Kathleen Records felt burned out.  After 28 years as a Marriage and Family therapist in a private practice in Boulder, Colorado, she felt that she wanted to try something different.  She had found that being a sole practitioner had both personal and financial drawbacks.

Psychotherapy is about active listening, a process which is much more complicated than it appears.  “When I’m listening to a couple,” Kathleen begins, “I’m listening on many different levels. I’m listening to the story they’re telling, but I’m also listening to the story underneath that story—the body language, the tone of voice, eye contact—it’s very focused work.”

Kathleen realized that her work was taking a toll on her physical health. “When you’re listening, you’re not moving a lot,” she continues.  “I can’t just get up and leave and go get a cup of coffee. For that hour, you are engaged totally with the couple you are seeing. You can take breaks between sessions of course, but basically I would be sitting for six to nine hours a day.  Over the years, that has taken its toll.”

The listening process is so intense that Kathleen can’t afford distractions.  “I prefer an office with almost no windows,” she says, “because my whole focus is here, and I don’t want any distractions.”  So while Kathleen wasn’t burned out with the couples themselves, she was burned out with the structure of her work; as she puts it, “the structure of sitting still, hour after hour, in windowless rooms.” 

Kathleen also realizes the many financial limitations of a private practice.  “First of all, you’re running your own business,” she explains.  “You pay for health insurance.  You pay for everything, your own retirement.  Everything.  And you’re limited by the number of hours you actually sit and work.  So you might be able to charge a decent fee for your time, but that’s all you’ll receive.”

For Kathleen, vacations are also limited. “I could certainly take up to two weeks at a time, but any longer would begin to impact the effectiveness of the work I was doing.” In addition, the amount that Kathleen could charge was limited despite being one of the more experienced couples therapists in her town. "I am a Masters level counselor so I charge less than a PhD., psychologist, or an MD. psychiatrist.”

In 2005, Kathleen began talking with her husband, Veda, about a change of lifestyle.  Veda ran his own professional practice.  “Everyone was talking about passive income and getting into passive income,” Kathleen says.  “People were talking about parking lots.  Well, we couldn’t afford a parking lot.” 

Six months later, they received an invitation to a StoresOnline preview in the mail.  They had tried marketing e-books in 1995, but had failed due to a lack of training.  “That’s what we loved about StoresOnline,” Kathleen says.  “When we got that Internet marketing thing and we went to the training, we realized this is a company that put it all together for us.  We didn’t have to try to figure it out.”

Kathleen and Veda bought a package of six websites after attending the full-day workshop.  “It’s like you’re going back to school and taking a master’s level course,” Kathleen says.  “You get every kind of information that you could possibly want, you get it right there, and you have somebody to call if you get confused.    That kind of support was what conviced us that we could do the Internet marketing”.

Switching from providing a service to marketing products on the Internet was a larger change than Kathleen had expected.  One of the tools she used to research was StoresOnline’s specialized reverse search tool.  “What I learned about myself is I’m dreadful at figuring out what people will actually buy on the web,” Kathleen admits.  She would research products she thought would do well on the net, and find only 11 people searching for those products.  “I remember I researched dragons,” she says.  “It had one of the highest research things on the web.  I was like, ‘dragons?’”

Finally, Kathleen and Veda settled on selling wedding accessories.  Along with listing wedding products, Kathleen and Veda include advice from their years as relationship therapists.  Because Kathleen also performs marriage ceremonies, she also writes descriptions for all the wedding ceremonial products on the site.

rom her experience, Kathleen has come to appreciate the value of the StoresOnline program.  “If anybody in my profession wanted to go into Internet marketing, don’t try to do it alone.  You have to go with a company, and this one, I think, is the best."

Visit Kathleen’s site at

www.weddingbellaccessories.com

 

*Testimonial results are not typical and your individual results will vary. Your success depends on having the right price, product, and marketing efforts.