Dennis Guyvan, a life coach, shares his path in becoming a life coach during and after finishing the 6-figure practice program where he learned about life coach marketing.
The Six Figure Practice with Sasha Raskin, is an online program and community for counselors and coaches, who are building their 6 figure practice. If you’re looking for a clear, step-by-step road map for creating and marketing your private practice, you’re at the right place!
Free resources to grow your coaching / counseling business:
Free 15 minutes crash course – “How to Create a Thriving Counseling / Coaching Private Practice”: https://www.the6figurepractice.com/short-course
Free resources about marketing for therapists: https://www.the6figurepractice.com/blog
Free 30-minutes strategy session with Sasha Raskin: https://www.the6figurepractice.com/schedule-a-free-30-min-strategy-session/
Our accelerator programs for creating a 6-figure business:
The 6 Figure Practice Program: https://www.the6figurepractice.com/the-6-figure-practice-program/
The 6 Figure Practice Mastermind: https://www.the6figurepractice.com/the-6-figure-practice-mastermind/
More ways to connect:
Website: https://www.the6figurepractice.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the6figurepractice/ Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2174406112863019Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/the6figurepracticeChat with me on messenger: https://m.me/the6figurepracticeYoutube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCITSmYvj-vpwuWrOuwqYr5w
About me:
My name is Sasha Raskin. I’m a Number 1 Best Selling Co-Author in 12 Countries, a Doctoral student in Counseling Education and Supervision, a business coach in Boulder, a couples counselor in Boulder, and an adjunct faculty at a graduate counseling program at Naropa University.
One of the things I’m enjoying the most is helping other therapists and coaches build their successful private practice so that they could actually help the clients they were taught to help, and thrive themselves. I’m almost always fully booked, so my ability to work with individuals is limited. That is why I’ve created this program to deliver powerful results and create a community where you will feel supported by each other!
This program’s primary goal is to help you build a 6 figure private practice, in a fun and authentic way. Counselors and coaches invest an incredible amount of time, money, and effort into building their helping skills. However, when their training ends, they usually find themselves lacking the business skills that are needed to start and run a successful private practice, feel isolated, discouraged and not knowing where to start.
I believe that to be truly helpful to others, therapists and coaches have to learn to thrive themselves and definitely know how to get clients whom they can help.
This is where this program comes in. If you’re willing to learn and work hard, a 6-figure private practice is within your reach in a year – 2 years. This program will give you a clear outline, and detailed instructions on how to get there.
Dennis Guyvan: Becoming a Life Coach
Sasha Raskin (Business coach in Boulder, CO): Hi, Dennis.
Dennis Guyvan (Life Coach): Hey, Sasha. How are you?
Sasha Raskin (Business coach in Boulder, CO): I’m doing very well. Busy, busy day. Thank you for joining and doing this interview.
Dennis Guyvan (Life Coach): Thank you for having me.
Sasha Raskin (Business coach in Boulder, CO): You’re the six figure practice program, one of the graduates. And with incredible results there, so I think it would be helpful also to share the journey and the challengers, not the successes, right? Because many of the people that look into joining the program and thinking about, well, usually there is a big reason, a reason why they’re there, something is not working, right? Or maybe they’re just starting out. So it’s important to talk about the challenges as well and kind of normalize it, yeah, this path is not easy. It takes some hard work and some like honest … taking an honest look at how you do things.
So let’s start with just you sharing a few details about you and your business.
Dennis Guyvan (Life Coach): Sure. I’m happy to share. And like you said, it’s not always wins, there are always struggles on the way. And so I probably … I’m going to start with I’m a collective life coach and mostly I work with like high achievers, and I do career coaching as well and just generally I work with people who are going through major difficulties in life. So that’s my basically three niches that I’m working with.
Sasha Raskin (Business coach in Boulder, CO): Why did you decide to join the program in the first place?
Dennis Guyvan (Life Coach): I think it’s a great question. And I think like for most … So I think it would be useful to start with the journey that I went through with my coaching school. So my coaching school gave me a lot of good tools on how to coach and how to sit in front of the client, but their program wasn’t focused on the business aspect of how to create or how to start the conversation with the client online and also in person. So that was the initial thought that I had, “Well, I need some skills to deliver, to be shown online and offline.”
So I had this question, “Where do I learn those skills?” So I started reading books and like watching videos and listening to podcasts. And what happened I had a lot of information, and I started like figuring out things for myself but that at the end of the day I felt very overwhelmed and I didn’t know how to prioritize and especially having no experience it was a bit of a struggle for me to keep the wheels rolling or even to start, and I didn’t know where to start so that was the question for me.
And then I came across the six figure practice program, and, well, I have to say that one of my top values is like structure and prioritization. So here I got this really nicely structured way of building the business from zero, and so that’s number one thing that I like. And yet it wasn’t like this cookie cutter or a copy/paste way of doing business, so the other value of mine of being unique and individual was also present here. So there was some space for being different and yet delivering the story in a very like unique and nice way.
So that’s pretty much how I ended up and those are already couple of … those couple of things I think attracted me the most at the first place, and then that was pretty nicely seen on, by only just going through the overview of the program I saw that happening there and that attracted me.
Sasha Raskin (Business coach in Boulder, CO): What do you think was the biggest struggle for you? You mentioned a few. What was the biggest one that you were hoping that the program would solve or you doing the work using the program would solve?
Dennis Guyvan (Life Coach): I think it’s a really nice question. I think just the biggest struggle for me was to get myself out there, to be seen like by others, and to know like what to do, how to land a really nice consultation wisdom so I can show what … like what I’m coming from and also honoring their needs and make it very efficient and strategic. So that was … I think that was the biggest struggle for me, and I definitely got this solved here, my puzzle in my head was connected.
Sasha Raskin (Business coach in Boulder, CO): So tell me what are some biggest measurable for you as a result during and as a result of the program? Something that you can say this specific thing is how I made this happen.
Dennis Guyvan (Life Coach): So when you say this first what comes to me was the website, which was an achievement, and then at the first place it was a struggle, it felt so huge, it felt so big and like, “Oh, my God, the website.” And having this perfectionistic mind, look at that was, “Oh, it has to be perfect and this and that.” But then the first stuff was like after watching the tutorials and having a little bit of creativity around that helped me to finish the first like part, the basis of the web design in only eight hours.
And so that was a pretty huge win for me, and I’m like, “Okay, so now like the basis is done. Now let’s create the content.” That took me way longer, but like as I said, there are a lot of tools in this program like prism structure, so that’s basically the structure for creating the content and the story in a very … like I said, it’s structured. And also I was able to put my story into it and that felt authentic and it’s … So yeah, just bottom lining this I think that’s … like creating the website was the biggest measurable achievement that I had.
And also I think Google Ads campaign is something worth mentioning here. So that was a big achievement for me too. And to make it measurable I started like I didn’t have any experience in Google Ads and in Google marketing at all, so I wasn’t familiar was that, and yet after watching a couple of tutorials and I started like researching the keywords and this and that, so I was doing a couple of things.
And by the end of the five days, so I spent like a day doing this, and then in five days after like waiting and just adjusting it a little bit I already had my first client that reach out to me through that by just by doing this, only by the Google search.
Sasha Raskin (Business coach in Boulder, CO): That’s incredible. So just from a few days of work, not doing any previous knowledge about paid advertising you were able to create a system that allowed someone to find you and reach out to you, right?
Dennis Guyvan (Life Coach): Yeah.
Sasha Raskin (Business coach in Boulder, CO): And having a website and a marketing copy that actually is authentic, when that person found you they actually reached out to you as well, right?
Dennis Guyvan (Life Coach): Yeah.
Sasha Raskin (Business coach in Boulder, CO): So making sure that there are no bottlenecks. Tell me, so in the program I share, well, there is this basic training by Google that you can do with Google Ads for free. Was it helpful for you to have the detailed tutorials that I did with a counselor or building a specialized Google Ads campaign for coaches and counselors and how to go into depth with it?
Dennis Guyvan (Life Coach): Yes, definitely, that was very helpful. And different businesses have their own like differences and that there are some tweaks that in counseling or in coaching that are different from, I don’t know, some tool for production or something like this, so this is a little bit different. So that was very helpful for me definitely.
Sasha Raskin (Business coach in Boulder, CO): And my goal was to create a program that people can create first results fast, right? Instead of waiting for half a year for clients to start coming in. And you’ve done that, right? In the first few weeks, I think before even starting working on your website if I remember correctly, you created your first three paying clients which is just a testament to what you can create.
Dennis Guyvan (Life Coach): Yeah.
Sasha Raskin (Business coach in Boulder, CO): If you have some creative thinking, some creative strategies. And actually taking this leap of faith, “I’m going to try different things,” right?
Dennis Guyvan (Life Coach): Exactly.
Sasha Raskin (Business coach in Boulder, CO): Yes, I don’t even have a website now but maybe I can try some strategies to create clients even before I have that.
Dennis Guyvan (Life Coach): Yeah. And definitely it was like you mentioned, I was … basically before this program most of my advertising or like not advertising but marketing was based on the word of mouth, and so that helped me to like start it, but then it slowly was gradually was going down, and so this program gave me the opportunity and skills to shift it and to add … maybe not to shift, but to add something else. And so I didn’t have to just stick to one strategy, and when it falls apart like putting my self-esteem and everything going down with that, and so that’s not a nice feeling.
So having multiple sources of marketing is I think it’s a great way, and you’re showing in the program, I got familiar with a lot of … like a lot of small strategies that you can do along the way and that are pretty like simple and like distilled I would say, distilled and easy to apply.
Sasha Raskin (Business coach in Boulder, CO): So you’re saying it’s helpful not to put all the eggs in one basket, right?
Dennis Guyvan (Life Coach): Yeah.
Sasha Raskin (Business coach in Boulder, CO): If I do have a strategy that works for me and the same for many counselors, for example, referrals, right? But then it stops working, I still have strategies in place that clients keep coming in, right? And that’s incredible.
How was it for you during those first few weeks to move from a coach without paying clients to a coach with three paying clients? How is that for you, that change?
Dennis Guyvan (Life Coach): Well, I probably should share a little bit more, but like my life and that process on how it all happened, so I do have … I did have at that time a full-time job and then I was converting … like I was doing like coaching as a side gig and then I wanted to increase my business and the amount of clients and everything. So at that moment when I created those three clients and then some more, so with that came a lot of self-confidence and that belief that I can make this happen and there is a strategy that works, and it’s not something impossible, that it’s somewhere there.
You can make this happen if you put time and effort into it, and so there is not some kind of magic or something that is holding us back. So that was pretty empowering feeling to create those clients for sure.
Sasha Raskin (Business coach in Boulder, CO): Yeah, so you created the experience of you created clients and now you’re a coach who’s being paid for helping people, right? And how important is that?
Dennis Guyvan (Life Coach): Exactly.
Sasha Raskin (Business coach in Boulder, CO): And how it contributed to bigger confidence for you in continuing doing this work? I see many coaches and counselors kind of wait on the fence way too long, even with small things like buying a book about developing your business, right? I might buy it one day, right? And this one day is like I get it on an emotional level and I also know the implications of that approach being such a big trap, potential trap, for moving forward with your business, right?
People sometimes expect their confidence to grow first or to feel certain, yeah, this is what I’m wanting to do or I know I can be the best business person in the world, and that keeps them waiting and preventing them from becoming that person, right? So it’s okay to take actions, it’s okay to fail and learn from it or just not getting the results that you first wanted and then learn from it and then pivoting, right? But you’re already creating the momentum to make that happen. I think that’s a remarkable thing to do.
Dennis Guyvan (Life Coach): Yeah, and I think this is the biggest take away from my work with you that actually it doesn’t … so making that … like as I mentioned before, I sometimes tend to over think and I’m thinking too much, that keeps me stuck sometimes, and then it doesn’t have to be perfect to make that first step, because otherwise you have a chance to staying there for a very long time or even for entire life. And so my biggest takeaway was, “Okay, maybe learn a little bit, taking action, then grow your self-esteem,” or like if that was in my case because that was … I had a lot of self-doubt if that’s going to work out, and then made that first step, it worked out, and then I learned some more and applied it and again and again, so it’s like this loop of growth that I was like watching myself going through when I was in this program.
Sasha Raskin (Business coach in Boulder, CO): Wonderful. What would be your advice for a coach or counselor who is thinking about joining either the six figure practice program or any other program or working with a business coach, maybe only individually and they keep thinking, “Well, I don’t know if I have the money to invest right now or should I do it later,” and all of that stuff, what would you … what are your thoughts on that?
Dennis Guyvan (Life Coach): Well, it’s a great question, well, first when you asked it first came to me was it’s never going to be a perfect time to start and you just got to take an action. It all comes down to that first step, and then once you make that step and have some vision you’re just going to come alive. It’s all a question how much effort you’re willing to put in and the time. It’s not going to be easy but I think it’s way, way worse if …
Sasha Raskin (Business coach in Boulder, CO): Wonderful. Thank you so much, Dennis.
Dennis Guyvan (Life Coach): Thank you.
Sasha Raskin (Business coach in Boulder, CO): Anyone who wants to learn about what Dennis does, there are links to his website. He’s a great coach, so if you want some help he’ll be a great person to talk to. Bye, Dennis.
Dennis Guyvan (Life Coach): Bye. Bye, Sasha. Have a good one.
