You can build a therapist website using AI now, and it does not have to take nine months or cost five thousand dollars like mine did. I spent years bouncing from Weebly to Brighter Vision to a developer who farmed my project out and disappeared, and honestly, I regret most of that money and time.
In this episode of The Traveling Therapist Podcast, I'm walking through the exact process I used to build aifortherapists.com for about $36 in under two hours, using Claude to plan the site and Manus to actually build it. I'm also opening up my live AI website workshop on August 4th, 5th, and 6th, where we build a site from scratch together, plus a few lessons I learned the hard way about domains, contact forms, and email that you'll want before you start.
In This Episode, We Explore…
Mentioned in this episode:
AI for websites training https://kymtolson.kartra.com/page/AIwebsite
AI website I made: https://aifortherapists.com
Connect with me:
Instagram: @thetravelingtherapist_kym
The Traveling Therapist Facebook Group: www.facebook.com/groups/onlineandtraveling/
Signup to learn more about life as a Traveling Therapist: https://www.portablepracticemethod.com/free-training
Revolutionize Your Private Practice with AI Course: www.kymtolson.kartra.com/page/ai
Bill Like A Boss Insurance Billing Community: www.kymtolson.kartra.com/page/blab
Subscribe to the Podcast:
Apple iTunes | Spotify | Google Podcast | Stitcher | Amazon | Castbox
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Sponsored by Alma: Managing a private practice can be challenging. There are obstacles at every turn — from navigating the credentialing process, to managing finances, to finding new clients. That’s where Alma can help. Alma is on a mission to simplify access to mental health care by focusing first and foremost on supporting clinicians. https://helloalma.com/kym
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Transcript:
[00:00:00] Kym: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of "The Traveling Therapist" podcast. So this is a special episode. I'm just doing a little introduction for it. On my other podcast, "Run Your Private Practice with AI," you guys might or might not know about that podcast. We'll put the link down below in case you haven't found that podcast yet.
[00:00:16] Got about maybe, I don't know, 100 episodes over there too, just about different ways to use AI to help run your business more smoothly, make your life easier, that kind of thing. So I recorded this episode for that podcast, but then I got thinking, "Why don't I just share it over here for "The Traveling Therapist" podcast as well?"
[00:00:34] Because it's talking about an upcoming training that I'm having, and it's how to build websites using AI. And in "The Traveling Therapist" Facebook group, I see this question probably, like, two, three times a week, "Who do you guys use to help you build your website?" That kind of thing. So the good news is you can do it yourself with AI if you're into that.
[00:00:54] I know some people don't love AI, but I do. I'm obsessed with it. And I figured out this, like, kind of really cool way to build websites. In fact, my website, aifortherapists.com, I built using this method that I'm talking about this episode. So I thought I'd share it here too with "The Traveling Therapist."
[00:01:11] If you have any questions, let me know. And if you want to come to the workshop for building your website with AI, check out the link below and you can come sign up. It's the 4th, 5th, and 6th of August 2026. And if you can't come live, of course, you'll get all the replays, all the tools that we use to build out an AI website. You'll hear more about it in this episode.
[00:01:32] So this is kind of an exciting topic for me. I hear this all the time. You guys probably know this about me. I've got what? I have five large Facebook groups, an Instagram um, a YouTube channel. I've got three memberships.
[00:01:47] Anyway, I talk to a lot of therapists every day through all these different areas, and almost every week, at least two people ask me, like, "Do you guys know anybody that could help me with my website?" So it's a regular thing. When I first started in private practice, there was a thing called Weebly. It was like a free website builder, and it was like just blocks.
[00:02:05] You would like drag blocks in it. It was like so rudimentary. And then I found out about Brighter Vision. Some of you guys might still use Brighter Vision. I guess they're still around. But they were like a cookie cutter thing, right? Where you would just like pay a monthly subscription.
[00:02:17] They would like do an interview with you, and then they'd ask you what you wanted your copy to be and all that stuff. And they would put together these websites that looked pretty good. But you were locked in, right? For ever, essentially, until you canceled it. So I did Brighter Vision. I think I did it for like three years, four years.
[00:02:31] And then I got the bright idea. I was like, "Well, I'm gonna just pay somebody to do a website and be one and done and not have to worry about it anymore." You know? I don't wanna pay this monthly fee, that sort of thing. They've got control of my content, my SEO, my contacts, and all that stuff. So I di- I didn't like that after a while.
[00:02:47] So I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna pay somebody." And if any of you have tried to do this, you might have heard it's a nightmare or you might have found for yourself that it's kind of a nightmare to deal with like website developers. I don't know what the deal is, and I'm sure somebody's listening and they're like, "Well, my website developer was amazing."
[00:03:03] Anyway, I end up hiring this guy who's really nice and he met with me, he sold me the website. I liked him a lot. He was also doing like some coaching with me on the side for free, which was nice, but kinda weird too. so I hired him to do my website and I think it ended up being like maybe $5,000 when it was all said and done that I spent on that website.
[00:03:25] So if I'd stayed with Brighter Vision for a while, I mean, I would've paid that eventually. so I paid him to do it and it took about probably nine months, to get this guy to finish this website. He farmed it out to some other guy and that guy never showed up. He was too busy. It was just a total nightmare.
[00:03:42] So if you guys are listening to this, I just wanted to share my story and what I've heard others talk about too, 'cause it's a real pain in the butt. Now, with AI, everything has changed. You've probably heard me talk in here before about like all these amazing sales pages we're putting out. total game changer, right?
[00:03:59] Because Claude or Manus or whatever you wanna use can now just build websites for you really, not easily if you don't know how to do it, but it can be done. It can be a little overwhelming if you're not really familiar with AI, but it, it can totally be done. I built an entire website. It's called aifortherapists.com.
[00:04:15] I've got-- I just redid kimtolson.com which is really, it's the same story. It's been sitting there. The same guy did that website. It still like talks about me being just a therapist, which I'm really not anymore. I see two clients a month at the most.
[00:04:29] Yeah. So anyway, uh, you can build websites with AI now. You can. Now, I am getting ready to, on August 4th, 5th, and 6th, I'm hosting a three-day, 90 minutes each day workshop, where the first day we're gonna use... I develop these tools basically that you talk to, like you're filling out an intake form essentially. It takes all your information, and then it's so smart, it turns it into really good copy, and then the second tool turns it into a website blueprint.
[00:04:57] So day one, we're gonna do that. Day two, I'm gonna show you how to take the copy and the blueprint and put it into Manus. If you guys don't know Manus, I'll drop the link down below. It's amazing. We're gonna put into Manus the website requirements document basically is what this tool makes for you.
[00:05:14] So it makes a perfect website based on the interview it does with you. You take it, literally plug it into Manus, and Manus, you know, will thinking, thinking or whatever, and it's gonna generate this really awesome website for you. Complete admin dashboard, behind the scenes, all of that. And really what you can do is if you've got a URL already or a website with a URL pointed somewhere else to like, you know, a WordPress site or something like that you could just transfer the domain to this Manus website.
[00:05:42] It's very easy to do that. And then you can manage all the content in the back end. Because the other thing that happens, right? This guy that did my website for me, he did them on WordPress, two websites. One was a traveling therapist, one was kimtolson.com I ha- know nothing about WordPress. So you get the website, but then you're locked in 'cause it's like, what if you need to change something, right?
[00:06:02] What if I need to, like, update something, my rates change? What if I wanna add a contact form, that sort of thing? You can't do it if you don't know how to do it. So there's a whole another problem. Then you gotta pay that person to continue to update your site or, like, find somebody else to update it or figure out how to update it yourself, which can be a major pain in the butt.
[00:06:19] So this method that I'm gonna be teaching in the workshop builds a way in the back end that really you just vibe code your website with Manus. So you can talk back and forth with Manus, and it's gonna continue to change and update your, your website. And when I say vibe code, it's basically like you say, "Hey, I don't like that color.
[00:06:37] Can you change this color?" And Manus is so smart, it just goes in and updates the stuff for you. So it's almost like you're communicating with a website developer around your changes and what you want changed. You just hit enter, and it goes over and does it for you. And the admin dashboard is gonna have the ability to look at analytics you know, SEO.
[00:06:54] There's all kinds of amazing stuff you can do with SEO, AEO, and GEO, and that's the third day. I'm gonna show you guys how to do that on the third day. So I'm really excited about this. I'm a little bit nervous 'cause I've never, you know, I've never taught this to anyone before. These are just the tools I use to build my websites.
[00:07:09] Again, that AIfortherapists.com was completely built with this methodology, and it's, pretty good website if, if I do say so myself. Claude helped me build it completely, and it was built on a WordPress site, so I'm actually in the process of I'm gonna rebuild it out on Manus and be able to transfer it that way because I need more control over it myself.
[00:07:26] all that to say, the workshop's coming soon, fourth, fifth, and sixth. If you can't come live, you will get the replay. You'll get all the tools and be able to do this on your own. So link down below in the show notes.
[00:07:37] But I just wanted to tell you all that you actually can do this yourself, so it's not gonna be as easy or as fast as the tools I created.
[00:07:45] But really, go into Claude or ChatGPT or whatever you like, the one that knows you the best really, and tell it to interview you for building out a website. Tell it to interview you about everything that you'd like to have on your website, the pages your brand, who you help serve, your niche statement.
[00:08:02] You know, all of that we'll be doing in the workshop, but you can do all of that too with your AI. So just tell it what you're trying to do. Tell it to interview you, and then say, "I want you to be like a, you know, expert website designer, and I want you to create basically a requirements document that I can give to Manus and have Manus build this thing out for me."
[00:08:21] The reason I'm telling you to do it in Chat or ChatGPT or Claude originally is because Manus does take credits, right? So if you don't have like a full... Like, I've got the full Manus. I, I think I get like 44,000 credits a month or something, and I actually blew through all of them last month.
[00:08:35] That's how much I use Manus. But for the average person, they have a free tier. Every day you get 300 credits on Manus. And then I think they have like a $20 tier that you could pay for for one month or something if you wanted to do it for this. But, all that to say, any change you're gonna make on the website, it's gonna take credit, so you always want to program or you know, basically plan things out in a different AI, is where I would do it.
[00:08:59] Unless you have a million credits like me in Manus, it doesn't matter. But if you have like a, like a free ChatGPT account or a $20 account or a Claude account, you can go in there and plan the whole thing out first and get it all written in a really nice, complete prompt. Then take the prompt over to Manus and tell, you know, give it to Manus, and Manus is gonna know exactly what to do, the type of website you wanna build out.
[00:09:19] So you can do that, but I'm kinda giving you like cautionary things I've learned already. And then once you do that, you can look in the back end of what Manus creates, and it's almost got like an admin dashboard back there already that you can you could change the URL, you can transfer the domain name, you could turn on SEO optimization if you want to.
[00:09:38] All of that can be turned on on the back end of Manus in that dashboard. So, it's really fun once you do it. Once you get it all together and you put it in there, it's like, "Oh my God, I spent all this money and time." I mean, I kinda just regret all the money and effort I put in. And even kimtolson.com, like I haven't done anything with it for a long time, and I had Claude build out...
[00:09:57] It's really good in my opinion. I think it looks great. I can't wait to transfer the domain name and get that set up over there. My only hesitation with that, and I'm gonna tell everybody this in the workshop too, is my email address, info@kimtolson.com. It goes through that website, which was again, something this guy told me to do a long time ago.
[00:10:16] Now it's my regular email, and it's actually through GoDaddy. So I had to research this 'cause I was worried, and, and this is cautionary for some of you listening too. If you're going to do a method like this where you're just gonna transfer the domain, so you've got an old website sitting somewhere you don't like anymore, you wanna transfer the domain to this new website make sure that you've built into Manus, like all of the requirements.
[00:10:39] If you've got a contact form, you're gonna need to know the specifics of that contact form and make sure Manus knows that. Like there's a contact form, here's where it goes to, here's the emails it connects to. So you're gonna have to talk to Manus about that.
[00:10:50] The email address I was worried about, but I reached out to GoDaddy and basically the email address is through GoDaddy where I bought the URL.
[00:10:57] So even though it's transferred to a different like hosting site, I guess you would call it a hosting site, it's, it's transferred over there. GoDaddy is still like the main owner of that domain. It's just allowing me to like transfer it to a different address, so to speak. So in Manus, you know, it's gonna-- They, it reroutes what they call the CNAME record for your website.
[00:11:22] And of course, I'll talk about this all in depth on you know, the workshop. But basically you would-- you just wanna make sure anything you're transferring, anything that's functioning or bringing you leads on your website, you're gonna wanna make sure you take it with you to the other domain. So that would be like a caveat.
[00:11:37] Like when you're planning this thing, you need to be like "Okay, I've got a contact me form. I don't know how to handle that. I've got an email address here. Here's who hosts it." You know, GoDaddy or wherever you buy it, there's name, name, cheapnames.com. There's all kinds of places to buy domain names.
[00:11:53] And if you don't have a domain yet, name yet, you can actually even buy the domain name through Manus now. So those are all things to take into account when you build this out. Another tip that I'm gonna like show exactly how to do it in, in the program that we're gonna do is If you go to Pinterest and type in like therapist websites design or something like that, you'll see a million different designs pop up.
[00:12:15] Like, you know, some of them are AI generated, some of them are people trying to sell designs or that sort of thing. But if you see a couple that you like, like you like the style and the way it's laid out, you could take a screenshot of it and you can give it to ChatGPT or Claude where you're doing the planning and you could say, " this is actually the design that I want my website to look like.
[00:12:33] So included in this blueprint that we're gonna give Manus, I want you to give all the specific details about this particular layout of this website so I can make sure you follow that." Otherwise, you're just gonna get this real generic kind of website that's just like a bunch of boxes and that sort of thing.
[00:12:49] And you can vibe code, right? You can go back and forth with Manus after it's put up. If it's like, "Oh my God, this looks terrible. I don't like it," you can be like, " Can you make this look more boxy or more this style?" Or, "I want, you know, I want it to scroll more. I want it to be more of an interactive website."
[00:13:04] You can do all that after the fact, but it helps in the, in the beginning planning phases to pick a design that you really like. And your brand colors, you know, like what colors do I like? If you've already got a brand, maybe you've you use Canva already and you've set up like a brand kit in there with like different colors that you like to use.
[00:13:22] They're called hex codes. So each color in a brand has got numbers essentially that tell AI what the color is based on the hex code. They, they know what the color is. So you can put in a bunch of hex codes into the, the programming and you can say, "I want it to be these colors with these hex codes, primary blue secondary red, and here's the hex codes for it."
[00:13:44] And then, you know, Manus will know what you're talking about, and it'll go right to it and make sure that it's that color scheme that you want it to be. So those are just some, some tips or tricks that you can use. You can also tell it to build in places for images if there's image design that you wanna do.
[00:14:02] You could upload images of yourself. You could say, "Later, I wanna be able to upload images." Or even with Manus later, you could say, "You know what? I wanna add this picture in at the, on the hero section of the website," and you can upload the picture, and Manus is so smart, it'll like reconfigure everything and put it in there for you.
[00:14:17] But it's just gonna take more credit, so you just have to know that. But even like a paid plan of Manus is way cheaper than hiring a developer and then having to have somebody else maintain it for you, not knowing how to edit it or that sort of thing. You can do all of that through Manus now. So anyway, I'm really excited about it.
[00:14:36] If you guys are like, "Oh my God, I wanna learn how to do that," the link will be down below for the workshop, so you can come build it live with us. It's basically just us building it together. It's not like a lot of me talking or slowing, showing like slides or anything like that. Like, I hate showing slides.
[00:14:51] So we're just gonna open up, we're gonna use the tools, we're gonna do it together. There's gonna be like Q&A throughout. We're gonna build it. By the end of day three, you'll have a functioning website. And some questions I'm getting about it are, somebody already emailed me and said, "What if I already have a website?"
[00:15:06] Couple of things you can do. You can have the whole website rebuilt through this process that I'm talking about. Just say like, "Here's the link to my website. Here's what it looks like now. I really wanna have this, this, and this different, so I want you to create a prompt or a new plan so I can recreate the whole website over Manus with these changes that I wanna make."
[00:15:25] So you can do that. You can use, like this is not really gonna be in the workshop much, but it's more for people that wanna build like a whole new website out. But you can use like the Claude extension in the Chrome browser, open up your website, the back end of it and say you know, "I wanna make some changes to my website.
[00:15:42] I don't know how to do it." And you can let the browser extension like kind of walk through and do that for you. So that's like a hack if you're kind of stuck and you've been paying somebody to make little changes for you. But the big thing is you can recreate the whole thing and transfer the domain name and just have it in Manus.
[00:15:57] And that aifortherapists.com, I built that out, I think it took me about two hours, and I think it was about $36 in credits to build the whole thing out on Manus. But you know, I have a lot of credit, so it didn't affect me. But for somebody that's like price conscious, you might just wanna just be aware of all those numbers and stuff.
[00:16:16] And you might have to pay for a month of Manus if you can't get it done in 300 credits. You probably won't be able to build the whole thing out in just those free 300 credits. But after that month you can downgrade, right? And then you have 300 credits every day. So if you wanna make little changes, you can just do a little change that's not gonna cost much credit-wise And keep updating it like that and just have the whole thing re-hosted with a redirected domain through Manus where you can just manage all of it on the back end.
[00:16:42] So anyway, I hope that helps you guys. I hope you'll come to the workshop. If you're listening to this after August 4th, 5th, and 6th, 2026, we are eventually just gonna make it like an evergreen product, as we call it, where you can just download the whole thing and take the training then and then just do it yourself.
[00:17:00] Like, all the tools will be available in there. And of course, Thera AI Hub members, you'll have access to it also. It's al- You guys already have access to it. This workshop is totally free and included for you. But people that aren't in there would have to eventually pay for it later and be able to watch the replays if you wanted to, so if you listen to it after the fact.
[00:17:17] Anyway, I'll put the links down below and let me know if you have any questions. If you built your own AI website and there's things I'm not thinking of, let me know, 'cause I'm always learning. But anyway, this is a cool, easy hack for therapists who are brand new in private practice or, you know, don't wanna pay somebody and wanna update their website or change it around.
[00:17:36] It's a very easy way to do it, and it's fun. It's a little bit addictive. You could totally, like, just set up different chats in Manus and change the prompts and see which one you like better, the colors, that sort of thing, and then decide from there and transfer the domain to the one that you like.
[00:17:50] So once you get the hang of it, it's, it's really fun to play with different ones. I, I personally own about, I don't know, like 25 URLs, like domain names that I've bought over the years. So I'm looking forward to when I have some downtime just to make some better websites for all of those URLs. A lot of them are not even ones I ever activated, but I probably will now 'cause it's so easy to do and just host it in Manus.
[00:18:11] So I'm excited about that. Anyway, I hope that helps, inspires you. Again, if you have questions, let me know. And of course, we would love to have you in the Thera AI Hub where we're always building stuff like this, building out things that make your life easier as a therapist. Okay. Have a great day. Bye-bye.