Badass Therapists Building Practices That Thrive
Welcome to Badass Therapists Building Practices That Thrive, the ultimate resource for mental health professionals ready to step into their power, grow their practices, and create a career they love. I'm Dr. Kate Walker, a Texas LPC/LMFT Supervisor, author, and business strategist who's here to show you the path to success.
Formerly Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses, we’ve rebranded because, well, we’re way too big for Texas now! This community of badass therapists is growing nationwide, and we’re here to help you create a career and practice you love, no matter where you are.
Every week, you'll get practical advice, proven strategies, and motivation to help you build a thriving practice—one that gives you the freedom to live your life on your terms. From mastering marketing to designing scalable systems and becoming a clinical supervisor, this podcast is your roadmap to leveling up without burnout.
Hit subscribe and get ready to unlock your badass potential. Your thriving practice starts now!
Badass Therapists Building Practices That Thrive
137 Behind the Mic: Raw Truths of Therapy Podcasting with the Hosts of Therapy Tea Podcast
Ever wondered what really goes on behind the scenes when therapists become podcasters? This candid conversation with the hosts of Therapy Tea podcast pulls back the curtain on the triumphs, challenges, and ethical considerations of creating mental health content in today's digital landscape.
Friendship, frustration, and a shared vision sparked the creation of Therapy Tea, as the hosts sought to address the real-world experiences that graduate school never prepared them for. From establishing ethical guidelines to wrestling with technical nightmares, they share their unfiltered journey through the good, bad, and ugly aspects of podcasting while maintaining their professional integrity.
The good? Creative fulfillment, meaningful connections, and the satisfaction of helping fellow clinicians feel less alone in their struggles. The bad? A staggering time commitment—approximately 4-5 hours per episode beyond recording—that requires careful balance with clinical practice and personal life. The ugly? Financial investment without immediate return, the uncomfortable necessity of self-promotion, and the constant tension between mission and monetization.
For mental health professionals considering content creation, this episode offers invaluable insights into setting realistic expectations, establishing ethical boundaries, and navigating the technical and personal challenges that come with putting your professional voice into the world. Whether you're an established practitioner looking to expand your impact or a student wondering about alternative career paths, you'll find honest guidance about what it truly means to share your therapeutic wisdom beyond the consulting room.
Ready to learn more about podcasting as a mental health professional? Contact the Therapy Tea hosts directly at TherapyTPod@gmail.com, or tune into their upcoming anniversary episode for even deeper insights into their podcasting journey.
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.
And the truth is it's really hard for social media for this thing to come up with posts and self-promote and, you know, do stuff that like talks about how awesome we are and that's not really who we are in general, and so you know that part has been really hard. How to balance that.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Badass Therapists, building practices that thrive, where it's all about working smarter, not harder. Now here's your host, dr Kate Walker who loves a good fireplace.
Speaker 3:What's really happening behind the scenes in the therapy world? Today, I'm joined by the hosts of the Therapy Tea podcast for a raw and insightful conversation about what it means to show up as a mental health professional in today's climate, whether you're a grad student, new practitioner or seasoned clinician. This episode is the tea you didn't know you needed. Now let's get to work. Hey, I'm Dr Kate Walker, welcome.
Speaker 3:I'm super excited about this one because these folks are legit podcasters, like they're the real deal, and so the fact that I talked them into even putting an ethics component in here like okay, we're going to make this a CE, they're going to. So they came up with the title the good, the bad and the ugly and I love that because this will be turned into a podcast and I'm curious like I'm here as a fangirl because I want to find out everything they do, and they had me as a guest on last week and it was super fun and you guys, you just made me feel so comfortable. So I definitely want to know how you guys make this work and I sent you some questions from our Texas counselors creating badass businesses Facebook page. But other than that, jasmine, I'm going to turn it over to you. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:I'm not used to being by myself. I just called her. I don't know where she is. We just talked on the phone. We'll get started. So the way we're going to kind of do this is, karen and I have created sort of like an outline, as proven in my other CE experiences where I'm teaching a CE or I'm presenting a CE. I'm not very good at it, so we'll watch it for you, cool. I'm not very good at it, so we'll watch it for you. Cool, cool, cool. Hey, yeah, I'm Jasmine and Karen and we host Therapy Tea.
Speaker 2:We started our podcast about a year ago. Our first episode in April is going to be our one year anniversary episode, so definitely make sure to check that out. I do want to also note we have an hour today, so that means that we're probably not going to get through everything, although if Karen doesn't show up, maybe we will. If you are interested in learning more, we're going to do more of a deep dive on our anniversary episode, like I said. So just follow us on pretty much any platform that you're listening on, like I think we're on Pandora, we're definitely on Spotify, itunes, we're on all the things. So definitely follow us and you can see our anniversary episode, where we'll talk more in detail about what's going on. I want to start just with our origin story. There she is. Yay, karen's here, oh my God.
Speaker 1:I know I figured it out now. Was I using the wrong link?
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:This is Karen. We're so professional. Okay. So, Karen, I was talking. I've already told them about our anniversary episode and why they should follow us to listen to more, but I was starting with our origin story because it's important to know your roots and why we started this in the first place. That's right.
Speaker 1:You know, one of the things that I want to start with on our origin story is we met in grad school and we did not plan on this podcast from the very beginning. That was like it evolved, for sure, and we actually share a lot about just our friendship in general and a little bit of our podcast origin story with another therapist. Her name is Candice Frazier and she does a podcast as well, called the Couch Next Door, and we love her and her podcast. She came on our podcast as a guest and we did an episode with her about our friendship and it's I think it's dropping tomorrow. So if y'all want to know more about that, like definitely tune into that. But I think we really just like I think we were just ranting one day, drinking wine as you do and ranting about some of the things that frustrate us as professionals, as counselors, and we both are avid podcast listeners and it really started from there, just like well, what if we had a podcast? What if we talked about some of this and just turned on a mic?
Speaker 2:Right. Like I mean, how many people in grad school were like Googling what should I do? Or like podcast for counselors and then getting just a bunch of, like you know, really curated podcasts that talk a lot more about like educational stuff and not really like the nitty gritty of like okay, but like what is it actually like to be a counselor? Like what is it actually like to get into this profession? Like how much am I expected to make? What can I even do with this? Like how do I start a private practice?
Speaker 2:I mean, you can pay for a bunch of stuff and see a bunch of stuff that is going to tell you the how to's, I guess, but not so much like the real life stuff. You know the real struggles. Like we all heard about boundaries in grad school, but I don't know about you. I didn't know what that meant until I actually became a counselor and then I was like, oh, I need boundaries. Like I need them. Oh, I need self-care. That's not just like some stupid thing that we talked about every single class. Like we didn't know all of that stuff and until it was too late and we were already counselors.
Speaker 1:And Jasmine, you and I were like sharing those things with each other just again as conversations and realizing that maybe it would be useful for and here's what we're coming up with as we go. So we we did spend a lot of time having conversations about okay, who is this for? What are we doing, what's our focus, what's our intention?
Speaker 2:It means that Karen said Jasmine, we have to have a focus conversation and we have to like, do our ideal listener and do all these weird little exercises. Because I was just like a lot of people. I'm like let's just do a podcast, I don't know, let's turn on a microphone, let's just do it. No, no, that stuff's actually very important and actually very, very helpful, like the ideal listener. We came up with a name for her, we came up with her age, like all that stuff, and honestly, I still go back and look at it to this day. So that's something that I would just absolutely recommend, even though it's kind of a pain in the ass.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it sort of seems like maybe gratuitous, but I thought it was absolutely necessary for us to figure out what our focus was going to be. And so we started by like just scheduling times to talk to each other regularly about this podcast idea not just about, like, life and our friendship and blah, blah, blah. But what is this podcast? What are we doing? And we set up a shared Google Drive. That was kind of where we started, like, okay, that way we can both see the stuff that we're typing on. Because we don't live in the same area and we weren't able to get together in person as often. We started out just like mining our list in our brains of like okay, if we want to do this, we're going to talk to other mental health professionals. Who do we know? Who are we friends with? Let's start with a friends list for people that we can talk to, and that was also in my mind. That was like kind of us testing our idea. Do we even know enough people that we could even start this? Or are we ridiculous Because we actually don't know anybody that would say yes to coming on this podcast. So is this idea even worth exploring any more if we can't come up with enough people or enough content to even start, and so that, to me, was like really important, and talking through this ideal listener persona was so important, I think, for both of us, not just as an exercise, but to make sure that the two of us are on the same page, because we're doing a podcast together. It's not just one person deciding everything. We're doing this together, and so we wanted to really make sure we're on the same page. We know what our focus is and we can, like you said, jasmine, always go back to that to like make sure that we're still going that direction. And then we came up with questions like, okay, what would we talk about with our guests? Like, what would we say? What would we ask?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think we are not professional interviewers, as it turns out, and another thing that we learned pretty early on is like natural counseling ability translates well into podcasting. However, if you're doing an interview style, I would also recommend maybe just listening to like investigative reporting interviewer podcasts, like those story series where they investigate something. I remember listening to those and then like writing down, maybe not questions, but kind of like where the conversation went, just like brainstorming and really mindfully paying attention. Because I didn't get my degree in journalism, because I didn't get my degree in journalism.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't piggyback off of that, jasmine, because we did try to listen to a bunch of different kinds of podcasts that were interview style. I listened to like celebrity interview ones too, because we both knew we wanted this podcast to have a certain vibe and that not be overly investigative or serious and instead be more casual and relatable, and so that was another thing I was like looking at. Like how does more than one person interview one person, cause it's not again just one of us interviewing one person, it's both of us. How do we make sure that we have a dynamic? How does that even look when two or three people are interviewing one person? How does that flow? And so, like we did spend a lot of time doing all of that before we even turned on a mic, yeah, so, speaking of, turned on a mic, we had to, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:So how did you guys cause? Your Google form was amazing. Right, as one of your guests, there was a Google form and had me fill out a lot of things ahead of time. So I was prepped, you were prepped, and did you guys come up with those questions when you were doing the ideal client or the ideal exercise? Yes, that's exactly where we came. What you wanted to get out of people Correct?
Speaker 1:Yes, related to the counseling field yes, and we also spent a lot of time figuring out, like kind of what order we wanted those questions to be in, because we talked a lot about like how did we want the conversation to flow and how much direction did we want to have as the interviewers, and how much openness did we want there to be when it came to just like letting the conversation go where it's going to go. Sometimes, like sometimes that happens and we want that to happen and we knew that intentionally. So we have some big general questions that we ask everybody, and then there's other things that maybe we don't even ask at the end of the day because we just don't get to it. And it's okay, cause it was still a good conversation.
Speaker 2:There is one question that we sort of centered the podcast around, just based on, again, the interaction. The initial idea of this podcast is what do you wish you had known? So, while, yes, we sometimes go off the rails and we'll talk about predatory practices and that's the one I edited today, so look out for that one Predatory private practices and insurance and stuff. We wanted to talk about all of those things and be open to that. But we also wanted to stay to a central theme which I think is flexible enough to cover all of the information that we want to but keeps everybody on track. So I think it was really critical for us to figure out OK, what is the central, like very centering theme of the podcast what do you wish you had known? So we do not get through an interview without asking that question, even if it's in the last five minutes, we do not get through an interview.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we decided that that was like our central theme. I love that you said that. Jasmine, as our resident tech expert, tell us a little bit about how we figured out what to do with iThinkTech, jasmine is so much better at it than we do, and that's really saying something about Karen, okay.
Speaker 2:So that was probably like the biggest headache starting out, because it's like, okay, everybody loves podcasts, but what do we even do as far as like, how does that work? Like, what do we even do? As far as like, how does that work? Like, how do you create this and then put it on platforms? Like we had no idea?
Speaker 2:So we again started Googling and we found a few different things, like there's Zencaster and a lot of different people have a lot of different opinions about it, just depending on what kind of content you want to put out there. We ended up landing on Alitu, because it was sort of an all encompassing thing. Karen had heard about it on another podcast they were doing like a link to it or something and she ended up looking it up. I looked into it. So that is our, that's our platform that we use, and I like it because it kind of does all the work for us and we don't have to figure that out Like we just have the. I mean, karen builds the episodes and I essentially just do a lot of the editing and we record within it. Yes, and we record within it as well. So we do. It's a one stop shop.
Speaker 2:And if you don't know a lot about computers, if you don't know a lot about recording software, audio video, like sharing, content sharing if you don't know a lot about that, find an all in one. Or if you just don't have that kind of time. Because if you're going to sit here and tell me that audacity is the best, but, like you, only have 30 minutes extra a week to be editing from a local like program, like that, it's not going to work because the learning curve with some of these programs is incredibly steep. So you want to find something and you're not. This is don't quit your day job.
Speaker 2:You know, like you're, we'll get to that in a second, but don't quit your day job. You're going to have to continue to see clients, like you're going to have to. This is going to have to be a hobby for more in a second, but don't quit your day job. You're going to have to continue to see clients, like you're going to have to. This is going to have to be a hobby for more than a minute, a few minutes actually. So find something easy just to get you started. I mean, we reevaluate all the time, but Allitude just kind of always comes on top, mainly because of the convenience of it. We edit on there we everything, literally everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we record in it, we edit in it, we build in it and we distribute through it. It has the links to where it distributes into all the platforms for you Not all of them, not all the like the little tiny various podcast platforms, but the main ones like Spotify, right. And so the other thing I want to say about kind of Alitu was it also offered like some discounts and like free trials and stuff like that, and so it gave us the opportunity to like mess around with it. Oh, and there's music within it too. So, like our music just comes from Alitu. It's free.
Speaker 1:We didn't pay anybody for that and we wanted to just sort of get started and we found that Alitu enabled us to like get started with like low information, if that makes sense, right. Us to like get started with like low information, if that makes sense, right. We didn't have to like figure a whole lot out to just like get something out there, and it makes it pretty easy to use their help pages like really great. And we have recently signed on to be affiliates with them because we've decided we can endorse them, and so you can use our code T E A five zero at Alitucacom for 50% off your first month, so in addition to like some opportunities to like try it.
Speaker 1:They're really low cost as well. And then they also offer like. If you like it, after the first month and you want to sign up for like an annual, there's a discount to it. So they've been really fair and they're always upgrading their features. I recently got an email that says they're going to start allowing for like video recording, so that may be something that we can upgrade into for our podcast. So what I like about it is they're always upgrading their features. Their help is really useful. Like. It's just a product that we sort of tried in the very beginning and we've since come to really appreciate. It does take a lot of the guesswork out of a lot of things that we're just we're not tech people in many ways, you know, and we don't want to spend all our time figuring it out.
Speaker 3:So now I'm going to throw a question at you. Yeah, yeah, I want folks to get the ethics from this, right, Because you know you're out there, right, and I. One of the things I wrote down is like why podcast, right? So if your client finds you, if potential clients find you, then what? We just had a case come before the board about this guy doing TikToks and he went over the line no boundaries, right, so all of these things. So I want to drop that there, just so that I want you guys to stay with what you're going to talk about. But I also want to hear more about okay, how do you decide on how much to say, what to edit when people reach out? Would people reach out? Can they reach out? All the things?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, sure, and you know what's so funny. We did a couple of episodes specifically on that in the very, very beginning, because Karen made us do yeah. Karen's one of the most fun people I've ever met in that she made one of our first episodes be an ethics episode, where we talk You'll hear Jasmine really not be quite on board with it at the very beginning.
Speaker 2:but she came around. It was pretty cool. Yes, so we actually talk if you are interested in that. We have a couple of episodes specifically about that. We do a deep dive. We actually go into the ACA code of ethics. Little ethics police here goes into the ACA Code of Ethics and, like she has highlighted, like every single one that pertains to the podcast that potentially pertains of it, I would say, theme is incredibly important. When you think about ethics of whatever kind of content you want to put out there, whether it be a podcast or an Instagram account or a TikTok, whatever Be careful of sticking to your central theme.
Speaker 2:We're really careful not necessarily to give advice. We focus primarily on personal experience and I think that comes across really clearly. Like, for instance, we did an episode with Sina Moran. Sina Moran is a counselor, actually out in Florida. She has BetterHelp experience. She worked for BetterHelp for a couple of years, I think, and so I remember being really nervous about that episode specifically because I was like, oh my God, betterhelp is gonna like come and get us. They're gonna sue us right, because we're gonna put out this thing. That's obviously not gonna be painting them in a very nice light, but we looked, yeah, like, if you're curious about it, check your ethics consult, do all the things that you learned in grad school. But we looked like, if you're curious about it, check your ethics consult, do all the things that you learned in grad school. But we ended up doing the episode and I think we focused only on her experience and I think that's really like global.
Speaker 1:Yeah, about it yeah.
Speaker 2:Being very specific and sticking to your content, like stick to the script, in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1:Another thing that we, when we were doing the ethics of a podcast episode initially, we talked about like first we need to talk through the ethics. Like that I felt like was a crucial part of our development process. Like we actually recorded that very early on. We recorded that before we even did an interview. We just started published it later. But it was essentially Jasmine and I going through an ethical decision-making model step by step, and we just earned the mic on and then talk through the ethical decision-making model. We even talked about different ethical decision-making models and like how we wanted to walk through this. We pulled out the CA code of ethics, we pulled out some of the laws and we just talked through them and explored like the questions that we need to explore, which is like how would this impact our clients, how would this impact the profession, what is our mission and what is our intention right and how should we deal with certain issues? I mean, certain things were pretty obvious and that is, for example, like talking about clients. That's obviously not something that we do. We're really conscious of confidentiality and maintaining confidentiality. We don't ask our guests any questions about client specific stories. We again stay, like Jasmine was saying, really focused on their personal experience, like this is your story as a professional. It's not really about whatever client. And even when we're talking about our own experiences in some of our intros, where we're really diving into, like the moment to moment, things that we're learning, even if it was again maybe related to an experience in a session, we're protecting confidentiality at all times and being really deliberate and intentional about that, protecting aspects of our guests' confidentiality in the sense allowing for our guests to have out things right. Like sometimes we've had to throw things away or redo things entirely because we hold a certain ethical standard about we're not going to release this If you said like, hey, I don't want that out there or I don't want that to be talked about, we're going to delete it because that's our standard. And that's something that we talked through when we were working through the ethical decision-making model, before we made this decision. And then we also talked about like, how do we want to handle it? You know, do we tell our clients, do we not tell our clients? What's the line? Because are we advertising? Are we soliciting? Right, what is this? And we wrestled a lot with that and I think the thing that we came up with. You know and you can listen to kind of our episode about this to get to basically how we answered some of these questions. I think the point for you if you want to come up with a podcast is the point of our ethics. Our ethical code is that you wrestle with these questions, is that you ask yourself how might this impact a client if they heard it? How do I want that to be handled? You know what are my responsibilities.
Speaker 1:You know we sort of came down on the side that it's important to be transparent, but it's also important to not be soliciting and not be advertising, because our ideal listener is not clients. We're not talking to people about mental health issues the way that maybe somebody else who's doing a mental health podcast might be. I think in some cases there are mental health podcasts out there that are really about like hey, let's learn about mental health concepts and wellness and so on and so forth, and they're intending to talk to the general public. Our ideal listener is not necessarily the general public. Our ideal listener is other mental health professionals, is people who are considering becoming mental health professionals, and so we really try to stay connected to that by focusing on that audience piece. If that makes sense, yeah.
Speaker 2:So, and which is why we talk about our origin story and why it's so important to do that prep work prior, to always remember who you're talking to. Like always remember who your audience is. If you do want to start a mental health podcast, that is more you know, learning. Like you want to spread mental health information, like our friend Candice Frazier in the couch next door, she does that. She did a whole thing on, like the Enneagram and like all this other stuff like the central themes that she kept noticing in counseling. But, again, know who your audience is and stick to your motivation, like our motivation is to inform future and current counselors on the profession itself. Like, remember what your motivation is and if something feels weird, delete it, just delete it.
Speaker 1:Just cut it out, right, and we're like, right, we can really just cut this crap right out or not publish it too, like we then can also really reflect on was there anything that we need to be really thoughtful about not publishing or deleting or editing because it comes across a certain way or we're worried about how it comes across. So we just constantly go back to it, and I think that's the part of ethics, that is what we're encouraged to do professionally. It's just like constantly go back to it and constantly reflect, like not just like our podcast in general, but maybe each individual episode, each individual conversation, and as long as we're continuing that dialogue with each other and reflecting on that, then we're doing our ethical due diligence that, then, we're doing our ethical due diligence.
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Speaker 1:Okay, jasmine, you want to talk about the good, the good. Always Talk about the good, the bad and the ugly guys. We'll try to give you some little details.
Speaker 2:We're just going to, just gonna go. Yeah, we'll go through them pretty quickly because we're very verbose, which is why we have a podcast. Okay, so number one we get to hang out more, which is great for me because I am actually currently in wisconsin and my partner travels for work he's a travel nurse and I don't have to be as lonely because I get to hang out with Karen literally every week for multiple hours a week, so we get to be less lonely. It's had a really positive impact on our now long distance friendship and yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 1:So I want to note on this piece too like I think it's a decision that you want to think about when you're going to. If you're going to develop a podcast, like, are you going to do it by yourself? Are you going to do it with somebody else? The truth is that if you're going to do it with somebody else like you, you really need to like that person, because we're going to get to this, but you spend a lot of time together, and so if Jasmine and I didn't get along, like if we didn't have ways of navigating our friendship and working together because that's what this is then, like this would be miserable, you know, and so prepare yourself for that. Like, are you sure you want to see this person way more than you do already? Because, like our friendship used to be like, oh, we'd get together, we'd have wine, we'd hang out, but like now, we talk way more because we're doing this project together. And so if you're going to do this with someone else, then make sure you actually like that person.
Speaker 2:Yes, and also know that if you are going to do it by yourself, we'll kind of get into this in a second, but if you are going to do this by yourself, it is a time commitment. It's not that the time goes away, you're just doing more. So while I think there's drawbacks to having like two people doing one podcast, I think ultimately it is pretty beneficial and it also keeps us both ethically in check. Like, for instance, if somebody goes off the rails on a podcast or on one of our episodes, like you know, we can discuss it later. Like another thing, you need to have really good conflict resolution skills and know how to handle tough stuff because you aren't going to agree and in fact sometimes you won't agree on air.
Speaker 2:So you need to be able to know that. Okay, it is a super awesome creative outlet. It's just something different than individual client work, because that gets a little tedious. Sometimes I see about 25 to 28, I guess that's a big range Clients per week and I needed something different. So that has really scratched an itch for me and Karen I think as well, because all the different creative things we get to do art and design. We both kind of designed our logo, our Therapy T logo. That was really fun. And then we come up with posts and stuff like that. We're not super great at posting, but you know we're much better at writing. Karen does a lot of, so so much work and I'm so thankful for her for doing so many scripts and show notes and Alitu now has some functions for that as far as like transcripts are concerned. So that's really awesome Titling episodes.
Speaker 2:We have like full on conversation sometimes just about the titles, because we really enjoy coming up with cute, kitschy little titles. Ah, persona and acting. It's kind of like your counseling persona, but like you know, everybody knows what I mean Like there's your counseling persona and then there's like you counseling persona and then there's like you, not the counselor. Just you know. The same deal goes for podcasting. I am not this person. I'm a little bit this person, but not fully this person when I am off of the mic Not fully this person. Yes, yeah, so that's been pretty fun for me. Yes, yeah, so that's been pretty fun for me.
Speaker 1:I don't really care, I'm not, I'm not really, I'm not curious about it, like we. We did talk about how it was important for us and our podcast and the dynamic of our relationship to be authentic and, to be honest, truly I think we are authentic. I mean we're authentic and there are definitely real moments in our relationship where we argue or we disagree or we snippet each other. If you've heard some of our episodes, you can tell there are moments where we're like all right, that's enough, and we literally talk to each other that way. But at the same time, we're also trying to be productive in this conversation and a part of our dynamic is for the show, if that makes sense. So, yes, it's authentic, but there's also a quality of it that is for the show.
Speaker 1:So even if, like, we're sometimes recording episodes and we did not have a good day that day, I had a shitty day, I'm not in a good mood, or vice versa for Jasmine, and we still have to show up and be a certain way in this interview, being prepared for that is important and it's something that I've never been very good at. So it's something that's hard for me, but it is another outlet. Yeah, I think. So that kind of goes to your point, right?
Speaker 3:We've got a question what kind of a disclaimer do you put out there for counselors with podcasts that shares mental health information with prospective clients? What measures should be in place to make it clear the podcast is not counseling, and what measures should be in place if existing clients are listening to the podcast? Is there something placed in the counselor's informed consent?
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, when we talked about the ethics, we decided that we would use written disclaimers in our show notes. So every episode has a written disclaimer within the show notes of that episode. When we get our website off the ground, our website will include various written disclaimers. And then also, we talked about adding to our informed consent with clients. So we talked about how we'd word that to make sure that it doesn't feel or look like advertising, but again like informed consent, and instead like hey, this is a thing that's out there.
Speaker 1:If that's something that you want to talk to me about, you're not the audience, I'm not talking about you, but if it's something you want to talk to me about, let's talk about it in session. So, yes, we do include that, and I think you would have to probably do even more of that. This is just feeling about it. If you are talking to clients in your episodes, like in your podcast, if it is kind of about mental health, in the sense that you're talking about what people should or shouldn't do, then I think it is really more important not just to have a disclaimer in writing, but maybe to have a disclaimer audio like embedded within the episode. We decided not to do that. But I've heard other therapy related podcasts where they have the disclaimer in the very beginning of the episode in the audio that says this is not therapy, because then they're saying like they're talking about therapy issue, therapeutic issues that maybe you would talk to your therapist about specifically. So hopefully that answers the question.
Speaker 2:And one thing that's really cool, especially in Alitu like if you have a one stop Alitu Zencaster I mean I think most of them do this Like when you build the episode, you don't have to, you can just record that on your own. Like you just record that and then that's good. Like that is good forever. You can just put that in the beginning, yeah, and you don't have to worry about that. So, as long as it's like in the beginning, if you do, if again, if you're feeling icky about it, just go ahead and do it. Like, just go ahead and do it. If you question it at all, just go ahead and do it, and it can be really simple and fast. So but you can just they make it really easy. You can just put it in the beginning and then you'll never have to worry about it again, as long as you're making sure it's in the order that it's supposed to be in, correct, okay, awesome.
Speaker 2:So, speaking of editing, I like editing and I have to. We have to do quite a bit of it. I don't know if this is good, but I've like listened differently now, I think, to podcasts. Like once you start podcasting, you can like hear things. But that's been really helpful because it helps us kind of build our thing that we send out to counselors like Kate, we told you it'd be awesome if you had a mic and headphones because that makes editing a lot easier. But that's something that's been really good for me editing and you'll spend quite a bit of time doing it, so it's not crazy, especially with an all in one. It's not crazy, but there is a learning curve, for sure, and again, you have to listen to things like ethical considerations throughout whatever you're talking about. Yeah, so it's a cool skill to learn. Cool skill to learn. I like it a lot.
Speaker 1:Another cool thing that we really like about doing this podcast is that we ultimately get to reap the same benefits as our listeners, in the sense that, like, we're also learning about the profession, we're also learning about the various options and paths into, you know, the field, and we also feel so much less alone than we did 18 months ago, you know, when it comes to, like, how we feel about our work and how we feel about what we do. We have had such great guests and great opportunities having conversations with other mental health professionals. That has really helped us realize, like, oh, we're not the only ones who worry about that or who feel that way or who have had those experiences, and that's something that we want for our listeners and it's something that we get just kind of by doing this, and so that's kind of cool. And we also have had a lot of like really cool or at least I have sort of really interesting self-reflection opportunities through the conversations that we're having with people, and so that's been really rewarding.
Speaker 1:So, I think, being able to really get the kinds of benefits that we're hoping that our listeners get we're getting them too and that's been really cool. And so also connecting that to like networking, like we're making so many cool new friends and like we genuinely like the people that we are interviewing and talking to and we genuinely feel like we could hang out with them, and so we've built a network through this podcast and that's been a really cool benefit. I think we both really were hoping, and are still hoping, that this will be a passive income revenue generator, but when we get to the bad and the ugly, we'll explain to you that it's not right now, but that's the potential and the hope for the future and we still like hold on to that deeply.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so setting some realistic expectations. If you hit it big, you hit it big. That's great, but everybody knows that the viral lottery is and whatever the algorithm is like, something could explain that to me. That'd be great, but it's very up in the air whether or not you're going to hit it big. We've had a lot of slow growth. Like Karen said, we spent about six months prior to even publishing the first episode just like planning and figuring out what we wanted to do, figuring out how fancy our microphones actually needed to be and how fancy our headphones actually needed to be.
Speaker 1:So that's time and the importance of headphones, because I think the first few episodes I was like I'm not doing headphones and then Jasmine was like I'm about to meet you, yeah.
Speaker 2:Fucking headphones. If you're going to do this, invest in a nice pair of headphones.
Speaker 3:I highly recommend.
Speaker 2:I also highly recommend investing in a very nice microphone. Yeti makes a Nano. That's actually really affordable and super approachable, but you could also go with like a more basic one, but don't just rely on your AirPods. Okay, so let's get to the bad really fast.
Speaker 2:No one likes to talk about this, but this has been incredibly time consuming. We've been planning for a year. We've been planning for six months and then published for a year or coming up on a year, like I said in April. So it has a pretty big time commitment. Karen and I meet. We're all about transparency, so I'll just let you know. Karen and I meet on Fridays. We have two slots for interviews. We schedule two hours per interview slot, so that means sometimes it's four to five hours on Fridays, just interviewing, just interviewing, and then we do editing whenever we can. Each interview is anywhere between an hour to an hour and a half, so editing you can expect at tack on Minimum. Well, unless you get really good, unless you have have allotoo. They've got some really nice filters now. So yeah, so it does cut down on the time.
Speaker 1:I would say at least 30 minutes extra talking about yeah, on top of however long, on top of the actual episode.
Speaker 2:So if your episode is an hour, you can expect minimum one hour and 30 minutes of editing. So I mean, that's already two and a half hours of your time.
Speaker 1:That doesn't include the recording that we do for intros.
Speaker 2:We also do intros that are about 20 minutes long, yeah, and we edit those.
Speaker 1:We spent time recording our intros and our outros, all of that we just like add in.
Speaker 1:I would say from like a build perspective, because I do Jasmine does maybe a lion's share of the nitty gritty, editing and I tend to do a lot more of the sort of show note writing, so the stuff that gets added in, where it's like listing the resources that everybody mentioned and building the actual episode out within the software. That probably takes me just if the episode is edited, the audio is edited and we're talking about about a 20 minute intro and an hour and a half interview, and I'm going in and I'm just like building it out, I'm writing the show notes, I'm adding all that stuff, I'm setting it up to be launched and to be scheduled. That process alone takes anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and that just depends on kind of how much I remember, quite frankly, what we talked about. I like to go back and re-listen and make sure I got the resources correct Maybe an hour, depending upon the complexity of the resources, because I like to make sure that I'm being accurate, like if an interview guest says the name of the book and it's not actually the name of the book. Then I go back and I make sure I get the correct name of the book for the resource list, so that process can take a little bit of time. So I would say maybe, based on what you're saying and what I'm saying, the entirety of one episode is going to take an additional anywhere four to five hours of additional time, right?
Speaker 2:So it's a lot. Right. We split it into two, so think about that. Our podcasts are also pretty curated. At this point we're picky about most things, but if yours is more free form, maybe it takes less time. If you think it takes that much time, add at least 30 minutes to the time you think it's going to take, because you never know Tech issues have happened. It can be pretty time consuming.
Speaker 1:None of this time stuff we're talking about. That's just the episode. There's also time that's going to go into, like Jasmine creates all of our social media posts, so there's time that it takes to actually create those posts for social media actually responding to emails, engaging with emails, reviewing analytics, like talking about that. Just the additional conversations we have outside where we're also talking about business decisions or you know, oh, we want to get more guests in this direction versus that direction. So the additional conversations that we have outside of just recording related things and then also the scheduling of guests takes time right.
Speaker 2:And we have streamlined.
Speaker 1:We have streamlined we've changed our system, but it still takes time. Right, and we have streamlined. We have streamlined, we've changed our system, but it still takes time. Like having conversations of vetting guests. I spend time.
Speaker 1:I don't just let anybody be a guest, I make sure that they're actually a professional. That was one of the things that we talked about in our ethics discussion. We wanted to make sure we set a bar for who we would talk to, and so I check all of your you know credits before I let you be on our podcast. Like I go on to BHEC and I make sure that this person is actually licensed in the way that they say that they're licensed. I check their website, I check their psychology today, like I make sure they are who they say they are before we go ahead and like allow this person to be interviewed and to be on our podcast To have our platform. So we spend time doing that pre-screening as well, and that really depends on how easy the information is defined, but I would say per guest we're talking about another half hour or so, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's quite a bit of an added weight when it comes to the mental load of things. Again, it's the time commitment, but it's also coming up with organizational planning tools. Yes, it's just like constantly playing in the background, like some of my time off has to be scheduled to edit and I have to keep that in the back of my head when I'm making plans with my partner or something, remembering what's next. Karen's really good at that. I'm not very good at that, so I'm thankful for Karen for that. Remembering what people said and what people's names are things like that. If you're not doing an interview style podcast, that's not quite as important. It is a constant learning process, like learning how to do Google Calendar and make it shareable and make it so that people can schedule themselves like self-scheduling, so we don't have to do that anymore. The forms, like it's a really great resource, but if you don't know how to use the Google suite, I'd start learning because it makes things a lot easier, especially if you are by yourself.
Speaker 2:There's also been a lot of instances of emergency pivots we've had to rerecord, like. There has been one episode that we recorded in the very beginning that experienced this lovely thing called audio drift and I will never forget it. It was such a great episode and, guess what, we cannot use it. So that person has just gotten back from Peru and we're like still trying to like schedule him, and so that's a thing that goes on in the background. But, yes, we will have to rerecord his episode completely. There's guest tech issues as like. Sometimes people have headphones, but there's like a feedback because the mic's not working or something, or there's a baby in the back or something like that. Like, you have to kind of account for those things as well. Yeah, the drift phenomenon and the emotional devastation that I again trauma, we can't let it go. Yeah, yeah, lastation that I again trauma, we can't let it go. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Last, thing on like, oh, go ahead. No, I was going to just say the same thing you were, which was, like, once you decide that you're going to do this, there is like a pressure to stay the course. Right, you've decided to do this, you started releasing episodes and like you've got to keep to it. And something that you know, I listened to and I'd heard about when we were in the planning stage was that you know, a lot of podcasts fail because they're not diligent in their frequency, and so something that Jasmine and I decided early on was like, what is our frequency? We need to be realistic about what we can do, because we are both practicing therapists. You know we have practices, we have partners, we have dogs, like we have lives, and so let's be realistic.
Speaker 1:Like this is not going to be a daily podcast. That is not going to happen. So, like, what is a frequency that we can honestly commit to? And that's a thing that, like we didn't really know what to expect, right? So we picked a frequency that sounded like realistic and the reality has been is that it is doable, but it is hard, it is actually hard, and then there's the pressure to kind of keep going, because we already picked this frequency and we got to keep going because at a certain point now we have, like, people listening to us actually, as opposed to just like sending this out into the ether and nobody really cares if we stop doing this. But at a certain point we have listeners and we feel like we got to be, you know, showing up for you.
Speaker 2:It is a commitment and sometimes I'm not going to lie, I just want to quit. But again, something to think about whenever you are creating a podcast. If it were just me, I'm not very good, like I'm not very good at delayed gratification, right, so I need someone who's going to be like no, this takes time. We're going to keep doing this because we like it. It's benefiting both of us and eventually it will, you know, be what we want it to be. But if you're like me and you're not a great delayed discounter, know that about yourself going into it Because, like I said, we have been doing this a year and guess what?
Speaker 2:I still work full-time. It's a bummer, but I still work full-time because this has not generated what you probably think it's going to generate, which brings us to the. It costs real money to do this, which is why everyone if you are really interested in Alitu, everyone should use our code, because you'll get money off, not like us, yeah, and even if you end up not liking Alitu, at least you didn't have to pay full price to try it.
Speaker 1:Right, like there's literal upfront costs, you know, associated with like the tech, like my mic, my headphones. You know, we set up an LLC, you have to pay for that. It's not free, right, we're going to be building out a website and then you have to pay hosting fees and all the taxes associated with it. So there's like literal upfront costs and I think we did where we could like manage that and sort of stretch it out to test, and I think there's ways to do that. But even so, for us it's about a thousand dollars is, like, I would say, a reasonable initial startup cost for the physical tech, the audio tech, like the tech of it. And then, you know, for Jasmine and I both, like this is a hustle. Right, this is a side hustle. It's a side hustle that makes $0 and costs money right now that's what's truly ugly about it. But it is a side hustle. It's our goal is that it will eventually be, you know, a passive income source.
Speaker 1:But the fact that it's a side hustle for both Jasmine and I kind of feels icky sometimes, like it feels murky and icky.
Speaker 1:And so there's this tension for both of us between our mission, our message which is, you know, it goes back to like the challenges of being a mental health practitioner and then monetization.
Speaker 1:So if our whole motivation for this is to be real, build community, give away information for free, but then we also need to make money to justify the time away from our practices and our lives and our partners, and the fact is that the amount of time that we spend on this every week is going to look like anywhere from two to three to six hours, depending upon how many interviews we have that week, and so we have to be at a certain point.
Speaker 1:We need to generate money for this to be sustainable. And so how do we balance that tension between the mission and the monetization? And it's hard and we still haven't figured it out, and that's what kind of makes it ugly about this is we are having to try to figure out what are our advertising and monetization choices, that then, how do those interact with our own values and our ethics, and the mission for the podcast. And so it's been really uncomfortable, actually, and really challenging, I think, for both of us to figure out the answers to those questions and we didn't really anticipate how that would feel when we started this.
Speaker 1:We didn't anticipate how that would trigger when we started this and we both absolutely hate social media, like anti-social media people, and the truth is just really hard social media for this thing to come up with posts and self promote and, you know, do stuff that like talks about how awesome we are and that's not really who we are in general. And so you know that part has been really hard.
Speaker 2:How to balance that. Do you have more on that, jasmine? I don't like social media and I don't like that. I'm part of it. I mean just like chasing the algorithm right, like doing CEO whatever, seo whatever, whatever I don't know, and like it just contradicts my like own. If you want to get off of Facebook, like me, that's no longer an option. Luck is still getting you if you, because there's no other way. But if you do want to do that and we're kind of exploring that right now to cope with this If you do not want to use free methods of advertising for yourself or getting your name out there, then you're going to have to be creative in how you're advertising for yourself and getting yourself out there, and it's probably not going to be as free as social media.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, like it's a constant like values, test and check. I think of like I don't really want to do this because I don't want to. I don't like social media, but it is what it is. So not being successful right away I've already kind of touched on that. It's a commitment and you're not going to be very good in the very beginning, and Karen and I I think the time commitment has definitely gotten lower the more that we do it because it's a lot more streamlined. But the initial commitment I'm a perfectionist. I struggle with it. High anxiety. Here we are, and I mean hours, hours, hours spent on making a not perfect episode, like having to just put that out there with my name on it. You're find a way to cope, yeah, cause it's going to happen. You're going to do some stuff and it's not going to sound very good.
Speaker 1:Real listen to your old episodes and you'll be like man, those sound like crap and it's just triggers that again and you just have to go and deal with it Right. So like it brings up that sense of like being kind of not good or being subject to criticism.
Speaker 2:You know, imposter syndrome. There are mental health podcasts out there that are freaking killing it. And here we are, just like with this original idea. It's a good idea, but I would say the biggest thing for me is coming back to that original mission, like the thing that has been so helpful. One, karen, but two, just like. Why did I start this in the first place? Am I still being helpful to some people? And the truth is we are, like we have gotten feedback that has said, oh my God, this is so helpful, like I'm so glad we had this conversation, I'm so glad someone is talking about this and that's our payment right now. That's how I define success right now. You know, podcasting is a bit like counseling in that regard. Like we talk about this all the time in the podcast and it feels sacrilegious to say it out loud. And if you want to know more about what we both think, about what I'm about to say, definitely check us out. You don't get in this for the money and podcasting counts as that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so. So tell me, karen and Jasmine, we're coming up on time. If folks wanted to reach out to you with questions, what's the best way for them to contact you? Email. Email is the best way for them to contact you.
Speaker 1:Email. Email is the best way. Therapytpod at gmailcom.
Speaker 2:TherapyTPod at gmailcom, not podcast.
Speaker 1:We're pretty good at responding.
Speaker 1:We also get like and we've talked about this in some of our episodes Like, if you just want to say nice things to us, we absolutely love comments on the listening platforms, like Spotify and Apple podcasts and like any of the social media posts that we do on Instagram and Facebook.
Speaker 1:But if you have like a question, then, yeah, please email us and we're totally willing to answer questions, not just about like podcasting, like if you want to be a guest, but if you just literally have a question about the mic that we use or any of that like, we're happy to share all those details. We use different mics and different headphones and share all of that with anybody. We're fine and we're going to be doing another episode ourselves. So, yes, where we're going to go a little bit more in depth about what we talked about today, because, as Jasmine mentioned, we're coming up on our one year anniversary of episodes and so we're going to do a special anniversary episode and the theme of it is what do we wish we had known about podcasting before we started podcasting, and so we're going to go a little bit in depth about a lot of the stuff that we shared with you guys here today, maybe even going into some of the nitty gritty about like our tech and like our actual fail moments, cause we've had multiples and they've been great experiences.
Speaker 2:We also I'm pretty active on our Instagram, so if you want to just like, dm me, go for it, and if you want to be on the show, feel free to send us an email on therapytpod at gmailcom. If you have something that you really want to share, definitely listen to a couple of our episodes prior to, but if you want to be on the show, we're always looking for new guests. A lot of this is about building community for us and making therapists feel less alone and making networking a lot easier, so definitely reach out, please.
Speaker 3:You're awesome and thank you so much for sharing so much. I mean that was great. I mean I do this too, and it just so much of what you say. Yes, it's good, but there are parts that are bad and there are parts that are ugly. So thank you for being so authentic and transparent with us. This was really good and I appreciate you letting folks DM you and reach out and ask more questions.
Speaker 2:So thank you everyone. Y'all are great, Thank you. Feel free to reach out.
Speaker 3:Awesome. All right, thank you guys. Thanks for joining. I'm Dr Kate Walker and this is our expert webinar of the month. Don't forget we've got more coming up, so check out the calendar on the Facebook page.
Speaker 3:Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses and I will see you guys soon. Businesses and I will see you guys soon. Thanks for listening to Badass Therapists Building Practices that Thrive. Be sure to follow or subscribe so you never miss an episode. And don't forget our exclusive 2025 summer intensives are filling up fast. Whether you're looking to grow your income, simplify your systems or just feel less alone in private practice, we've got you. Learn more at katewalkertrainingcom. Slash summer25, and I'll see you next week. I'm Dr Kate Walker. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to the lovely Ridgely Walker for the interesting facts about me that we use in our introduction, and do me a favor when you get a second, please like, share and subscribe and write us a review. That's really how we get picked up by other RSS feeds and we get this information out to the mental health badasses who need it. Thanks again, and keep saving the world with excellent therapy. You.