For figuring out if your marketing is "working"…

How long should you stick with a marketing strategy before deciding it’s “not working” and moving on to something else?

This is something I think about in real time basically every single day, so I was thrilled when Anna Walker made an episode entirely about this topic.

One of the things I loved most about the episode is that Anna talks honestly about something I see happening constantly in my own practice: the sales cycle for bringing in a new client is much longer than it used to be.

Here’s what I mean. Historically, even two years ago, a client would call already pretty convinced they wanted to work with us. Our job was mostly helping them find the right therapist.

Now? Clients call with lots of questions. They need more reassurance. Sometimes they schedule a second matching call before booking. Occasionally even a third. Our services are still excellent, but the client journey has changed dramatically on the consumer side.

Anna does not sugarcoat this at all. She talks openly about how important it is to stay patient and how many marketing strategies need to be implemented consistently for a long time before you truly know whether they’re working.

It also got me thinking about my own business. Now that I’m updating my website and investing more heavily in SEO, what changes should I realistically expect to see in three months? Six months? What metrics would actually tell me that we’re moving in the right direction?

I think I’m going to spend some time with Claude today narrowing down the specific metrics I care most about and making sure my new website designer and I are aligned about what success actually looks like.

For me personally, knowing what the end goal is supposed to look like always helps me determine whether a strategy is truly working or whether I’m just getting impatient too early.

If you also feel overwhelmed by knowing how long to wait, this episode will really help.

For the 2026 quarterly update…

So I know that this is two Therapy for Your Money podcast recommendations in a row, but I am an absolute sucker for quarterly updates from established hosts.

All the time on social media, I see practice owners posting things like:
“Is there something weird going on in 2026?”
“Why am I suddenly not getting enough clients?”
“Is anyone else seeing a slowdown?”

And honestly, I wish I could send them episodes like this in real time so they would feel more in the loop about what’s happening in the market instead of feeling blindsided or assuming they’re personally failing.

This quarterly update talks about common mistakes practice owners are making, some warnings around reimbursement trends if you accept insurance, and broader shifts Julie Herres is seeing across the therapy space.

I always find these kinds of episodes helpful because even when I disagree with parts of them, they help me think strategically.

For example, there’s one area where Julie and I see things differently: branding. She sees branding as less important, while I actually think it’s extremely important if you’re working with premium-pay clients. But I also think that may partially reflect differences in clientele and business model. Branding may matter less in very small practices or practices that are primarily insurance-based.

Either way, if you want to stay aware of broader market trends instead of accidentally reacting too late to them, this episode is definitely worth listening to.

For figuring out who you can trust…

Everyone tells us that delegation is the key to growing a business and they’re right. You cannot scale without trusting other people.

At the same time, almost everyone who has tried to delegate has experienced some version of betrayal. A contractor not doing the work they promised. A team member hiding mistakes. Someone overselling what they were actually capable of doing. It’s a terrible feeling, especially when you genuinely wanted to trust them.

Recently, I had to fire two people in one day because important things in my business were not getting done. It was emotionally challenging, and it forced me to think really hard about this question:

How do you stay open-minded and trusting as a leader without constantly getting burned?

What safeguards can you put in place so that you can still delegate, still grow, still trust people, without completely handing over the keys and hoping for the best?

In this episode, I break down some of the specific things I now consider before trusting someone with important parts of my business, especially as someone who has been betrayed before and is trying to prevent it from happening again without becoming cynical or controlling.

Also, apparently my new hobby is throwing sales calls into Claude to figure out whether someone is actually competent or just very good at sounding competent 😅

If you'd like my framework for making trust-related decisions, this episode is for you.