WP208 | How to Obtain Ethical Google Reviews with Brent Stutzman
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You work hard to create a practice where clients feel supported. But when someone searches for a therapist, they may encounter your Google reviews before they ever visit your website or speak with your team.
That creates a challenge for practice owners: how do you build an online reputation while respecting the boundaries of the therapeutic relationship?
In this episode of the Wise Practice Podcast, Whitney Owens talks with Brent Stutzman, founder of TheraSaaS, about Google reviews, private practice marketing, and navigating negative feedback. Their conversation explores the tension between wanting your practice to be visible and wanting your marketing to reflect your values.
Why Google Reviews Deserve Your Attention
Brent compares searching for a therapist to shopping online. People often look at star ratings, the number of reviews, and what others have written as they decide which options to explore.
Choosing a therapist is a much more personal decision than buying a product. Still, a practice’s online presence can shape someone’s first impression before a relationship ever begins.
For practice owners, that makes reputation management something to think about consistently. Waiting until an upsetting review appears can leave you feeling reactive and unsure of what to do next.
Brent also discusses how AI search is changing the way people discover practices. As search tools draw on information from different sources, the conversation about online visibility extends beyond your website alone.
The Pressure Behind a Review Request
One of the most personal moments in the episode comes when Whitney describes an experience with her daughter’s therapist.
After Whitney emailed to thank the therapist for going above and beyond, the therapist asked whether she would leave a review. Whitney felt uncomfortable. Even with her professional background, she worried that declining or questioning the request might affect her daughter’s care.
Her story illustrates why review requests in a therapeutic setting deserve careful consideration. What feels like a simple marketing question to a business owner may feel very different to a client or family member.
Whitney and Brent discuss how power differences can complicate these requests, including when they come through an email, a waiting room sign, or someone working on the practice’s behalf.
The underlying concern is the same: clients should feel free to focus on their care without feeling responsible for promoting the practice.
Making Your Practice Easier to Find
The conversation also explores the distinction between sharing your online presence and asking someone to write a testimonial.
Brent offers examples such as linking to your Google Business Profile from your website or email signature. These links give people another way to find information about your practice.
A useful starting point is to review the information someone encounters when they search for you. Is your address accurate? Does your website explain your services clearly? Can someone easily understand how to contact your team?
Whitney’s upcoming office move prompts a discussion about location changes and keeping business information current. It’s a reminder that your online presence needs attention as your practice evolves.
Professional Relationships and Your Reputation
Brent emphasizes staying connected with referral sources and community partners. He encourages practice owners to keep track of those relationships and communicate about new clinicians, services, and educational opportunities.
Those connections give people a fuller understanding of your work and the clients your practice serves.
The episode also explores reviews connected to professional networks and workshops. An important distinction runs through this discussion: professional ethics and a platform’s review policies are separate considerations. A strategy discussed in the episode should not automatically be treated as permission from a licensing board or review platform.
Building visibility starts with authentic relationships and an accurate representation of your practice.
What Happens When a Negative Review Appears?
Whitney asks a question many owners have faced: what do you do when someone posts a negative review that you believe misrepresents what happened?
She shares her frustration with reviews she believed came from former employees presenting themselves as clients. The conversation captures how personal public criticism can feel when you have invested so much in your business.
Whitney and Brent discuss responses, privacy concerns, and the temptation to pay a company to make negative feedback disappear.
Brent also offers a reassuring perspective: an imperfect rating does not necessarily erase the positive reputation you have built. One critical comment is only part of the picture.
For practice owners, the challenge is to slow down enough to consider a response carefully rather than letting frustration lead the way.
Give Your Online Reputation Consistent Attention
Brent’s closing message is to create a system for paying attention to your online presence.
That can begin with regularly checking your business information, maintaining referral relationships, and making sure someone on your team knows when feedback needs attention.
You do not have to solve every marketing challenge at once. You can begin by understanding what potential clients see when they find you—and considering whether that experience reflects the practice you are working to build.
Listen to the full episode of the Wise Practice Podcast for Whitney and Brent’s conversation, and find Whitney’s episode checklist in the show notes.
Meet Brent Stutzman
After helping his wife launch her counseling practice in 2016, Brent Stutzman saw the need to help other practice owners build powerful sales and marketing funnels. Since then, he’s launched over a dozen private-pay practices nationwide, founded TheraSaaS a marketing and intake CRM for therapists.
His mission is to simplify sales and marketing for private practices so they can confidently grow their practice (and have fund doing it!) Brent is recognized as an expert in digital marketing and AI within the mental health community.
Brent lives in Chicagoland with his wife of 22 years and their four children.
Brent Stutzman’s Resources
Links and Resources
The Ethical Google Reviews Checklist
Learn More about Wise Practice Consulting
Connect with Wise Practice on Instagram
Connect with Whitney Owens on Facebook
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[00:00:00] Whitney Owens: Building a thriving faith-based private practice isn't easy. It takes courage, wisdom, and commitment to lead your business without compromising your faith and values. I'm Whitney Owens, the owner of a seven-figure multi-location group practice and founder of Wise Practice Consulting. Every week on the podcast, I share real strategies, lessons, and conversations that come from actively leading my own practice, helping practice owners across the country do the same.
Whether you're building a solo practice or growing a team, this podcast is here to equip you, empower you, and remind you, I believe in what God's called you to. You don't have to do it alone. Welcome to the Wise Practice Podcast. Let's get started. Hey
[00:00:41] Brent Stutzman: friends, and welcome back to the Wise Practice podcast.
This is a great packed episode. The thing is,
[00:00:46] Whitney Owens: Brent Stutzman brings it every single time I talk to this man. Sometimes I go into conversations, I'm just gonna be honest, I can get a little arrogant and be like, "I know all the things." I bet you think that too, 'cause we're therapists and we think we know all the things.
But Brent always tells me something I didn't know, which says a lot about him. So we talked about ethical Google reviews. I liked it so much that afterwards I put a document together so you would have a checklist of all the stuff we talked about in the episode, the good, the bad, the ugly. So head to the show notes and you can grab that checklist.
And Brent gave me so many great tips. I asked all the hard questions. What do you do when you get a bad review? How do you handle that? And let me tell you, some of these bad reviews may have come from people who actually didn't interact with your business in the way that they said they did. How do you handle those?
But also, why does it matter to get good reviews? You're gonna get all the information here on the show. So make sure that you listen to the full episode. Make sure you download your checklist, because I wanna be able to help you get those ethical reviews in your practice. If you find this podcast to be helpful for you, if you like the checklist, please share the Wise Practice podcast with someone that would benefit from the show.
We want more therapists to be doing the work they love, they're called by God, so that clients can find good clinical help. So thank you again for listening to the episode, and now we're gonna jump into my interview with Brent Stutzman
Today on the podcast, I have my dear friend, Brent Stutzman. After helping his wife launch her counseling practice in 2016, Brent saw a need to help other practice owners build powerful sales and marketing funnels. Since then, he's launched over a dozen private pay practices nationwide, founding TheraSaaS, a marketing and intake CRM for therapists.
His mission is to simplify sales and marketing for practice owners so that they can confidently grow their practice and have the fun and funds to do it. Um, Brent is recognized as an expert in digital marketing and AI in the mental health community. He lives in Chicagoland with his wife of 22 years and four children.
[00:02:56] Brent Stutzman: Yeah.
[00:02:57] Whitney Owens: So glad to have you on the show. You know, every time I talk to you, I learn something. Ooh. And I've heard you speak multiple times, and most people that I hear speak, I'm just gonna be honest, I get kind of bored. Um, you always bring it.
[00:03:09] Brent Stutzman: Yeah. Well, I've, um... I learned from somebody I... You know, he doesn't know me, but I follow him.
His name is Alex Hormozi, and his value is give a ver- give everything away for free. Mm-hmm. Like, just be overly generous in what you know. So that's kind of what... I was like, "You know what? I like that." I learned from him. I learned from others who've been generous. So when I speak or when I do presentations or webinars or podcasts like this, I don't hold anything back.
Like, I just- Yeah ... give it all away. And so, uh, maybe you- that's kind of what you're experiencing, a little bit of that, that, uh, that value that I have.
[00:03:40] Whitney Owens: Yeah. Well, let's talk a little bit about your background story as we kind of get into it. So what kind of got you into the field? Obviously, your wife, but, like, you have become kind of this marketing AI expert in the private practice world.
How did you get there?
[00:03:54] Brent Stutzman: Yeah. Well, because I needed to. Yeah. So, um, because my, you know, I... Before TheraSaaS, I was doing marketing for private practices and just only a select. I got always have 10. I've always been kind of a boutique specialized with video and SEO and everything else. So basically, I've had to evolve.
So when you laun- when you grow a private pay practice, you have to have good branding, you have to good marketing, and there's all these other things you have to have because there's other competition out there with insurances. You have to show the value and, um, prove it in a way as well. Uh, and when AI came along, we knew that...
I just was, I was like, "Well, this is new and I need to stay on the front end of it." So not only just, like, creating tools along with TheraSaaS and things to complement that program, uh, but also, all right, now we gotta think about AI search, 'cause a lot of people are going to ChatGPT, having long conversations about therapists who might specialize in this and that, and then AI would make recommendations.
How does your practice show up in those recommendations? Like, what is going on behind the scenes there? And it's, um, there's a lot going on behind the scenes there. It's way different than traditional SEO. You don't get the same answer twice most of the time. And so I was like, all right, well, people will go to AI.
I have a conversation about therapists, if they make any recommendations, and then they will often go to Google to verify what AI was searching or what it was providing. And so you really kind of need to be on both. So that's kind of the new frontier is, um, how do you show up on AI search? Which is actually, I think, the topic of my conversation at the, at the Wise Summit.
We're gonna- Right ... I, I get to have an hour and a half with you all, uh, doing a deep dive on that. Mm. So I'm really looking forward to it.
[00:05:33] Whitney Owens: I know. That's gonna be good. I'm looking forward to it as well. Yeah. Um, so today, though, we decided we were gonna talk about Google reviews and how do we make them ethical and appropriate and get more of them.
So maybe we should start with the, just the basic, like if somebody's listening and they're starting their practice, they don't even know what you mean when you say Google review, what are we talking about? Yeah.
[00:05:55] Brent Stutzman: Okay, that's great. So let's start with the basics, and then if I can, I'll go into, like, what's not allowed, and then I'll go into, like, what's allowed and kind of like strategies what you can do.
Google Business, you have a... Every, every local business has an opportunity to have a Google Business profile. It's free, and it's what Google uses to really determine what kind of search results it provides people when someone searches plumber near me, lawyer near me, therapist near me. It's gonna heavily rely almost solely on the Google Business profile to then surface those recommendations.
And so one of the ranking factors of which Google will- can surface those recommendations in the top three, which they call the map pack, but that's also now changing with AI. Some of these AI recommendations now have six Google Business recommendations in it, and that's all changing. But one of the core ranking features or ranking, um, values that Google has is a review.
So how many reviews who ha- you have, how many positive reviews you have, and the recency is now a new thing, a newer thing that people are finding out. How recent are the reviews as well? That's pretty powerful. Now, I always say Google shop for their therapists like they do Amazon products. When you go to Amazon, you're looking for a, a widget, something that would solve a problem, and what is the first thing you look at when it, when Amazon surfaces or recommends these different widgets that you're looking for?
Well, you look at how many reviews, right? How many stars, and then you look at the little blue number next to that. Well, how many people left those reviews? And then that is actually the gateway of your first purchasing decisions. Same thing when it comes to, uh, your Google business review. People are looking at reviews and they're gonna read reviews.
And guess what? It only takes one mad person to leave a one-star review. If you have no reviews and now you have a one-star Google review, if you're not taking... If you're not being a little more proactive in getting reviews for your Google business profile. If you have a brick-and-mortar practice, a local practice with an office, you need to have one.
You gotta have one. It's almost essential when it comes to marketing 101. So hopefully, is that a helpful review?
[00:08:08] Whitney Owens: Oh, yeah. I got good questions coming up at the end.
[00:08:12] Brent Stutzman: Okay.
[00:08:13] Whitney Owens: Good. But that was, that was really good. Yeah. Exactly what we're talking about. Now, the other thing, would you... I know this is kind of a little off topic, but as far as, like, optimizing your Google My Business page, pictures, videos, all that kind of stuff, is that stuff important?
[00:08:29] Brent Stutzman: Uh, yeah. There's some strategies around that. And that, you know, maybe you need to have me back for a more fuller, 'cause that im- there is a lot more going in there. Your categories, uh, is really important. The name of your business is really important. People do... I, I was gonna talk about this later, but we had some competition in the area show up, and they were keyword stuffing their Google business name, and I filed a, uh, a formal complaint with Google.
People need to realize that doing SE- SEO is also finding spam accounts or people who are abusing the system and reporting them to Google.
[00:09:04] Whitney Owens: I, like, I wouldn't even know how to do that, but-
[00:09:06] Brent Stutzman: Yeah. Um- Well, hey, maybe that's a teaser to have me on again, Whitney, so I can talk to your audience.
[00:09:11] Whitney Owens: Gosh. Mm. Okay, 'cause I got stories I'm gonna give you at the end that I want your opinion on.
Okay.
[00:09:15] Brent Stutzman: Okay.
[00:09:15] Whitney Owens: Now I'm gonna actually just ask you a personal question before we get into Google reviews. Sure. If someone's gonna be moving- Mm ... how far in advance should they go to try to change that Google My Business profile address?
[00:09:30] Brent Stutzman: Well, Whitney, you actually need to ask an even more important question than that.
You need to find out where Google actually draws the line. Where in the map is your business moving to? Are you moving to a different zip code? Are you gonna move to a different county? So what people have done, and I had a consultation call or someone hired me for an hour and, and she's like, "I'm trying to rank for this, this town that I'm in.
I'm not showing up." And I said, "Because fi- your business is 500 feet away from that town. You are actually in a different town." And so according to Google's map... And you can do this. You could type in, like, your town, and Google's gonna draw a line around what that county or that town that you're in, and you're gonna wanna make sure your business is within, your business address is within that line if you wanna rank for that town or county.
[00:10:27] Whitney Owens: Yeah.
[00:10:28] Brent Stutzman: So if not, your SEO work is gonna be pretty tricky moving forward. So if anyone's gonna move businesses, make sure you do that hard work first. And I will tell you, people will move their business o- their offices just to be inside that radius, 'cause they wanna be in that, in that zip code. I'm not ki- Yeah.
It's really important. So how ear- It depends if... Now, going to your original question, depends, uh, if Google's gonna make you, like, uh, verify your business with a video, so you're gonna make sure you have some signage up and things like that to be able to video verify it. But I've had no problem. So, like, my office here, it was Brand Your Practice for many years.
I wanted to shift it over to Therasass to get Google reviews and focus on that, and I was like, "Well, okay." It's a whole business change, category change, everything. Update it, not a problem. It was, like, approved- Wow ... in an hour. So it just depends. But I would say wait till you're open for business. You know, start seeing clients and then you can do it.
[00:11:29] Whitney Owens: Yeah. Well, we're moving over a weekend from one building to the other, but it's just down the street, so
[00:11:33] Brent Stutzman: Oh, but there you go. Yeah.
[00:11:36] Whitney Owens: All right. Okay, so let's talk about ethical Google reviews. You said you're gonna hit the don'ts first?
[00:11:41] Brent Stutzman: Yeah, I'm gonna hit the- let's, let's draw the ethical line a little bit.
So again, this was from a conversation I had with, uh, Kate Fish. She's a practice owner out here in Illinois, in the, in the Chicago suburbs. So we had this a few months ago, and she went to her Marriage and Family Therapists conference, and she said, "They said so many things that we couldn't do, but I was frustrated because they lacked any ideas on what we could do."
It was like, "Don't do this, don't do, do, do, do this." But knowing that having a Google business profile is kind of essential- Yeah ... and going, "You gotta have one. If you're gonna be a local business and if you wanna show up on Google, you really have to have one. So what, what are, what can we do?" And they just didn't have that.
So we did this podcast together, it was on YouTube, uh, to do it. So this is kind of a synthesis of our conversation. So what's not allowed is... Here's kind of the core ru- rule, is no solicitation of testimonials or reviews from current or former clients. Mm. Like, that's kind of the line. No solicitation of testimonials or reviews from current or former clients.
And she was saying like, "I mean, why does this exist?" And therapists know this, there's like a power differential, so if, you know, if a client senses they can win at therapy or whatever by leaving a good review, that actually damages, like, the therapeutic relationship, okay? And that trust. So what, what's specifically off limits?
So let's dive in a little bit. So directly asking a client to leave a review in a session or by a text or by an email, even having a waiting room sign that says, "Leave us a Google review," or, "Please review us," that's solicitation. If you have a QR code that's kind of labeled in the same way, texting or emailing a review gl- a review link.
Now, you can text a Google business profile because that will also have directions, but having the specific review link so if they click on it, it opens up the review, uh, window, you shouldn't do that. Asking former clients, including clients who have completed treatment or were formally discharged.
Clients, you know, we s- you know, are never really truly done, but they can always return. If you have your office manager, admin, or marketing person ask on your behalf, if they represent a practice with a licensed clinician, that's still solicitation. Asking current supervisees And not the clients, but the s- your supervisees to leave.
That's still a no-no because there's a power differential there. Writing a review if your client owns a business and writing f- a review for them and asking it to, like, do a reciprocal review type of thing, that's also it's a- Wow ... that's solicitation. Let's see here. Kate said, "Anything that really just fails the gut check.
If it feels like asking without asking, and it was probably is asking." So if it feels, feels that kind of gut check, probably shouldn't do it. So that's kind of the line when it comes to the ethics, I think are pretty, um Hopefully that's clear. Do you have
[00:14:33] Whitney Owens: any question on that? So clear. You did so many good examples.
That was good. Yeah. I actually, my daughter went to therapy, and I got an email, or I emailed the lady 'cause she had done something really kind for us, went above and beyond. I emailed her, "Thank you so much that you brought this to the, my attention and your time you spent on this." And then she wrote back and was like, "Actually, would you mind leaving a review about that?"
[00:14:58] Brent Stutzman: Oh, interesting.
[00:15:00] Whitney Owens: And I- Yeah ... had the exact experience that you're describing. Like, I as a therapist knew that was inappropriate. I almost emailed her back and said- Mm-hmm ... "You're not really supposed to ask me for that. I'm a client." But then I felt like, ooh, but then she might not care for my daughter-
[00:15:15] Brent Stutzman: Yeah
[00:15:15] Whitney Owens: and put us on the naughty list or something like that. So I did send her back something, you know?
[00:15:22] Brent Stutzman: Yeah.
[00:15:22] Whitney Owens: And yeah, it was very uncomfortable, but I also know another practice in town, and they put those signs in their waiting room. They say, "Vote for us. Best in Savannah." You know, "Leave us a review." Yeah. And they constantly get voted best.
And then I sit here and I go, "Yeah, but it's just because you're soliciting people," and that's- Mm-hmm ... like, nasty. It's nasty.
[00:15:44] Brent Stutzman: Yeah. I know, and it hurts.
[00:15:47] Whitney Owens: Yeah.
[00:15:48] Brent Stutzman: You're like, "Oh, well, if they're doing it," you know? Well, if
[00:15:51] Whitney Owens: they're doing it, I should do it- Yeah ... because at least my, I wanna be like, "Well, my practice is better," but that's just lowering my standards.
[00:15:59] Brent Stutzman: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:15:59] Whitney Owens: So okay, you just told me all the things I can't do, so what am I supposed to do?
[00:16:03] Brent Stutzman: Yeah. Okay, so before actually, I lied. Before that, I think I wanna just touch on what Google says about its own review policy. Uh-huh. I think it's important to know because often what Google says, it doesn't always believe itself, or enforces itself, too.
But this is kind of the rules when it comes to reviews. Now, just so you know, there is massive spam and scams when it comes to reviews. So not too long ago, there was a massive amount of scamming coming out of India targeting hotels and say, "I will have 100 negative reviews on your restaurant if you don't send me gift cards with this certain amount, because my family is starving, and I need to be able to feed them.
But if you don't give us these gift cards or this, transfer this money," they'll have all these. So it's all scammy, right? It's all fake, but they're pulling at the heartstrings, and it could tank an actual restaurant's business. So this stuff was happening. Um, I don't know if it still is. It was, like, a year and a half ago, two years ago that this was happening.
Google has been terrible at moderating these things. But so for example, Google Maps, 'cause that's where the reviews are, blocked 292 million reviews- in 2025 and removed 13 million fake profiles in 2025. So just to show like the scale of this, but also to show you the value of reviews and why they're so important, because there's a whole cottage industry of scamming around it.
So here's some of the things that Google is talking about when it comes to reviews. Uh, let's see here. So they say incentivizing reviews is still prohibited, including discounts, freebies, or perks in exchange for feedback Their words. I don't know how they track it, but it's their words. Uh, reviews create from multiple accounts, emulators or automated systems are easily detected and removed.
Maybe, but that's what they say. They were tracking this. Sudden spikes in review volume can trigger removals if patterns- Yeah ... look unnatural. Now, uh, and this is g- this is gonna lean into one of the strategies. Every time that I encourage my marketing clients, every time you onboard a new clinician, the clinician asks friends and family to leave reviews.
And let's say let's just go for three. And some of them are really great at, and they'll get 10. So you might go six months, you hire someone, they get 10 new reviews. Now, is that a sudden spike? I don't know. To Google, it's all relative. There might be spikes for them are a thousand, maybe spikes are a hundred.
I don't know. We haven't been taken-- There's hasn't been anything done in our accounts or any of the ones that I've managed when you see like a sudden spike in that. Okay. Reviews from employees, vendors, or anyone with a professional connection are not allowed. That's-- But how are they gonna know? They're like totally agnostic when it comes to these things.
You could have a dog-- Like you can even leave anonymous reviews now on Google. Google Business, you could do anonymous reviews. Review gating remains violation and is actively enforced. So what is review gating? You send an email, "How was our service?" And if you say, you know, you could have like so many stars.
These aren't Google Business stars. But let's say you go to like auto mechanics and others will do this. This is review gating. They send you a email. "Please give us-- please review our service." If you have a three, if you click three stars, it's gonna reroute you to a different page that says, "Hey, speak to our customer service and let us know how we can do better."
If you give them five stars, it will take you to a Google Business page like, "Can you leave us a five-star review?" That is review gating. You're trying to determine the sentiment before you send them on and ask for the Google reviews. Uh, which is a huge, uh, FC-- I think it's an FCC violation now. People who have been egregious at this have been getting sued by the government.
Uh, businesses cannot pressure customers to leave reviews while on site. I don't know. Uh, businesses cannot ask customers to include specific content such as employee names or keywords. So that's what they say. Now, it's a caveat say that Google says a lot of things, but they don't-- do not always enforce them, and they break their own rules all the time.
Uh, we encourage people to say, yeah, leave-- Uh, and again, post these rules. These were updated, I think, at the beginning of twenty twenty-six, somewhere around there. And a lot of our reviews that come from family and friends across all the accounts that I, I manage, uh, they leave their names. Not one has been taken down.
Not one of them has been flagged. It's okay to leave names. In fact, I would encourage you to include keywords like therapist or they're a wonderful-- If you're looking for a therapist in Savannah, right? That type of thing. Savannah therapist. Those things, those are keywords because Google will highlight those in the reviews that might pop up if someone's looking for a therapist in Savannah.
So all that to say is keywords are actually really important. You actually want to have some reviews that have keywords around your services that you provide. Okay. Yeah, Google allows anonymous reviews now and AI overviews. So with Google's AI, they're starting to s-- Okay, so AI wants to know if we can trust, how can we trust a business enough to be able to recommend them our results?
So Google's own AI overviews are scanning people's reviews. And AI is all word-based, so they will summarize. It seems like Water's Edge does really good work with EMDR because a lot of people leave EMDR reviews or whatever, right? So they're summarizing those for the users, and it's pulling all that information from reviews.
Okay? All right, so I'll get into-- and, uh, we don't do keyword stuffing. Let's go everything that is allowed, but I'll stop there. Any questions on what I just said on that?
[00:22:10] Whitney Owens: No, I agree with everything you said. I've had the same experience with Google, where they don't follow their own rules, and so it's gets very complicated.
[00:22:19] Brent Stutzman: Oh, they g- egregiously break their own rules. Remember they, one of the rules around content was you're not allowed to, like, either, like, plagiarize content or wri- write content based on other people's content. Like, there was these weird things, and then when Google's AI reviews came out, they're basically like, "Thank you.
We have scanned every blog post in the world, and now we create our own content based on that content." But they g- they weren't always citing authors, right? Mm-hmm. So there's a whole thing around SEO and content now. Google doesn't, I don't think Google, according to some other experts too, Google doesn't want blog posts anymore-
[00:22:56] Whitney Owens: Mm
[00:22:56] Brent Stutzman: 'cause they have all the blog posts. But there's something else that they want, and I'll maybe leave that as a teaser for to come to the Wise Practice Summit, and I'll explain what I mean by that. Yeah. What is Google looking for when it comes to content now? Great. Okay, let's talk about everything is allowed.
Does that sound good?
[00:23:10] Whitney Owens: Yes.
[00:23:10] Brent Stutzman: All right. So let's go back to that waiting room. So if you have a sign that might say... This, I think this was Kate Fish's really good idea. You can have a sign that says, "Let- let's get social," and you can list your Facebook, Instagram, and Google. Like, you can point to your presence, but you're not requesting anything.
But you can point to, like, your different social pages if you want people to follow them. You could also have a sign that says, "Read our Google reviews," or, "Find us on Google." Okay? So, like, it still will pop up your Google when you read it, but you're not soliciting. But you can just... You're saying, "Hey, read our Google reviews."
Yeah? Uh, Google links, you can add your Google business, uh, in your, uh, email signature. Link to your Google business profile on your website if you want. Something I like to do is you could say, you know, "We're the highest re..." If it's true, you could say, "We're the highest reviewed private practice or mental health private practice in Savannah."
And then you can link to your Google, uh, business page if you want.
[00:24:10] Whitney Owens: You put that on your website?
[00:24:11] Brent Stutzman: Yeah, if it's true. I'd do it.
[00:24:14] Whitney Owens: How w- how would I know?
[00:24:16] Brent Stutzman: Well, just look at your competition.
[00:24:18] Whitney Owens: Okay.
[00:24:19] Brent Stutzman: Other mental health practices. Are you n- Do you have more Google reviews?
[00:24:22] Whitney Owens: I haven't thought of that one, so that was a good one.
[00:24:24] Brent Stutzman: It's true. Why not?
[00:24:26] Whitney Owens: Mm-hmm.
[00:24:27] Brent Stutzman: Here's the thing. AI... Going back to AI, AI doesn't know if it's true, but I found that if you put it on your page, AI will think it's true.
[00:24:37] Whitney Owens: I know.
[00:24:38] Brent Stutzman: Mm. But AI's also gonna try to corroborate that, and so that's why there's so much spam out there. That's why they're using third-party sites like Yelp.
Yelp is a thing now. It's a thing now. And Google Business Profile and stuff, they, they wanna be able to corroborate that, some of these claims, and so, uh- Mm ... that's important. So there's that. Let's see here Uh, you can mention your online presence in community newsletters. And yeah, we can talk about another one like optimizing your Google business profile itself so people can find it is accurate and it's complete.
Ooh, can I give you a Google business profile tip?
[00:25:14] Whitney Owens: Yeah.
[00:25:14] Brent Stutzman: I'm gonna give one. Okay. So this is one where Google, Google's a hot mess when it comes to business profiles. So you have your business hours, okay? Google, if somebody searches therapist near me and your business is closed, there's a good chance you won't be se- your Google business pro- profile may not be recommended.
And this makes sense if you think about in restaurants, like if somebody's looking for a hamburger place near me and you're closed, your hamburger pla- your hours are closed, then it's not gonna recommend it, right? You don't want that. You don't go to businesses that are closed, right? But in most times people looking for therapy services, it's not like a burger joint where you're gonna like drive through therapy or get something like that.
So the best-- what I've been doing now is not saying open twenty-four hours, but just not having your hours at all on there. Really? I think, yeah, you just not even have it. In fact, I think in some I just, uh, I have to go back and check, but I'm sure like some of them are just open twenty-four hours. But we also put on the notes by appointment only.
[00:26:19] Whitney Owens: Hmm. But
[00:26:19] Brent Stutzman: Google doesn't check this, right? They're not like penalizing, but it's actually a ranking factor, your business hours.
[00:26:26] Whitney Owens: Hmm.
[00:26:26] Brent Stutzman: But yeah, optimize your Google business profile. So maybe that's another, uh, conversation we can have together with your listeners. Referral partners and community. So this is gonna be important.
So you need to be able to track those physicians that are referring to you, community partners, chamber of commerce, whatever, ven- like whatever. Just track everybody, your top referral sources. And I teach this a lot on my demo calls with TheraSaaS and on our training calls. I have knowle- my videos on this.
You have to have a-- You can use a CRM or a Google spreadsheet, but you have to track those referral sources. And it's really important to have a newsletter that you can even just have separate for those community partners. So whether it's new hires or things that you're doing in the community, whatever, just get in front of them and let them know what's going on.
Uh, those people you should absolutely ask to leave a review. If you are giving any workshops or trainings, ask the attendees that either on the webinar or if it's live, have a QR code and ask them for a review. Just ask them for a re- talk about how they enjoyed the training. They don't even have to talk about therapy.
Just ask how they joined the training. So I have TheraSaaS people-- or TheraSaaS people. I have TheraSaaS reviews that reference my one-on-one consultations. You know, it's totally fine.
[00:27:38] Whitney Owens: Yeah.
[00:27:39] Brent Stutzman: Um, let's see here. We-- I'm looking at my notes. So yeah, network. If you are in a mastermind, if you are in a mastermind-- I, I'm smiling because I'm gonna share a story about this.
If you're in a mastermind or something, do a review swap. You know, just leave reviews for everybody. Totally fine. At the, um, the group practice scaling summit that Nate and I do, people just did it right at the tables right there. Okay, so here's the story. So my wife had a Yelp, has a Yelp account, and w- we've ignored it for years, and it was like a two point three star or whatever.
And then I saw that OpenAI and others were referencing Yelp And its recommendations for therapists. Like practices for therapy. And I'm like, "Wow, that's a terrible score." And so, uh, the mastermind I was a part of, I'm like, "Look, guys, I need your help. Can you all get on Yelp and leave us a review?" And they did, and it just moved that score right back up, so now it's like a four star or something like that.
Asking people in your mastermind or- I think is really important.
[00:28:41] Whitney Owens: I have a question about this.
[00:28:42] Brent Stutzman: Yeah.
[00:28:43] Whitney Owens: I've always noticed or have heard that it shouldn't be someone outside the zip code or outside the state, and that it gets flagged and they don't like it. You don't think that's the case?
[00:28:53] Brent Stutzman: Oh. Let's say I really enjoyed a restaurant in Nashville.
Let's say... Wait. Wise Craft Summit. Louisville. Nashville. Wait, what did- Nashville. Yeah, yeah. Nashville. Sorry. Sorry. Let's say I'm at the Wise Summit. I'm in Nashville, I have some Nashville hot chicken, and I was like, "Man, that was really good." Five days later, I'm back in Chicago, and I'm like, "You know what? I should leave them a five-star review."
Now, do you think Google's gonna take that down because I wasn't in Nashville? Now- No ... Google might know I was in Nashville 'cause my phone was in Nashville, right? It tracks everything I do. But I haven't seen it. I've seen people leave reviews. Now, if you're getting like 100 people from California at once doing it, maybe.
But again, Google's going after the big players. Now, I know some people might have, might, uh, got a, got dinged on it, but you can actually just go to Google and say, "This is a real review." I've done that before, where they, the review is on the back end of your dashboard- Mm-hmm ... in Google business, but it's not showing publicly.
I'll just say, "Hey, this is a real review. Please show it publicly." So that, that's my an- that's my kind of counter story to your, to your question on that.
[00:30:05] Whitney Owens: Okay, that's great. Hey, you just debunked it, so I love it.
[00:30:08] Brent Stutzman: Yeah. Well, I mean, I say everything's with an asterisk with Google. Sometimes Google will just wanna hate you that day, but most of the time they wanna leave you a- alone because you're, you know, we're small players in a huge world when it comes to review.
[00:30:21] Whitney Owens: Okay. I got a real big question that I'm sitting on. You ready?
[00:30:24] Brent Stutzman: Yeah.
[00:30:25] Whitney Owens: Okay. Let's say you have some disgruntled employees who maybe quit or could have been terminated, and they decide to write reviews. To trash your business,
[00:30:41] Brent Stutzman: right?
[00:30:42] Whitney Owens: So then you s- it's very obvious, especially because they use the nickname of an employee that no client would ever say.
Like, what did they think about that? But no client would ever know that that's what somebody goes by unless you worked here. So I contacted Google the way they tell you to, and I put in the thing, and I said, "This was a disgruntled employee. We don't call this person that." And they didn't do anything.
[00:31:07] Brent Stutzman: Yeah.
[00:31:08] Whitney Owens: So-
[00:31:09] Brent Stutzman: Yeah ...
[00:31:09] Whitney Owens: what do you do in a situation like this?
[00:31:12] Brent Stutzman: Well, you can keep emailing them. That's one. But to me, I bet they're not gonna do anything because this person has actually interacted with your business, and so they're leaving a review based on the interaction they've had with your business. Google allows that.
You have, I don't know the, the full rules on, like, this is a fake review. You have to prove this is a fake review or this is spam. In this case, it was, it was not. This is a real, real review for your
[00:31:42] Whitney Owens: business. Mm-hmm.
[00:31:44] Brent Stutzman: So I, I would-
[00:31:45] Whitney Owens: Well, it was, it was, um- ... someone acting like they were a client and talking about the person as if they had been a client, but they hadn't been a client.
[00:31:54] Brent Stutzman: Yeah.
[00:31:55] Whitney Owens: Obviously. They had worked here. And another, the same week, another one was, like, saying something, and I'm like, "This person has never actually been a client with us."
[00:32:06] Brent Stutzman: Yeah. So this is a, this is a good point, where you cannot respond to Google re- Let's say a client, clients may leave Google reviews, fine, but you can't respond in a way that affirms that they were a client.
The only thing I would say, just say thank you Never, doesn't, uh, confirm or deny that they're an actual client. So you can't talk about their treatment. Like, "You worked so hard in therapy." You know, you can't say anything like that- Mm ... 'cause that breaks HIPAA. However, in this case, if it is an employee, then you can absolutely get on there and leave a, a reply.
[00:32:42] Whitney Owens: I
[00:32:42] Brent Stutzman: did. You can call them out. Yeah, because pe- I
[00:32:43] Whitney Owens: did. I said,
[00:32:44] Brent Stutzman: I s- People will actually read that stuff. So how you actually respond- Yeah ... is gonna be very important.
[00:32:48] Whitney Owens: That's exactly how I responded. I said, "No one would know the name of this unless you actually worked here, and no client would ever know this name."
[00:32:57] Brent Stutzman: Go girl.
[00:32:58] Whitney Owens: You hit it. But, but you still can't get rid of it. And so there are companies out there that you can pay to get rid of your bad Google reviews. Is that something that... Okay, you're rolling your eyes, so that says get over it. I don't know. Should I invest in these- No ... to get these reviews off my site?
[00:33:13] Brent Stutzman: No. Why? And here's why. If you have less than a five-star rating, let's just think of, like, human psychology a little bit. Let's say if you have anything between 4.5 and a 4.9, that says that you're human and you're a little bit flawed, and people will click on that review to maybe find that one or two bad reviews, 'cause they wanna read that.
But yet, your overall score is very positive. Mm. So people, I think, actually try... And I, there's, I think there's been some studies on this, that people might be suspicious of perfect five-star reviews and there's a lot of them. They actually would prefer to see a little bit under five stars just to kind of, it's like, "Oh, they're human.
Maybe some people are leaving some real reviews there." So I would say actually use that. I think that's an advantage.
[00:33:58] Whitney Owens: Mm. So we're getting like, I've been reading a book about gratitude and Henry Nowen, so now we're, like, bringing it back. We need to be grateful for the- Be grateful for this ... negatives in our lives 'cause God uses it for a positive.
[00:34:10] Brent Stutzman: Yep.
[00:34:10] Whitney Owens: All right. This is great. All right. Is there anything we have not hit on that you feel like is really important to mention?
[00:34:15] Brent Stutzman: Yeah. I think g- you have to systematize this in a way. Try to get one Google... And this is really on the onus of the practice owner in some ways or a clinical director or your director of ops if you have one.
Try to get one Google Review a month. If not, when you hire somebody, make it part of their onboarding process to try to get three reviews from family and friends. It's th- a- and you wanna explain to them, like, this is the tide that rises all ships. They're gonna mention you in the reviews. You'll be at the top of the review pack.
And this is also just gonna help the practice overall in its rankings and getting more client leads.
[00:34:50] Whitney Owens: Yeah.
[00:34:50] Brent Stutzman: So I would just make that part of it. Yeah. And then m- make sure you have your referral source dialed in and think about all those in your network. You know, when real estate agents get started, they're so good at this.
Uh-huh. Their ability to do referral work is really good. They're asking family, friends, interns, whoever. If you speak, ask for-- I- if you speak anywhere, ask the host to leave you a Google review. Ask the audience to leave you a good review. Put up a, a TheraSass QR code that goes right to your Google business profile.
Family, friends, professional network. I already talked about masterminds. We talked about responding to views. We could talk about-- Maybe this is-- I'll talk about more of this at the summit, is diversifying beyond Google- Mm ... and why that's important. Yeah. Uh, but you, but you need to have a system in place really for this.
It's gonna be more-- Reviews are gonna be more important moving forward in the age of AI.
[00:35:43] Whitney Owens: Right.
[00:35:43] Brent Stutzman: Uh, I think that's Kind of, uh, yeah, I got some other notes You've loaded
[00:35:47] Whitney Owens: me up, Brent.
[00:35:49] Brent Stutzman: What'd, what'd you say?
[00:35:50] Whitney Owens: You've loaded me up. Yeah. I've got lots of tips now that I'm like, you see me writing them down, I'm like, "I gotta be doing this and this."
So this is really helpful. So you bring it all the time, like I said at the beginning, this is just one of many things that you help therapists with. So if somebody's wanting some help with their marketing, maybe they need a CRM, which by the way is a customer management relationship spreadsheet kind of thing to help you manage your customers, okay?
[00:36:14] Brent Stutzman: I would say it actually- That, that- ... helps you get rid of the spreadsheets ...
[00:36:17] Whitney Owens: made it better than me. Okay, you're getting off the spreadsheets and into a software to help you manage when clients are reaching out and- Yeah ... and referral partners, correct. And you kind of put it all into one with TheraSaaS.
[00:36:28] Brent Stutzman: Yeah.
Yeah. You can leverage it to do a lot of things. It's pretty much software. I always say just like you have QuickBooks for your finances, you have a EHR for your operations, you really need a CRM for your sales and marketing. Yeah. It's just software to help you make, be more efficient, organized, and really cut down on the amount of cut and paste manual work that your team is probably doing and spending hours every week doing.
And client leads are gonna fall through the cracks because of all of that. So you need to simplify and centralize all your, your client leads in one place, and it's gonna- TheraSaaS helps you do that. It's pretty great. So if you want, if you wanna see a lot of, a l- if you go to the TheraSaaS YouTube channel, so that's T-H-E-R-A-S-A-A-S, I- I'm gonna do a live website breakdown in September in a couple weeks.
So I do a lot of marketing stuff on there. So my goal is to give away all the marketing stuff I know, 'cause I'm also in the game, right? I got websites and practices that I help out, uh, that I need to make sure they're staying on top of Google and being recommended on AI. So I am constantly in this stuff while also selling the CRM.
So I share all the marketing knowledge. A lot of it's there. We also have a TheraSaaS newsletter as well. But if you need a CRM, just go to TheraSaaS.com and schedule a demo and we can talk about it. Um, that'd be the best thing. And then if you need a consultation, you can go to brandyourpractice.com. You can click on a little button that says, I think it's schedule a coaching call or something.
So you could pay for my hour there. But if you really want, if you really wanna s- hear the good stuff, come to the Wise Practice Summit and- Oh ... and I'm gonna do a deep dive on AI local search, and I'm, I'm not gonna hide anything. I'm gonna show case studies, things that I'm doing on websites now, because the game has changed and, um, it's gonna be really important for you to know some of this stuff.
So-
[00:38:13] Whitney Owens: Mm ...
[00:38:14] Brent Stutzman: there you go, Winnie.
[00:38:15] Whitney Owens: Well, thank you. Well, I look forward to being with you in person, and this has been jam-packed. I'm definitely gonna be grabbing the notes when we're done to making sure that I start going through the steps. So thank you again for being on the show.
[00:38:27] Brent Stutzman: Yeah. It was a pleasure to be here.
Thank you. The Wise Practice Podcast
[00:38:31] Whitney Owens: is part of the Site Craft Podcast Network, a collaboration of independent podcasters focused on helping people live more meaningful and productive lives. To learn more about the other amazing podcasts in the network, head on over to sitecraftnetwork.com. The Wise Practice Podcast represents the opinions of Whitney Owens and her guests.
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