah blah that's going to help them outcome outcome outcome. They're going to click on it. They're going to opt in. You're going to follow up with them. You're going to start a conversation, and then you're going to move them along in the client journey. Too many people are focused on vanity metrics. My reel's going viral, getting enough comments. I don't have enough likes. I don't have enough engagement. Not that numbers don't matter. You need to know your numbers, but do not get caught up in if I had more followers, maybe I should pay for followers. This would solve my problem. Are you nurturing the leads? Have you messaged every single person who has followed you? Have you gotten in front of an audience that already exists of teachers? Have you borrowed somebody else's audience? Have you leveraged their audience? That's the fastest way to grow when you're starting from scratch is borrowing somebody else's audience. So who has a network of teachers that you could go introduce yourself to? See if your mission is in alignment. You're not direct competitors, you're indirect competitors, and see if you can teach something to their audience. See if your lead magnet can be sent out to their email list. See if you can be on their podcast. I could go on and on and on and on for days with marketing. That was a loaded question, but I hope that gave you a few gold nuggets. Any piggyback questions on that?
That was great, a lot of information. I took notes, good things to follow up on.
Thank you.
You're welcome. All right, next up is Michelle. Can you tell us who you are and who do you help?
Hey, yeah, so I'm Michelle Lassane DeSantis and I'm the founder of Creating a More Powerful You. Which is a private education and mentorship company. We teach people how to understand and use their minds well. We integrate neuroscience, psychology, spiritual wisdom, and practical application to help people think more clearly, respond more intentionally, and experience life with greater peace, freedom, and purpose.
Amazing. And what is your burning business question?
So I've been a therapist for over 25 years, and I struggle with Every time I get asked by a marketer, what problem do you solve? I think I put in my question, whatever shows up. I mean, having done what I, and I've worked in so many different modalities, I almost feel like that experience is a stumbling block. How do you refine? Because what we're doing is really teaching. I don't have a specific population that I'm targeting right now. We're teaching more right use of mind and how to understand the mind and work with it. So I feel like that's way too generic and broad to market effectively.
You're correct. How do you choose a population and a problem? Because you do need one. I can walk you through that process, but I just want to illuminate and mirror back to you that it's going to make marketing very hard and like finding a needle in a haystack if you are general and you can help everyone. Can your process and modalities help everyone? Absolutely. And you're used to solving every problem under the sun and morphing into whoever is in front of you as a clinician. Your heart wants to save the world, so it does make this process difficult. But from a business marketing lens, in order to attract cold leads and move them into sold— go cold to sold, stranger not knowing about you to, oh my gosh, she knows exactly who I am, what I'm struggling with, and she has the solution to my problem, let me pay her immediately. To solve this problem? That's what we need to figure out. So you are going to have to choose. Think about the top 3 problems that you're good at solving. What is your skill level with each one of these top 3 problems? And what is your excitement level? Just because you're skilled at solving it doesn't mean it excites you to solve it. And you will be talking about these problems in your marketing every single day. Mm-hmm. You need to be excited about it almost to where like you are half falling asleep and you think of an idea and you need to wake up and you need to put it out there immediately. Like you cannot shut up about it because you are so excited and passionate about this problem that you solve. So what are the top 3 problems? Then we'll do process of elimination based on your alignment and excitement level with each one of these. Same thing for population. You also wanna think about the population that you possibly have a good warm network with who would be really easy to go to market to and know that this can expand over time. The population that you're choosing now doesn't have to be the population for forever, but at the very beginning when people are first getting to know about you, you're getting your name out there, you're getting testimonials, you're establishing trust and credibility and social proof. We need to pick a very specific population with this persistent painful problem. So going back to the problem for a second, this can't just be a general nice-to-have addition to their life problem that you would be solving. This needs to be life transformational. There is a huge negative consequence if they don't buy their way out of this problem. I always say businesses make money because they solve problems. So needs to be a persistent, painful problem that they have been suffering with. And if they don't buy their way out of this problem, then XYZ negative consequence is going to continue happening in their life. Usually it's going to impact something with their finances, their career, their relationships, possibly romantic relationships, relationships with kids, or their mental or their physical health. Their body image, their chronic illness— that's the physical health— or their mental health as well. These are the buckets that keep us up at night. It's just how the human brain is wired. And so when you're thinking about the persistent painful problem that you're solving, it's most likely going to fall in one of those buckets. Yeah, it makes sense. You don't have to guess on this as well. Go to market and do market research. Ask your people, start to have coffee chats, do surveys, meet your people where they are, especially if you already have a network of these people. Do you mind me asking, what is your number one burning problem? See the feedback and common denominators that you receive. This should help you narrow it down. Helpful?
Very helpful.
Thank you. Okay, you're welcome. All right, that concludes today's Hot Seat episode. If you have questions that need to be answered, do not be shy. Do not be bashful. Message me on Instagram at Carly Hill Coaching, and we will make sure that your questions are answered. And as always, if you are curious about mentorship options and how you can get involved to continue to start, grow, or scale your online coaching business, then just check out the show notes. There's many different ways that we can continue to support you on your journey of outgrowing the office. My love is with you, and I'll see you in the next episode.
