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
144 Stop Overthinking and Start Your Therapy Practice Today
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.
Thank you. Hey, it's Dr Kate Walker and I am actually on grandma duty today and so you can see in my background there's a stroller. So I am in Conroe, texas. So for all of my Conroe people, houston area folks, I'm in your neck of the woods this week but I'm not getting in your traffic. I'm going to stay in the Conroe area and play with my grandbaby and my daughter and her lovely husband.
Speaker 1:But we do need to talk about the topic today because it's pretty important. We've seen some major shifts. Today is May 27, 2025. And so there are some marketing changes and I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole today because, yeah, the title of this is like start your practice in one day, and I want to stick to that. But I am going to give you some context about why we're we're talking this way, because I'm not the only one. I stay in some circles with lots of therapists who who focus on marketing. They make their living with therapy and marketing and, plus, I have a circle of folks who aren't therapists. They are just keeping their finger on the pulse of what works with marketing. And the biggest shift, in case you couldn't guess actually two shifts.
Speaker 1:I've talked about this before. One is AI and the way that it now affects Google searches and, of course, the advent of big companies big corporations, national corporations coming in and offering therapy nationwide, and it does a couple of things. Yeah, it messes with the search engines, but it also kind of messes with your head a little bit, because I think a lot of us feel like, oh, it's too much competition, there's just nothing I can do about this, and you know what's the point of even trying, and I really hope that what I talk about today is a springboard. This is the end of May, so next week I've got a four-day smart practice sprint. These are little 30-minute snippets where I take you through more specifics with handouts, like you're going to leave with things you can download that will help you with your marketing and will identify mistakes you're making, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1:And then Step it Up, members. Just for you guys, we are having two-hour intensive seminars this summer. So a two-hour seminar you know I'm offering CEs on marketing a two-hour seminar on HIPAA compliance, a two-hour seminar on gosh it's slipping my mind right now, but it will come back to me but these, oh, I know how to be a CE provider, but not just how to be a CE provider, how to find a platform to host the things, sell the things and provide the good customer service. So Step it Up, members. That's all for you. It's included in your membership. Everybody else has to pay, so it is open to the public, but they're going to have to pay. Step it up members, not you. So I want you to really use this summer 2025 to get your practices in a space where you're just not freaking out and stressing out about it. So you got to start somewhere and that's what today is all about.
Speaker 1:If you are listening to me for the first time, you're a brand new member, you're a brand new listener and you are a grad student or you're somebody who has never been in private practice, thinking about doing private practice, and you're like, okay, I don't know what to do. First, because you know, when I say one day to starting your private practice, I'm not being, you know, exaggerating. That's not good grammar, but you guys get what I mean. We are in a business with extremely low overhead and we're able to reach people fairly easily. So that's where I'm leaning today. I want you to understand how to start and do your practice. But my other agenda is to help you stop doing things that are wasting your time because they are based on outmoded, outdated. When I say outdated, I mean like six months ago. I'm not talking 10 years ago. I'm not talking about those of you who are still putting flyers on cars and paying a hundred bucks to get your name on a t-shirt that's gonna get shot out of a t-shirt cannon at a football game I'm talking about. This is new stuff.
Speaker 1:And if you are still over-focusing, over focusing on any social media at all, or you're spending lots and lots of money for SEO, optimization or God forbid Google ads sorry, google, I feel like I got to be careful with the Google but if you're spending money and time in places in your business that just won't impact your bottom line, I mean that's time, that's money that leads to burnout. I mean I know, for me personally, you know, when I find out, I used to say every mistake is expensive and time consuming, and I still say it. I don't, it's no use to about it and I have made some very expensive mistakes when it comes to SEO and blogging and Google ads and all of those things. And so it's okay If you're doing the things that are wasting time and money. Please understand, this is never, ever going to be a shame conversation. We have all been there and you need to know what you can do today to either get your practice off the ground or just get it into shape. All right, I know. So here's number one. Actually, I was going no-transcript, I was going to start somewhere else, but this came to my mind and so I'm going to do it right now.
Speaker 1:I see so many people on social media worried about do I form an LLC? Do I form an LLC? Folks, in Texas, you can open a lemonade stand without an LLC. Okay. Limited liability corporation is just that. It's designed to help you limit liability. Now the question is to what? What are you trying to keep safe? Well, obviously, that would be your assets, right. Your home, your auto, things that you own, if you have an inheritance or land or things like that. So, yes, if you are going to limit the liability from your company to the things that you own, well, that's a good thing, right. But your malpractice insurance does that as well, right. And LLC, more specifically and even more efficiently, is designed to protect your businesses from each other.
Speaker 1:So, if you are just staying awake at night because you're not sure what to do and how to get that, how to organize what to do and how to get that. Whether to how to organize At the beginning, you're going to be taking in a very little money, right? And so at that point the liability is probably the primary issue, not the tax benefit, right? You really don't see a tax benefit until you do an S-Corp. So when you're thinking about organization and I just can't do this until I get the right organization, dba, just a doing business as Go down to your county courthouse, your county clerk, get a piece of paper, pay $10, get your name and go to your bank, open a bank account.
Speaker 1:One day, that's all you need to do. A DBA and a bank account. All right, you can do that in one day. Then, down the road, when you talk to your partner, talk to your accountant, think of the tax benefits, the advantages. Then you can start digging deeper into organization. But if you're really worried about liability, call your liability insurance, work with them, right? Because I'm not going to tell you to get liability insurance on day one. You should have gotten liability insurance, malpractice insurance, back when you were a grad student. So, yeah, if you haven't done that yet, absolutely so.
Speaker 1:Day one get your malpractice insurance and your DBA. All right, we good. Next thing get your domain. Go, get your domain, get your domain name. That's your electronic version of your DBA, your DBA, your DBA, your bank account. All right, easy.
Speaker 1:Now website. Let's talk about that a second, because a lot of folks think, well, I'll just I'll be on psychology today, I don't need a website. Wrong Over reliance on psychology today. That's, that's a mistake. Right, definitely do that, but make that day two or day 10 or day 50. You need a website and I'm going to. This is where I know everybody's like duh, okay, well, of course we. You know this isn't the nineties. Yes, we know everybody needs a website, but if you're just going to do day one, I see so many people going down the rabbit hole of content. If you listen to me, you know that I talk about content. You know copy, copy, copy. We've got to have everything optimized for the search engines. Not on day one, you don't On day one.
Speaker 1:You need simply a one page, a brochure. You need your and a phone number. People need to be able to contact you and I'll tell you why in just a minute. They need to be able to put a face and a name together because there's an emotional connection there and there needs to be a contact way to contact you above the fold. So that's an old print term, right? If I opened a brochure, we'd say above the fold. Right, that's, when I open the brochure, I see it the first thing. I don't have to unwind the brochure to see more information.
Speaker 1:So, with your website, think in terms of your phone as well, right, because everything if it's not optimized for the phone, forget about it. Right, very few people are going to be looking you up on their laptop, so on the phone they have to be able to have that contact information in that first glance. We call that above the fold, all right. So if you're freaking out because of a website and colors and designs and fonts and copy and you're booked out, you know, do you want? You're not going to do a website until you get, you know, the perfect headshot. Take a picture with your phone. You've got a domain name, put it on a website. Make sure you have contact information, make sure it works. Whatever you choose, you know I'm a big fan of the phone and really that's.
Speaker 1:That's your day one. Start your practice. Yes, you're going to need a camera, unless you have an office, which I was going to talk about. That but I thought, no, no, this is about starting your practice in one day. So if you're going to look for an office, that's going to be a couple of weeks because you got to do some shopping.
Speaker 1:If you're going to start your practice in one day, a camera and HIPAA compliant software to do meetings, and guess what? Zoom offers HIPAA compliant add-on, they'll sign a business agreement with you and it's free. So, yes, zoom, hipaa compliant Zoom, and it may not be free anymore. So check me on that. It's super cheap, all right. So are you with me? Here we are. You got your DBA, you got your bank account, you got your domain name, you got your one page website with the way to contact you above the fold, and then you have a way for it to actually deliver services in a HIPAA compliant fashion. All right.
Speaker 1:Now that you're going to see people, you need a HIPAA compliant record storage. Again, I see people spending so much money on robust software, electronic health record systems, when, if you're just starting out, you really just need a HIPAA compliant folder. Right? Because when we say folder. We're really talking file cabinet, right? So when you have your HIPAA compliant folder or file cabinet think Google Workspaces Google Workspaces, for about $12 a month or less, will sign a BAA with you. They're HIPAA compliant and for a small practice that's starting in one day that can take care of all of your electronic health records, your PHI that can take care of all of your electronic health records, your PHI for the clients that you will have All right.
Speaker 1:Now, here's where I'm going with this. We are moving away from the old system, which is attraction marketing. All right, and I know this is kind of tacky, but I'm going to refer to it like fishing Because it is. I mean, it's a good metaphor. So you think about in terms of we talked about attraction marketing in terms of a lure right. You think of one of those lures that's super shiny and the fish sees it from way far away and it's attracted to the lure right. Or if it's at night and you shine a light in the water so that the fish would come to the light.
Speaker 1:Well, now, because of all of the search engine optimization kind of a mess that it's in right now and I will talk about this more in the Smart Practice Sprint. I will talk about it a lot more in the webinar that's happening in June the two-hour webinar, because SEO isn't doing what it used to do for us. We have to have a way to keep people in our circle longer. So I'm almost thinking, like in terms of the lobster fishermen right, if you ever seen a lobster trap. Right, it gets the animal into the box and it stays there.
Speaker 1:That's where I really don't like the metaphor anymore, because I don't like to think we're trapping people. We're not trapping people, but you are creating a system so that people are able to have access to you multiple times. All right, so old still works, but it's really changed. That's the attraction, right? The lure New is we are going to get them into your circle and we are going to help them stay in your circle through things like resources on your website, email newsletters I know nobody wants to hear that, I know you don't and ways to contact you that work to get them into your circle and stay in your circle. And that's really hitting some of y'all's sweet spots.
Speaker 1:I know, if you're listening to me, a lot of you like to do retreats, you like to do public speaking, you like to get out into the community. Introverts, don't turn away. I want you to listen too. There's a space here for you as well. It's just changing, but I don't want to go down that rabbit hole today. You guys have a lot of stuff coming up this summer and we are going to really focus on this the alternative to SEO, the alternative to search engine optimization, or probably, if I a better way of putting it, is a way to complement what you're already doing with SEO. Alright, right, so I'm going to recap.
Speaker 1:So today was starting your practice in one day. Really, what this is about is not going down those rabbit holes that we all tend to go down, which is just keeping you up at night as far as how to structure and what to say and the perfect headshot and all of those things. So, number one DBA. You can start your business with the DBA County Courthouse 10 bucks lasts for 10 years. Use it to get your business bank account.
Speaker 1:Don't worry about the perfect headshot. Just get something to go on a one-page website with a good enough headshot and contact information above the fold. Get your camera, get your Zoom that is HIPAA compliant. Get your $12 a month Google Workspaces how do you know something's HIPAA compliant, they will sign a BAA with you, a literal business associate agreement that you can download. You can put in a file, electronic or otherwise that shows that they will share liability with you. Am I going to talk about this more this summer? Absolutely, I am Step it Up, members. We're going to have a two-hour HIPAA self-audit intensive in August. All right, we are going to double down on how to make sure our practices are going strong, going into the fall. All right, I am going to open it up for questions and I will hit pause to do that.