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Which business ideas should you pursue? What are the best business ideas? Where should you spend your time? What’s the ROI on your time and money? How do you make a product that you sell before you develop it and waste a bunch of time?
We cover all of this on today’s podcast!
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Meet Joe Sanok
Joe Sanok, MA, LLP, LPC, NCC is one of the world’s leading private practice consultants. He is the owner of the Traverse City counseling practice, Mental Wellness Counseling. Joe helps counselors to start private practices and grow them.
Podcast Transcription
Pop 126 | How To Determine The Best Business Ideas
[0:00] Music.
[0:28] I am joseph your post and i am so glad you’re hanging out with me today you rock you are so soda an awesome idea emails from people all the time.
About how they’re just starting a private practice they’re growing at their adding consulting it is.
So darn exciting for me to see how in some way i can join you on your journey.
You might notice that my sound sounds a little bit different today i’m actually not using my professional mike i’m using my white headphones that you know you get when you buy an iphone.
And that’s because i am working from home today and i have to go pick up my four year old from preschool in about half an hour.
And i was like you know what i am inspired to do a podcast and i would rather get this out to my people to the pop community.
Rather than worry about going to the office and having other to do list item to do so here i am sitting in my living room there are toys everywhere i see a little,
mermaid doll without a shirt ice pop ice all sorts of little hanker chief toy is there’s.
Their toys literally everywhere in to me.
Cleaning up is not as important as right now hanging out with you still doing great today it’s just i’m so excited i’m not talking about ideas and what to do with an id when you go after an idea when to,
just cause an idea as it’s not right time it’s gonna be awesome,
i’m gonna first one i think brighter vision they’ve been such a great sponsor here and practice of the practice in the make affordable websites.
[2:05] For therapist for fifty nine bucks a month,
you can get a website up and running i have so many consulting clients that work with greater vision and is just such a clear clean process that it just it’s amazing to see how quickly they can get website up and,
you got a check now if you’re looking for a website that’s brightervision.com for such joe and i don’t give you a disc i think you get a month free play perry was doing a few extra things for some of the people i sent,
send over there so yeah just no i sent you letter note this marketing is working you know as you may have heard last week with the website round table perry and aaron,
i’m staying five days of us talking all about websites all about,
what you need to do how to bootstrap it so if you missed that you can use the all five episodes over a website round table that come,
also there’s a fifty page book you can download their that will walk you through how to build a website,
and perry gave so much of his time around that so i checked them out.
Also if you missed any of the podcast the three before that week.
Oh my gosh so on real had jonas alright you works for all brucie of the show there he also did a documentary it’s on netflix called wake up all about how he woke up one day see spirits and or as in dead people,
crazy fascinating interesting wild will just interview a really just,
it was so good i see i found him just fascinating from his work just so interesting and then the next week was rob bell on his new book all out cold called how to be here he toured with open.
[3:46] I am more e-mails and tweets and facebook messages about the interview with rob bell than probably anything else i’ve done,
and then the next week my friend all goodman was in and was talking about how he’s a global forecaster trying to stop world genocide.
And so you may have noticed that i’m having some people that.
Yeah maybe don’t fit your typical box of private practice but i’m just kinda trying to follow some of my curiosity and i feel like.
Yeah ideas that they bring they may be outside of the counseling field but is just so interesting and s service we need to be.
Thinking outside of just what the counseling field teaches us what are professional organizations and incurred just to learn c use we gotta we gotta look outside of our own feel.
Because it is inspiration everywhere and an inspired everywhere i wanna tell you but a couple of times that i had ideas,
and you can judge whether they were successful or failures in a i’ll tell you my thoughts on these ideas and then i want to take you,
do on the process for a new idea that i’m working on because i think it’s really important to can give you the behind the scenes.
Is boy people have ideas like you and i.
How you gonna know what to do with them and when you run after them and when put them on the back burner cuz if you don’t you’re gonna spend so much time in ideas that you may be art fruitful and should spend more time on ones that are.
[5:15] So back when i was in high school i had a friend who he and i almost every day in high school over lunch we will talk about how we’re gonna travel europe together.
How we are after our freshman year of college we’re gonna go to europe.
We’re gonna just get this euro rail pass stay in youth hostels and just travel together.
[5:38] Answer this idea was brewing and us and at the end of my senior year of high school and i got some graduation money rather than go by computer or,
spend stereo were pizza actually bought six months see the,
i was a twelve month no is a six month cd so that is in a body in june so so that would be in december it would come do and i think i got like three percent.
[6:04] I don’t know how i heard about sees me and my parents have mentioned it.
But i put all my graduation money into a cd knowing that if i couldn’t touch it for six months that reality of going to europe.
Was more likely to happen because then i would have all this money that can do in december i can buy the plane ticket about your el paso.
So during the year my friend got in trouble again and my p e got some other things that went on and he was on probation and couldn’t leave the state.
So i had a decision to make that point was i going to still go to europe all alone as a nineteen year old.
Or was i going to stay home and work in traverse city and you may be a server are tourist town of northern michigan stick around.
Well i decided to buy a plane ticket for six weeks and you fly to europe for all of may and half of june.
It was gonna fly into dublin where i had a friend that i mac of yours earlier when i worked at a restaurant as a cook in high school and he and his girlfriend.
They came over from ireland and just wanted to have a summer in traverse city.
[7:17] And so he talked with even staying with her family while i was there and then there’s an exchange student in germany that i was gonna have travel for six weeks and get to germany.
[7:28] And is a nineteen year old it didn’t seem like it was that big of a deal but this idea that i took some action was genuinely life changing,
so i flew into dublin and toured ireland for about two weeks staying in youth hostels in,
couldn’t trains across the country and going to galway and the dingle peninsula and meeting random people.
I still remember when i was at the rainbow hostile in dingle ireland dingell is,
this pencil on that’s just south of the ring of kerry ring of kerry go of the tourist buses the dingle peninsula has these amazing cliffs and all these islands and is just,
it’s on the real i rented a bike for the day and.
I was eight pounds and there is this german guy who was.
A man who is a big guy and then there is this other german girl that he that he had matt like a day earlier than the three of us biked around the dingle peninsula is like fifteen miles and around every corner was like you’d see,
this cliff and then on can’t get better than that they can run another quarter they would be this late nest and,
they’re being island of rock and then you said yourself it just can’t get better than this.
Can you come around the next corner and they would be shit raising and splashing waves and the entire time it was just is magnificent views fun travel.
[9:02] Can a room in southern il and st by these people that i’ve met.
And then i need these two girls and a random train station and one of them her grandparents live in traverse city.
And so we all travel together all the way up through france and belgium and then i head off to amsterdam and they stay in belgium a little longer.
I go to amsterdam with this girl that i met like a day earlier and she was she was not slake only gosh i just did not wanna hang out with her,
but amsterdam was gonna be there for three days and i was there night left early because it was just at that time character is also the world,
answer the european cup finals are going on and so is kind of like soccer fever so when did germany and traveled on to switzerland for a while.
[9:48] And so this idea that just started in the halls of my high school.
[9:55] I then took small steps into role and put some money aside just so that i can have it as an option.
A man in my friend had to bow out so that point was like they do this and then i and a traveling europe alone for six weeks meeting random people and realizing really just how small the world is that when.
What a banking crisis happens in france or in spain or in germany there’s people i’ve met from there.
[10:23] And i continue traveling as a young person for referral me with my wife and i still travel with her very first international trip with our marriage we went to haiti and work at a medical mission down there and she never been anywhere but like.
Became an island in canada.
And so our family’s been super involved in haiti with micro financing with this medical facility in mount on like thirteen times.
The anyway travel then became a very big part of who i am.
[10:54] And when it comes to private practice when it comes to who we are as owners of a business.
Ideas to me are at the very center of what we do and but this question of.
[11:11] Well should i spend time in new ideas for me and idea lunches something in me.
So i can sleep i start work on a plan i formulate and more that comes alive and alive and idea of for me it’s a part of everything is a part of who i am because since i was little.
I love drawing i love being creative is always voted most artistic in my class from like first grade all of your high school and for a long time i thought i was gonna be a cartoonist for a career.
[11:43] Is there something that internally that creation inspires in me and so creating and bringing things to life it didn’t exist prior to an idea.
Implement implementation is just the spark that ignites a feeling in me that it feels like a language doesn’t have words for.
[12:01] I guess i’m is an opportunity to feel more alive than i have this idea if it starts to grow and i end up in europe.
In belgium i remember there was.
There is this riot going on in the you have riot police and the locals were there and things are escalating and what is happening i’ve never seen anything like this except from the news.
[12:25] But that original spark of an idea was an opportunity for me to see the world become our life but.
[12:32] The flip side we have to focus on which ideas to pursue.
[12:37] So what do we do with an idea because when you have an idea when you have a new blog post when we course.
When you have a fuck you wanna right when you have any idea of starting a private practice is a lot that you’re giving.
To give me and spend time with your family so for me that’s my two little girls you know once for a month eighteen months old and.
You’re missing out on time with them that i spam you with them with my wife growing are a relationship.
[13:08] I’m missing out and doing counseling for every hour i spend in co podcast idea or a blog.
That’s totally could be doing counseling and getting paid or doing consulting getting paid i can be networking with people in traverse city so that’s.
You know the colors that work at my private practice that they can get more people coming back to working out to be eating that are all these things that i could be doing.
[13:32] Instead of contrasts you should i put my time into an idea and so for me.
What i’ve shifted with my on you so you may be my how to start a private practice email list or you might be on the high grow private practice of the web and are you melis you ever seen that i’m starting to.
Ask you more questions in gauge with you more here you’re struggling with so as i have ideas i can see where does this resonate with you and i talk with you a little bit about new idea that i have that i’m pretty sure gonna pursue.
But he’s kind of the framework of what i see.
Being how i am starting to decide whether or not to pursue some of the bigger ideas of the bill take my time,
so first i have an idea a couple of the essential elements my brain so,
so recently i had this idea of inviting people to come to traverse city and hang out with me for today is working a private practice and then go get wine together go wine tasting so traverse city,
was voted and continues to vote in when the top wine towns in america,
and usually the only one on the list is outside of california.
[14:41] So i was a he will be fun to have the really in depth consulting where we dive into your private practice your launch or your growth.
We got the food trucks reset on the beach and hang out together we go wine tasting with us for a couple of days,
so this is a formula to then i email them my email is and describe an email so it took me ten minutes to do that i created a google document with that said hey,
here’s my idea at all and a little more here’s the potential plan right now it’s an idea that i’m deciding whether i wanna pursue more.
[15:16] If you are interested in this.
Please apply in within the email if you got access point to be around five hundred bucks so yeah seven five hundred dollars to be in a group of spite twelve or so people.
We are super in-depth on private practice and growing your practice and we hang out the wine tasting seconds tried this seventy five hundred box have them link then to this application,
then the application again says here’s what i’m thinking can be run five hundred box,
and then at the end of the question says yes i know this is gonna cost five hundred dollars um really weeding out people that are just gonna filling out this application,
to just see what happens but that i really genuinely committed.
And then it said in the email he has like six to twelve people applies i know that she puts more effort into this.
So did that actually yesterday and got nine people in the first week four hours to apply.
So i’m already and a number that is sustainable income putting some extra time into this so that i put out on social media little bit on twitter a little bit on facebook and quietly on to some groups i’m a part of.
When,
got a couple more applications and then from there i just wrote a blog post about a kenmore talking about this idea of ideas like how do you decide to pursue i do so you can get some value out of it but it’s not just,
up it’s like hey come to piano and practice in traverse city but like use my whole process lee you can take what i just did and apply to your own life.
[16:47] Because none of you myself included want to just the pitch to say hey give joe stack money instead you need to get value even if you don’t decide to come to traverse city.
I’m so for me it’s really important to make sure that i’m so what’s really going on here as i planned piano and practicing traverse city for the summer.
And what can you the audience learn from it.
[17:09] So now i’m making a podcast about not just the idea of being on practicing you guys coming to traverse city but also that idea behind it.
[17:21] So when it comes up private practices we try really different ideas hopefully number of years ago i had this idea called dinner in a counseling session when partnered with a local french restaurant.
They would give me a discount and gift certificates and people pay hundred dollars to come to a counseling session bigger one counseling session and then they get a fifty dollar gift card to go to this french restaurant.
No i think it’s a great idea and i think it really could work if i done a different way.
But i feel so much time working with this restaurant and making sure confidentiality would be respected making sure there wasn’t anything on the gift card that said,
i just came from dallas counseling didn’t advertising around there are local paper picked it up so i got some great advertising but i got one couple out of it.
Now the end up coming for upright hundred twelve sessions so was substantial amount of money for that one couple.
With my time i put into i think despite other way like we’ve got one couple to come to my practice so there’s these ideas that holy slot.
It’s worth trying and then can say is this worth putting more time and.
But if we can figure out okay i’m gonna put in a little more time with a little more time to time before i go pick up my four year old to do a quick podcast.
I will let these ideas continue to bring me and then when my twelve people the people that are say i’m in or the people that even say a give you the money.
Then i start to feel let’s build this thing together so it really is exactly what you want it exactly how you want this to happen.
[18:54] So here’s what i look like let me just tell you about this pino and practice idea,
and so today is in traverse city michigan it will be probably wednesday and thursday cuz for one the wire is slower on that day and we have like thirty or so wineries up here.
So the entire late july early august skinny around five hundred dollars,
people arriving tuesday flying to traverse the airport to help you guys connect to facebook group so if you want to share a hotel room if you want to share house with some people you can do that.
I’m probably wednesday and thursday between seven am and nine am you get breakfast coffee maybe do some stand up paddle board yoga sleep and there’s a lot of different options in the morning.
Nine till noon we do group consulting practice planning on maybe have some people on the hot seat to really go in-depth with what they’re talking trying to do.
Hi we then go eat at the food trucks explore downtown and the beach a little bit till about one thirty and then like one thirty to five i’ll get a wine tasting bus to someone drives us around.
What a wine tasting at a bunch of wineries will talk private practice will get to know each other i’m will go to old mission peninsula one day and we’re open for the other to my favorite wineries.
I have some fun and just really like to get to know each other and dive deep into your private practices for two days.
So would love to have you pay the best way to apply is head on over to practice of the practice you’ll see piano and practice right on the home page is one of the most recent blog post the applications right there.
[20:29] I would love to hangout with you in traverse city manchester city has been named america’s twenty most romantic towns i travel leisure magazine cnn call this twenty can’t miss bit beach towns.
Usa today had a top ten great coastal drive in ten places to enjoy wine.
Touring and tasting call old mission peninsula one of the seven top wine regions to watch was the only non california region and the list trip advisor.
Call this the top ten wine destination national geographic listed us as one of america’s top adventure town so,
if you have a miniature city like let’s do it let’s hangout this summer so that’s it i wanna hang out with you guys i want you guys to go with your ideas i want you to be inspired and.
Keep up the amazing work.
[21:14] And your check a brighter vision if you need websites a brightervision.com/joe and thanks in two years need to bring you guys rock.