Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses

1. Welcome to TCCBB! My Story

October 19, 2022 Kate Season 1 Episode 1
Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses
1. Welcome to TCCBB! My Story
Show Notes Transcript

What happens when you decide to quit your career and try something new?  Usually, a few strategies pan out, while most don’t. But what do you do when suddenly everything you throw at the wall starts to stick? I'm Kate Walker and I'm a counselor educator, author, marriage counselor, blogger, musician, wife, adult-kid-mom, and founder of achievebalance.org and Kate Walker Training.  I created the 2K member (and counting) Facebook Group Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses, a successful private practice in The Woodlands, Texas, and my courses train more clinical supervisors than any other CE provider in Texas. But...it didn't start out that way. Hop on to my inaugural podcast number 1 and learn how anyone, no matter where you are in your journey, if you have a passion to help can learn the steps to make it happen. Your communities need you. 

Show notes and more at katewalkertraining.com

Get your step by step guide to private practice. Because you are too important to lose to not knowing the rules, going broke, burning out, and giving up. #counselorsdontquit.

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Kate Walker: This is Dr. Kate Walker reminding you that I am not that kind of doctor – not only that, I’m not a CPA and I’m not an attorney. Laws change all of the time, so Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses should never be construed as legal advice. Always check with your trusted professionals. Now, let’s get to work.

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Speaker: Welcome to Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses, where it’s all about working smarter, not harder. And here’s your host, Dr. Kate Walker, who actually enjoys Brussel sprouts.

Kate Walker: Hey, it’s Dr. Kate Walker and today I’m going to tell you how I got started in this field. What field, you ask? Is it counseling? Is it providing CEs? Who knows? What day is it? So, listen up, and I’ll share a little bit and hopefully it will get you inspired to do the same. Now, let’s get to work.

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Welcome to Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses. I started counseling because of a flyer in the teachers’ lounge where I was working. They were offering master’s degrees in school counseling, and I thought, well, that sounds kind of cool. I’m an orchestra teacher and I’ve thought about becoming a counselor, and I’ve never really thought about doing it – it would mean taking time off from work and all of this stuff. And then I noticed it was all night classes and I was like, oh, that sounds amazing. 

Not that I didn’t love orchestra – I loved orchestra, I loved teaching orchestra, I loved the kids. I think I was getting a little bored. I graduated from the University of Texas with my bass degree/music education – it’s actually a BM, I have a Bachelor of Music – in 1989. And I started teaching little kids, just general music in elementary schools, and then I moved on and became an orchestra teacher up in – it’s called HEB, so for those of you from the Dallas/Fort Worth area, you know that doesn’t mean the grocery story, that means Hurst, Euless, Bedford. So I taught in a little elementary school in Bedford, Texas, called Stonegate Elementary. 

And then I got a job at a music store where I met a guy who connected me with the orchestra teacher in the Richardson School District. So I taught at Westwood Junior High, that was my very, very first orchestra teacher job. I taught there, got to teach junior high and high school orchestra. That was a blast, loved that. Moved back to Austin and got a job at Keeling Junior High on the east side and it was amazing. I loved it. It was a magnet school. So I had these players, they were killer players. I mean, they were playing stuff that I could barely hold on and teach them. It was a wonderful, wonderful school, a great experience.

Then, moved back – or I should say, I didn’t move back, I moved to Woodland, Texas. I had never lived there before. My parents lived there, and I had a kiddo by then. My first marriage had ended. I moved back – sorry, there I said it again. I’m not going to edit that out, I don’t know why I’m saying that. I moved to Woodland, Texas, with my kiddo, and started teaching junior high and high school again. I was at York Junior High and Oakridge High School. 

I had met my husband, David, and we got married, had a couple more kids, and about the time my second kiddo was born, I decided, okay, you know what? I’m going to make this counseling dream happen. I had gotten some amazing counseling after my first marriage ended and like most of us, we get into the field because we have a story like that, where we received amazing counseling and we’re like, okay, I think I can do this. I think I love this. And sure enough, I finished my master’s degree in 2000 and right about the time I was thinking about – gosh, this is really taking me back here. So I finished my master’s in 2000 and let’s see, my youngest was born in ’02, started the PhD program in ’04. 

So, funny story how that started. I was picking up my 12 hours because when I finished my master’s degree in 2000, it was a 36-hour program, so I didn’t have enough hours to actually go do anything. So I was picking up my hours in ethics and practicum and internship and Dr. Brim came and sat down in one of our classes and said, “Hey guys, we are starting a doctoral program and we are going to give away scholarships and you’re going to get a trip to Mexico,” and I was like, sold! Maybe it was because I had three little kids under the age of 10, who knows, but I wanted to go get my PhD and get that started. I just loved the idea of having a doctorate. 

Honestly, I had no real plans at that point about what I wanted to be when I grew up. I knew I wanted private practice, but that was about it. I still had one foot in the orchestra world, I wasn’t willing to give up that great steady job. So ’04-’05, I thought okay, I’m going to pick up one foot, I’m going to put it firmly into the counseling field and start the PhD program, and that’s kind of when all hell broke loose because when I started the PhD program, I had a little office in Conroe, Texas where I had my little All About the Family private practice. Then, my husband got called up to go get mobilized with the army and we didn’t know where he was going. So that was crazy. 

Oh wait – let me take that back. No, that was when 9/11 happened. In ’04, he got mobilized to Iraq. So I had now the little one, I had the middle one, and then I had my older one. My husband as like, “Ah, see ya, I’ve gotta go over here for who knows how long.” And then I got breast cancer. That super sucked because I didn’t know how I wanted to get it treated. Did I want to do the chemo and all that stuff, or did I just want to get those boobs chopped off and call it a day? And I had three kids at that point. I was in a doctoral program. I wanted to start a private practice. Call me crazy, but I just decided to opt for the double mastectomy. 

So the double mastectomy happened and then the reconstruction started failing. Who ever heard of that? Well, the reconstruction, they do the expander, they put in the thing, and the thing would basically fall out. They’d do the expander, they’d put in the thing, and again – for those of you who are listening and you’re wondering what the thing is, it’s a silicone implant. It’s kind of like a beanbag, but a jellybean beanbag. So whenever they would put the expanders in, they would expand the breast tissue, they would put in the silicone thing, and because my tumor was so close the skin when I was getting my surgeries, there just wasn’t enough muscle and skin to really do the job and hold the implant in. So I had to do more of a major surgery where they took stuff off my back – when I say stuff, I mean meat, meat off my back, and put it on the front. So when you see me walking towards you, you’re actually looking at my back. I’m walking towards you back first; you just don’t know it.

So I had a successful reconstruction, but it took my back and my front. And I remember I wasn’t even able to hold my little two-year old for about a year. I was that person who was able to pick up my kiddo with her feet. So the doctoral program, Sam Houston State University, they were amazing, and they gave me so much grace. I was able to finish my doctorate in three years, yay, and then start in the field.

So I think now, what does that origin story have to do with who I am now and how I practice? And I think like a lot of us who coach folks in private practice, we hate seeing people make the same mistakes that we made. Now, I want to take it one step further because I know the limitations that were – and still are – placed on counselors in getting paneled by insurance. Medicaid, Medicare, who can paneled? LPC-Associates cannot get paneled, but LPCs can. Psychology associates can. There are these territorial issues related to getting paneled and payment that are affecting Texans in these deserts where there is not access to mental health care. And I can remember thinking, this isn’t right.

So while I was changing from an orchestra teacher into a counselor, I was also becoming an advocate for that mom who was me. That mom who’s me, she’s there in the middle of the night, she has no resources. I don’t know if you’re aware, but when you are a reservist spouse, you don’t have this nice warm and fuzzy FRG or base that you can run to. You’re kind of out in the middle of nowhere. You don’t know how to access resources.

So when I think about that mom in west Texas who is struggling with a kiddo or a situation that’s way over her head, I think okay, that’s why we need more professionals in the field, so they have to be well-trained. They have to be supervisors because they have to pay it forward. But – and, I always say but, but I mean and, I decided that mental health professionals are too important to lose to not knowing how to do business, or not knowing the rules, or not knowing what to do with their money or how to start a retirement account. So they’re going broke, they’re burning out, they’re giving up because they can’t go to doctors’ appointments, they can’t go to the dentist, they can’t get their car fixed. 

It’s just not a sustainable profession in so many ways. We already know the average lifespan for a corporation has dropped from 60 years to 20 years – and these are very general, broad numbers. But then you take folks who are just small business owners, counselors, and they’re trying to make their practice operate and work and run and feed their family and sustain their community and they don’t have the tools to do that.

So, insert Kate Walker training. I develop courses that give counselors the resources to stay in business. Period. I make them excellent courses. I build them for excellent people in the hopes that they go serve their excellent communities. Now, I do other things, too. Yes, I do some teaching at universities. Yes, I still play music, I love playing music. I still do the occasional sit-in with a band here and there and it’s a blast. I love to hike. I love having adult kids who can host me for Thanksgiving. I love hanging out in this little town that my husband and I live in, and we have these wonderful hobbies that we do. We’re UT volleyball fanatics. We have season tickets to UT volleyball, and you will see us there on the floor behind the opposing team almost at every home game. Actually, we don’t ever show up on TV because it’s the opposing team’s bench, but sometimes you may see us over there.

I am driven to provide counselors with excellent resources so they can stay in business and continue to serve their communities. How that started from a little kid born in Texas who then got moved to Indiana and then got moved to Michigan, so I’m this Texas Midwesterner and my kids can’t even tell the difference in the accent when I take them to Michigan. They’re like, “Mom, they sound just like you.” And I’m like, what? I thought I lost my midwestern accent. But I can hear it right now and I know when I go back to edit this podcast, I’m going to hear it again.

So that’s my story, I’m sticking to it. I want to invite you all along for the ride as I produce Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses Podcast, designed for one thing and that is to keep you in business, mental health counselor. And you know what? If you’re not from Texas, you’re welcome. You’re welcome to be here. We want you here. Texas, we are a very welcoming state – yes, I am speaking for all Texans now. But we also say what starts here changes the world, and I’ve known that since I was a little kid. 

I know that legislation here can affect everything because we are so massive, not only in size but in – I’m sorry, in square feet, geography – but also in population. So when we pass laws here, when we set precedent here, it does affect the entire nation, it affects the world. So I’m very, very mindful that the groups that I form, the groups that I participate in, we stay positive, we stay encouraging, and we stay solution focused. No problem talk around here. We’re going to state the problem only because we’re about to follow it up with three or four solutions and then we’re going to take off and we’re going to get the problem solved. 

So that’s our mission, that’s my mission with Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses, and no matter where you are in your journey, my job is to get you from graduate to supervisor and beyond because you’re too important to lose to going broke, giving up, not knowing the rules, burning out, quitting, #CounselorsDon’tQuit. That’s you. You don’t quit. Your communities need you. 

I’m Dr. Kate Walker, thanks for listening, and I’ll see you on some more podcasts.


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I’m Dr. Kate Walker and this episode is brought to you by the 40-hour training to become a supervisor in Texas – not just any training, but the Kate Walker 40-hour LPC LMFT Supervision Training, completely online. It’s the only all-in-one 40-hour LPC LMFT Supervisor Training Course and Community designed to grow your skillset and give you more research-based resources all in less than 30 minutes a day. No bots, no BS, just a great course to get you up to supervisor. The Kate Walker Training 40-hour LPC LMFT Training Course – check it out!

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