How to grow your audience on TikTok with Jeff Guenther
My interview guest this week is Jeff Guenther, LPC. Jeff is a licensed professional counselor from Portland, Oregon.
He’s also the co-owner of TherapyDen, a progressive therapist directory with 140+ expansive search filters.
You may recognize him as @TherapyJeff from his viral one-minute videos on TikTok, where he has over 2 million followers. He offers deeper dives on his Patreon for only $4/month.
I spoke to Jeff about why he started using TikTok, how he’s grown his TikTok following, how therapists can use TikTok to make money, and what he’s learned along the way. Enjoy!
When did you first start using TikTok?
When the pandemic hit in March 2020, I was doing a lot of things: I had my own podcast, I was running TherapyDen, I had my own private practice, and I was renting out part-time office space to therapists in the Portland community and helping them market their practices.
A lot of my money was wrapped up in renting office space to therapists and that got fucked up. I hit a wall and felt burnt out.
A year went by and I spent a lot of time on TikTok enjoying stupid videos. I consumed thousands of hours of content and thought to myself, I could do this. I understand the algorithm. I get what makes a good video. I know how to write a good hook in the first two seconds.
I bet I could do something interesting and get a bunch of followers and figure out what I want to do with that platform.
How did you get your first 1,000 followers?
This isn’t typical, but I started making videos and the fourth video went viral. That made it so all my videos went out to a bigger audience.
The more videos I made, the more I started to understand what people were looking for, who my demographic was, how to connect with them, and what kind of content resonated.
Did you notice any difference between 0 to 1,000 followers and 1,000 to 50,000 followers?
The first few videos were goofy to see who I could attract. Then I started talking about shit I really care about, which is empowering clients in therapy.
The first 50,000 followers were attracted to me because I was talking about how to have a voice in therapy and sharing questions to ask your therapist.
I told people: You can ask your therapist what they’ve diagnosed you with. You can ask your therapists for all of the notes they’ve taken on you. Maybe don’t do that, but you can. Here’s some client rights you don’t know about.
That got people interested, commenting, and sharing. Educating clients about how they can have power and what they can do in their therapy sessions was key in the beginning. I also leaned into comedy and humor but that takes a lot of thought.
How long does it take you to create a TikTok video? What’s your creative process?
It varies widely. I’m not a rock star, but sometimes you hear a rock star talk about writing the perfect song and it flows out of them in 15 minutes. Every now and then, something flows out of me and I type it into my notes app in 4-5 minutes. Sometimes it takes much longer.
I have my iPhone on a tripod and I put the script on an iPad that has a teleprompter app, so it looks like I’ve memorized everything, but I’m just reading the script I’ve typed out for myself. It can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 3 hours to make a one-minute video.
I usually aim to do two videos per day that go up the next day. When I post it, I try to hang out on my post on Instagram and TikTok for at least 10-20 minutes to engage with the community.
If it goes viral, I’ll check back in and see what’s happening in the comment section and continue to engage or I’ll just leave it and let it do its thing and move on to my next video.
Do you have help?
No, it’s just me. Posting one video can take an hour between TikTok, Instagram, and Patreon, engaging with the commenters, and making sure I’m not getting canceled.
Have you been the target of criticism?
Every day (laughs) but it varies. I’ve been criticized from all directions, sometimes very fairly and sometimes what I think is unfairly. I have a pretty good understanding of how my words are going to land but I don’t always know.
As a white male, I have all of the privileges, so I’m not really going to understand how it’s going to affect every single demographic or person. I have to be prepared.
If I offend someone, do I take the video down? Do I leave it up and apologize? Do I make another video afterwards addressing how I fucked up? Do I engage with the person who is criticizing me? Do I fuck around and make them even more mad at me?
I have a core group of therapist friends who tell me if I’m being problematic or not. I need a team of people who keep me in check. I get it. I have a very cancellable face (laughs). I have to let my defensiveness go. And if it’s too upsetting for me, then I send in a friend.
Do you think TikTok is problematic?
There’s a lot of problems with TikTok. One of the things I don’t like about mental health advice on TikTok is that most of it is wrong, given by unlicensed professionals that might have good intentions, or not.
If you talk about something on TikTok with gusto, it’s going to influence people, sometimes in the wrong way. People aren’t going to do research on the person’s background.
I’m hesitant to even say this, but therapy isn’t super accessible, so TikTok is not that horrible of a place to learn about mental health issues.
There’s a big problem with people self-diagnosing from TikTok, which can manifest symptoms even more. But it can be good information. It’s the Wild West out there right now.
Have you generated income from TikTok?
The original goal was to make content and encourage people to find a therapist on TherapyDen, which continues to do well. On many of my videos, I have text that pops up that says, “Find a therapist on TherapyDen!”
The account was first called TherapyDen, not TherapyJeff, but I was saying things that people were having problems with. I wanted them to get mad at me, not TherapyDen. I got into a big fight with an unnamed therapy app that really got wrapped up in TherapyDen.
Also people thought my handle with TherapyDan and were calling me Dan, so I changed it to TherapyJeff.
I started selling t-shirts because people were commenting on my graphic tees. I think it’s really funny for therapists to sell merch. I do it ironically, but I do love the shirts.
I wanted to get more regular income, which is why I launched a Patreon. I have 1,800 patrons paying $4/month right now, which is around $7,200/month minus 5% in extra income.
The Patreon is fun because the 60-second videos I make are very scripted and concise. The Patreon videos are really liberating because I can riff on a topic for 10 minutes and people can go on the journey with me.
I still have to make sure people understand I’m not their therapist. I’m just educating here. Don’t report me to the board. But I’m excited about the money making possibilities.
Any final advice for therapists thinking about using TikTok?
You don’t have to be a big deal on TikTok to fill your private practice. Start creating a small community of people who resonate with your message.
As therapists, we have hundreds of things we say over and over again. Make that into a 15-second video. Maybe you don’t want to be an influencer. I don’t know if I would recommend it (laughs), but if you want to use TikTok to build your caseload, it’s a really good way to do it.
Once you have an audience, you can also create a digital course or digital product and sell it to people. You don’t even have to know what the product is. Your audience will tell you what they want.
It’s totally fine to ask for money. If people feel like they’ve received a lot of value from you, they’ll want to give you value back.
Thank you to Jeff for sharing with us. Follow him on TikTok and on Instagram. For deeper dives, subscribe to his Patreon.
Finally, sign up for a free therapist profile on TherapyDen.