Warm, Inviting Squarespace Website for Licensed Professional Counselor in Austin, Texas
Meg Mattingly, LPC is the owner of Willow Tree Collective, a private practice based in Austin, Texas. Meg provides virtual and in-person therapy, as well as outdoor therapy to help her clients connect to themselves and the natural world.
Meg used the Bridge template to create a warm and inviting website for her private practice that feels grounded and safe. At first glance, the colors, patterns, and photos tell me that Meg is a compassionate and warm therapist, and even though I can see the “bones” of the Bridge template, the website feels totally unique and custom to Meg’s practice! I’m thrilled that she was able to create something so aligned without any prior website building or design experience.
Read on to learn more about Meg’s experience of using the Bridge template to build her own counseling website!
Your name + credentials: Meg Mattingly, LPC
Your website URL: www.willowtreecollective.com
Where in the world are you located? I am located in beautiful Austin, Texas
What do you love about the work that you do?
I love the relationships that I'm building with people. I love being a safe, trusting person in someone's life. I love the stories I hear and the strength I see in humans! I love the ability to bring myself to this work and provide humor, love, metaphors, stories, and support. I love the humanness of this work and the opportunity to learn from and through my clients. I feel very lucky to have found a career that I love and that gives me the space to grow.
Which Hold Space Creative template did you purchase?
Why did you choose this template?
I loved the design and the ease of the template. As a new business owner, I was trying to be really strategic with the upfront costs and didn't have professional pictures taken. I appreciate that bridge wasn't picture-heavy and that I could add more as I expanded my practice. The Bridge template allowed me to have some structure but also room to be creative. My favorite combo!
What prompted you to choose my templates over others?
I am new to the world of websites and marketing and felt slightly overwhelmed with the idea of starting from scratch. I found myself going down the rabbit hole of looking at other therapists' websites and not sure if I had the tech skills to create something similar to what I was seeing. After hearing about Hold Space Creative on Mind Money Balance, I was so relieved that something like this existed! I just launched my practice at the beginning of 2022 and wanted to have something out there for the world to see. My main presence online is my website, so I wanted it to be beautiful but also not overwhelming to create. Hold Space Creative fit perfectly into that!
How did you feel about your previous website or the website building process before purchasing a template from Hold Space Creative?
Prior to using Hold Space Creative, I had a very basic website I slapped together on Wix that served the purpose of just having my name out on the web, but it never felt like a representation of me. My undergraduate degree is in Recreation, Parks & Tourism Sciences so my background and expertise in website building were little to none. It always felt like such an overwhelming and daunting process to me.
How do you feel now that you've published your new website?
I feel so much pride! It was several months in the making for me to be able to get to the point where I felt confident enough to make it live. Creating my website felt so vulnerable and raw because I wanted it to be an extension of myself. I want people to come to my website and feel seen and get to know who I was as well. Becoming a therapist can feel like so much identity work and I experienced a great deal of that in creating my site. I am someone who loves and leans into "good enough" and I know that my website will continue to change and expand, just as I do.
How would you describe the process of using a Hold Space Creative template (from purchase to publish)?
A big step for me was just purchasing the template. I knew that once I did, I would want to get to work. Once I bought the template, I had an amazing marketing coach (maggiegentry.com) that helped me brainstorm what I wanted to put out there to the world. I was so appreciative of the copy templates that were included in the template. I used those as a guide and foundation in my writing copy. I wrote and rewrote (and continue to even after it has been published) what I wanted to be present on my site. It was such a tiring but rewarding experience that had me in a paradoxical place of reflection and dreaming of the future. Because I had never worked with square space before, I used the how-to videos from Monica quite to help me when I got stuck or didn't understand a particular area of square space. I set a goal for myself to be done with my website so I could have an official launch date and send it out to my network. This was helpful so I didn't continue to try and make it "perfect" and leaned on "good enough". When I launched my website at the beginning of February it was an incredibly emotional process with lots of joyful tears.
What do you hope your new website does for you and your private practice?
I hope that people who visit my website get a very clear idea of who I am as a therapist (and human). I also hope that if we aren't a good fit or I'm not what they're looking for, they're able to glean that from my site. Especially in the beginning of things, it can feel like we have to have everything figured out or perfect. I am trying to lean more into slowing down and letting my website evolve as I do. I have high hopes in the future of continuing to write more for my blogs, add a resource page, a collaboration page, and who knows what else. But it feels so good to have something up for the world to see that I am proud of and represents where I am in my process.
Is there anything else you'd like to add?
I love that there are spaces where therapists are reminded that they are not alone in this work! Monica and her team were great and I found the blogs that featured other therapists to be so helpful! I referred to them quite a bit (Thank you Lise McMillan and Julie Ciecior). As Private Practice owners, it can feel like we are suddenly required to be good at EVERYTHING! I don't know about other folks but I definitely didn't get any business or marketing support while in graduate school. I appreciate that there are amazing companies like Hold Space Creative that remind us, that we don't have to do it alone! Using a template from HSC was such a needed reminder of that. Thankful for the opportunity to collaborate and get support from the wider community.
