Latest / Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza / Ep.12 - Dr. Nick Wignall Discusses Side Hustles for Clinical Psychologists

Transcript

Ep.12 - Dr. Nick Wignall Discusses Side Hustles for Clinical Psychologists · Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza

• 0:00
  Doctor Nick Wignall, thanks so much for joining today.
• 0:04
  Hey, John. Yeah, of course.
• 0:05
  It's a pleasure to be here. So really excited to hear what
• 0:08
  you have to say. You're one of my very early
• 0:11
  mentors before I even started on the psychology career path.
• 0:15
  And I still remember a presentation you gave about a
• 0:18
  career in psychology that was a big influence in inspiring me to
• 0:22
  embark on it. And it's been cool following
• 0:25
  your progress. So just to give our listeners a
• 0:28
  little bit of an introduction, can you just talk a little bit
• 0:30
  about yourself and where you are right now?
• 0:33
  Yeah, sure. So my name is Nick Wignall.
• 0:36
  I'm a clinical psychologist and I live in Albuquerque, NM.
• 0:39
  I've been here for the last seven years or so.
• 0:41
  I came here right after grad school.
• 0:42
  After finishing grad school, I did my graduate education at the
• 0:47
  University of Chicago, And then University of Texas Southwestern
• 0:50
  Medical Center is where I got my PhD.
• 0:53
  So I came out here and I started practicing in a small group
• 0:57
  practice doing clinical work, mostly specializing in insomnia
• 1:01
  and anxiety, panic in particular.
• 1:03
  So those were kind of two of my two of my things I spent a lot
• 1:05
  of time doing, and I just worked one-on-one with folks doing
• 1:08
  individual therapy for, oh, let's see, about six years, I
• 1:12
  think. And then I more recently I've
• 1:16
  started working for, I work for A start up in the kind of
• 1:20
  corporate consulting space, doing kind of well-being and
• 1:23
  culture consulting with organizations and teams.
• 1:27
  And then on the side of all that, I'm sure we'll get into
• 1:29
  this more. I've been, I've had a blog and a
• 1:32
  newsletter for the last seven years and I do podcasting and
• 1:36
  videos and courses and workshops and all sorts of stuff kind of
• 1:39
  on the topic of emotional health, broadly speaking.
• 1:42
  So that's I think that about kind of sums up at least kind of
• 1:45
  professionally I have, I have a wife and four little kids out
• 1:48
  here in New Mexico. That's a big part of the big
• 1:50
  part of the story. Yeah, that's that's a little bit
• 1:54
  about me. Yeah, you have a beautiful
• 1:57
  family. I saw the picture on your
• 1:58
  website, so that's true. I know, I know, you're an
• 2:02
  excellent therapist and today I want to focus on your non
• 2:06
  clinical. Your non clinical professional
• 2:08
  career path or at least outside of the specific practice that
• 2:14
  you've been working with, can you just walk us through the
• 2:17
  story of how you started, I think it was with the blog and
• 2:21
  then how it developed from there?
• 2:24
  Yeah, yeah, for sure. So I think the most appropriate
• 2:29
  place to to talk about starting it is frustration.
• 2:32
  I think that's that was kind of like the motivating.
• 2:34
  I'm a psychologist here, I am talking about emotions.
• 2:36
  No surprise. But I think that really was kind
• 2:39
  of the impetus to start doing kind of extracurricular
• 2:42
  activities, so to speak, on the side of my professional work as
• 2:46
  a therapist. And when I say frustration, it
• 2:48
  was kind of frustration with my field in general because I felt
• 2:52
  like we had, you know, the field of mental health and psychology
• 2:56
  more broadly. It's got a lot of, it's got a
• 2:59
  lot of problems and it's a relatively young field.
• 3:01
  So it's got a lot, a lot of room for growth, I think.
• 3:04
  But over the last hundred 150 years, we've accumulated a lot
• 3:08
  of, I think, really helpful insights and practices that can
• 3:12
  help people with their emotional health.
• 3:15
  But a lot of them are kind of locked behind therapists offices
• 3:20
  and then kind of in research labs.
• 3:23
  And there's so many of these things that just could be really
• 3:27
  helpful outside of the clinical world.
• 3:30
  But for whatever reason, I just didn't see them out there.
• 3:33
  A lot of what I saw when it comes to kind of general advice
• 3:37
  for mental or emotional health, it was kind of lightweight.
• 3:41
  Maybe it's the way to think about it.
• 3:43
  And then we had all these this really rigorous, solid kind of
• 3:47
  insights and again, techniques and practices in the clinical
• 3:50
  and research world. But they either literally
• 3:53
  weren't making it out at all into the public realm or they
• 3:57
  did, but it was done in a way where they were too esoteric and
• 4:01
  obscure and researchy and overly academic the form of them.
• 4:07
  So it was really hard, I think, for people to actually
• 4:10
  understand croc on and understand and see why it would
• 4:13
  be helpful. So anyway, that was just like
• 4:15
  really frustrating to me. I remember thinking when I first
• 4:18
  started working with insomnia clients, I didn't know anything
• 4:21
  about insomnia. I didn't study at all in grad
• 4:23
  school. I didn't do anything until I I
• 4:25
  got into this practice. And my boss was the, he was like
• 4:30
  the head editor for this journal.
• 4:32
  And he wanted someone to do a book review on this new book
• 4:35
  that was on a treatment for insomnia, A cognitive behavioral
• 4:38
  treatment for insomnia. And so he asked me to do it.
• 4:41
  And I was like, well, I don't know anything about that, but
• 4:42
  looks interesting. So I read the book and I was
• 4:45
  blown away by this book. Like, so blown away that there
• 4:49
  was this incredibly effective treatment for insomnia that
• 4:53
  almost nobody knew about. I'd never even heard of it going
• 4:57
  through grad school in clinical psychology.
• 4:59
  And it was like, the research showed, like, over and over and
• 5:02
  over again. It was remarkably effective.
• 5:05
  Like, way better than standard. Kind of like generic sleep
• 5:08
  hygiene tips or medication or like whatever the usual stuff
• 5:12
  people think of for insomnia. Anyway, so I got so interested
• 5:15
  in this. I was like, well, I'm going to
• 5:15
  start doing this. I'm going to start.
• 5:17
  I want some conferences. I went, you know, took some
• 5:19
  workshops. I learned how to do this, this
• 5:20
  approach, and sure enough, it was wildly effective.
• 5:24
  Like so. In fact, so many clients I had
• 5:26
  had suffered with insomnia for decades and within months, like
• 5:30
  gone cured. Like you don't use the the C
• 5:34
  word in mental health very often, but like completely cured
• 5:38
  from this. And I'm just thinking to myself,
• 5:40
  hey, this is crazy. Like, I was like excited, like
• 5:42
  this is so wild that we can be so good at something because in
• 5:45
  mental health, honestly, like, we're not that good at that many
• 5:48
  things like that. Even our best, a lot of our best
• 5:50
  approaches are somewhat effective for some people.
• 5:54
  So to have something that was, like wildly effective for a lot
• 5:57
  of people was just really exciting.
• 6:00
  But then again, the like, the frustration crept in, which was
• 6:03
  this is nuts that just only people who have, you know, a
• 6:07
  diagnosis of insomnia were coming in to see.
• 6:10
  Like a mental health professional who happens to know
• 6:12
  about this treatment, which is a tiny fraction.
• 6:14
  Most mental health professionals have never heard of CBTI or kind
• 6:17
  of behavioral therapy for insomnia.
• 6:19
  Like this is nuts. There's so many people with
• 6:22
  insomnia out there who would could easily benefit from just
• 6:26
  one or two of like, the core pieces of this protocol for
• 6:30
  treating insomnia. And so again, there, there's
• 6:33
  that in me, there's that frustration like, this is
• 6:35
  stupid. This is stupid that more people
• 6:38
  don't know about this and it's not that hard or it shouldn't be
• 6:41
  that hard. Doesn't seem that hard for me to
• 6:43
  kind of package this up in a relatively accessible way and
• 6:46
  say, like, hey, here's this thing, try this if you've got
• 6:49
  insomnia. So I sort of thought, like, what
• 6:52
  the hell, Like, I'll start, I'll start a blog.
• 6:54
  I guess that was like a thing people did.
• 6:56
  So I spun up a website and a newsletter and yeah, I just
• 7:00
  started writing articles about like, you know what, what is
• 7:03
  insomnia and how to overcome it And you know, CBTI for insomnia
• 7:06
  or things about panic attacks and how panic worked and stuff
• 7:09
  like that. And initially, you know,
• 7:12
  crickets. Like I'd look at my analytics on
• 7:14
  my website and it was zero people have visited, visited
• 7:17
  your website today and I'd send out my newsletter every week and
• 7:20
  it would go to 10 people, half of whom were were family
• 7:23
  members. But I think I had that sort of
• 7:27
  inner kind of drive again, largely driven by frustration
• 7:31
  like it just, you know, I was like getting mad every single
• 7:33
  day that this stuff wasn't more widely available.
• 7:37
  And so I think the combination of that frustration and I just
• 7:41
  really, I love, I think, you know, I I did therapy for a long
• 7:45
  time and I enjoy doing therapy. But I think at heart I'm a
• 7:48
  teacher. Like I love explaining things
• 7:50
  and I love explaining things in emotional health especially.
• 7:54
  And so writing about these things and trying to capture the
• 7:58
  the, the substance of the, you know, what we know from research
• 8:02
  and practice, but in a way that's really accessible and
• 8:05
  appealing and you know anyone can sort of understand and take
• 8:08
  in. I just, I love doing that.
• 8:11
  It was really fun. So it it I've been doing it ever
• 8:15
  since. Basically I started.
• 8:16
  I think in, I think it was October, September, October of
• 8:20
  2017. I sent my first weekly
• 8:23
  newsletter and I haven't missed a week since.
• 8:26
  Been doing it ever since then. So sorry, I'm talking your
• 8:28
  talking your head off, but like, yeah, I think frustration that
• 8:31
  was the that was the impotence at the beginning.
• 8:34
  Yeah, I think the reason people like your newsletter blog is the
• 8:37
  same reason why you're such an engaging speaker.
• 8:39
  It's encouraging, it's cheerful, you get the positive energy from
• 8:43
  it, it's super clear. And it's just science, science
• 8:47
  based content. So where, how many subscribers
• 8:51
  or viewers do you have now and what did it take to grow to
• 8:54
  that? Yeah.
• 8:56
  So my my main metric is newsletter subscribers.
• 9:00
  That's always been sort of my North star when I I don't really
• 9:03
  care that much about social media.
• 9:05
  But newsletter subscribers for, for one thing, they're sort of
• 9:09
  you're working on kind of owned, owned territory, so to speak,
• 9:12
  when you're building an audience on, you know, Twitter or
• 9:14
  Facebook or Instagram or whatever, but they're not your
• 9:18
  audio. Like some those companies can do
• 9:20
  something, change the algorithm, do something drastically
• 9:22
  different than your, you know, bummer, you know.
• 9:25
  But if you've got people's, if people have given you their
• 9:27
  e-mail address, that's a very intimate thing, right?
• 9:30
  And no way, it's no one can really kind of like no company
• 9:33
  can take that away, right. You've always got this
• 9:35
  connection, this one to one connection with your audience.
• 9:37
  So anyway that that was has always been my kind of main
• 9:41
  metric for what am I, what am I going for when I'm thinking
• 9:43
  about kind of building an audience broadly speaking.
• 9:47
  And I have about 50,000, I just passed 50,000 subscribers on my
• 9:52
  on my newsletter. Thank you.
• 9:55
  And it's pretty engaged. You know I get like a between 50
• 9:57
  and 60% open rates which is which is pretty good.
• 10:01
  And yeah, I get I get lots of people writing in and asking
• 10:06
  questions. And in fact, it's almost sort of
• 10:08
  turned into like an advice column because I get, I get so
• 10:10
  many questions that I turn that into a segment of the
• 10:13
  newsletter, which is I pick one of the questions someone writes
• 10:15
  in and then do like a short essay kind of answering or
• 10:19
  trying to answer, answer that question.
• 10:21
  So yeah, that's about. And then your second part of
• 10:24
  your question, I guess was what did it take to get there?
• 10:26
  I don't know if you were to look at like the graph of my
• 10:30
  subscribers over the time. There's nothing particularly
• 10:33
  interesting about it. Like it doesn't, there aren't
• 10:35
  any like huge leaps or like it's not like the hockey stick thing.
• 10:39
  It's just this kind of fairly linear kind of progression up
• 10:44
  and to the right. And so I think the, I mean
• 10:47
  there's a million factors and we can talk about more specific
• 10:50
  ones that maybe are more interesting.
• 10:52
  But I think if I had to say like the biggest one is just sticking
• 10:56
  with it. I think I found something that I
• 10:58
  have a knack for like I think I'm fairly good at it and it
• 11:01
  resonates for people. But I think more importantly
• 11:03
  it's something that I just am really, I still get up like
• 11:06
  excited to like write my newsletter after eight years or
• 11:09
  whatever of doing it. I just have a lot of kind of
• 11:12
  internal, intrinsic motivation to do that.
• 11:14
  I'm excited about it. I'm frustrated that other people
• 11:17
  aren't doing it. And so yeah, I've stayed in the
• 11:19
  game long enough to just sort of accumulate a decent sized
• 11:23
  audience. So I think that's probably the
• 11:24
  most important thing. So no particular kind of
• 11:28
  marketing strategies that just grew organically from the 10
• 11:31
  people up to where it is now? Yeah.
• 11:34
  So I wouldn't say I do capital M marketing at all.
• 11:38
  I do. So if you think I will like
• 11:40
  where do I get subscribers? I have for a long for almost
• 11:44
  from the beginning I have been post reposting.
• 11:48
  So when I write an article anything it goes on my website,
• 11:50
  one of my two websites. Then I send out like a blurb,
• 11:54
  like a brief description of it and a link in my newsletter
• 11:57
  every week. And so people have been jump
• 11:59
  over to the website to read my stuff, but I also literally just
• 12:03
  kind of copy and paste the articles and I post them on
• 12:06
  Medium, which is a it's not exactly a social media platform.
• 12:09
  It's a little more like YouTube, like YouTube.
• 12:11
  You wouldn't necessarily call YouTube a social media platform
• 12:14
  like you would Twitter or Facebook or something like that.
• 12:16
  It's more like a content platform anyway.
• 12:18
  And long form writing is the is the thing on Medium.
• 12:21
  And so I repost everything on Medium because that gets me
• 12:25
  exposure to a much larger audience.
• 12:28
  And so I've been doing that again for seven or eight years
• 12:32
  now. And so that has been a huge
• 12:34
  chunk, a huge percentage of my audience growth.
• 12:38
  And then just sort of people finding me organically based on
• 12:41
  Google. You know, if you write long
• 12:43
  enough and you write content that is fairly decent, Google
• 12:47
  sort of, you know, indexes it and prioritizes it, shows it to
• 12:50
  people. When when someone searches, you
• 12:52
  know, how do you know how to get rid of insomnia or something?
• 12:55
  If you've written an article on insomnia, that's that's that's
• 12:57
  really high quality. It'll sort of bubble the surface
• 12:59
  and people will find you that way.
• 13:00
  So those have been the two primary ways that people have
• 13:04
  come to me. And then I've always been very
• 13:06
  intentional about anywhere I am online.
• 13:10
  I'm always linking people to my newsletter because I have a like
• 13:13
  a landing page on my website. That's like very simple.
• 13:16
  And it just says, like here's my newsletter, here's what it's
• 13:18
  about, put your e-mail in and join the That's what I want
• 13:21
  people to do. I want people to kind of get
• 13:22
  into my more intimate orbit on the newsletter.
• 13:25
  And then once they're in there, they can, you know, they get
• 13:28
  access to every, they see everything.
• 13:29
  I can point them in different directions.
• 13:31
  And so that's always kind of been the the main, the main
• 13:34
  goal. So yeah, sorry, long winded
• 13:37
  answered your question. Yeah, I know that this is
• 13:38
  excellent, this is excellent. So in terms of cost benefit,
• 13:41
  like cost would be time at which would include like the
• 13:45
  opportunity cost, what you could be doing with that time and then
• 13:49
  the benefit would be, yeah, what, what is exactly the
• 13:52
  benefit, how would you weigh the cost benefits of this?
• 13:56
  Yeah, you mean of just sort of having this as a side, you know,
• 14:00
  blogging, writing, teaching on the whole thing?
• 14:03
  Yeah, yeah. Because writing well takes time
• 14:06
  and as a as a therapist your your time is very valuable.
• 14:11
  So I'm just wondering what, what is the, what is the benefit of
• 14:14
  it and how do you weigh that? Yeah.
• 14:17
  So let me OK, I'll start with the benefits.
• 14:19
  The big one, if I'm totally honest, like is kind of selfish.
• 14:22
  Like I just like doing it in a weird way.
• 14:24
  It's it's like my hobby. Like I don't golf, like I don't
• 14:27
  go. I don't go drinking at the bar
• 14:28
  with my buddies. Like I don't know whatever other
• 14:30
  things. I don't collect stamps.
• 14:32
  But I do really like to write and I like, I love.
• 14:36
  I like to write. I love just sort of talking
• 14:38
  about emotional health and and but mostly like I like teaching.
• 14:41
  Like I just really like doing it.
• 14:43
  Like you can ask my my kids and my wife and my friends.
• 14:46
  I end up teaching even when I'm not asked to because I just, I I
• 14:49
  just love explaining things. I learn about something new and
• 14:51
  I can't help myself. But so the benefit is like it's
• 14:55
  it's my hobby. Like a lot of people do hobbies
• 14:57
  in general. Like I don't know it's enjoyable
• 14:59
  sense of progress. Like I think we all it's one of
• 15:02
  those like most motivating things in life.
• 15:03
  I think it's like having some sort of a project where you
• 15:07
  consistently feel like you're you're putting an effort and
• 15:09
  then making progress based on that.
• 15:11
  For you know for a lot of us it's our jobs, our work could
• 15:13
  be, could be hobbies, could be our sports league that we part
• 15:16
  like whatever if we like a sense of progress.
• 15:18
  And so that's certainly like just for me personally like I
• 15:22
  get a strong sense of I like getting better at something and
• 15:25
  helping other people get better and and getting the little
• 15:29
  reward from doing that. Like it just feels good to be
• 15:31
  sort of making progress whether that's senior subscriber count
• 15:35
  pop up or having more and more people write into you saying how
• 15:37
  helpful stuff was. I just like that just kind of
• 15:40
  selfishly it just feels good. So that's that's one on that
• 15:43
  level and I say that because I think that's a little underrated
• 15:46
  there. There's other reasons and I'll
• 15:47
  get into those. But I think it's I think that's
• 15:50
  been a big part of the at least the kind of sustainability of a
• 15:52
  project like this for me is this I just have so much intrinsic
• 15:55
  motivation for it. I I almost couldn't not do it in
• 15:59
  a way. And then other things are like
• 16:03
  like socially, like the relationships I I've built as a
• 16:07
  result of this have been incredible.
• 16:08
  Like professional. I mean, yeah, other all sorts of
• 16:12
  other mental health professionals that I've gotten
• 16:14
  to know over time, either because I've had them on my
• 16:16
  podcast or I've met them on Twitter and, you know, struck up
• 16:20
  a relationship. Friends.
• 16:21
  I have a whole bunch of I I joined this writing group early
• 16:23
  on in my writing career, most of whom are are in Europe and so I
• 16:27
  have this whole group of like European friends now and we do
• 16:30
  you know we talk regularly and we meet up on Zoom and we have a
• 16:33
  little chat group and all sorts. So I've literally made friends
• 16:36
  doing it and then even professional opportunities IA
• 16:40
  few years ago I left my clinical practice because this at the
• 16:43
  time this random guy read one of my articles, really liked it and
• 16:47
  he was looking to start a company and he wanted a
• 16:50
  clinical. So like he wanted a psychologist
• 16:52
  someone with a research background and a psychology
• 16:53
  background on board and he just called, he emailed me out of the
• 16:56
  blue and said hey like let's talk.
• 16:58
  And so that literally led to a whole new job and even career
• 17:01
  potentially. So stuff like that has been a
• 17:05
  huge there's so much benefit like relationally I think from a
• 17:08
  project like this And then the the other one that I would say
• 17:13
  is just kind of from my own. I don't know sort of career and
• 17:19
  like financial future. I I always knew about myself
• 17:23
  that I'm I'm a fairly good employee because I'm I'm I'm
• 17:27
  pretty conscientious person. But I have a personality such
• 17:31
  that I really love doing things that I am really interested in.
• 17:37
  Like I I will just work, you know to no end.
• 17:40
  Like I have no problem being disciplined and like working
• 17:43
  hard on something I'm really passionate about as evidenced by
• 17:47
  like this whole project. Like I just, I it doesn't seem
• 17:49
  like work to me. It's it's honestly just really
• 17:51
  fun and and energizing. But I hate doing stuff that I'm
• 17:55
  not interested in. Like really hate it and you know
• 17:59
  I'm I'm again, I'm decent at being.
• 18:01
  I can kind of suppress that when I need to and and be a
• 18:04
  reasonably productive conscientious employee.
• 18:06
  But I've always known about myself.
• 18:08
  That's probably not sustainable. Like eventually I want to be in
• 18:11
  a situation where and I'm kind of calling the shots.
• 18:14
  And I come from a family of entrepreneurs and tend to be
• 18:17
  around a lot of people like that anyway.
• 18:19
  So I think I've always known that that's somewhere off in the
• 18:22
  future. It wasn't immediately in the
• 18:23
  future, you know, like 8 years ago or whatever.
• 18:26
  When I started, I was just starting to become a therapist.
• 18:29
  And I knew, you know, I wanted to really see what this was like
• 18:33
  and put in the wraps and get good at it and learn a lot from
• 18:35
  it. And so I was in no hurry to kind
• 18:37
  of go off and do my own thing. But I knew that eventually that
• 18:41
  was a place I wanted to get to. And so I thought, well, this
• 18:44
  thing I like doing anyway, writing and teaching online.
• 18:48
  If I kind of build up a audience and a reputation and a skill set
• 18:52
  for doing this, well, this could be the platform for me doing my
• 18:56
  own thing professionally later on.
• 19:00
  So I think that's, yeah, that was a big, that's been a big
• 19:06
  benefit. And I think we'll continue to
• 19:07
  be, will pay dividends so to speak in the future.
• 19:12
  So that's the big one. Downsides.
• 19:14
  You asked about downsides. Certainly time like you said
• 19:20
  there's always opportunity costs.
• 19:22
  But if I'm, if I'm really honest like I I feel pretty good about
• 19:25
  this trade off. Like again, I like I I don't go
• 19:28
  golfing for three hours every weekend.
• 19:30
  Some people love to golf like maybe I would love something
• 19:33
  like that too but I don't know. I feel like I have this thing I
• 19:36
  love, so why It doesn't seem like it's worth trading that off
• 19:41
  just to go explore other things that I'm have less than or that
• 19:44
  I would love this much. I think like it's it's a
• 19:47
  relatively rare thing to find kind of a a hobby or a passion
• 19:49
  that you're that excited about and that you can invest that
• 19:52
  much time and energy into. And frankly, I just don't like
• 19:57
  time and energy are limited. Like I have my family and my
• 20:00
  career take up the vast majority of my time and energy, and like
• 20:05
  I don't have that much. Space left for anything.
• 20:08
  So my this fits really well for me as like a hobby or like a
• 20:12
  third thing in the pie chart, and I'm just super satisfied
• 20:16
  with it so far. So to be honest, I don't think a
• 20:19
  ton. I love the idea and I think it's
• 20:21
  a really important thing to do to think about opportunity costs
• 20:23
  and trade-offs. But I think I feel pretty
• 20:26
  confident that there aren't any significant ones with this at
• 20:31
  this point. Yeah, yeah.
• 20:33
  You're seeing it kind of like a hobby.
• 20:36
  And how how much time does it take for you to produce a good
• 20:39
  blog post? And is there any direct
• 20:42
  financial incentive? How much time and is there a
• 20:46
  direct financial incentive? Yeah.
• 20:48
  So I would say in general I'm a pretty quick writer.
• 20:52
  I think I've always been a relatively quick writer.
• 20:55
  And then having done this for so long, I've developed kind of a a
• 20:58
  format and a style of writing that I'm I'm pretty quick at, so
• 21:02
  I can write. Most of my articles are between
• 21:04
  maybe, I don't know, 1200 and 1800 words, something like that.
• 21:09
  And I can, I can, I can draft the article in between an hour
• 21:15
  and an hour and 20 minutes probably.
• 21:17
  And when I say draft like it's 95% of the way done.
• 21:20
  I basically copy and paste it into Google Docs and spell check
• 21:23
  it after that. But I don't do like rewrites or
• 21:27
  stuff like that and that. Not because I'm opposed to that,
• 21:30
  but just the the style of content I put out there is it it
• 21:36
  has this kind of casual. It has an element of it being
• 21:39
  casual. I'm not trying to write like the
• 21:42
  definitive guide to whatever or a research article or something
• 21:46
  like that. Like it's it's almost like an
• 21:48
  advice column. You know that you would that you
• 21:49
  would get that you would read, you know back in the day.
• 21:52
  So that helps. That makes it rough.
• 21:54
  I don't have to do A and I'm writing about something this.
• 21:57
  I think this is key. I'm writing about topics that I
• 22:00
  spent close to a decade talking about every single day with
• 22:05
  people. So when I go to write an article
• 22:07
  about insomnia or panic or, you know, chronic worry or something
• 22:12
  like that, I've the article is essentially like a version of a
• 22:16
  conversation I've had 500 times. So just kind of spitting it out
• 22:20
  onto paper. I I I write like I talk.
• 22:24
  And so to me writing is like, it's almost like poppy on a
• 22:27
  podcast and someone says so I, you know, I keep getting panic
• 22:30
  attacks even though I've tried XY and Z.
• 22:32
  Like, what do you recommend? And like I, as everyone
• 22:34
  listening now can tell, I can just sort of start gabbing and
• 22:37
  like go off the cough about something like that.
• 22:39
  And I can I seem to be able to do that on writing just as, you
• 22:42
  know, just as easily as I do in, you know in visual or audio
• 22:46
  format doesn't necessarily mean it's good.
• 22:48
  But anyway so I think that's the I'm I'm a fairly fast writer and
• 22:53
  then in terms of the direct there there isn't there isn't a
• 22:57
  super direct financial benefit to putting the articles out.
• 23:02
  The closest I get to a direct financial benefit is medium has
• 23:05
  a partner program much like YouTube's partner program where
• 23:08
  if you if you're big enough if you generate enough views
• 23:11
  they'll pay you the they'll pay you some amount per per view
• 23:16
  essentially. So I at this point I built up a
• 23:20
  big enough audience to where that becomes a a pretty
• 23:22
  significant number at the at the end of every month.
• 23:26
  So for if you like averaged out over the last few years my
• 23:30
  earnings from the medium partner program.
• 23:32
  Remember I I write an article goes to my newsletter and my
• 23:34
  website but then I repost it to medium right.
• 23:37
  And so all on a given month and you know I don't know there's a
• 23:42
  bunch of those and so I'm I probably make between 2:00 and
• 23:47
  $5000 a month from medium partner program earnings.
• 23:51
  So that's a fairly direct income generator but but really the
• 23:56
  more valuable thing with doing that is the newsletter
• 23:59
  subscribers I get because those people then come into my orbit
• 24:03
  and they can they can buy much more expensive things that
• 24:06
  Ioffer so courses and workshops and stuff like that.
• 24:10
  So so it's kind of A2 Fer right. You get the the you get new
• 24:13
  subscribers because people don't read the article and they they
• 24:16
  join my e-mail list and Medium pays me something for basically
• 24:20
  giving them content for their platform.
• 24:25
  OK. Let's jump into these other
• 24:26
  offerings that you have. How did they develop and what's
• 24:29
  your vision with them? Yeah, so other paid kind of
• 24:34
  products or offerings, Yeah. So I do a few things.
• 24:39
  I do. I do one off workshops, so
• 24:41
  probably, I don't know, 6 or 7 * a year.
• 24:44
  I'll do a 60 or 90 minute workshop over Zoom and I only
• 24:49
  advertise it to my newsletter. I say, you know the week before
• 24:52
  I'm like, hey, I'm going to do a workshop on Insomnia or I'm
• 24:55
  going to do a workshop on how to communicate better with your
• 24:57
  spouse or whatever. I do all sorts of topics.
• 25:00
  And then yeah, I basically I put together kind of a, it's usually
• 25:05
  a deck like A and I it's on a specific topic.
• 25:09
  And my goal for those is I want to teach one specific tool or or
• 25:14
  like exercise or technique, right?
• 25:16
  So it might be if I'm doing one on chronic worry and anxiety, I
• 25:21
  love my favorite technique or exercise in that.
• 25:24
  In that kind of domain, this is something called scheduled
• 25:25
  worry. Like, it's a specific exercise
• 25:27
  you can do. And so I'll talk.
• 25:28
  I'll spend 20 minutes, 1520 minutes describing what chronic
• 25:32
  worry and anxiety are, like, why they're a problem, whatever.
• 25:35
  I'll show this exercise and then I'll do like, you know, 20 to 30
• 25:38
  minutes for Q&A where people can ask questions.
• 25:40
  And those are like, you know, I think 35 bucks.
• 25:44
  So I want those to be pretty accessible like people it's it's
• 25:47
  almost anyone could afford if they were interested in a
• 25:50
  particular topic you know 35 bucks and then you get the
• 25:53
  recording and stuff like that afterwards.
• 25:55
  So that's that's the workshops and I typically sorry I'm.
• 26:01
  Sorry, I think you were about to say how many participants you
• 26:03
  get for that. Yeah, so I I will often.
• 26:07
  What do I I I end up getting? I don't know, like I'd say
• 26:11
  around 50 maybe is my average. So some of them depending on the
• 26:15
  topic, if it's a more obscure topic, I make it 30.
• 26:18
  It's a really popular topic, I might get 70 or 80.
• 26:21
  So it it depends a lot on the on the topic itself.
• 26:26
  So yeah, so I do those and then I do, I do bigger courses and I
• 26:31
  basically have two types of courses.
• 26:33
  I have standalone courses, my current standalone core or not
• 26:38
  standalone self-paced course. So it's a video course and you
• 26:42
  don't, there's no live component.
• 26:43
  You just you purchase the course and then you work through the
• 26:46
  videos and the exercises and stuff at at your own pace,
• 26:48
  whatever you want. It's it's like me talking like
• 26:50
  this. And there's usually graphics I'm
• 26:51
  showing, you know, visualizations, graphics and
• 26:54
  stuff too. And so I have one my, my current
• 26:56
  one that I'm really working on is called creating calm and it's
• 27:00
  about chronic worrying anxiety and how to address chronic
• 27:03
  worrying anxiety. So that one is, that's $150.00.
• 27:07
  So it's more expensive, but it's also much more comprehensive.
• 27:11
  So the workshops are like a tiny slice.
• 27:12
  It's like I'm going to teach just one thing.
• 27:15
  This course is much more. It's like it's everything.
• 27:17
  I think it's not everything there is to know about chronic
• 27:20
  worry anxiety, but it's my kind of like complete playbook for if
• 27:24
  you struggle with this here are like the most important things
• 27:27
  that if you do this you're you're like 90% of the way
• 27:30
  there. So that and it's yeah, it's
• 27:33
  relatively comprehensive. And then so that's a self-paced
• 27:38
  course. And then I do, I have for about
• 27:41
  four or five years I've been doing a live what are called
• 27:45
  what's called a cohort based course which is once or twice a
• 27:48
  year I take usually 30, maybe 40 at the most students in a Givens
• 27:56
  cohort into a a course on emotional resilience.
• 28:02
  So it's kind of, again like my sort of framework or approach
• 28:06
  for how do you in a healthy way, how do you deal with any
• 28:09
  difficult emotion, right, whether it's anxiety, whether
• 28:13
  it's jealousy, anger, like whatever it is.
• 28:17
  So it's sort of like my, it's almost like my kind of overall
• 28:20
  kind of philosophy and approach to emotional health and
• 28:24
  resilience in particular. So I can go into details of
• 28:27
  that, but that's that's more expensive and it's more, it's
• 28:30
  more of a commitment. So that's I think $350.00 and
• 28:35
  it's it's usually I run it over the course of four or five weeks
• 28:38
  and it the way it's structured is there's like a couple live
• 28:41
  sessions a week where I'm on zoom with people teaching and
• 28:44
  people can ask questions. One of them is like a workshop
• 28:47
  so where I'm doing a lot of active teaching and then the
• 28:49
  second session is usually like an office hours.
• 28:51
  People can do Q&A and stuff like that.
• 28:54
  And then there's kind of self-paced lessons that people
• 28:56
  do on their own and exercises that they do throughout the
• 28:59
  week. And we over the course of like 5
• 29:01
  weeks, we kind of work through this curriculum.
• 29:05
  I think those, those are the big what am I missing?
• 29:08
  Are you on my website? I can't tell what I might be
• 29:11
  missing something. I think those are the big ones
• 29:12
  though. Yeah, this is the ones I recall
• 29:14
  from the website. How many people do you have
• 29:17
  typically for the self-paced course?
• 29:20
  Oh, how many? Let's see.
• 29:22
  I launched. I will pull it up here and tell
• 29:25
  you I think I'm done. I I launched in.
• 29:30
  So I launched a new, I had an older course on chronic worry
• 29:33
  and I launched this newer 1 on kind of chronic worry and
• 29:38
  chronic anxiety generally speaking.
• 29:41
  And I've had, I launched it in October and I think I've had
• 29:46
  about oh gosh, sorry I can't find the exact number, but I
• 29:53
  think it's maybe 304 hundred students something like that so
• 29:59
  far. Now admittedly that's there was
• 30:01
  a a lot like at the launch, anytime you launch something
• 30:03
  there's always a huge spike there and then kind of there.
• 30:05
  But the the idea with that one hopefully is that it will be a
• 30:08
  sort of a, a steady kind of beat of not tons of people but this
• 30:12
  is something that it's available to buy anytime.
• 30:14
  So it'll be kind of a a continual and that that's partly
• 30:19
  because for me like it's nice to have.
• 30:21
  I have a source of income that's much more time dependent, like
• 30:24
  the court, the live course, the mastery, which is very, you
• 30:27
  know, a big chunk once or twice a year.
• 30:30
  But this hopefully will be more kind of a more steady source.
• 30:33
  But then it's also nice to have content that people can purchase
• 30:36
  immediately, right? Instead of having to wait for
• 30:39
  the my live course, which I only do once or or twice a year.
• 30:42
  So that's part of the reason for for doing that too.
• 30:46
  Yeah. You're reaching people at
• 30:47
  different, at all different levels of accessibility, both in
• 30:50
  terms of time commitment and the financial cost.
• 30:53
  Yeah. So that's great.
• 30:54
  I'm just going to your mission of just getting these ideas out
• 30:57
  there to help the most people. That's wonderful.
• 30:59
  Yeah. What?
• 31:01
  Where does the podcast fit into all this?
• 31:03
  What inspired it? Was the purpose of it.
• 31:05
  Oh, the podcast. I I I I say that wistfully
• 31:10
  because I I it's been on a little bit of a hiatus.
• 31:12
  I started it like everyone else in the world.
• 31:13
  I started a podcast during COVID.
• 31:15
  When COVID first started off and I guess the the the OK if I'm if
• 31:19
  I mean totally honest the emphasis was like I like
• 31:22
  podcasts and I think it'd be kind of fun and cool to start a
• 31:24
  podcast. Like it was that selfish and
• 31:26
  short sighted probably and it obviously fit within the kind of
• 31:31
  generally speaking what I do. It was it's like another kind of
• 31:35
  in addition to my articles and my classes and courses and
• 31:37
  stuff. This is like another way people
• 31:39
  kind of learn and something that was like a little bit less me
• 31:43
  right in the in the podcast I do.
• 31:45
  It's more I want to highlight and ask questions of other kind
• 31:48
  of interesting people in psychology, emotional health,
• 31:51
  that kind of space generally. So yeah.
• 31:55
  And I guess the idea with those is just to to find interesting
• 32:00
  people with interesting ideas and and also to kind of ask
• 32:04
  them. Yeah, ask them.
• 32:06
  The I sort of think about the podcast is I get this book on,
• 32:10
  you know, someone sends me a book on, you know, some new
• 32:12
  approach to managing anger. Right.
• 32:15
  I'm like, OK, cool. So I read the book and I'm like
• 32:17
  taking notes. And when I take notes, I'm
• 32:19
  often, I'm like, I'll ask little questions like, oh, well, this
• 32:22
  sounds OK. But like, what about this, you
• 32:23
  know? And I always wish, like,
• 32:24
  wouldn't be cool if you just ask the author, you know.
• 32:27
  So that's that's the end of the podcast.
• 32:28
  Like, I I read a book I really like.
• 32:30
  I'm like, OK, this person sounds cool.
• 32:32
  Like, let me get him on the show and I'm going to go through the
• 32:34
  book and find the, like. I don't know, 5 to 10 questions
• 32:38
  that I thought were really interesting from their work or
• 32:39
  from their article, an article they wrote or whatever.
• 32:42
  And I'm just going to ask them the questions I'm kind of
• 32:44
  curious about and I want to ask about them.
• 32:46
  So again, it's a little the theme here.
• 32:47
  It's a little bit selfish in that I I only interview people
• 32:50
  that I'm kind of interested. There's a lot of people who
• 32:54
  frankly I'm sure my audience would be potentially interested
• 32:56
  in but if I'm not interested in it, I'm, you know it's that's
• 33:00
  it's too much of an investment for me to put into it if I'm not
• 33:04
  really interested in it because doing a podcast is actually a
• 33:06
  lot of work it takes between yeah I'm sure you know but
• 33:11
  especially for this type of this type of podcast it was you're
• 33:14
  you're reading the book you're researching their other stuff.
• 33:16
  You're for kind of formulating the questions and it yeah.
• 33:20
  Anyway it's it's it's a lot that you're editing and post
• 33:23
  production and all that kind of stuff so that's part of why it's
• 33:26
  it's been on a bit of a hiatus lately as I just didn't have
• 33:28
  time for everything and something had to go and so the
• 33:30
  podcast was the thing to go. But I do hope to resurrect it at
• 33:34
  some point because it is very challenging but also really,
• 33:37
  really fun. Like I just really enjoy and my
• 33:39
  audience loves it. They're, you know, I'm always
• 33:41
  getting people writing and saying bring back the podcast,
• 33:44
  so hopefully one day. How big is your podcast
• 33:47
  audience? Oh man, I have no idea.
• 33:51
  I'm totally honest. I I mean, it was doing, it was
• 33:53
  doing pretty well. That's all I remember is that I
• 33:56
  felt, I felt like I was like reasonably pleased with it.
• 33:59
  But yeah, I have, I have no clue at this point and I haven't.
• 34:03
  I've released a new episode in probably a year and a half.
• 34:05
  So it's. I'm sure it's not doing
• 34:07
  amazingly well. But, but I also, I feel like
• 34:09
  it's the kind of thing where if I, if and when I do decide to
• 34:12
  kind of reinvest in it, it, you know, I could, I feel pretty
• 34:17
  confident that I could get some good traction because there's
• 34:20
  already an established base there and yeah.
• 34:25
  Yeah. So given that these things take
• 34:26
  time and there's an administrative load to it, do
• 34:30
  you involve other people in helping you, administrative
• 34:33
  assistants or specialists of the technology or anything else?
• 34:38
  No. I've flirted with this from time
• 34:40
  to time like bringing on I, I I thought about bringing on like
• 34:43
  an editor because I'm I'm I think I'm a pretty good and and
• 34:46
  fast rider but I'm a terrible proofreader.
• 34:48
  Like I just I don't care enough about it.
• 34:51
  So I thought about that and at various other times I've kind of
• 34:54
  considered this kind of stuff but I'm I'm probably just too
• 34:57
  picky at this point. Like I it feels like it's I I
• 35:01
  guess at this point it feels like the amount of work it would
• 35:04
  take to find someone, train someone, and then deal with if
• 35:08
  people leave. Like you got to find someone
• 35:10
  else and train someone else. The kind of expected benefit of
• 35:13
  having someone to help probably isn't there.
• 35:15
  And luckily for a lot of the technical, I'm fairly
• 35:18
  technically savvy. So, like putting up websites and
• 35:22
  dealing with tech issues and, you know, editing podcasts and
• 35:26
  all that kind of stuff. Like I'm I'm good enough at that
• 35:28
  for now. If this thing became bigger, I
• 35:32
  would probably definitely consider hiring out at least
• 35:35
  kind of contract type help for that.
• 35:39
  But no, at this point it's it's just me.
• 35:43
  What's your vision for your professional growth?
• 35:45
  For my own professional growth or for like the the work itself
• 35:50
  or maybe the maybe it's the same question.
• 35:51
  I don't know, like, are you more interested in like my personal
• 35:54
  kind of professional trajectory or where is like the newsletter
• 35:59
  and the blog and stuff going to be in the future?
• 36:03
  I think I was originally thinking the second one, but how
• 36:07
  you bring it up, I'd be very interested in the first as well.
• 36:10
  Well, let me, I'll have to think more about the second one.
• 36:12
  So let me answer the first one and then maybe a flash of
• 36:14
  insight will come about the first one.
• 36:16
  So in terms of like the work, like where do I want it to be
• 36:19
  again? Like I think that I I write a
• 36:22
  lot people know me best as a writer, but I think and I've
• 36:24
  been a therapist so I've been kind of a coach.
• 36:28
  You know like in the broad sense of the word therapy is kind of
• 36:30
  like coaching. But I think the really I'm a
• 36:33
  teacher. Like I love teaching.
• 36:34
  Like I said I love explaining things and so I think ultimately
• 36:39
  I I would you can sort of see the outlines of it now.
• 36:43
  But I would like to have sort of an online school that is.
• 36:47
  Yeah it's a school for learning about emotional health.
• 36:50
  Like one of the things I hear over and over and over again
• 36:53
  from all sorts of people, whether it's newsletter readers
• 36:55
  writing in after reading a good article, or especially students
• 36:58
  having gone through my courses, are it's like, damn, I should
• 37:01
  have learned this in 6th grade. Like why are we teaching this
• 37:04
  stuff when kids are young instead of having to like go
• 37:07
  through all the stuff and then learn about it after the fact.
• 37:09
  And so I not that I necessarily want to teach kids, although
• 37:14
  that would be wonderful. I'd have partners some of that
• 37:16
  like that for that. But I just, I love the idea of
• 37:20
  having a school. Doesn't have to be a not a
• 37:22
  physical school necessarily. I love kind of the online
• 37:24
  virtual world for all sorts of reasons, but just a place where
• 37:29
  people can come to learn about their own psychology and
• 37:34
  emotional health. And the kind of emotional side
• 37:37
  of personal growth is a lot of the way I describe what I do.
• 37:40
  And so that could continue to be me on some level, just writing
• 37:45
  advice columns and teaching stuff.
• 37:46
  But ultimately, I think the other thing I would like to do
• 37:49
  more of too, is bring in other people, other voices to kind of
• 37:54
  do more of that. But that's hard because again,
• 37:57
  I'm pretty picky and most of the stuff I encounter in the space
• 38:02
  of kind of psychology and emotional health, I'm either I
• 38:06
  flat out don't like it or I think it's it's not substantive
• 38:11
  enough or it's not. I worry about sharing a lot of
• 38:17
  the stuff I see out there with my audience because I just, I
• 38:20
  don't feel like I can support it fully.
• 38:21
  So finding people who I feel really confident like this, this
• 38:25
  person. Johan.
• 38:26
  Yes, bring him in. He's solid.
• 38:28
  Dude, that's hard. Like curating the appropriate
• 38:33
  person for my kind of vision is. That's something that would take
• 38:35
  a lot take a lot of time and effort.
• 38:37
  But I think ultimately it's something I would I would love
• 38:39
  to do and even just selfishly because I I just love learning
• 38:44
  from all sorts of people And so anyway that yeah.
• 38:48
  So I think that's kind of the kind of vision.
• 38:50
  And then for myself personally where where do I go?
• 38:54
  Like I'm just, I don't know. I'm I'm kind of like a learning
• 38:58
  junkie. Like I'm one of those people who
• 39:00
  could, if I would, if I was like obscenely rich and had a huge
• 39:04
  trust fund or something, I would probably just be a perpetual
• 39:06
  student. Because I just love like
• 39:07
  learning from people like I used to love in in grad school going
• 39:10
  to grand rounds which are if people aren't familiar grand
• 39:13
  rounds are you. They're especially common in
• 39:16
  like medical schools. But every week, let's say
• 39:20
  Wednesdays, somebody you know, it could be someone from the
• 39:23
  faculty gives a like a 30 minute talk, say on their little like
• 39:27
  research specialty. And then there's like a 30
• 39:29
  minute Q&A afterwards where you can like ask questions and just
• 39:33
  learn and anyone can attend, right.
• 39:34
  You don't have to be a neurosurgeon.
• 39:36
  You can just go to this neurosurgeons talk and like
• 39:38
  listen and learn about his little or her little kind of,
• 39:42
  you know, niche in neurosurgery. And then sometimes they invite,
• 39:44
  they'll invite people from other schools and places to come in
• 39:48
  and give talks. And so you get exposure to
• 39:49
  people from all over the place. So it's this wonderful, like
• 39:52
  kind of mixture of collegiality and learning, but it's also a
• 39:57
  little bit casual. It's not as kind of like stuffy
• 39:59
  as as academic academia typically is.
• 40:02
  So I just, I love that. Like I just want to be around
• 40:05
  that all the time. So I hope my professional growth
• 40:08
  involves more and more being in situations like that, whether
• 40:12
  it's me participating in someone else's thing like that or.
• 40:15
  Me kind of facilitating or creating an environment like
• 40:19
  that. I just, I love that it's my,
• 40:21
  it's my jam that that kind of environment.
• 40:25
  But a noble vision to have this online school where you can help
• 40:27
  even more people in addition to having more course instructors.
• 40:32
  What do you think is the one thing that you would need to
• 40:34
  make this happen? The one thing I would need to
• 40:37
  make it happen, gosh time like I think there is the last few
• 40:43
  years have have demonstrated there's there's enough interest
• 40:46
  in it, but I think there's just a lot of kind of experimentation
• 40:52
  and revision to like kind of figuring out what works.
• 40:55
  I mean I'm constantly when I run my course, for instance, like
• 40:59
  every single time I run it, I'm I'm slightly changing up the
• 41:02
  curriculum or the format of the course based on the feedback and
• 41:05
  figuring out what works or I'm kind of piloting when I do
• 41:08
  workshops. I'm part of why I do that is to
• 41:10
  kind of test out like what areas are people interested in.
• 41:14
  I mean my articles do that. But when you ask someone to pay
• 41:16
  for something, even a small amount, it's a much better test
• 41:19
  of like what are people really interested in, right?
• 41:21
  If they're because if they're willing to hand over some cash
• 41:23
  for something, that suggests there's a lot of motivation
• 41:26
  there. So I think it it it just needs
• 41:29
  time to kind of for all of that to to kind of foment and then
• 41:34
  settle into a coherent because that's the thing it has to be
• 41:38
  something that I'm interested in, people are interested in but
• 41:41
  it has to be a like it has to work as a business model to like
• 41:45
  I would want it to be sort of self-sufficient financially as
• 41:49
  well. So I think that's kind of the,
• 41:51
  the challenge and the fun of doing something like this is
• 41:54
  kind of making it work both as a you know a service I guess to
• 42:00
  people but also as a as a business that can sustain itself
• 42:04
  and and me and my family potentially and something like
• 42:07
  that. So I I feel like I just need
• 42:08
  more time to kind of iterate and experiment and figure it out.
• 42:13
  I'll wish you all the best with that.
• 42:14
  And where can people find you and your work?
• 42:18
  Let's see a few places I have my personal website is Nick
• 42:20
  wignall.com and they're I I recently have started kind of
• 42:25
  dividing up some. Some of my content goes there.
• 42:28
  More of my kind of essays go there.
• 42:30
  And then I have a my new I I recently rebranded or about a
• 42:34
  year ago I rebranded my newsletter to what the friendly
• 42:38
  mind is like kind of the the brand.
• 42:39
  It's like the idea for the newsletter.
• 42:41
  And so though there's a website that goes along with it where
• 42:44
  all the articles and reader questions and stuff like that
• 42:47
  are So the friendly mind.com and that new the newsletter is
• 42:50
  really the best place because that's whatever I'm up to.
• 42:52
  Whatever, I'm my newest stuff. You just get a little a nice
• 42:55
  friendly e-mail on Monday morning with all my stuff and
• 42:58
  you can kind of skim through it pretty quickly and find what's
• 42:59
  interesting or or not. So yeah, those are the two
• 43:03
  places I think. We'll keep up with good work,
• 43:06
  Nick, and thanks so much for joining.
• 43:09
  Yeah. Thanks, John.