In 2006, when I first started Blogging with Beth, I was primarily teaching small, in-person group classes. I had a signature class called “Basics of Blogging,” and I traveled throughout the Denver metro area presenting this course to small businesses and other folks who were interested in blogging.

In the spring of 2008, I got an email from a therapist named Tamara Suttle. She introduced herself and told me that she ran a business called Private Practice from the Inside Out. In that business, her specialty is teaching therapists and coaches powerful networking and marketing skills, so they could grow their practices.

Tamara asked me if I would be willing to travel to Castle Rock (about 2 hours south of Boulder, where my office is) to teach my Basics of Blogging class. She offered to fill the class with therapists and coaches from her network.

I was impressed with Tamara’s gumption and initiative, and she seemed great in our email exchanges, so I agreed.  We worked out all the details over email.

On the morning on the class, everything seemed to go wrong. The room I had rented for the course was locked up tight, so I was frantically running around and making harried phone calls when Tamara walked up and introduced herself.

Tamara’s sweet and totally laid-back personality put me completely at ease, and I liked her immediately. Even though I was running around all haggard and crazy, she kept calm and even managed to get me to laugh about the situation. We eventually found the key to the room and we got the class started.

It was a great workshop – Tamara and her merry band of therapists asked interesting questions and made it really fun to teach. I left feeling good about what we had accomplished, and feel like I had potentially converted some of the students over to the content management/blog site web strategy that I preach. A good day.

Within a few months, Tamara became a Blogging with Beth client. We worked together to build her first WordPress site, AllThingsPrivatePractice.com, which she has worked very hard to build into a thriving online community for therapists and coaches.

After that, we moved her regular private practice website, previously built in HTML, over to WordPress. Tamara wanted to make that change because she had fallen in love with WordPress from working on her other business site, and it was driving her nuts to have her therapy site in HTML, which she couldn’t easily edit or add to.

And while we worked together to build these sites, Tamara become a star student. She continued to ask great questions, soak up new internet marketing techniques, and add new technology tools to her websites. I really enjoyed working with her. And somewhere along the line, she also became a friend! We were having so much fun!

Tamara also started sending me a lot of referrals, and since most of the people in her professional network are therapists and coaches, I started carving out a little niche for myself in my business– I developed a specialty in building websites and blogs for people in private practice. I also taught them about using social media, email marketing and other online marketing tools to grow their practices. And I love working with those folks!

Last December, I had a fabulous idea. I recognized a major need that wasn’t being filled – therapist and coaches need solid, easy-to-digest, not-scary information about marketing their practices online. And I approached Tamara about partnering with me to provide this information to that audience on a BIG way.

It was a natural fit – my technical expertise with Tamara’s deep knowledge of what therapists and coaches need and want in order to build their practices. And because we are such good friends, we would have a BALL building it! What a fabulous plan!

We’ve been working hard behind the scenes on our new project, The Private Practice Online Survival Guide, for months. And I can’t wait to reveal the whole thing to you on June 29^th.  In the meantime, you can download a whole bunch of free pre-launch content, including the Private Practice Online Survival Guide Manifesto, on our website. We can’t wait to show you what we’ve been working on!

Download your Survival Guide Manifesto and a fabulous case study interview with Tamara Suttle here!