Office Hours: How to Create a Therapist Directory Profile that Converts with Ryan Schwartz

Ryan Schwartz [00:00:00]:

You're trained to do this as a therapist. I think therapists often get in their own heads that they don't have a marketing class, they don't have a marketing background, they don't know how to do this. But the reality is what makes a really good profile is what makes a really good therapist.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:00:18]:

This is Heard Business School, where we sit down with private practice owners and industry experts to learn about the business of therapy together. I'm your host, Michael Fulwiler. Ever wondered how the right words can turn a search for help into a heartfelt connection? Therapists know human connection is key, not just for healing, but for thriving in business. On this office hours episode of Heard Business School, I speak with Ryan Schwartz, known for making complex ideas clear and engaging. Ryan is the CEO of Mental Health Match, a platform transforming how clients find the right therapist by focusing on genuine connection. In this episode, Ryan and I break down how therapists can craft profiles that radiate warmth and hope, the importance of relatable headshots, and the pitfalls of using clinical jargon. We also tackle seasonal client needs, profile updates, and personalizing client follow ups. Ryan reveals exciting updates and mental health match aimed at better supporting clients and therapists packed with a ton of incredible advice.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:01:25]:

Here's my chat with Ryan Schwartz. Enjoy. Ryan Schwartz, welcome to Office Hours.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:01:34]:

Thanks, Michael. It's a pleasure to be with you and your listeners.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:01:38]:

You've matched thousands of clients with therapists over the years at mental health match. What have you learned about what clients are looking for when searching for a therapist?

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Ryan Schwartz [00:01:48]:

If I could sum it up in one word, it would be connection. We have to remember that clients are usually in a state of overwhelmed when they're deciding to look for a therapist. Maybe they've been thinking about it for a while. Maybe they've hit, you know, something happened. There's a breaking point. They just decide, like finally they need to look for a therapist, and they're emotionally anxious, they're overwhelmed, and that is they bring all of those feelings into their search for a therapist. You know, when they look, start looking and searching for a therapist, especially on directories like mental health match or just going to Google, they're really looking to feel a sense of connection with the person on the other end of their screen. And so what that often looks like is feeling reflected and what a therapist is saying, that they feel like they're actually being this therapist is talking them or about them specifically.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:02:43]:

It means feeling a sense of hope that this therapist can help me. And there's a personality sense of connection that this feels like somebody I can open up to and talk with.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:02:54]:

I love that we're going to get into what makes a good therapist profile, what helps to stand out, what attracts ideal clients. Before we get into that, I'm curious if there's any insights or trends that you've learned over the years about what people are looking for, specifically on mental health match, for example, what they're looking to work on. I know is a question that's part of the questionnaire that you have. Has that changed over time or has it been pretty consistent?

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Ryan Schwartz [00:03:24]:

Yeah. So we've matched over half a million people to therapists since we started six years ago. And there are some baseline things, anxiety, depression, stress, burnout, kind of your run of the mill things that people experience just being in the modern age. But we also find that a lot of folks search for work around childhood trauma. It tends to be a big one that comes up. People really still feeling a lot of pain from past events and that kind of simmers beneath what might be sending them to look for a therapist. We also see seasonal trends. We see period trends.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:04:04]:

So, like during COVID you know, we saw a lot around drug and alcohol use really skyrocket, actually. A lot of summers. We see trends around family conflict come up more, relationship conflict come up more. A lot of loneliness and isolation this time of year, too, when you see everyone out and about, or you might not feel like that, all of the summer advertising that you see and the summer vibes that you see on social reflects you. So a lot of loneliness. We also see trends around modalities that people look for. So at mental health match, we do a lot of work to match people to the right modality. They don't need to know the lingo for them, for us to be able to match them.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:04:43]:

We ask them kind of broader questions about are they very logical, focused? Do they feel like they feel their emotions more than other people? Do they want to work on helping to calm their nervous system or retrain their nervous system? When it comes to thinking about traumatic experience, experiences are they're working on accepting different parts of who they are and we do the work to match them around modalities. But increasingly, a few years ago, CBT was like the hot word and so everybody was looking for CBT. We see a lot of people looking for EMdR, increasingly brain spotting, but so we see those trends and I think it's really important to remember that there are other trends throughout the year. Political anxiety is high and will get higher and higher as we move move towards the fall. And so it's really nice for therapists to reflect that in their profiles and in their marketing. You know, you can update these things over the course of the year. I would say it's a great time to reference, you know, burnout, but also politics and just the stress of the world, as well as maybe trends that might be seasonal, like family conflict and feeling lonely.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:05:49]:

I love what you said about loneliness over the summer because the narrative that I hear is actually the opposite, that people are feeling good over the summer. The sun's out, the weather's nice. They're actually not going to therapy as much. And therapy practice owners that we've talked to on the show as well as therapists I've talked to have said that they felt like, especially this summer, things have really slowed down a lot. I'm curious, are you seeing that kind of as an industry wide trend just from people who are coming to mental health mesh to find a therapist or not? Like, have you seen that this summer maybe being slower than previous years?

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Ryan Schwartz [00:06:30]:

We see it every summer. People start traveling over the summer. I don't know if the reason is because people are feeling good because the sun is out. I think people might be busier. They might be traveling. I think maybe there is like a buffer where people think, well, maybe it's not that bad or maybe I don't need a therapist just yet. A lot of our upcoming new advertising that we're launching is really helping folks connect, that you shouldn't wait till you're at that breaking point to look for a therapist, but a lot of people do. And so we definitely see a trend over the summer where there is a decrease in people looking for a therapist.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:07:09]:

And then at the end of August, getting September, school's back in session, people stop traveling as much like just skyrockets back up.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:07:16]:

I'd love to move into what we're here to talk about, which is what makes a good therapist profile. You've published great resources through mental health match, which will drop those links in the show notes. I would love to just read. And you've also done webinars that I've watched in researching for this conversation, and you've really identified some key components of a good profile. So I'd love to just read them and then we could talk about each one, if that sounds good to you.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:07:48]:

Sure.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:07:49]:

Awesome. So you alluded to this a little bit already, but the first one is use words of connection. Why is that important?

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Ryan Schwartz [00:07:56]:

Well, this is the bridge between the client and what they're seeing on the screen, and you, you want to help the client feel that there's a connection there. So these are words just like together we write something that invites a client into the relationship with you. And to me, that's the first step in to this. When they're reading a profile, hearing those words helps them imagine working with you. It helps create that first connection. A lot of our tips come from the way that we've studied profiles that work. So we look at how many clients are landing on a profile that they're seeing as a good match, mental health match for. We have a matching survey that we ask clients and we help match them to therapists who best meet their needs.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:08:38]:

So when we show a therapist as a match, how many clients who see that are look at the profile, how many go on to contact, and how many go on to the next profile. And so we kind of create ratios for everybody, and then we can look at what are the best performing profiles and we do language analysis there. Some of these tips we try to build into our profiles, like the prompts that we asked, are designed to do this. But what we found, especially before we started designing prompts that way, is that the profiles that worked best create that bridge. It's fewer us and I's and more we's and togethers that help create that initial connection.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:09:13]:

I love that. As a marketing professional that has worked with a lot of therapists, what I see is often therapists use I language, so they describe themselves, where they went to school, their license, their certifications. Right. Which, like, are all very valid in establishing your credibility. But typically the advice I give is speak directly to the client, to the person who's reading your profile. But that is a lot of you language. Right. And I love this framing of actually we and together and kind of finding that balance in the middle.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:09:49]:

Yeah. You know, this is what I would call, like, the curse of knowledge, which is once you know something, it's really hard to imagine what it's like to nothing know it. And so once you've gone to school and you've immersed yourself in a clinical world, it's really hard to imagine what it's like to not have that clinical knowledge, to not know what the degrees are, what the letters at the end of the names are. And most clients coming to look for a therapist don't know these things. And even if they do know these things, because they've been in therapy before they've done their research, it's still cognitively creating distance. They have to think about it, right? Or they know that. They recognize that it's not everyday, their everyday language, and so it creates distance between you and the client.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:10:38]:

I think that selecting a therapist is also an emotional decision. Right. It's not necessarily a logical one.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:10:45]:

It's a very emotional decision. That's right. I mean, I think most decisions are, but especially when you're fueled by your emotions, which are leading you into this search.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:10:56]:

Definitely. Do you feel connected? Do you feel like this person can help you? So the next one is photos matter. This one feels obvious. But why do photos matter on a profile?

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Ryan Schwartz [00:11:07]:

When people are looking for connection, they're looking for another human. The photo makes a really big impact. When we do user tests and we watch people looking for therapists use the site or use other sites, you know, we see that the first thing that they're looking at is the photo, and that can be make or break sometimes. And so they've seen all sorts of photos. What we have learned in studying photos is that the most important thing is having clear eye contact. That's where humans make the connection. We look into each other's eyes, and so we see, you know, the profile photos that don't do so well are profiles where the head is really far back and you can't actually see the eyes. There's a lot of glare.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:11:47]:

Maybe they're wearing glasses and there's just glare off the glasses. Or there are photos where there's a whole lot of distraction in the background and so the viewer's eyes are going to the distraction and not the eyes. Or we see, like, some weird positions, like, we've seen some profiles, like the therapist arms are crossed and they're, like, looking down at you, which is not an emotionally abiding stance either. And so, you know, what we found with photos is just having clear eye contact, keeping a very simple background, some nice warm lighting. It doesn't need to be a studio. It doesn't need to be professionally shot, but at the same time, it shouldn't be, you know, the self from your car or like, you on vacation. It should be seen it.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:12:27]:

Yeah, I'm laughing because I have as well.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:12:29]:

Yeah, it's really just about creating that warm, inviting connection in that helps a client feel comfortable and safe. Kind of like learning a little bit more. We also know that over half of traffic looking for therapists, especially on our site, are looking on a mobile phone. And I think I, you know, if you think about when you're on your phone, what kind of patterns and reactions you have, you're just flipping right and it's very immediate. And sometimes you've like flipped to the next page without even consciously thinking about it. Very reactive. And so photos are the place where that reaction happens. So, you know, again, it doesn't need to be super professionally shot, but just like a nice warm background, just nice warm face, facial expression, eye contact and a nice background that doesn't.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:13:18]:

Mental health match has a great guide to taking a good therapist headshot. We'll link to that in the show notes. The four kind of keys to a good headshot that you share in that guide are lighting, which you mentioned, eye contact, background and presentation. So if you get those four things right, you should be, should be in a good place.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:13:41]:

Yes. And we can talk about this a little more. We talk about nixing, but, you know, your presentation should match that definitely.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:13:47]:

The next one here is use the word you to connect and validate. So this is interesting. So we talked about this, like using we and together. When is using you in your profile helpful?

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Ryan Schwartz [00:13:59]:

So we had really interesting results. When we do these language analysis of profiles, we found that there's a lot of use in profiles that perform very well and a lot of us in profiles that perform poorly. And when we really dove into it, we found that it's about how the word you is used. Because when you use the word you, you are creating the possibility of a connection and reflection, but you also might create the possibility of defensiveness and separation. And so when you are using the word you, sometimes people see profiles that use it in a way that describe a problem. So, like, do you have trouble controlling your anger? Do you have a hard time saying no to alcohol or, you know, regulating your driver alcohol use. And what that does is creates a lot of defensiveness in somebody looking for therapy. Maybe they know they have some struggles or their issues, but to feel that right there open often creates a lot of distance and a lot of people pulling back.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:15:07]:

And again, they might just flip to the next profile without fully recognizing what happened or why they're doing it, but they just feel this emotional hesitation, emotional reaction, and they move on. Whereas the profiles that perform very well, they use the word do in the sense of hope and what they can make possible for people. So, you know, when we work together, we can help you create better boundaries in the people, with people in your life, or we can help you better understand what you want out of this world and realize it. And that creates that sense of hope that we were talking about at the beginning that a lot of therapy seekers are looking for.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:15:45]:

That makes a lot of sense. It feels so nuanced. It's the same word, but using it just in a slightly different tone and context, but makes a huge difference. This is super valuable.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:15:56]:

Yeah. And I think it just goes back to remembering that therapy seekers, they just want to feel hope, connection, want to feel reflected, and that's what this is all about. You know, I think something really, really important here to remember is that you're trained to do this as a therapist. I think therapists often get in their own heads that they don't have a marketing class, they don't have a marketing background, they don't know how to do this. But the reality is, what makes a really good profile is what makes a really good therapist. It's the connection that you create in a therapy space. It is helping somebody feel comfortable, feeling vulnerable, feeling hopeful, feeling able to work on themselves and what they're dealing with. Get to a better place.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:16:43]:

I find when I talk to therapists who don't feel good about marketing or the idea of marketing feels kind of icky to them, for lack of better words, I find that it's often bad marketing that they've been exposed to. An example of this is using you phrases in a way that are more putting down the person to your point of are you this, are you this? And it's almost like a scare tactic in order to sell your services, and that's not effective. Maybe it does work for some people, but for a therapist, that's nothing.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:17:25]:

Even if you got a client through the door with that, they're not going to be the client who is excited to work with you and sticks around for the long term or to make progress. You're not going to feel great working with that client. I think underneath the hesitation to embrace marketing or to understand marketing are some other emotions as well. We know that there's a lot of self doubt, especially for folks who are just starting their career. They're not sure that they've got the right letters or all of the studying after them. They're hesitant to see themselves as a really experienced, competent professional. There might be some shame and involved around, you know, being new in the career. There's a lot of perfectionism that shows up.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:18:12]:

I mean, this is the number one thing that we see is therapists kind of get stuck because they feel like it's got to be perfect and create a perfect thing and the perfect profile, and they feel a lot of doubt about themselves. And so those emotions, I think, really get in the way of marketing. And that's, again, where you know, I think it's really important to recognize that what makes a great therapist is not the letters after their name. It's not the number of years that they've been around. It really is about their ability to create a connection with the client. And it's the same thing with marketing. It's not about anything else except for that ability.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:18:47]:

Two phrases here come to mind. Done is better than perfect. Perfect is the enemy of great because they're both kind of cliches, right? But, like, if you're sitting on that profile or that website and you're listening to this and you haven't hit publish on it yet, because you don't feel like it's perfect, ship it, and you can always iterate and improve on it.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:19:07]:

And also, like, you may not feel like you're perfect. That is the world. You know, that's part of being human. And more than anything, clients want to see your humanity. Just want to see that they're a good human that they can connect with. And that is way more important than any training, any letters after your name.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:19:24]:

The next one is use words of hope. You alluded to this earlier. Why is that important?

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Ryan Schwartz [00:19:31]:

I think the same thing. Clients don't want to get defensive. They don't want to feel more doom and gloom. And so profiles should really be forward facing. What can you make possible for a client? What have you made possible for people that you've worked with? What can a client hope to achieve by working with you? Those, I think, are way more important than reiterating the problems or the struggles that people are experiencing. They're not coming to look for a therapist because they want to be reminded of the hard things that they may be facing. They're coming because they want change, and it's really important to speak to that change.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:20:11]:

In marketing, we talk a lot about selling outcomes, not features. Apple is like the poster child for that. And I think it's relevant here as well. Taking the client on a journey, connecting with them, and then showing them what the outcome could be. Working together.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:20:30]:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of clients, they're not coming in visualizing that necessarily. Right. It's what they emotionally need to know and emotionally what they need to feel to be able to say, like, I am going to contact this therapist. I want to start working with them, but they are maybe stuck in the negative. They're stuck in what they're experiencing, and they need somebody to remind them of what's possible.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:20:57]:

Yeah. It's even as simple as taking a statement like I help people struggling with depression feel more hopeful. It's like, what do you help them to achieve? What's that state that you can help them get to? And I think that makes the copy on a profile or on your website that much more impactful.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:21:17]:

Yep, absolutely.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:21:18]:

Next one here. Use everyday language and words you can sense.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:21:23]:

This is about jargon. It's about clinical jargon. Therapists love to list out modalities and approaches. And while these things are certainly important from a clinical perspective, most clients have no clue what these things are. And by using them, you're creating more distance between you and that client versus bringing them in and helping them picture a relationship with you. And so that everyday language means lose the clinical aspects of things and use. So describe them in everyday language. Right.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:21:55]:

And we talk about words that you can sense because those are the words that are most resonant with people. It's not heady concepts. Right. Which are really difficult to understand if you've never had a psychology course before. It's real feelings, it's real sensations. So one of my favorite ones is talking about EMDR, which more and more people are knowing, but it's still a phrase that a lot of people don't understand. But helping your nervous system react more calmly to distressing memories might be a way to describe that. There's that with calm in there that helps people a lot.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:22:33]:

We talk, you know, with, even with DBT, something like a lot of people don't realize the CBT train got real strong, especially a few years ago, and everyone thought they needed CBT without really understanding why they would need that. So, you know, thinking about, like, are you a logical thinker who's often in your head, or do you feel your emotions really strongly? These can really help people understand the approach that you take without using some of this clinical jargon. And I just think it's really important. I have my Aunt Cindy tests, and Cindy, she's worked in retail all of her life at our family store. And so, you know, when I have languages that I am curious, like, do people understand, I will run up by her and see, like, what do you, what do you get from this? Like, what, what does this mean to you? And I would encourage you to ask a non clinically trained, non therapist in your life to look at your profile and say, like, what words do you feel and do you experience and do you, like, fully grasp? And what are the words that are kind of confusing or create distance between me and you when you read this?

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Michael Fulwiler [00:23:36]:

That's great advice. I think that we can get, we all can get so close to our work. I'm guilty of this as well, that what makes sense to us feels obvious, right? But if you show it to someone else or ask someone else if it makes sense, may not connect with them at all. The last one here, which is probably the most important and is really the foundation for all of this stuff that we're talking about, is defining a niche.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:24:00]:

Yes. Clients want to feel reflected in your profile. They want to feel like you're talking to them. And we know that that happens really well when somebody defines a niche and said, like, these are the people that I work best with and then I help the best, it doesn't. When you're defining a niche, it's not writing it in stone. You can change your profile. You can change your marketing materials frequently. I think a lot of folks get really nervous around defining a niche too early in their career before they really know.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:24:32]:

But remember that this is not, you're not, you're not signing up for a four year grad program in this niche. You're just putting some text down on a profiler on your website. And it really just, we want to help clients feel like you're talking to them. And so to me, that means being a little bit more specific in the types of issues or the types of people that you work with. And there's kind of an art to this. Like, it's not too big, but, you know, it's like a Goldilocks thing. Like, you don't want to say like, oh, I work with, like, you know, new moms ages, you know, 28 to 31 who are struggling with careers. Like, that might be a little bit too specific, but, you know, you're, you helped new parents who are trying to juggle their new family and their jobs is a little bit broader that a lot of folks can see themselves in, or new moms, however you want to describe it.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:25:23]:

We see a lot of poor performing profiles that say things like, I work with clients ages eight to 88, and you're just like, well, who is that? That's everybody. There's a old marketing phrase, and then if you try to speak to everybody, you end up speaking to nobody because it doesn't land with, with anybody. And so you're really just trying to reflect back some folks and some ideas about the populations that you work with that people can see themselves in. It's also really helpful for you to define that as a therapist because maybe there are populations that you don't want to work with. And so by being clear about that, you're not going to attract those folks, you know, mental health match. We do ask folks, we ask therapists what issues they always refer out to. So if there's higher acuity needs, maybe like suicidality, personality disorders, things like that, we're not sending them to therapists who don't work with those populations or training in those populations. But again, part of your website and your marketing materials, profiles on other sites should really help define that so that you're getting the types of clients that you want to work with.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:26:25]:

We have a whole office hours episode with Allison per year from abundance practice, building on how to define your niche. So if you're interested in learning more about that after this episode, go listen to that one. I see jokes on social media about therapists who have every specialty checked on their psychology today profile. So don't be that therapist.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:26:49]:

Yeah, yeah. It doesn't work so well with folks who want to feel like they're reflected, that you work with people who are like that.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:26:58]:

How often should you be updating your directory profile? One thing that I've heard as sort of a hack is to make sure that you're going in frequently and updating your profile, whether it's psychology today or a mental health match, because that's going to help you kind of move up in the algorithm and how your profile is served. Is there any truth to that on mental health mention?

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Ryan Schwartz [00:27:20]:

No, there are no hacks. It is based on the fit with the client's needs and that is only the thing that we take into account. I love the psychology today conspiracy theories of like how to get on the front page of psychology today. There's so many good ones. From what I can tell and from what our team can tell is they just rotate through. And if you're on the front page this week, you're going to be on the back page next week. And there might be some truth that if you go in after a while and update it, maybe they bring you up a little bit. But I'm not.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:27:50]:

I don't believe that if you go in and just change a word, like all of a sudden you're going to be on the front page. It just seems like they rotate through these pages. However, there is a strategy to say that if it's not working for you, change it up. If it's seasonality, change it up. It's not a hack. It is simply the fact that you're trying out different things. There's so many factors that are involved. What your price point is.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:28:16]:

Do you take insurance, who your niche is and the clientele that you're trying to attract, that you've got to mix up the pieces a little bit. It's worth just trying things out, saying, okay, I gave it a month. Mental health match. You get data about how many clients you can show us a match to, how many clicked through your profile, how many contacted you. So you can actually look at real data, measure it and say, okay, this is performing better than when I tried this other niche, or now I'm switching off insurance panels to private pay. Let me try to approach this with a broader niche or like something different and see how that works. And so I think it's less about a hack and more just about experimentation and trying things out. See how they work.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:29:01]:

I think what probably happens is people sit down, they write their profile, they hit publish, and then they never update it. And it's been like two years, so it's worth just going back. I love what you said earlier too, about anything that's seasonal or contextual. For example, the summer or the election. If you can work that into your copy, then that also shows that it is updated and it feels relevant and it doesn't feel like outdated or old copy.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:29:29]:

Totally. And you're speaking to things that are on people's minds.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:29:32]:

Definitely. I'm curious what you should do with your directory profile when your practice fills up. What do you see at mental health match when people are full? Do they deactivate or hit pause on their profile? Or would you recommend people continue to keep their profile open just so they're getting a steady stream of referrals?

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Ryan Schwartz [00:29:52]:

I think most clinicians like to have a little bit of a waitlist because people kind of go in and out. When you are a mental health match, you can just say that you've got a waitlist. We convey that information to clients, help them make the right choice, see what the right fit is for them. This is really especially important too. As you develop a niche, there are going to be clients who are happy to wait because you're the right fit for them. So it's nice to have a little bit of a waitlist. I think that, you know, as a clinician, you get to decide what happens when you're full. Congratulations.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:30:20]:

Like, you've made it to that point. We see a lot of clinicians then say, like, okay, now I'm going to want try to attract more private pay clients. I want to get off insurance panels that help me get full in the first place or I want to really focus in on a niche that I really love working with and try to get more of those specific clients. Mental health match is a really great part for that because we really try to focus in on the match. And so for clinicians who are less concerned about quantity coming in and more concerned about the quality and the fit, that's a really great option for them. And so I think that you can decide where you want to take your career when you've got the stability to be able to do that. Another tactical thing that I think is super important, that doesn't get enough attention, how you respond to a referral. We see this a lot, and in my own experiences as a client, I've experienced this a lot where, you know, we know that the average person is a health match.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:31:11]:

They contact about two and a half, three clients, three therapists at a time. So they're not just contacting you, they're always contacting somebody else to. We, you know, part of what we do is really try to create and start the relationship off on the right foot. So you get really detailed information about what the client is looking for. We really help you go into an intake call to say, hey, I know that these are the things that you want in a therapist and I'm the right fit for you. I do these things. You've come to the right place and I'm really excited to start working with you versus like sending this very generic form letter of like, here's my policies and procedures. This is a relationship, and I think people lose sight of that a little bit when we get into marketing and you get into referrals and everything just feels like other sites, it can feel really impersonal.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:31:56]:

We're really trying to make it about the personal aspects of things that aren't health match. And that relationship that you're creating once you get a referral is part of that. And so, you know, responding in a timely way, personalizing your response back to them, to say like these, I know that this is what you're looking for and I think you've come to the right place. This is what I specialize in. I'd love to talk further and avoiding like really burdensome paperwork when it's just like a ten minute consult call. We see that. And I've experienced it where it's like, great, we'd love to have a conversation with you. And here are like the twelve forms that you need to fill out and I'm not available.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:32:32]:

Talk to my intake coordinator. And it when you get that experience and you compare that to somebody who says, like, hey. And they respond within 24 hours and they're like, got this. You seem like a really good fit. I specialize in these things I'd love to chat with. You should click here to book a call. They're not going to respond to the first one, right? They're going to go to the second one. And so I think that part of that connection that we've been talking about that's so important in a profile and that relationship that you're building with somebody goes through into what that first interaction between you and them is like.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:33:02]:

And I think that that's a part that gets overlooked a lot of times, especially when clinicians have an admin or an intake person who kind of starts handling all of these things. There's not the right level of care involved. It just gets treated like paperwork and not like a real human on the other end who is looking for hope and connection.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:33:22]:

There's two parts of that that I love. So the first point that you're making is that often when people are searching for a therapist online, especially if they're searching it 02:00 a.m. right? Like they're going to six different websites and just submitting the contact form. And sometimes, like, the first person who gets back to them is the one that they end up going with. Right. So just being on top of those inquiries that are coming in, obviously within reason. Right. Like, you're not expected as a therapist to respond to emails at all hours of the day, but to the best of your ability, and then for that follow up to feel human.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:33:56]:

Right. It's an opportunity to make that connection that we talked about. It's not just a transactional email to schedule an appointment.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:34:01]:

Correct. People want to feel reflected and they don't feel reflected when it's clearly a form copy and paste email.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:34:06]:

I want to spend the last few minutes here talking about mental health match. You've talked during this conversation about how you match clients with therapists and what you've learned over the years from matching a half million. I thought it was in the thousand, like few thousands. That's really amazing. I know you've been hard at work on a rebrand and update to the platform, so I'd love to learn more about what folks can expect from mental health match moving forward.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:34:36]:

We've been updating the products and the experience that both clients and clinicians have on the site to really help elevate that relationship and the relationship that we're building between a clinician and a client. So on the client side, we've created a much more held space where we ask what they're looking for in a therapist. We know that it's an emotionally vulnerable experience to convey some of those things, and these details are really important. We don't want people like, shying away from talking about something that might be traumatic or really hard to talk about, but that is really important and finding the expertise that they need. So we've created a much more health space for that process and we've really elevated some parts of the product that help them understand why we're recommending a clinician as a match for them, like what they match on, maybe what they don't match on. And we've also created a whole guide to therapy that helps clients understand certain things about, like should they use insurance or not? What are the different types of therapists? How do they know if a therapist is a good match for them? When is it time to change therapists like those types of elements of things? We're also doing more to elevate that referral process when it comes to a therapist, to really bring out the humanity of the seeker of the therapy seeker. And to highlight for the therapist, like what this person, why we're recommending them as a match to you as a therapist and what are some ways that you can connect with them when you get back to them, like what they might be looking for. That's part of it.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:36:00]:

We've done a whole big design change as well. You know, the first version we had up was a very simple version and we laughed because some of the interviews that we did just remark that this is like, oh, yeah, that unremarkable blue site that you had. So we've really elevated it into a strong, really branded design that really stands out, that is going to form the new foundation for a lot of new advertising that we're running to help connect with therapy seekers who are out there, who, you know, get oftentimes bombarded by a lot of advertisements from these, like, large clinical companies without understanding what the experience might be like on those platforms or the clinicians that are part of those platforms and really helping them understand that there's probably a therapist in their own community who's going to be a better fit for them and who can help treat, you know, help interact with them in ways that feel a lot more personal than these other platforms. So that's whole part of the experience that we are creating. And finally, I'll say we do something that we just never talked about, but you're now talking about it a little bit more, which is we stay with therapy seekers until they have a therapist. So if they don't hear back from a clinician, we will help follow up on their behalf. We'll help figure out what's going on. A lot of times emails might get lost in the inbox, somebody on vacation.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:37:20]:

We don't want any client to feel like they've reached the end of a road or they're being ignored. We've always done this. We feel like we have an ethical responsibility to do this. It's the right thing to do. But we've really built that more into the experience that clients will have. Where we're following up to ask if you've actually heard back from this therapist, and if not, we'll help you get in touch with them and we'll let therapists know that if somebody didn't hear back, we'll try to figure out what happened.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:37:46]:

Something that I've always appreciated about you and mental health match is that you put the therapist at the center. We wrote an article together years ago that I still see circulated in therapists Facebook groups about how tech is impacting the mental health industry. So I just wanted to say thank you for all that you're doing.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:38:08]:

You know, this is a very, I'd say like sacred thing. Therapy is a sacred thing. It's really impacted. It can, it can be harmful if it's not done right, but it can be really, really impactful. And I think a lot of people deserve the kind of care that comes with a good therapist. So we're very mission oriented at what we do and we're all about just helping people get the care that it's going to help them out.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:38:32]:

Barry aligned there. Thank you Ryan, for coming on the show. This has been really helpful.

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Ryan Schwartz [00:38:36]:

Thanks Michael. It's been a pleasure. Folks can always contact us at mentalhealthmatch.com. That's the the website and you can contact our care team anytime with any questions - care@mentalhealthmatch.com

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Michael Fulwiler [00:38:46]:

Thanks for listening to this Office Hours episode of Heard Business School, brought to you by Heard the financial back office for therapists. For downloadable tools and guides, visit our resource hub at joinheard.com. And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube, Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.