Jessica Tappana is a mental health therapist, a group psychotherapy practice owner and the owner of Simplified SEO Consulting. She discovered the power of search engine optimization when creating her own group practice. She has then spent the past two years helping small business owners in the mental health and healthcare field get their websites in front of more ideal clients. She and her small team of SEO specialists believe in the power of a website to not just bring in more people to your business, but to bring the RIGHT people to your services. In her spare time, Jessica enjoys chasing around her two children, training her new miniature Australian Shepard puppy and traveling….when a pandemic isn't keeping her home!

• CEO Hack: My RocketBook
• CEO Nugget: You don't have to do it all
• CEO Defined: To serve yourself, family and everyone who needs to benefit from your business

Website: https://simplifiedseoconsulting.com/

FULL INTERVIEW

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Transcription

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[00:00:02.20] – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

[00:00:30.19] – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gretch from the I Am CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Jessica Tapana of Simplified SEO Consulting. Jessica, it's awesome to have you on the show.

[00:00:41.00] – Jessica Tappana

It's awesome to be here. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:43.50] – Gresham Harkless

No problem. Super excited to have you on, and what I wanted to do is just read a little bit more about Jessica so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Jessica is a mental health therapist, a group psychotherapy practice owner, and the owner of Simplified SEO Consulting. She discovered the power of search engine optimization when creating her own root practice. She has then spent the past two years helping small business owners in the mental health and healthcare field get their websites in front of more ideal clients.

She and her team of SEO specialists believe in the power of a website to not just bring in more people to your business but to bring the right people to your services. In her spare time, Jessica enjoys chasing around her two children, training her new miniature Australian Shepherd puppy, and traveling when a pandemic isn't keeping her home. Jessica, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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[00:01:40.90] – Jessica Tappana

Absolutely.

[00:01:41.50] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. So to kick everything off, I wanted to kinda rewind the clock a little bit here a little bit more about how you got started. So could you take us through your CEO story? We'll let you get started with the business.

[00:01:42.90] – Jessica Tappana

Yeah, absolutely. So when I, had my daughter who's three now, I decided kind of on my maternity leave so to speak to start my private practice and start my first business and I think I knew essentially nothing about starting a business. I just knew that I wanted flexibility and I wanted to be able to meet my family's needs also I'm really passionate about providing really good mental health services to my clients and being my own boss meant I could do all of that. And so I did start a practice and when I did I filled up pretty quickly and hit a point where my husband's like, you know, hon, you just can't keep taking more clients and adding more hours because the whole point was to have work-life balance. So I started taking on associates.

We now have seven clinicians and an administrative support person as well, but when we started adding clinicians everybody was calling for me. I had built a name for myself, but when they would call I couldn't convince them that my very carefully chosen amazing clinicians were everybody as cool as I was. So I decided to buckle down on the website. Spent just tons of time learning everything I could about search engine optimization and what I found is when I get my website to the top of Google and people call they're calling for Aspire Counseling not for Jessica.

And so it's really easy then to figure out which therapist is truly the best fit not just because they, you know, happen to see my name but actually because that person's personality and experience and training and availability was the right fit and so we're we pride ourselves on really taking the time to fit potential clients with the correct therapist. And since that made my business successful, I started helping a couple of friends and they said, hey, you should charge for this.

And I was like, would you pay me to do this really fun thing of like helping you get your website? And so we started about two years ago adding in the well, not adding in, it's a Simplified SEO Consulting and now I help therapists I used to say around the country but we have some people in Canada and England now as well and so basically I only speak English, so any English speaking, not just and we've moved beyond just mental health providers, but that's still our focus. We occasionally have people in related businesses, SL speech-language pathologists, and occupational therapists. We have someone with an educational business as well, that sort of thing.

[00:04:17.10] – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love kinda like the process and by which you organically kinda built both of your businesses as well because I think so many times, especially with, you know, in the digital marketing world, and I think we kinda talked about this when we first connected, is that some of the best people have not necessarily gone into saying, hey, I wanna start this or I wanna do this, but they started to help themselves and then got great at it because of how new it is and how, much opportunity there is to kinda grow within it and that they were able to help themselves out their business or whatever they're doing, and then it starts to create its own business from there.

[00:04:51.00] – Jessica Tappana

Yeah. And I like how you said, like, how new it is and it's it's ever-evolving. That's one of the things I love about marketing in general. And I think I mentioned to you, like, SEO is my thing. I understand enough about, social media to be a bit dangerous. And same with, email marketing. You know, I use those things but I don't typically focus on helping people that much with those. But all of it, it's just so ever-evolving that I love the challenge of it. I literally pretty much every day read some article on some aspect of digital marketing most often SEO, because that's our focus and it's just it's fun, it's a challenge, it's evolving, and that, and yeah, that's and then figuring out, you know, how that fits in, how the two businesses fit in with each other and how that fits in with my home life. It's just an exciting adventure Sometimes.

[00:05:43.50] – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. Yes. Well, it definitely sounds like puzzle pieces, but I love too how you kinda talked about, the customer journey, so to speak. How originally, you know, the customer was coming, you know, looking directly for you. But because you leverage and was able to be able to use, you know, SEO so so well, it became where the brand itself was the most prominent thing, and then people found the best fit for them, in terms of therapists.

[00:06:08.50] – Jessica Tappana

Yeah. And I think that it actually serves our clients the best that that's, you know, that we do that, because, yeah, I might be the best therapist in the world. I don't think there's any such thing but let's break them right now. It's still the truth that, that I won't be the best fit for every single person And so I mean I have very actually now I've really niched down and that I still see about ten counseling clients a week, but I'm extremely picky about who I see. They're the ones I really can help the most and my other clinicians have very different areas of expertise and so just being able to, you know, our clients are better served because I've built a brand and because they're now calling for the brand. I think that it ultimately helps the people that we're serving them.

And I think that's the cool thing about marketing so often people in my field struggle with the word marketing and struggle with the idea of trying to quote-unquote sell yourself. It feels different for people. Yeah. It's yeah. When you came and I think most business owners are trying to help people, but certainly in my profession, you know, that's I I don't wanna be accused of, like, trying to make money off of people. But if we can good marketing actually helps clients, and it gets the, and I'm big on, like, getting the right clients and the right people through your door. I think that's the truth, you know, almost whatever kind of business you have the people you know you want it to be your ideal clients.

Even if you own a clothing store you want it to be the people walking in your door not just mass volume but the ones that will feel right with your style. And in counseling practices every practice, you know, I have good friends that are therapists in my community and I want us to appeal to different people because you'll get a different feel when you walk into our office and we have different clients that we enjoy working with the most.

[00:07:56.69] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. That makes so much sense. And I think that you know, when you start to attract those people, those ideal clients that, you know, you help so many people out with, I think that really is when you're able to make the most impact, and I think there's, more than enough opportunity for everybody. So when you have that mindset and that mentality, you understand that, it starts to really create, I think an incredible energy because you're you're not necessarily just taking on clients to take on clients. You're taking on the right clients, making a huge impact, and that starts to trickle down in so many areas, I think, in business and of course in life as well.

[00:08:28.00] – Jessica Tappana

Yeah. I think it's huge. It's, I, you know, people I think we talk about burnout a lot in my field too but I think anyone can get burned out in any field. And so often it happens when there isn't that perfect fit or when you have no work-life balance, which is another thing that I'm constantly working on. But yeah, if everybody is serving their ideal clients and serving in practicing from an abundant standpoint you know I'm not out to compete with other people. I'm out to attract the people that I help the best and I want my quote-unquote competitor to, attract the ones that they deal with that they, you know, help the best. And those are slightly different and here's the differences between me and this other person that offers a similar service, then we'll all do better work, and we'll all feel more satisfied

[00:09:19.10] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. I couldn't echo that better. So I know you touched a little bit on, you know, how you serve your clients. I wasn't sure if you had anything else, you know, additional you wanted to mention. But I also know you touched a little bit on what I call your secret sauce, the thing that kinda sets you apart and makes you unique. So could you tell us a little bit more about that as well? Well?

[00:09:35.10] – Jessica Tappana

Yeah. I think that the big thing is just an overwhelming commitment to providing, the best. I feel like now I'm sounding cliche. Like defining them to serve our clients the best, but specifically to serve our ideal clients the best. Whether that is in both of my businesses. But you know, in our SEO business we're really focused a lot on mental health providers. As I said, we've we are some people who aren't mental health providers but they tend to be still in the helping professions and still in that sort of arena. And so because we're serving the people that we like to work with because we're serving the people that we know we know those industries, especially the mental health industry. But related like we kind of get some of that. I feel like that makes a huge difference. And we offer, and the other thing is we offer really in-depth services.

So there are a lot of people out there that do base what I call none even there's like basic SEO and then there's like a step above it where you're doing some meta descriptions and some really cool stuff. But we, like, we go in-depth. We spend, you know, a couple of hours per page per month usually on our services. And so our clients also tend to be the people that have tried several things and they just need more. And so, you know, we might have to have frequent emails throughout the month. We don't mind that because that is part of what sets us apart and we know that those are kind of our ideal clients are the ones that are like, I'm never gonna get to the top of Google, and then we're able to, you know, maybe not get to the top the first month because we all know that's not quite how search engine optimization works, but we're able to get real meaningful progress and provide some of that reassurance sometimes along the way that people need.

[00:11:22.20] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. Appreciate that. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

[00:11:33.70] – Jessica Tappana

Oh, my Rocketbook, which I have, like, sitting right next to me. I own a couple of them. So we have so I have a Rocketbook. One of my, SEO staff introduced me to it, and we are able to take lots and lots of notes when we're on calls with people, and then we can, like, essentially take a picture and upload it to the cloud. And we have a shared Dropbox folder where we're all able to view each other's notes. And so that works well.

[00:11:58.50] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. That's good. And, so I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So that could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It could be around SEO or just general business information or something you might tell your younger business self.

[00:12:11.39] – Jessica Tappana

There's a whole lot. Can I just write a whole book for my younger self? It would be really helpful. But I think that the overall thing is you don't have to do it all. I think, I definitely early on wanted to do it all and and figured I could learn to do all of these different things. So I tried building my website before I just for both businesses. Before I had to just admit that that's not my area of expertise.

[00:12:38.29] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. I think it brings a a tremendous amount of peace as well too because when you have and understand you don't have to do everything, you get to be in your zone of genius as you kinda spoke to. But I think on an even deeper level, you allow other people to be in their zone of genius as well. As you mentioned, your virtual assistant, if you were answering the phone, wouldn't be able to be the rock star that she is.

[00:12:58.00] – Jessica Tappana

Yeah. And my SEO team, you know, we found, I've found that it's best to be flexible because as each new team member comes on, I'm like, well, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna teach you to do an awesome job doing our comprehensive on-page SEO service.

[00:13:13.39] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. So, now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different, quote, unquote, CEOs on the show. So, Jessica, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:13:26.10] – Jessica Tappana

It means finding a way, to serve. Yeah. I'm I'm just gonna go with that, to serve. Whether it's serving your clients, serving your, staff, if you have staff like I do, having, serving yourself and your family. And a lot of times that involves a ton of problem-solving and involves systems and involves so many different components that we think of, the systems and all of in marketing and all of these things, but I think at the core of all of it, my mind is how are you serving buddy, who needs to benefit from your, business or your product or your service.

[00:14:19.29] – Gresham Harkless

Kind of North Star of why we're doing what we're doing is extremely powerful. So I appreciate that, definition, and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and, of course, how best they can get a hold of you.

[00:14:34.70] – Jessica Tappana

Yeah. Absolutely. My website is simplified SEO consulting dot com. And we also have a page on online courses with our online SEO courses. So if you are interested in learning to optimize your own website, you do want to get to the top of Google, and you believe that that is a choice that you're making to learn to do it yourself, we'll have a code on there for fifteen percent off any of those courses with the code CEO. But I think, you know, if that's an area where you'd prefer to optimize, either we offer those services or I know lots of other people offer them as well, but just knowing that it's okay to outsource whatever it is that you decide is not worth your time. I won't say not worth your time, that you decide not to put your time and energy in that direction.

[00:15:30.60] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. No. That makes so much sense, and I appreciate you for sharing that and making that offer. We will have the links and information in the show notes, but I think it definitely, like, hits home what you said as far as your nugget about not having to do everything and being okay with that. Because I think so many times we beat ourselves up because we want to be Superman or Superwoman or whatever in every aspect of our business. But in reality, by allowing everybody to be the best selves in their zone of genius, we really start to see results and see awesome things happen.

[00:16:00.50] – Jessica Tappana

Absolutely.

[00:16:01.70] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, Jessica, have a phenomenal rest of the day, and take care.

[00:16:05.29] – Jessica Tappana

Thank you. You too.

[00:16:07.39] – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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