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Therapy Tech With Rob and Roy
Episode 103: Internet Marketing
This Episode's Sponsor. Coupon Code: Either "ROYROB" or "ROBROY" — you choose!
Let's learn about Internet Marketing! Rob and Roy discuss Internet Marketing techniques that private practices can use. They cover web sites, SEO, Social Media Marketing, and much more. Joining them to discuss the ins and outs of Google AdWords is Joe Bavonese of Uncommon Practices.
Therapy Appointment is a feature-rich practice management system and sponsor of this show! You can get a $1 setup fee and the 1st month free by using one of the these two coupon codes (you choose!): ROYROB or ROBROY
Uncommon Practices – Joe Bavonese's site. Learn more about how he can help you improve your Google AdWords campaign!
SEO Moz – Beginner's Guide to SEO. A must read!
Google AdWords – Where to craft your Google Ads
Google Keyword Planner – Research and get keyword ideas for your marketing campaigns.
Roy's Top 10 Mistakes in Marketing Your Practice Online. (PCT — Roy's site.)
Facebook page moderation hack that Roy mentions. The linked-to page is about marketing, but the "hack" can also be used so that you can ensure that clients don't comment on your Facebook page (or, at the very least, they don't comment there without your approval.)
Ethical Pitfalls of Online Reviews and Testimonials – Counseling Today article (by Rob)
Why Internet Marketing?
Brand Marketing – What is it? Why is it important?
Thinking About Your Practice As A Business (Profit is self-care!)
Historical Ethics of Marketing a Private Practice
Intro to Internet Marketing
Therapist Directories and Web Sites
Person Centered Tech Hot Tip
Guest Spot – Joe Bavonese
Describe Question – How Do You Know If You're Too Busy?
Social Media Advertising and Ethics (Facebook Ads and More!)
Mailing Lists, Blogging, Capturing Leads
Rob Reinhardt: TherapyTech with Rob and Roy, the most fun therapists can have listening to a podcast about technology. This episode of TherapyTech with Rob and Roy is brought to you by Therapy Appointment. You provide the therapy. We provide the rest. Find out more at www.therapyappointment.com.
Roy Huggins: Hi, I'm Roy from Person-CenterTech.com
Rob Reinhardt: And I'm Rob from Tameyourpractice.com and today we're talking about Internet marketing. Why would we want to talk about Internet marketing, Roy?
Roy Huggins: Well, because we want more clients, don't we?
Rob Reinhardt: Yeah, I mean some people do. I mean some people are booked, right?
Roy Huggins: Oh sure, yeah, but they might be booked, but they might want to grow their practice, go to a group practice. They want to make sure they still have clients during the lean times. Maybe they just want to be that person who is always sending referrals out? That could be a good way to build stuff.
Rob Reinhardt: Well, and honestly if you keep the referrals flowing, it's a good way to build your niche.
Roy Huggins: It totally is, yes.
Rob Reinhardt: If you've got a flood of referrals coming in you can be sure that you're taking on the ones that are particularly a good fit for you.
Roy Huggins: Yeah, yeah, you know once you have that big abundance, there's a lot you can do from there. Abundance gives you options.
Rob Reinhardt: Exactly, I can think of a couple other reasons you might want to market. Getting the clients is certainly a primary goal, but another thing that's important is building your brand.
Roy Huggins: Oh sure, yeah, it's kind of funny because 20 years ago or something, building a brand was basically unethical.
Rob Reinhardt: Yeah and ethics is kind of an ongoing thing and we're going to probably touch on it today. This is another one of those cases where we'll probably do a broad survey and you'll have to listen to a future episode to learn about the HIPAA and ethics implications of some of this stuff.
Roy Huggins: Right.
Rob Reinhardt: But yeah, it's something you're certainly going to be aware of in the marketing and because of the Internet things have opened up somewhat for us, especially in brand marketing.
Roy Huggins: Yeah, that's right. I mean I wonder about that? There are a lot of people who have full practices. They don't really focus on a brand. Why would somebody want to go ahead and start doing that?
Rob Reinhardt: Well, I think some people aren't aware that they're brand advertising is just happening organically. Brand advertising is all about people associating your brand, whatever it is, even if it's just your name with an idea. One basic way that's accomplished is when people do marketing on a blog or social media and it's not about, "Hey, here's me and what I do," it's about passing on quality information about your specialty or your area of expertise and that begins to associate that area with you. When people think about anxiety or marital counseling, they associate that with you for later on when they may need those services.
Roy Huggins: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I certainly can think of at least one friend, colleague who is very much known as the couple's counselor. Basically, she only sees couples and that's become a big brand. That's a pretty wide niche, too. Of course, she doesn't really have a lot of trouble finding clients and getting referrals.
Rob Reinhardt: Right and some people, they fall into that and it happens without them sitting down and saying, "Now, I'm going to do brand advertising." It just kind of happens because they tell people they want to do and they start to get those referrals and network and become known for that and there you go.
Roy Huggins: Here's the thing I wonder about that? When I think of brand advertising I think of things like the Coca-Cola written in cursive kind of thing, right? That logo or whatever. I know that logo. I know that name and I think of that kind of stuff. Does it really help if people know what my logo looks like?
Rob Reinhardt: I think the two primary pieces to brand advertising are one: name recognition. Certainly, people like Coke and other large companies are trying to gain that through regular advertising. But also feel: how do people emotionally react to your brand? That's why you see a lot of commercials that have nothing to do with the actual product. You may see a bunch of heavy people dancing around drinking Coke, but they don't actually say anything about drinking Coke in the advertisement. It's associated with something else.
Roy Huggins: I don't think I've seen a Coke ad that talks about what Coke is like to drink in a long time?
Rob Reinhardt: Exactly, so they're focused more on "Hey, what is the feeling you get when you hear the word 'Coke?'" It's about making sure people think of you, but also how they think of you.
Roy Huggins: That makes sense, right. I think Coca-Cola ends up being a pretty good example, too, because it's like why do they need to establish a name or a brand? Who in the United States doesn't know what Coca-Cola is? Yet, you still see tons of commercials and ads everywhere for it, so there's clearly this need to maintain, like you were talking about earlier, like what if you already have clients? Well, that doesn't mean you stop marketing. Certainly, Coca-Cola hasn't stopped.
Rob Reinhardt: Sure, there's always new people and then there's the maintaining that feeling because I guess us humans have short attention spans and like to move on to the latest, greatest, newest, hotness.
Roy Huggins: Right, so you continue to market, whether that means the Internet marketing like we're talking about today or if it means continuing to just meet with colleagues and keep those referrals flowing. Whatever it means to you.
Rob Reinhardt: Yeah and I think that's especially important in our field because unlike some fields like say a restaurant, restaurants can use your traditional marketing methods, advertisements in magazines and what have you because people are hungry all the time. Whereas people aren't always looking for therapy services, so it can be even more important for us to have brand advertising, name recognition so that when people do eventually need services they think of you and your practice.
Roy Huggins: Right, right another reason to keep things going continuously is you want to catch people at that moment when they actually need you. They may ignore your ad or your marketing or anything you're doing, while they're not feeling like they need you.
Rob Reinhardt: Yeah, it's a very great point. If you're only doing something every six months, you miss a lot of those folks, yeah.
Roy Huggins: Okay, yeah, one thing I think some people may be think about right now. I'm sure many of our listeners don't think of it this way, but a lot of us are uncomfortable with money and thinking about the idea of running a business, which of course, you and I, we jump into this podcast being like, "Yeah, our listeners are running private practice. That means you're running a business," and we just talk about it like a business.
But a lot of our colleagues are uncomfortable with that and it's a discussion I have pretty much every year in my ethics class with students about if you're going to go to private practice, you're running a business and so that creates an inherent dual relationship and one that you must manage. That's easy to manage, but you have to manage it. The students usually do bring up that they're not super comfortable with the idea of being profit-centered.
Rob Reinhardt: Absolutely and I'm glad you bring that up because that's certainly is one of the over-arching goals of doing advertising to begin with. Why are you bringing in more clients? Certainly, hopefully because you enjoy your work and you want to work with more people, but overall the goal is more clients means you get more money. Once you've paid your overhead you've got more money for yourself and your family.
Roy Huggins: Right and I think it's really worth noting just quickly at least, having a good profit can be viewed as a self-care thing. If you're not comfortable with the idea of business and business profit as being involved in your work, just remember that if you don't have enough profit, then you don't have the space you need to be able to provide services for clients. You'll run out of money. You'll run out of time.
When you suddenly have to scurry to get your 20 CE's, you suddenly don't have the money to get them. You find that you're unable to keep up with rent. There's all kinds of things where if you're not actually making extra money, then you actually put yourself in a bad position to be able to serve clients. Even if someone doesn't feel profit-centered or feels uncomfortable about that I want to encourage people to think of profit as self-care at the very least.
Rob Reinhardt: I completely agree. I think that's a great point, Roy. I'll add if you're walking into sessions wondering if you're going to make the bills this month and is the person going to have their payment today that's certainly going to interfere with your work.
Roy Huggins: Yeah, absolutely.
Rob Reinhardt: You mentioned earlier how 20 years ago there were more concerns about ethics with brand advertising. I'm curious to hear from you how you think things have evolved since then?
Roy Huggins: Well, it's been flipped around. I've been studying this whole advertising a private practice from ethical perspective thing for now, Jesus, six years. Since I started Person-Centered Tech, I've been thinking about it and talking to people about it. When I talk to my mentors and older therapists, they talk about when in the 90s, 80s it was unethical to advertise, except for a Yellow Pages spot just saying "So and so with these credentials, provides therapy at this location." Marketing was a whole different ballgame for a private practice. The idea of actively participating in various marketing strategies was just not something people did and it was generally seen to be an unethical thing to do.
Rob Reinhardt: What was the concern?
Roy Huggins: Man, I have so many thoughts here. Okay, before the 21st century I think that it was relatively easy to design an ethical framework for therapists. Of all the professions, that was very contained and conservative because the world supported it. For example, dual relationships. You could say, "Don't ever have dual relationships," because it was pretty easy in most cases or at least in the cases of the people who make the ethics codes to assume that boundaries are defined by the literal walls of your office. Except when you both happen to be next to your landline and you need to call each other about the only communication is going to happen inside the therapist's office. These days that is absolutely, completely untrue and so you can extend that to marketing as well to a certain extent.
If people who seek a therapist are going to go to the Yellow Pages and look for therapists, then everyone is just listed there and people can find their therapist or they can get a referral from their insurance company or something. Basically, how you would find somebody who does a service you need was a lot simpler at the time.
These days, the number of channels and avenues by which businesses can promote their brand as you're putting it or by ways people can find services is dramatically larger. The downside is that's a lot more complexity for a business to try to manage, which sucks. But the advantage is that there's a lot more opportunities for us to figure out how to get our name out there and help people find us.
Rob Reinhardt: Well and the other plus I think is a lot of those opportunities are less expensive than they were many years ago.
Roy Huggins: Yeah, that's true, that's right. You just have to know how to use them. That's the downside. If you don't know how to use them, then you can't take advantage of that.
Rob Reinhardt: Yeah and that brings us back to the subject of "Hey, how do we use some of these inexpensive marketing tools like methods of advertising and marketing on the Internet?"
Roy Huggins: Yeah so what are those? What are those things, Rob?
Rob Reinhardt: Well, you could probably start about talking some general things and then build from there. We're talking top level, big picture things that you can do and probably drill down into some of these in later episodes and certainly hit on some of the ethics and legality later. When we're talking about general Internet stuff and how some of your specific approaches are going to affect things, we have to talk about search engine optimization.
Roy Huggins: Absolutely, got to start there.
Rob Reinhardt: Yeah, so search engine optimization for those who aren't aware, it's all of the things that you can do, the approaches you can take to improve your search results when people are searching for certain terms like "therapist in Portland." You want to make sure you're coming up near the top of the search results because people generally don't go past page 1.
Roy Huggins: I know. It's too bad. I'm not on page 1 anymore.
Rob Reinhardt: Can you guarantee that you'll be on page 1?
Roy Huggins: No, how would I do that?
Rob Reinhardt: You know that's probably tip one: be wary of anybody that promises you page 1 in search results.
Roy Huggins: No, they're lying, sorry.
Rob Reinhardt: Unless they are a high up at Google.
Roy Huggins: Oh sure, right.
Rob Reinhardt: And have some control over the algorithm there, in which case they're probably going to charge you more than it's worth anyway.
Roy Huggins: Right, yeah, for $10 million I can guarantee you on page 1, right.
Rob Reinhardt: That's right.
Roy Huggins: Right, what's interesting though is if we're saying SEO, so search engine optimization, if we're saying that's essential that implies something, Rob. That implies you have a website.
Rob Reinhardt: Yeah, that's certainly … You can have some search engine optimization without a website, but I think it's pretty essential to have a website these days. Even when we talk about some of the advertising listing services you can be on, I think we talked about in the first episode on our "Essentials episode," how people still would like to go to your website and read more about you and find out if you're a good fit because more and more people are making that decision that way.
Roy Huggins: Also, quite honestly, if I'm … How do I search engine optimize my Psychology Today or GoodTherapy.org profile? How do I make mine come up higher than someone else's? It's not really a thing I do.
Rob Reinhardt: Right, you can't because their search results are randomized and then as far as Google is concerned they tend to be near the top because they put so much into SEO.
Roy Huggins: Yeah, absolutely they do.
Rob Reinhardt: Yeah, you're right. Your website is one area where you can have a lot more control as far as the SEO performance by choosing different avenues and I'm sure we will include the link to SEO Moz. Is that how they pronounce it, SEO Moz?
Roy Huggins: That's how I pronounce it, SEO Moz, yeah.
Rob Reinhardt: Yeah, well that's how it's pronounced. We declare it so.
Roy Huggins: That's it. It's pronounced Moz, yes.
Rob Reinhardt: Even if you have somebody else do your website and you get help with keywords and stuff like that, I strongly encourage everybody to read through that so you at least have an understanding of how SEO works.
Roy Huggins: It's a really good basic intro. It also, honestly that intro could also help you filter out the scammers out there, who try to sell you first page of Google and all that. Website is pretty essential. I know we could actually do a whole podcast on it, but it's worth taking a couple minutes on that. Don't forget the website is in your control.
That's the really important thing. The profile's like the Psychology Today are good therapy profile. I'm a big believer in telling people obviously, you want those if they work for you. I actually encourage everyone to get a good therapy profile, if no other reason than good therapy provides a lot of other really useful services, even if the profile is not bringing you clients. It's totally worth it in my opinion. Having said, Rob and I have been on Good Therapy a couple times, so you could find more CE stuff that we've done.
Psychology Today really depends … Psychology Today just offers that profile, so it really depends on your zip code, whether or not it's going to be very useful to you or also specialties, that kind of thing. That could bring you some people, but you may have seen different things with your consultees, Rob because you talk to them more about this stuff than I do.
I have not really seen a lot of situations where Psychology Today profiles bring people already well-connected, qualified leads in terms of prospective clients. People tend to go, call people from the profile because the profile says they do a certain specialty or they're in a certain area. Whereas if they come from my website, people usually have already made a decision that I'm the therapist they want to see.
Rob Reinhardt: Yeah, I think you're right. I do think a lot of people have some really good results from sites like Psychology Today and Good Therapy. But I think you're correct that if they make it to your website there's even more of a chance that they're going to be a good fit for you and become a schedule client.
Roy Huggins: Yeah and honestly, you're going to actually start with a stronger therapeutic alliance from the get-go. That's not really a marketing thing, but that's something I've noticed with the way I try to attract new clients.
Rob Reinhardt: Yeah and if we're talking about okay, so then is Psychology Today or Good Therapy worth doing? I think one: a couple things we should point out is anytime you're doing a new marketing strategy, and I encourage people to pick something new every three to six months, "Hey, let's try this new thing." Make sure you're tracking it, "Hey, this is when I started." Make sure you're asking people how they found you, so that you can actually track your results and know what's working and what isn't working.
Roy Huggins: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Rob Reinhardt: With specific regard to Psychology Today, Good Therapy, I encourage you to do some searches in your area for your zip code and so forth and see how many results you get. If you're getting 12 pages of results, you're probably going to get less traffic from those sites than if you only have one page of results in your zip code because it is randomized.
Roy Huggins: Right, the one exception that I've seen is if you list on your list of specialties something that people search for and that's an important thing the way I said that. I don't mean as in you list specialties that people need. You list the specialty that people search for.
Rob Reinhardt: Correct.
Roy Huggins: It's like someone who has ADHD will usually know that and type ADHD or depression or anxiety, but of course, everyone will have it on their list so that won't help you. But for example, somebody who needs treatment for PTSD often doesn't know that, especially if it's complex, so they're not going to type "PTSD." They're just going to type "therapist."
Roy Huggins: That's one of the things there. If you've got some specialty where people know the name of it and they actually will search for it, that tends to also get you better results with Psychology Today.
Rob Reinhardt: I think I've seen the same thing, although to a lesser extent with treatment mode. Some things like CBT and EMDR and DBT, occasionally people will be specifically looking for those things, either based on something they've read or been recommended to buy another professional, so those are things to pay attention to as well.
Roy Huggins: Yeah, yeah, I can definitely see there being a population of people who have specifically looked for CBT and DBT especially. I didn't know people knew about EMDR? I didn't know that?
Rob Reinhardt: Maybe that's a regional thing? I hear a lot of that over here on the East Coast.
Roy Huggins: You guys love to just flip your eyes around over there. I know that's a thing you guys are into.
Rob Reinhardt: Right.
Roy Huggins: You're so shifty. You're always looking left and right.
Rob Reinhardt: Well and I may be biased in hearing that terminology more because I do some trauma work and that's EMDR is focused on trauma work.
Roy Huggins: Right, right, exactly.
Rob Reinhardt: And it's important, we've brought this up in the context of Psychology Today, Good Therapy, but the same concept is important on your website in using these terms that you want people to be able to find you through.
Roy Huggins: Yeah, absolutely, right, you want to use the terms and you want to tell people, especially if you have specialties. But one thing that's really important, I think I've seen a ton of social media discussions where people don't quite have their head wrapped around this concept yet.
Roy Huggins: It's time for the Person-Centered Tech Hot Tech Tip. This Episode's Hot Tech Tip has to do with picking search term keywords. Now, we've seen this a lot on social media where people will say, "Hey, I do X, Y, Z therapy, so I'm going to make sure that I have the words X, Y, Z therapy all over my website," because they figure they want people searching for letter X, Y, Z therapy to find them.
The problem is clients don't usually search for X, Y, Z therapy, so that doesn't really work. I'll give a more concrete example. For example, somebody who does say cognitive behavioral therapy may say, "Oh, I was sure to put the terms 'cognitive behavioral therapy' all over my website so that people who are searching for that will find it."
The thing is most people when they're looking for counseling help when they go to Google, they don't type in "cognitive behavioral therapy." Most commonly, they type in "counseling" or maybe "therapists" and they'll put the name of the town they're in. In which case, the fact that you had cognitive behavioral therapy all over your site doesn't make any difference.
Now, okay, cognitive behavioral might be a bad example because maybe some clients do search for that? But I've certainly seen people say things like, "I do EMDR," which they might search for or "I do internal family systems," which people are less likely to search for. Just because it's your special doesn't mean people are going to search for it.
Here's the key. You want to optimize your site for keywords that people use to search, not what you think they need. Let me say that again. You don't optimize your keywords for what people need. You optimize for what they're going to search for and it actually makes it a lot harder because people don't search for a lot of different terms.
In fact, there's a lot of competition for terms like "counseling" because that is largely what people search for when they want a therapist. They search for "counseling." Whether they intend to find a professional counselor, psychologist, clinical social worker, whatever, they usually say "counseling." But make sure you know what people are searching for and that will help you know what to optimize your keywords for.
Rob Reinhardt: Depending on if you want to get into this yourself or have somebody helping you, Google has some tools available where you can actually research what is it that people are looking for, totally?
Roy Huggins: Those can be really useful. I have found I have a hard time using them to look for therapy-related terms, but sometimes they're useful for that.
Rob Reinhardt: Well and the tools themselves, I don't know that I'd say that they're not user friendly, but are certainly bare bones, techy-oriented kind of things, so you have to know what you're doing. You might want to watch a video on how to use them or get some help. They can also be very helpful when you get into things like Google Adwords and you're wanting to target specific search terms. You want to make sure people are actually searching for those terms.
Roy Huggins: You just brought up a really important point because I was saying, for example, I'm not on the first page when you look for Portland therapists. Five years ago, I was and I had a really powerful presence there. Partly, it's because I have fallen off the SEO, but also it's because a lot more people are working on it now and I'm just like I have to make a decision of is getting on the first page my marketing strategy or not? Because if you want that you have to work hard at it. You probably have to spend money on it.
Rob Reinhardt: Like you said, it's not as simple as getting on the first page. It's getting on the first page for the search terms you want to be on the first page for.
Roy Huggins: Right and for example, I don't have any of those popular terms that people are looking for. I don't do DBT. The kind of population I work with they aren't going to go to type that in. I'm the therapist of Portland's tech and geek community. Even though someone would love to have a therapist who's like them, they're not going to type "geek therapist." It's just not what they're going to do.
Rob Reinhardt: I doubt it happens often. I can't say it would never happen.
Roy Huggins: Sure, sure.
Rob Reinhardt: Right, but yes, but is probably not the norm.
Roy Huggins: Right, basically they're just going to type "therapist" or "counselor" and I have to hope that they keep looking for a good match until they find me and then they go, "Oh, this is the guy." Because of that, what I want to do ... I would figure that search engine optimization for just the words "therapist" or "counselor" is probably not the strategy I want. What I need to do is actively find those people or actively get myself in front of people who might be like that. Things like advertising like Google Adwords might actually do a better job of that, right?
Rob Reinhardt: Yeah and that's because you might have another thought about it, but it's because you have so much control over crafting the search terms that Google Adwords are connected to.
Roy Huggins: Right and it's also a way that you can get yourself above ... If you want to get yourself on the first page of Google that's how you do it. You spend enough on the ads.
Rob Reinhardt: Yes, so those of you who do searches on Google, you'll notice that some of the first things listed on the page it always says "sponsored" or I think it's "sponsored" is how they label it now?
Roy Huggins: I think it's just "ad" or "advertisement."
Rob Reinhardt: Yeah, there's some kind of label at the top. It makes you know that this was here because somebody paid for it. Right below that another thing we need to make sure we talk about usually is a map.
Roy Huggins: Yes.
Rob Reinhardt: When you're looking for local services you're probably going to get the Google map that has some local services and the way to make sure you at least have a chance of being on that map is to make sure you're listed with is it Google My Business now? They always change the names.
Roy Huggins: I think that's what it's called right now for the next five minutes. It's called Google [inaudible 00:23:44].
Rob Reinhardt: Exactly.
Roy Huggins: Yeah, it used to be Google Places.
Rob Reinhardt: Exactly, so you want to make sure you're listed on things like that and that's another thing that can improve your SEO. The more presents you have whether it's through your website or being linked by other providers and referral sources and making sure you're listed on Google My Business, all of these things to potentially help your search engine optimization.
Roy Huggins: Yeah and one of the strongest things that helps search engine optimization is having other people make links that go to your website. That's one of the strongest things, especially if their sites are related to your region or they're related to mental health or something like that. Barring that, advertising helps. I know we'll talk a little bit about Facebook ads, but Google ads can be actually a really ... If you want to go ahead and get into the game of Google ads, they're pretty powerful. But I have tried Google ads and I wasn't really able ... For me, it was hard to figure out how to do it well. Have you figured out how to do that, Rob?
Rob Reinhardt: Yeah, I have had some mixed results with it. It's something you really have to tinker with and it depends on your context. The way a solo practitioner crafts their ad may be very different from a group practice.
Roy Huggins: Totally, very true.
Rob Reinhardt: Group practice may want to capture people looking for just about any kind of therapy help, so they might use all kinds of search terms like anxiety, depression, so forth. Whereas a solo clinician, who has a very targeted niche, will have different keywords that they're targeting.
Roy Huggins: Good point.
Rob Reinhardt: It's something you really have to research and tinker with and that's why it's so important that you track it. You say, "Okay, for one month I'm going to run this Google ad at this budget and make sure I'm asking everybody who calls or comes to the website how they found as and see am I getting a good return on this ad," and then tweak it a little more make a couple different ads and see if you get different, better or worse results and improve from there.
Roy Huggins: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I wish you had more details though. It would be really cool if there was somebody who could help us learn more about things like Google and Google Adwords.
Rob Reinhardt: No, it would be excellent.
Roy Huggins: Well, there's a knock at the door.
Rob Reinhardt: Let's go see who it is.
Roy Huggins: Hey, it's my old buddy, Joe Bavonese. I bet he can help us.
Rob Reinhardt: We have incredible luck with people showing up just when we need them to.
Roy Huggins: It's the best. I love podcasting. This episode of TherapyTech with Rob and Roy is brought to you by Therapy Appointment. You provide the therapy. We'll provide the rest. One thing I like about Therapy Appointment is the number of mental health professionals in the executive team. At Person-CenteredTech, we've found that tends to translate to better features for mental health professionals and better responsiveness to our needs. How about you, Rob?
Rob Reinhardt: Yeah, Therapy Appointment is one of the EHR's that are focused on mental health professionals that has been around the longest. They were one of the first with a client portal, so I'm very interested to see what they do with their latest update.
Roy Huggins: Right, will check them out at www.therapyappointment.com and you can use a special coupon code RoyRob to get $1 set up ...
Rob Reinhardt: Or RobRoy.
Roy Huggins: Well know, you want RoyRob for that $1 set up the and the first month free if you use RoyRob.
Roy Huggins: Hello everybody, I'm here with Joe Bavonese, the famous Joe Bavonese. Yes, it's that Joe Bavonese, the one you're thinking of. He is a license psychologist and the co-owner, co-director right of Uncommon Practices?
Joe Bavonese: Yes.
Roy Huggins: What's your group practice? I know you have one in Ann Arbor? Are you in Ann Arbor?
Joe Bavonese: One of my offices is in Ann Arbor. We have three office locations in southeastern Michigan called Relationship Institute, yes.
Roy Huggins: Very nice, there you go.
Joe Bavonese: We have 24 therapist, yes.
Roy Huggins: That helps you understand why we called Joe come and not just the fact that he runs Uncommon Practices, which covers this whole topic we're topic we're talking today about using the Internet and other, I guess electronic means to market your practice, but partly because Joe has used all these techniques to grow his group practice and it's got three locations. It's very big, very successful.
One of the things I've always appreciated about Joe's approach to marketing is it's no surprise he's a psychologist because there's numbers behind it. It's not a theoretical. He usually measures outcomes and comes up with reasons why things work and things don't work. That methodical thing we like to see. Welcome Joe, we're very excited to have you here.
Joe Bavonese: Well thanks guys, really glad to be on the podcast.
Roy Huggins: Our first question, and we've been talking about this and it's always a big, big hot topic for everybody, should SEO be something I think about and by thinking about, I'm trying to grow my practice. I want more clients. I need more clients. Let's look at it that way, not just I want more and more to do well, but that I need more. So someone says, "SEO, I have to do SEO." What do you think, Joe?
Joe Bavonese: Yeah, I think it definitely should be a part of your marketing mix. If you're relatively new to the whole Internet game, it will probably not blow your socks off with massive referrals immediately, but it's the kind of thing that over time will definitely help you get seed and help you get referrals. But probably not as much as it would have say four to six years ago.
Roy Huggins: But I keep hearing more about it now. It's possible that this is just sort of a confirmation bias, but I'm pretty sure I see it more frequently discussed and certainly when I search for "Portland counselor." Man, it's got a lot more competitive than it was four or six years ago.
Joe Bavonese: Yeah and I also think the most common title of SEO online is SEO dead? I see that a lot. [Inaudible 00:29:27] No, it's like you said, most therapists are a little behind the ball with technology as you guys know, so everybody finally figured out they needed a website and then once they figured out they needed a website, then they figured out just building it they will not come, so they figured out they might need to do something to get ranked. It's very competitive and there's only so many spots on the first page of search.
Part of the problem is Google keeps shrinking the number of spots that are available for individual websites like ours and also, the directories, like Psychology Today, Good Therapy, Yelp Health Grades, etc., are taking up more and more spaces and the free business listings that used to be called "The Seven Pack" are now down to "The Three Pack." All of Portland gets reduced to three people who get their websites for free and then there's four ads at the top on desktop and three at the top on mobile. The number of spots that one sees in a short attention span are shrinking in my experience.
Roy Huggins: Right, that sounds great in terms of SEO, right?
Joe Bavonese: Yep and several SEO experts that I follow online are predicting that at least half of the first page of Google by the end of this year will be ads, which I think that's a little pessimistic, but that's certainly the trend because Facebook and Google are into this competition for mobile advertising. They have to keep up and they have to keep monetizing and helping making their shareholders happy, since what is it? 97% of their money comes from these ads, so they really are still a one trick pony and so I think they are going to keep monetizing their search as much as they can.
Rob Reinhardt: If things move in that direction do you see people almost being required to participate in things like Google Adwords in order to have a shot?
Joe Bavonese: I think it's getting there. As I said, Rob, especially if it's a newer practice or one ... Google definitely rewards longevity. I've been very lucky with my therapy practice because actually had a really, really horribly bad website before Google was founded. But because the URL got picked up right from day one and they really reward longevity. Part of the process of why people need to pay for ads is it's one way to guarantee that you can be on the first page as much as you're willing to pay for the privilege.
Roy Huggins: What's the most you've seen somebody pay in order to be able to show up at the top?
Joe Bavonese: Well, it depends on your Metropolitan area, but in crowded areas, not like where you are. That's not that crowded, even though you probably think it is. I know, just teasing ya. New York, Los Angeles, I've seen people pay eight dollars or nine dollars a click. I just did a campaign for somebody in Florida, no Georgia and we were able to get a very high ranking for $4.10. It just depends on where you are.
Roy Huggins: All right, okay, so speaking of adwords, that's certainly our next question, right? The other thing we're seeing a lot, even more so and I know this for sure this one's growing is [Xword 00:32:33], they're recommending that you promote your practice, especially the talk about Facebook ads. But people do occasionally talk about Google Adwords, but because Facebook ads can help you find your audience. I want to know your opinion on that. I know you've talked about it quite a bit in the past.
Joe Bavonese: Yeah, I have tested everything pretty extensively and my experience so far is that I find Google ads actually to be better in terms of consistently generating referrals and I'll tell you why. One of the statistics I always track, as you said I like to track numbers, is average time on the page after a Google click versus a Facebook click. One of the shocking statistics that I found is that the average Google click is five times longer than the average Facebook click from that.
Roy Huggins: That's a long …
Joe Bavonese: Yeah and so because the reason is Facebook is interrupting socializing. You're going back to the 20th century interruption marketing model and people they are there to socialize. They're not there to get information, so it makes sense when you actually go to Google and say, "Find a sexy therapist in Portland, who specializes in anxiety," that you're going to spend more time on that page looking at his pictures, right?
Roy Huggins: Right, my pictures.
Joe Bavonese: Right, whereas when you're on Facebook and you're looking at your friend's vacation photos or whatever and this and happens to catch your fancy while you're scrolling through your newsfeed on your phone, you're not going to stay that long unless it's something extremely compelling. What I have found though works really well on Facebook is if you have some kind of free thing that you can demonstrate, like EMDR, new feedback, EFT tapping, those kind of techniquey.
Facebook is targeting is so much better than Google and most people have no idea how much information they have on them, but they do, so the fact you can target by education, income, gender, interests on where they live, etc., it really gives you a way to target your ideal profile. But Google, I think again, you're going to pay a lot more. I just did a campaign for somebody Facebook clicks were $.60 and I just said somebody on Google might pay eight dollars per click. The question is at some point did the lines cross and even if it takes a whole lot more clicks to get a Facebook client is it worth it because it's so much cheaper?
Roy Huggins: Right, well it sounds like …
Joe Bavonese: Yeah, it's shorter.
Roy Huggins: It's going to have a lot to do with how to use the and I assume, right?
Joe Bavonese: Yeah.
Roy Huggins: There's an ad that goes to your front page doesn't seem to make much sense on Facebook?
Joe Bavonese: Right and also on Facebook, the image, they let you put an image and this is not a sexist comment, but the research shows that if you have an attractive woman with cleavage, you'll get the most clicks if it's all relevant to your topic.
Roy Huggins: I'm not entirely sure how to arrange that one for my practice?
Rob Reinhardt: Yeah.
Roy Huggins: But the other thing about, we talked about mobile, but for Facebook about 97% of your ads are going to be seen on a smart phone and people are just going to flip through it. The attention span thing is really crucial. The other thing is Facebook is really big on video now and the videos are playing automatically without sound. If you get, I forget what is it three seconds or five seconds? They charge me for a video view, even if no one's hears ...
Roy Huggins: It's three seconds. Yeah, oh, I know very well, yeah.
Joe Bavonese: Yes, you do. [Inaudible 00:36:03] If somebody likes your ad, this is my favorite thing.
Roy Huggins: Well, it depends on how you ... Usually you can have them charge per impression and so it doesn't really matter, but they do show you a stat that says you got a view, just for three seconds of viewing, which I've never found to be at all valuable.
Rob Reinhardt: Well for you guys probably know how easy it is to accidentally hit the like button as you're scrolling.
Roy Huggins: Right, right.
Roy Huggins: Well thanks, Joe and I think Rob is ready. He's chomping at the bit to ask you a describe question so he can learn a little bit more about you.
Rob Reinhardt: Describe comes with over a dozen activities that can be used with clients of all ages. Find out more at describecards.com. The word I pulled out for today Joe is busy. The question is how do you know if you're too busy.
Roy Huggins: I know I'm too busy when I sleep less than four hours a night. That's my [inaudible 00:37:06].
Rob Reinhardt: Yeah, because you're paying me all of those waking hours or because you're so busy that you can't sleep?
Roy Huggins: Oh, I always sleep. No, I can't see doing too much because I run a practice with 24 therapists. I see about 50 clients a week, plus I do Uncommon Practice. Plus, I have two demanding dogs and three children and a wife, so those things all keep me busy.
Roy Huggins: You also have to check out various microviews. I know that is there as well.
Joe Bavonese: That's true. Yeah, I do a lot of traveling. I usually travel, now I'm traveling one week every month out of state, mostly just for fun and I do like to check out breweries all over the country so it's good.
Roy Huggins: Cool, so thanks Joe. Okay, where can people find ya?
Joe Bavonese: People can find me at Uncommonpractices.com.
Roy Huggins: Fantastic and what do you offer there?
Joe Bavonese: Well, we offer business coaching, classes on developing marketing plans. We do develop Facebook and Google Adwords campaigns. We also do a basic SEO service and my favorite think I'm expanding now is helping people develop a group practice. If you have a full practice and you are still getting referrals, you might as well start monetizing that. Apparently, there's quite a few people all over the country who have a full practice and keep getting referrals so it's good. People have learned how to do that. They realize they either want or need to make more money than they can just by seeing 30 people a week.
Roy Huggins: Fantastic, so check out Uncommonpractices.com. I really recommend anything Joe puts out there you want to check it out if you're interested in knowing what's going to work it growing a practice, especially with Internet marketing. Thanks a lot Joe, it was great having you here.
Joe Bavonese: Thank you.
Roy Huggins: We'll probably have you again I'm sure.
Rob Reinhardt: All right, that was very helpful. It was great to have Joe on the show and share his insights with us.
Roy Huggins: It's always fun to talk tech with Joe, too. It's good times.
Rob Reinhardt: We've done a good bit of talk about things like websites and Google Adwords and SEO. What are some of the ways that we can expand? The Internet is a pretty big ballgame. What are some other opportunities for us to do some marketing?
Roy Huggins: Yeah, you can also use the social medias.
Rob Reinhardt: Those social medias.
Roy Huggins: The social medias, yeah.
Rob Reinhardt: Wait a second, are we allowed to talk about what we do on social media?
Roy Huggins: Are we allowed to talk about what we do on social media? Well, you mean like ethically, legally, is that what you're asking about?
Roy Huggins: Oh well, yeah totally, here we can quickly introduce the concepts of personal virtual presence versus professional virtual presence. There's different names people have for it, but that's one you see, at least with the ACA code of ethics and that's you have to keep them separated. Like the old song from that what group ...
Rob Reinhardt: Got to keep it separated.
Roy Huggins: Yeah, that one, exactly. That's generally the idea.
Rob Reinhardt: Sorry to torture everybody with my voice but that's all I guess?
Roy Huggins: Well, Rob, I love hearing your singing voice.
Rob Reinhardt: We're probably going to get a cease and desist letter from-
Roy Huggins: Oh god, yes.
Rob Reinhardt: The recruit companies, yes.
Roy Huggins: A digital millennium copyright act, cease and desist, right. Speaking of that actually, don't use other people's materials in your social media. By the way, that actually has happened. I've had several people tell me that expert lecturers have told them that you can grab blog posts from other people and as long as you link back to the original blog post, it's okay to use their blog post on yours.
Rob Reinhardt: Oh, if you were on Family Feud, you'd get the big X.
Roy Huggins: Yeah, big X on that one. I have no idea where they got that completely erroneous, very rude idea.
Rob Reinhardt: You have to be really careful with photographs, images as well.
Roy Huggins: Yes, yeah, just don't grab them off of Google Image Search because those are still copyrighted. The fact that Google can display them doesn't mean that they're not copyrighted or that you don't have permission to use them.
Rob Reinhardt: Tell us more this separation you're talking about we have to have.
Roy Huggins: Oh, I'm sorry, yes. I got distracted.
Rob Reinhardt: It sounds an awful lot like the dual relationship thing.
Roy Huggins: It kind of is. It relates to that, the dual relationships and boundaries in general because that's the biggest issue because social media is all in one physical location. Any of those screens you use to access the Internet, they're all ... You and all your clients are all right there in that spot and so we've got to create these arbitrary boundaries and so you want to have personal social media and professional social media. Ideally, your personal social media is walled off through privacy settings or passwords. My Facebook has maximum privacy settings and I don't friend clients, of course, as we all at this point understand.
But I also have a Facebook page for my practice and I post stuff there about mental health for tech workers and entrepreneurs and I'm getting in to starting to use it to even run Facebook ads to advertise to my market in Portland. That's actually what I'm doing rather than Google Adwords, but partly just because I'm more familiar with it. These are all fine. I'm very careful about my business page, my practice page on Facebook is completely separate from my personal profile. They're not even linked together under the hood by Facebook. Facebook probably has figured out they're linked but they're not officially linked.
Rob Reinhardt: Sure, yeah but from the outside not so much. It sounds like you're specifically doing brand advertising out there. You're putting-
Roy Huggins: I am. You're right.
Rob Reinhardt: You're putting articles out that speak to your audience.
Roy Huggins: I guess I am, good point.
Rob Reinhardt: That show yourself as someone who knows about the things that they're interested in.
Roy Huggins: Hmmm-mmm (affirmative), yeah.
Rob Reinhardt: Establishing yourself as an expert so that if and when they need that expert, you are the go-to dude.
Roy Huggins: Yep, exactly, right and so right now I'm just putting out these Facebook ads. I pay a little bit of money and they show to people in my… within a mile around my office who meet certain criteria. I say, "Only show this to people who are in tech and who are interested in wellness or who are interested in personal improvement." I actually select that in my Facebook ad and say, "Show to them just that there's this page for this guy who is a therapist for tech workers in this area," and then Facebook will tell me how much people looked at that. Were they interested in it? Did it seem relevant to them or not? That can help me know if that audience really is the right ones to put my brand up to.
Rob Reinhardt: It sounds like you're taking a similar approach to what I was talking about with Google Adwords, where you try this, try that measure what's effective?
Roy Huggins: Exactly, right, that's exactly it.
Rob Reinhardt: Yeah, how effective has Facebook ads been for you? I've had some luck with Facebook ads with stuff I've done with Describe and Tame your Practice, but I am not actually done it with my private practice work. Has it been effective?
Roy Huggins: I'm just now starting to private practice one, so I don't know but yeah…
Rob Reinhardt: Oh, so people have to tune in later.
Roy Huggins: You'll have to tune in later, yeah. At Person-Centered Tech we've had mixed success, but I definitely learned a lot of good lessons about how to do brand advertising with Facebook for Person-Center Tech. Actually, trying to get sales is harder, but the branding has been helpful by its self.
Rob Reinhardt: Okay and just to make sure people understand when you're talking about that separation on Facebook, you can have a personal Facebook account and you can create what's called "pages." That's where you're creating a business ... When you create a page it ask you what kind of page do you want to create and so you create a business page. That's where you want to have that separation. Where else do we need to create separation?
Roy Huggins: Oh, when you're blogging in general one of the things you want to be concerned about is that whether it's "micro blogging" like on Twitter or just blocking through a WordPress site or BlogSpot or something, those are meant to be interactive. Anybody can just come and interact with you. That means clients can come and interact with you and there's some potential dangers there. You want to make sure you set the settings on all of these things such that, for example, you can moderate interaction.
If someone posts a comment, you have to approve the comment before it gets published. If a client comes along and post a comment that pushes boundaries or pushes a confidentiality you can call them or see them in the next section and talk to them about it before publishing it on to your blog. Those kinds of things become pretty important for ensuring that you keep those boundaries. Also, that's why you want social media policies in your practice. You want clients to know ahead of time or at least had a hint at the fact that when they see you on social media you're going to keep that separate. You want to make sure clients know that.
Rob Reinhardt: Yeah and what you were describing I think you were saying this but just to clarify, you need to have that moderation setting turned on for blocking and Facebook and anywhere else where people can interact with your posts or your page.
Roy Huggins: Right, by the way, you can't moderate the comments on a page. You have to use a hack, like a work around, but we'll post a link About That.
Rob Reinhardt: On the Facebook?
Roy Huggins: Yeah, on the Facebook page. Yeah, there's a workaround you can use and we'll give you a link to that on the website.
Rob Reinhardt: Again, I'm pretty sure we're going to devote an entire episode to the ethics-
Roy Huggins: Sure, we will.
Rob Reinhardt: Of Internet presence. You know another way that other businesses can go hog wild with that we have some limitations with, but can still be somewhat useful are review sites.
Roy Huggins: Yeah, that's rough for us.
Rob Reinhardt: Yeah, sites like Yelp, Health Grades, those kinds of things.
Roy Huggins: Or your Google My Business, which is still called My Business for the next five minutes, yes.
Rob Reinhardt: Right, exactly, so again, you have your restaurant and you want all kinds of people posting reviews and making sure you're close to five stars as you can because that's going to draw more people in and that presents an issue for us, which again, we're going to delve more deeply. I think you do the same thing I do and this was something I discovered as part of Keely Holmes' approach and that is to proactively post something on those sites that say, "Hey, we, I'm not going to respond to reviews because there's ethical issues there and we encourage people not to post a review because this is the Internet and that's permanent and you're giving up some privacy in doing so."
Roy Huggins: Certainly, if clients spontaneously without any goading at all go and leave a positive review lucky you, but the downside there, to me the downside is that another clients also see your other people also see, "Oh hey, there's reviews on Roy's Google My Business profile, so it's appropriate to go leave reviews there," which is why I still have that social media policy. I want to make sure clients understand up front that I do discourage that because I'd rather they keep their confidentiality and keep their therapy theirs and have that relationship be about them than about me. But of course, if they see that and they said they spontaneously want to leave a positive review that's good for me, but that has to be something that's purely opportunistic. It really can't be something that you try to aim at.
Rob Reinhardt: We talk about as we try these different approaches to measure it. This would be a harder want to measure, but I have actually had the occasional client mentioned that they've seen things like my statement on Yelp and have positive responses to that. Even though you maybe can't measure things like that, people knowing up front how you value privacy and confidentiality can be beneficial as well.
Roy Huggins: Yeah, I've had nothing but positive statements from clients about how they trust that I have their interest in heart whenever they see that from me, yeah.
Rob Reinhardt: What about some of the other social media platforms, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest? You hear of anybody having solid success using those?
Roy Huggins: Yeah, yeah and the secret is keep it professional. When I do my CE program on social media I talk a lot about what I call "professional transparency," where you might be a little transparent and if you're in private practice you have more room to do that because clients don't have to come to you. If they see what your personality is like in Twitter and Instagram and such and it doesn't match them they don't have to go to you and that's actually good.
They actually get more information about whether you're appropriate for them or not by seeing your social media presence, which I actually would argue is ethically positive. Putting yourself out there and like what you are like is actually a good thing because it helps people choose if you're appropriate or not. As long as what you're putting out there it is compatible with your professional person ... We use the word "brand." If that brand is professionalism compatible, I definitely seen people who love …
There is a psychologist, Jason Mihalko, who's got a great Twitter account. Literally, he just posts what he's interested in. He's not using it for marketing at all. I don't know if he gets clients from it, but I bet he does because it really displays what he is like and I have a strong sense of if I were to go to Jason for therapy, I'd really have a strong feeling what it might be like to work with him. There's all these pictures of his cute therapy dog and he talks about politics and all this stuff, but he's very aware that everything he does is showing what his professional persona is like and all of it reflects on him professionally. What he talks about something personal, he ensures that it's compatible with that professional presence and I think that's just what you have to do and then you can really let your light shine.
Rob Reinhardt: Yeah, I agree and it is a good illustration of when we talked earlier about how things have changed over the last 20 years. We have so many more avenues to establish that report with clients before we even talk to them and that's what you are describing.
Roy Huggins: Yeah, yep, the more I put out there that's professional and compatible but that shows my light, the more I see the clients who have seen that actually start to have therapeutic alliance formed before we even have that first session.
Rob Reinhardt: Right, what about some other things? We've got a couple other things we want to touch on before we ran out of time. What about mailing list?
Roy Huggins: Yeah, you know I always wondered about this because people are encouraging it because it's a strong marketing technique to build a mailing list and the reason you do is because the concept of "capturing leads." If someone comes around your site and sees your stuff, but they don't quite need you yet or they're not quite ready to go for it yet, market it and say, "You want to capture their attention, be able to talk to them again," because otherwise they'll just forget about you. Mailing lists are a big part of that. The marketing experts will tell you try to get people to subscribe to your mailing list and maybe that's how they see your new blog posts or maybe you just put out mailers to people?
I've always thought about the potential confidentiality issues here, except that if a client signs up for your mailing list they do so on their own and it's quite clear the client is. A mailing list can be a good way to do that, but you definitely want to make sure you think about what you're writing in your mailing list and ensuring that it's appropriate both for potential clients and current clients and future clients, past clients, the public in general. You want to think about what's called "media psychology," which is the referencing, like if you are going to write about your work in public you want to be careful about not giving medical advice, all kinds of things like that.
Rob Reinhardt: Yeah and what you're talking about their goes for all of these platforms, whether it's Facebook or blogging or the mailing list, you're focused on providing quality information that's useful to your audience that doesn't get into privacy, violating privacy and so forth.
Rob Reinhardt: Another way I've seen mailing lists used in addition to connecting with potential clients is referral sources. Having specially mailing lists that provides useful resources information for referral sources in your area. It's particularly useful if you have a strong niche and you're trying to get people on that mailing list who are associated with not that niche. For example, somebody might specialize in working with women who are going through pregnancy and after birth, they may have a bunch of … People associated with that on their mailing list. They could have everybody from pediatricians to people that run daycare centers on this list and provide valuable information about the psychological challenges that new mothers deal with.
Roy Huggins: Right, right, that's a good thought.
Rob Reinhardt: That's a way to establish yourself as an expert that deals with these issues and then people are going to think of you when they run into somebody who could use your help.
Roy Huggins: Yeah, that's great. Man, that's a great idea. I love it. Also, a growing thing is to, and this is usually something in your website, but it could also be something you'll use a YouTube channel for or a Vimeo channel is to do video. It's like blogging, but with videos.
Rob Reinhardt: Right and the primary way I've seen that is introductory videos on people's websites "Hey, this is another way to see who I have and maybe show my office and what I'm like." It's another way to again to establish that rapport be somebody's even called you up, yep.
Roy Huggins: I've seen people really get into vlogging, v-logging, where they go beyond the intro video and they're actually just … They like, "Today, I'm going to talk to you about my views on anxiety and what it comes from and some tips for reducing anxiety." It ends up basically being blogging but with video. For some people it's been really successful.
Rob Reinhardt: Yeah, it's all boiling back to the same principle I think we talked about people accomplishing that same goal and doing tutorials and e-courses. The old-school way of doing that would be to do local workshops, but it all comes back to providing valuable information, establishing yourself as an expert, having people remember you because you're providing those things.
Roy Huggins: Right, yeah, well, you know Rob, I think we're starting to come to the end of our TherapyTech hour. Why don't we wrap up and give a little summary of everything we talked about today?
Rob Reinhardt: Yeah, so again, a lot of what we're talking about is mostly brand advertising, which is going to be the most effective for our field. Ads in the Yellow Pages just aren't going to cut it anymore. It's about establishing yourself as an expert, creating a situation where people will remember you when they do need your services because most people with the initially run into you, unless they were referred directly to you for some reason, aren't going to need your services at that time.
Roy Huggins: Yeah, that's true, yeah and I want to point out that not everything we talked about is something you have to spend money on. No, a lot of that organic social media stuff you can do without spending money unless you might need to buy a new camera or something like that. Yes, so advertising doesn't always mean you're buying something.
Rob Reinhardt: Well and not everybody has to do everything that we talked about. It's really important to have a clear picture of where you want your practice to be and what are the things most likely to get you there and like we said, experiment with some things. Have a three month trial where you try a new marketing strategy, make sure you're measuring its effectiveness. If it doesn't work, then by all means drop it and try something new.
Roy Huggins: Absolutely, right on, well it was good times, Rob.
Rob Reinhardt: Always, always fun.
Roy Huggins: Right, okay.
Rob Reinhardt: I'm already ready to do the next one.
Roy Huggins: I know. What's the next one going to be?
Rob Reinhardt: Oh my gosh, I don't know?
Roy Huggins: I don't know?
Rob Reinhardt: But we'd love to hear from people if anybody's got some ideas on what they'd like to hear on our podcast, certainly right in.
Roy Huggins: Yeah, please do and we'll see you next time.
Announcer: Thank you for tuning in to TherapyTech with Rob and Roy. This episode has been sponsored by Therapy Appointment. You provide the therapy. We provide the rest. Find out more at therapyappointment.com. Episode notes and helpful resources can be found at www.therapytechrobroy.com. Until next time, may your backups be redundant and your chocolate plentiful.
Photo by Andrew Ly on Unsplash
General Technology,
Telemental Health,
Episode 107 – Awesome-ify Your Practice for 2018
Episode 102: Electronic Health Records (EHR)
1 HOUR 2 MINS
Episode 110 – Creating Products
Rob Reinhardt
The "Rob" in Rob & Roy
Roy Huggins
The "Roy" in Rob & Roy


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A police search in Creighton Court leads to unusual hearing of full federal appeals court
Frank Green
As police responded to a shooting in Richmond's Creighton Court neighborhood in 2017, Billy Curry Jr. was searched. His attorneys say that search was unconstitutional.
2018, TIMES-DISPATCH
Police responded immediately to the sound of nearby gunfire in Creighton Court the night of Sept. 8, 2017, in what might have been just another all-too-common incident.
Prosecutors say the resulting search of Billy Curry Jr. and the recovery of a handgun was fraught with danger. Curry's lawyers say constitutional rights also were put at risk by the search, a contention that prompted the scheduling of a rare hearing Thursday before the full 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Curry, a felon, was indicted by a federal grand jury for possessing a firearm. His lawyers contend that police violated his right against unreasonable search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment because they did not have a reasonable suspicion that he was breaking the law when they went to frisk him.
U.S. District Judge M. Hannah Lauck agreed and granted Curry's motion to toss out the evidence discovered in the search. The judge rejected the prosecutors' argument that the warrantless search was allowed under the "exigent circumstances" exception when there is imminent danger to public safety.
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In her ruling in March 2018, Lauck wrote that even taking into account the training and experience of the officers and their concern for safety, they lacked a reasonable, "particularized" suspicion for stopping Curry rather than other people who were also in the area and simply walking away from the scene of the gunfire.
The government appealed Lauck's ruling to the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and last year a panel of judges, in a 2-1 ruling, overturned Lauck. Curry's lawyers appealed the panel's ruling and asked the full court to consider the question.
Because so few cases are taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court, the 4th Circuit is the court of last resort for almost all matters in Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. And almost all appeals are heard by three-judge panels of the court's 15 judges, not the full court.
Thursday's rehearing by all of the judges is something the court grants only 0.3% of the time it is requested.
Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of law, said that such "en banc" hearings are held to maintain uniformity of the court's decisions, or when a case involves a question of exceptional importance.
"The full court often modifies the three-judge panel opinion, because judges who agree with that opinion are unlikely to vote to rehear en banc," Tobias said.
The case began around 9 p.m. that night when officers in a patrol car near Creighton Court heard five or six shots fired nearby and rushed to the scene. There had been six shootings and two homicides in the public housing community in the prior three months.
Curry was stopped by police and searched near the shooting scene and was found in possession of a .38-caliber revolver. He was initially charged in Richmond Circuit Court but then indicted by a federal grand jury.
According to the majority in the earlier 2-1 opinion, the officers found Curry and a half-dozen others walking away in the area of the gunfire. The police told them to stop, raise their hands and lift their shirts. Curry was the only one who refused to lift his shirt and a search and struggle turned up a silver revolver.
"The officers here reacted to a perilous active-shooter situation, arriving on scene within 35 seconds of hearing multiple gunshots in a densely populated area. These exigent circumstances implicated vital government interests — citizen and police safety — beyond the ordinary need for law enforcement. The officers' initial response was tailored to address these needs with minimal intrusion and thus reasonable," held the majority opinion.
But Judge Henry F. Floyd of South Carolina wrote in a dissenting opinion that the majority's position implies that gunshots in a high-crime area creates an emergency that allows police to stop and frisk anyone in the area without individualized suspicion.
Floyd complained that allowing police to bypass "the individualized suspicion requirement" based on the sound of gunfire and the general location where it may have originated, "completely cripples the fundamental Fourth Amendment protection and creates a dangerous precedent."
In asking the full appeals court to uphold Lauck's ruling, Curry's lawyers wrote that, "in this case, not only did the police lack reasonable suspicion, they were also operating without an exigent circumstance. Gunfire cannot always equal an exigent circumstance. It would erase the warrant requirement."
They add that a warrantless search is legal only if it was legal for the police to stop the person who is searched because "discretionary, suspicionless stops for the general purpose of investigating crimes are plainly impermissible."
"They encountered him walking away from a residential building after they heard gunshots. This fact did not distinguish Mr. Curry from the other pedestrians in that public space, or from any of the residents standing nearby, in a neighborhood where hundreds of families lived," Curry's lawyers argue.
Permitting that scenario to fall under the exigent circumstances exception would expand that exception far beyond what other courts have allowed, Curry contends.
The U.S. attorney's office disagrees. In a brief to the appeals court, the government notes that the shots were fired "in a location where someone had been murdered less than two weeks before. ... If police had failed to investigate, they could have left an injured person on the scene or failed to prevent a further shooting."
"If the officers had investigated and failed to control the scene, circumstances could have spiraled, resulting in the officers defending themselves against lethal force. Or the person — or persons — who fired the five or six gunshots could have simply disappeared in the dark," they added.
The circumstances, the government argues, "established objectively a serious exigency."
The government argues that, "faced with these exigencies, the officers needed to act quickly to ensure that they protected the lives of people on the scene, reduced risks to their own safety, and avoided the loss of essential evidence about what person or persons just committed the shooting."
fgreen@timesdispatch.com
Billy Curry Jr.
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Kaiser Permanente Gets $7 Million to Make PORTAL
By: Nathan Eddy | January 15, 2014
The network will develop data systems necessary to conduct studies with patients in colorectal cancer, severe congenital heart disease and obesity.
Health care provider Kaiser Permanente has been awarded a contract of nearly $7 million to take advantage of the company's expertise in health care research to build a data network aimed at improving patient outcomes in colorectal cancer, heart disease and obesity.
The Patient Outcomes Research To Advance Learning, known as PORTAL, is a network that brings together four health care delivery systems (Kaiser Permanente, Group Health Cooperative, HealthPartners and Denver Health), the 11 research centers affiliated with these systems, and patients, clinicians and operational leaders to develop the infrastructure necessary to conduct comparative effectiveness research.
PORTAL is led by principal investigator Elizabeth McGlynn, PhD, director of Kaiser Permanente's Center for Effectiveness & Safety Research, and co-principal investigator Tracy Lieu, MD, director of Kaiser Permanente Northern California's Division of Research.
The clinical data research network is one of 29 individual network projects that were approved for a total of $93.5 million from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) in December to form PCORnet, a resource that aims to boost the efficiency of health research.
The network will develop data systems necessary to conduct studies with patients in three areas: colorectal cancer, severe congenital heart disease and obesity.
"The PCORI award represents an important next step in the 20-year journey of Kaiser Permanente and its partners to realize the vision of becoming learning health care organizations, that is, to be able to ask and answer the questions that are important to our members and their clinicians," McGlynn said in a statement. "We are excited to be part of this national initiative and believe it will ultimately translate into better care for our members and for patients nationally."
During the next 18 months, the team will use the PCORI funds to expand and improve its research systems, continue work on standardizing its data for research, and participate in developing policies for the national network that govern data sharing and security and protection of patient privacy.
The Kaiser Permanente-led team also will refine PORTAL's capacity to engage and recruit patients and other stakeholders interested in participating in research, including clinical trials.
"PCORnet presents a terrific opportunity to further develop Kaiser Permanente's vision of using computerized data to help patients achieve better health," Dr. Lieu, co-principal investigator of PORTAL, said in a statement. "This vision was first described more than 50 years ago by Morrie Collen, the founding director of our research program. We have world-class leaders in research in the three focus areas for our network — colorectal cancer, heart disease and obesity — and this is a great chance for us to transform health care through patient engagement."
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Changing Faces is indebted to its volunteers around the country who donate their time, energy and enthusiasm to help us.
Help out at one of our administration centres in London, Sheffield or Edinburgh.
Work Experience: We do from time to time host work experience opportunities for Secondary School or Higher Education Students. But please note, we are not able to offer any work experience with the Skin Camouflage Service and we do not offer counselling training placements or any other direct contact with our clients, owing to confidentiality and ethical considerations.
If you are interested in volunteering in any of these ways, please fill out this volunteer application form. And if you have any problems completing the form please email info@changingfaces.org.uk.


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15 Things To Consider Before Moving In With Your Significant Other
List RulesLiving with your partner? Vote up the things other couples should consider before taking the plunge.
Moving in with your significant other is a very big step for your relationship but it's nothing to be scared of. Simply read these tips and stories to prep!
"Equal" Chores Mean Something Different To Everyone
From Redditor u/goldbat:
My husband & I will be living together for 20 years in October. We're married for 13.
Here's the thing with "chores" and such... "Equal" doesn't necessarily mean quantitatively "equal." It's not an "I did one thing and now you do one thing" kind of deal.
In our relationship, "equal" means that everything is completed and each person completes the tasks they are better at, willing to complete, or hate less.
So, in our case, my husband is in charge of grocery shopping, meal planning, and cooking. I am in charge of the "Charlie Work" (Always Sunny in Philadelphia reference) while he's running all over town going to all the grocery stores and such. Charlie Work = cleaning bathrooms, doing dishes, taking out garbage, litter boxes, and anything else "gross."
I don't "LOVE" Charlie Work, but I like it more than grocery stores and cooking.
Good to consider?
You'll Still Want Alone Time
From a former Redditor:
It's perfectly ok for both of you to want the house to yourself from time to time. And sometimes, you'll sit at the same table all evening without speaking a word to each other.
Expectation Is Resentment Waiting To Happen
From Redditor u/aviary83:
Remember that an expectation is resentment waiting to happen. Good communication is the key to absolutely everything.
You're A Selfish Person
From Redditor u/seemedlikeagoodplan:
First, you're a really selfish person. Like, really selfish. And so is your girlfriend. You may not think so, but after a few months of living with her, both of you will probably realize this. Hopefully, you've got the kind of relationship where both of you encourage each other to be less selfish. I've been married for nearly 3 years, and this was some of the best advice that my wife and I got. Just about every time we have argued or been upset with each other, it's because one of us is being selfish. Often both.
Secondly, there's a saying with a lot of truth to it: "Everyone marries a stranger". In your context, it might be "Everyone moves in with a stranger". Dating someone, and living with them every day, are two dramatically different things. Know that, and slack your expectations off a bit.


The service is being offered free of charge to retailers and offers them a customised homepage that opens the door to more than 75,000 Christian products — including ebooks — from Eden. All customer service and order fulfilment will be provided by Eden with a commission paid to the bookseller, somewhat akin to Gardners' Hive Network but dedicated to Christian resources and without the need to hold a trade account with the supplier.
The site is now open for retailers to register an interest and is scheduled to go live to the public on Monday 3 June. A collect-from-store option is planned for the Autumn of 2013.
An interesting idea, certainly. It should appeal to small, independent bookshops. Maybe, if they extended it, it might appeal to anyone blogging for Jesus too.


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'Justice for Walker': Historic first as NT police officer charged with murder of Indigenous man
Tarla Lambert November 13, 2019
A huge reaction has swept across the country to the news that Northern Territory police officer, Zachary Rolfe was charged yesterday with the shooting murder of 19-year-old indigenous man, Kumanjayi Walker.
The charge, an historic first in Australia, has been welcomed by many within the Indigenous community who believe a blind eye has long been cast on police brutality toward its people.
Walker died after he was allegedly shot at Yuendumu, a town 300 kilometres from Alice Springs, on Saturday night.
It's reported that two police officers, including Rolfe, arrived to arrest him for breaches of his suspended sentence. The shooting occurred shortly after, with the officers claiming Walker had lunged at them with a knife– allegations which have been disputed by the victim's family.
Over the last week, several candlelit vigils and peaceful protests have been carried out across the Northern Territory and in major cities, and when news broke of Rolfe's arrest last night, a vigil staged in Alice Springs was met by rapturous cheers.
Rolfe, who grew up in the national capital and attended the Canberra Grammar School, has since been released on bail. NT police confirmed that no further details of the incident would be released subject to court proceedings.
While Federal shadow minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney told ABC radio today that there was "enormous surprise" in the community that bail had been granted, Walker's family was calling for calm.
There's no doubt this case has become a symbolic marker of Australia's vexed race relations and a hopeful precursor for change.
Academic and Kamilaroi woman, Amy Thunig spoke tearfully and passionately on ABC's The Drum last night, saying it was time for Australians to stop overlooking similar injustices.
"We're really angry," she said.
"We're at 21 Indigenous deaths at the hands of police– whether that's in police custody or police presence– in a year. In one year."
"We are devastated. We are outraged. I speak in solidarity with this community because this son is our son," says @AmyThunig in response to the shooting of 19-year-old Indigenous teenager Kumanjayi Walker in the NT. pic.twitter.com/GFGMdxbqgc
— ABC The Drum (@ABCthedrum) November 13, 2019
A similar call to arms has been made by thousands on social media over the past few days.
Allies now is your chance to stand up for our people. If you can protest about climate change and marriage equality, you can call for justice for the First Peoples of this land you call home. #IStandWithYuendumu #JusticeForWalker pic.twitter.com/M30RSpgzLu
— Shannan Dodson (@ShannanJDodson) November 12, 2019
Melbourne #JusticeForWalker pic.twitter.com/D6ZumcACZT
— Danielle Priest (@danielle_priest) November 13, 2019
"We will see truth. And we will live truth." #JusticeForWalker #BlackLivesMatter #StopDeathsInCustody https://t.co/IcAcXBVd8V pic.twitter.com/43yXQvBmSL
— suze montgomery ☁ (@suze_montgomery) November 13, 2019
On Tuesday, prior to the ruling, NT police officers urged those on social media to be mindful of what they posted.
"There is a lot of public commentary especially on social media which could influence witnesses and not allow the investigation to run its full course," it said.
"Out of respect to the deceased man, his family, Yuendumu, the wider Warlpiri community and the welfare of the officers involved, we ask that social media users are mindful of the hard work being done by the community leaders to support the grieving and maintain community safety."
Tags Amy Thunig black lives matter Indigenous Australia Kumanjayi Walker linda burney race relations Zachary Rolfe
Tarla Lambert
Tarla is the publisher of Women's Agenda. She's a politics junkie, writer, commentator and fierce advocate for equality.
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Now is the time to help close the archaic 'mistake of fact' loophole in Queensland
Women's Agenda 22 mins ago


When a pregnant women decides to give birth outside of a hospital they are often looked at as if they were crazy. However it was only really a generation ago that giving birth at home was the norm. It was around the 50's that this practice started to change and babies were born in a hospital rather than at home. The idea was with medical care at hand that both mother and child would have a much better rate of survival. Initially the infant mortality rates remained the same as those who gave birth at home with just a midwife. Modern medicine has come a long way since then, but home birth versus hospital births the statistics remain pretty much the same. It is just as safe for moms with a normal pregnancy to give birth at home as it is in a hospital.
There are cases where giving birth in the hospital is the best choice. If the mother has a high risk pregnancy or they are expecting multiple births then you want to have medical care on hand. High risk pregnancies can include conditions like preterm birth, preeclampsia or gestational diabetes. If the expectant mother has a history of high blood pressure throughout her pregnancy then she also may want to give birth in a hospital.
Giving birth at home gives you freedom that giving birth in a hospital just doesn't offer. Labor is hard and painful and at home you have the chance to move around at home. In a hospital you are often confined to a bed and that can delay your labor. At home you can have whomever you choose be a witness to the process. However in a hospital during flu season, visitors are often restricted to protect the patient. Infection is another issue that comes with a stay in the hospital, even in modern hospitals. Hospital stays can expose both mother and baby to germs and viruses that you don't have at home, along with restricting your options for managing your labor.
Whether you choose to go to a hospital or to give birth at home is totally in your hands. If you have a normal pregnancy then there is nothing to prevent you from choosing to give birth at home. Giving birth at home with a midwife allows you to be in control of your labor and how you choose to manage the pain. Your child can be brought into this world safely and surrounded by people who love them.
As pregnant women get closer to their due date their doctor will give them the option of whether or not they want medication during labor and delivery or not. Sometimes it isn't a question of preference but medical necessity. While having a baby is a natural procedure that women have been doing for thousands of years, sometimes medication is necessary to save your life. An epidural can also make the pain of childbirth much more bearable for the mother. The question of childbirth with or without medication is completely in your hands.
For thousands of years mother's didn't have a choice on whether they could use medication to manage the pain, natural child birth was the only choice. Today the debate rages as to whether you should take pain relief or not, some mothers believe that not being medicated allows them the chance to feel closer to their child during the process. There are studies that have concluded that medication can interfere with the natural process of labor and even makes it go on longer. Natural childbirth allows the mother to move around during labor and find positions that are more comfortable and help with the birthing process. Here are some possible complications of having an epidural.
Mothers who have had children both with and without an epidural have indicated that without the epidural they recovered quicker and felt less nauseated after giving birth. Some mothers have experienced prolonged pain after birth as the medication continued to wear off slowly. While epidurals are fantastic at managing and even completely blocking the pain of labor, they are not without risks either.
You can change your mind about whether or not you want to use medication up to a certain point. If your labor is too far along it may be too late to opt for an epidural. Once you start feeling the initial contractions it is the best time to decide whether you want an epidural or not. Check with your doctor throughout your pregnancy and make sure that there are no pre-existing health conditions that may keep you from having the type of delivery you want. Some women who have heart conditions the strain of labor puts them at a much greater risk of complications during delivery. Have an open and honest conversation with your doctor about what you want and what you can expect during delivery. Your doctor will work with you to help make the birth of your child the joyous occasion it should be.


The Simulation in Nursing Education – Health Assessment Scenarios is a set of 10 scenarios designed for nursing students in an assessment or equivalent introductory course.
The scenarios address learning objectives that focus on fundamental nursing care concepts and encourage the participants to perform a systematic assessment of the patient, identify and prioritize basic patient problems, and initiate key communication for safe and effective patient care.
Used together with the Laerdal simulator, the scenarios allow students to practice a broad range of nursing skills, and offer faculty the ability to provide realistic and challenging scenario-based simulations to help students build competence and confidence.
The Simulation in Nursing Education – Health Assessment Scenarios can be used alone or together with vSim® for Nursing Health Assessment (purchased separately). Used together the products form a blended learning program that includes scenarios for human patient simulators, virtual simulations and online curriculum materials such as reading assignments, pre- and post-simulation quizzes, documentation assignments, and guided reflection questions.
When using the complete solution, the program enables students to develop critical thinking and clinical decision-making skills by a step-by-step process in which they start out by building and testing their knowledge with reading assignments and pre-simulation quizzes. When advancing to the next step, students can use the virtual simulations of the vSim product to integrate their acquired knowledge on topics needed to care for a patient. Later, they can meet the same patient in a simulation with a human patient simulator, which will include the complexity of having to perform procedures and communicate with patient, family, and health care team members. When the students experience the same patient encounter through different technologies, it will help them to reinforce their knowledge and gradually build confidence and competence. Finally, post-simulation quizzes, guided reflection questions, and documentation assignments complete the learning experience.


There are several environmental and cost saving benefits, in the agriculture industry, when Single and Multi-Stage Steam Jet Vacuum Systems are incorporated. Providing reliable, durable and efficient agriculture vacuum systems that are required, by the conditions found in agriculture, JET-VAC® Technologies steam jet vacuum systems are designed to pull from slight (drafting) vacuum to high (deep) levels down to the microns.
JET-VAC® Hybrid Steam Jet Vacuum Systems combine Steam Jet Ejector(s), intercondensers and a liquid ring vacuum pump to achieve the required vacuum level. The liquid ring pump serves as the final stage(s) in a multi stage system. The benefits of this type of vacuum system include, reduced steam consumption, small compact modular packages, and low level (on grade) installation.


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The 10 Best Ice Staking Rinks in Maine!
During the winter, there is no shortage of snow, ice, and cold weather in Maine. While some people like to hide by the fire with a big cup of hot chocolate, many hearty souls are outside enjoying the beauty of Maine in the wintertime.
Many Mainers choose to live in Maine year-round because they love the winter. Maine has activities for everyone to enjoy from downhill skiing at some of the best ski resorts east of the Mississippi to miles and miles of Nordic ski trails to hundreds of ponds and lakes to ice fish and ice skate. Whatever your interest, the Pine Tree State has something just for you.
1. The Rink at Thompson's Point, Portland, ME
Opened in 2015 for the first time, The Rink at Thompson's Point was a huge hit. This 10,000 square-foot arena is located under an open air pavilion. But don't worry about getting cold as parts of the rink are heated to keep you warm and toasty as you twirl about the ice. Check out the website for themed skate nights and holiday events.
2. Orland H. Blake Skating Pond, Yarmouth, ME
Located just off of Main Street behind the town's Log Cabin municipal meeting building, the Orland H. Blake Skating Pond is constructed every winter on the picturesque marsh. The rink is opened daily and it is lit until 11 p.m. Feel free to bring a puck, but be warned when the ice is crowded you'll have to play at the back of the rink. After a few hours on the ice, warm your frozen toes by the stone fireplace in the adjacent warming hut.
3. Androscoggin Bank Colisée, Lewiston, ME
Every hockey lover in Maine will spend time at the Androscoggin Bank Colisée in Lewiston. The Colisée is home to the youth hockey team, Fighting Spirit. With a team of passionate hockey coaches, the Colisée is committed to the development of the sport in Maine youth around the state. If you have a child who loves hockey, the Colisée is the place to be on the weekends.
4. The Waterhouse Center, Kennebunk, ME
Kennebunk is one of Maine's most iconic coastal towns. During the winter months the town opens a covered, open-sided ice rink in the middle of the town's quaint downtown. The Waterhouse Center rink is opened daily from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. and is maintained by the community's own Zamboni. Grab your skates and hit this rink for free.
5. Goddards Pond, Bath, ME
Fancy skating on a real pond? Goddard's Pond in Bath is a large pond maintained by the town open for free public skating during the winter months. Since the rink is a real pond, there are times when the ice is not safe for skating. You'll have to look for signs indicating if the ice is safe or not. The pond features a warming hut, concession stand and bathrooms from dawn to 9 p.m. daily.
6. Camden National Bank Ice Vault, Hallowell, ME
Just down the road from Maine's capital city of Augusta, the Camden National Bank Ice Vault has everything from public skating to figure skating lessons to hockey games. If you are serious about ice sports, this indoor arena is open year-round for you to hone your skills.
7. Sugarloaf Outdoor Center Ice Rink, Carrabassett Valley, ME
Sugarloaf might be famous for its skiing, but if skiing isn't your sport or you need to rest your legs from a day on the slopes, hit up the Sugarloaf Outdoor Center Ice Rink. The Outdoor Center boasts an NHL-sized outdoor rink with a full line of ice skate rentals for children and adults. Pick-up hockey games are available on Tuesday and Thursday evenings.
8. Ice Rink at Wainwright Recreation Complex, South Portland, ME
In 2012 the city of South Portland built a large outdoor ice rink at the Wainwright Recreation Complex. This simple rink offers nice views of the open fields and is lit for night skating. There are no skate rentals, but the site also contains cross-country skiing trails, too.
9. Scarborough Ice Rink, Scarborough, ME
The large outdoor ice rink behind Wentworth School in Scarborough is divided into two areas, one for hockey players and the second for just public skating. The Scarborough Ice Rink is a great place for young kids to enjoy the ice without the worry of getting hit by a rouge puck. There's a nice indoor space for dressing and a concession stand with snacks.
10. Bruce Fox Memorial Ice Rink, Norway, ME
Opened during the winter of 2015 and named after its longtime caretaker who died shortly after the rink liner was rolled out, the Bruce Fox Memorial Ice Rink offers a warming hut and skate rentals. This rink is popular amongst the locals.
Maine is home to numerous indoor and outdoor ice rinks during the long winter months. Instead of hiding inside by the fire, head outdoors and enjoy some of the best ice staking rinks in Maine.
View more Maine Ice Skating Rinks.
Find Ice skating Rinks Near You


Made with grapes from Chile where the warm, dry climate allows it to ripen thoroughly and develop a rich red fruit, berry, and black currant flavors. This wine can stand up to rich dishes like the porterhouse steak or braised short ribs. Dry.