By Compassionate Climb
The podcast currently has 83 episodes available.
Meet Nick DeCourcey, an LICSW who recently started his private practice, Aspirations Counseling, and is transitioning full-time! His career climb has been fueled by a desire to work within his values. After getting his MSW, he began working in outpatient community mental health but felt that there was a misalignment in his views of helping clients compared to the agency which led him to consider private practice.
His private practice journey started with a lot of self-directed learning but then when he found Julia’s webinar on starting a private practice through the National Association of Social Workers, he felt more prepared to take action. After obtaining his LICSW, he scheduled a consult with Julia and decided to purchase a package to help guide him in building his business. He attributes a lot of his current success and profitability to Julia’s help as a consultant and recommends that everyone considering going into private practice get one!
Most impressively, he went from starting his private practice to leaving his agency job in less than a year! With such rapid growth in his private practice, it no longer made sense to continue seeing clients in the community mental health agency he had been working with. In a little over a year, he went from considering private practice, to establishing the business, to building a full time caseload. Find out how he did it, how a consultant can help, and how to tell if private practice may be right for you in this week’s episode.
Key highlights:
Nick's transition to private practice was fueled by his desire “to help, not just be helpful”.
Nick also said that “my private practice, getting it going and making it profitable, was easier than my final paper for my master’s”!
To help him decide if it was the right move for him, Nick put a dollar value on his peace of mind.
A consultant can not only give you resources and ideas on how to get going and keep going, but they can also help you avoid really expensive mistakes down the road.
Nick shared that the 30 minute free consult Julia offered helped him determine they were the right fit.
Nick has also worked hard to make himself “findable” like investing in his website, having a Psychology Today page, and even leaving his business cards (with chocolate chip cookies!) at local doctor’s offices.
Julia's Links:
Compassionate Consulting Company
Free Consult
Nick’s Links:
Website
Psychology Today
Julia has made mention of the Enneagram in several episodes so it was time to give it a full one! Julia provides an overview of the nine types, wings, and triads, shares how this model of the human psyche has been transformative in her self-development journey, and how she incorporates with her team.
Julia provides Enneagram trainings to team to improve communication and enhance relationships. If you are interested email: [email protected]
Julia has recorded an Enneagram training with a move in depth overview in addition to how to incorporate in clinical work and integrate with teams available for purchase here.
Meet Brianna Pelletier, the Director of Operations at Compassionate Counseling Company. She shares her career climb from obtaining her Bachelor's in Psychology to working as a practice manager, and her decision to return to school for her Master's Degree. She reflects on her journey with the practice over the past year and a half, from her start as an Administrative Assistant to her promotion to Director of Operations. She discusses the benefits of hiring administrative staff to improve systems and processes and enable the business owner to work on the business as opposed to in the business. She describes the culture of the practice and the process of training additional administrative support.
Learn more about Brianna here: https://www.compassionatecounselingcompany.com/brianna-pelletier/
Sabrina Trobak is a counselor who works with clients to get to the bottom of their core beliefs to help them challenge and manage their anxiety. As a child, Sabrina always wanted to be a teacher, and ending up doing this for 20 years. When she was suddenly put into an administrative position, she had to attend graduate school to continue in that role. While she had no interest in administrative work, she did have an interest in helping people, so she got her master’s degree in counseling psychology.
After working as a school counselor for a year, she attended a three day workshop focusing on suicide. The modality that was used in the workshop was about people’s core beliefs. This inspired her to learn more about this modality and take it on herself. The model of therapy she learned focused on people’s core beliefs that contribute to anxiety which is common in people who have also experienced trauma. For many people, this core belief is “not good enough, not important, not valued”. Sabrina believed in this modality so much that she took a huge leap of faith and left her job to pursue private practice. This decision paid off and within six months she had a wait list which has continued today.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about this modality, how she developed her book, and how she works with clients to challenge their core beliefs and replace them with more positive ones.
Key highlights:
Challenging core beliefs is important because they are the source of anxiety for many people. “I can take 4 or 5 sessions and teach you how to manage your anxiety but then you have to manage your anxiety for the rest of your life”
She explains that as we go through life we “fill our buckets” with thoughts and beliefs that contribute to the core belief we have. In her work she helps people go through their buckets and pull out those things and examine this. This also helps people to continue doing this through their lives and not just in therapy
Many people can only recognize that they’re anxious when their anxiety has reached a high level. This means that they’re not doing anything about managing anxiety before it gets to that point. But at a high level, anxiety has cortisol flooding the brain, making it that much more difficult to calm down in the moment.
Anxiety often stems from a belief that we cannot handle something. “Anxiety and confidence are almost like on a teeter totter with each other” so as confidence increases, anxiety decreases and vice versa.
“We are not good at feeling our emotions. We just push them down and suppress them. That means we’re getting fuller and fuller with emotions and that makes it harder and harder to just cope with daily life.” This helps to reinforce that core belief of ‘not good enough’.
Marketing her book has been one of the biggest learning curves for her on her Climb. Farmers markets and free workshops are how she’s primarily promoted her book. She also started attending health and wellness expos and appearing on podcasts to help promote it. Something else she has done is to focus on growing her social media.
Sabrina’s links:
Website
Meet Jenny Cheifetz, a life and breathwork coach at Jentle Coaching who went from running a food truck to finding herself in a dark mental space during the pandemic. Finding that with nothing to keep her as busy, she was forced to deal with her internal demons led to her being deeply unhappy. She found spiritual life coaching through Kismet and the positive impact on her inspired her to do the same thing. Not only did she become a certified life coach, but she also became certified in breathwork!
For Jenny, there have been many benefits in her life to breathwork. She found that she has experienced improved sleep, a calmer system, more clarity, creativity, and an easier time working. It has helped her in her relationship with her son (helps her respond to him better and more effectively calm down in times of stress) and with better mood shifting as a result of breathwork she has also found she has been better able to manifest good fortune in her life.
She also describes how her podcast Sideline Sisters went from sports to talking to real women about relatable topics, life lessons, and overcoming challenges.
Key takeaways:
Self-care is a priority, not a luxury, and is not something you buy on a shelf. Breathwork is a form of self-care and everyone can do it.
Her ideal client? The person she was at the beginning of the pandemic: someone who kept busy and went through the motions of life but was generally miserable overall. She had a problem admitting to herself, as many people do, that her life was not emotionally/spiritually fulfilling
She would tell herself “Shut up, Jenny, you don’t have anything to complain about”. Through getting coaching herself, and then getting certified in life coaching, she realized she was allowed to feel sadness and despair despite seemingly having everything.
Breathwork involves purpose and a plan to bring something in your self, like peace, and breathing in a certain way for however long you can put aside for the moment. “You’ve given a gift to your body that you otherwise didn’t because you were operating in this stress response.”
Jenny’s links:
Website
Meet Dedee Cai, an entrepreneur who has found success in coaching and business development. She did all of the things expected of a first-generation immigrant: do well in school and get a great job, but it didn’t make her happy. Running a restaurant with her mother helped her find community, but it was also burning her out. Her wake up call came when she was on vacation in Venice and found herself more focused on her phone because she was so used to having “to put fires out” than she was on relaxing and enjoying her vacation!
She stepped away from the restaurant and became a certified holistic health coach, something that came from her original desire to become a therapist and help people. She found clients were coming to her for help with business and this is how she became a business coach. She found success in this industry by finding her self-worth and helping other women do the same and it inspired her to start Fit to Profit.
She is planning to relaunch her podcast, The Fear Factor, next year. She is also launching a program called Mindset Mastery that is aimed at helping women have the confidence and self-worth to charge what they are worth in their business. She’s also written a book, The Overcomer: How to Conquer Your Fear to Achieve Your Goals, about using fear as a catalyst for success.
Key takeaways:
“You have to be holistically fit in all ways in order to be profitable.” She works with clients to teach women to build their self-worth and confidence by working on themselves physically, mentally, and spiritually.
How Dedee zeroes in on her clients’ thoughts that build their realities and how she helps them change them.
Don’t let people convince you to undercharge. You have value to provide to people and you should charge your worth!
Fear, self-doubt, and overwhelm are common barriers to success. “Overwhelm happens when you’re trying to fix everything about yourself” and that’s why it’s important to do it one step at a time.
“Every single person, we all have a story to tell.”
Dedee’s links:
Website
Instagram
Meet Laura Rippeon, a licensed clinical social worker and self-identified introvert who also runs a coaching business, Aspire Coaching and Consulting. After graduating with her master’s degree, she worked in community mental health, for non-profit organizations, and even worked with insurance companies for a time. Eventually, she found herself in a group private practice where she was able to observe and learn about running a private practice.
In 2019, Laura moved from Maryland to North Carolina and decided to open her own private practice. After some time, she realized that she didn’t love doing clinical work as much as she loved being a business owner and consulting other business owners. While she loves her clients, being a full-time clinician wasn’t making her happy and she found joy and fulfillment in business coaching other introverted women.
By using self-reflection on what she had once needed when starting a business and realizing that a lot of business advice is aimed at extraverts, Laura was able to focus her business on the types of clients and coaching she wanted to work with. Through SEO work on her website and blogging, she was able to drive referrals to her site entirely through Google. No social media required! Laura found that marketing is not a one size fits all solution and that there is a place for introverts in the business ownership and marketing world.
Key takeaways:
-with regard to marketing you don't have to do everything, but you have to do something
-batch content and seize moments when you feel inspired
-find business besties that support and encourage you
Laura's Links:
Linktree
Julia's Links:
Enneagram Training
Schedule Consult
As we continue this series of consulting episodes with practice owners considering expanding to group, we are joined by Irene Faioes, a therapist in Rhode Island who owns All Family Wellness. She asks how to determine whether to hire contractors or employees, how to ensure clinicians are fulfilling the expectation, and how to achieve her income goals.
Learn more about Irene:
https://allfamilywelllnesscounseling.clientsecure.me/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/irene-faioes-lmhc-woonsocket-ri/84020
Meet Amy Sanders, a serial entrepreneur who currently owns 5 businesses, one of which is a coaching business where she helps women inspire, transform, and thrive. She self-identifies as a recovering people-pleaser who married a man after 3 weeks because she did not want him to feel bad. She shares her process for helping women thrive and the factors that contribute to her own ability to thrive.
Key Takeaways:
-we betray ourselves when we do not turn into what we truly want
-God loves us and would not want us to be treated badly
-No matter who you are or where you come from, you can choose where you want to be
-We all have unique gifts to offer the world
-Pour into you first
-Put everything in the calendar including the time you want for yourself and your family
https://amysanders.co/clientsonrepeat/course-sales-page
https://amysanders.co/thrivers-club
https://www.instagram.com/coachamysanders/
The podcast currently has 83 episodes available.