by
Joseph Peters
| Dec 15, 2022
Emily St. Amant:
Hello and welcome to the Voice of Counseling from the American Counseling Association. I'm Emily St. Amant from the ACA and today's guest is Dr. Ajita Robinson. She's going to share what she wished she knew before she started her private counseling practice. Before we hop into it, I want to let our listeners know that the ACA offers CE courses about private practice on lots of topics like risk management, credentialing, building your brand and more. For more information, go to counseling.org, click on continued education, product catalog, and select the private practice filter to learn more. We are so honored to have Dr. Robinson here today to talk about private practice. She is known as the expert's therapist and is a grief and trauma therapist, award-winning and bestselling author of The Gift of Grief: A Practical Guide on Navigating Loss. She is also a TEDx speaker, international speaker, and income strategist.
She's been seen in places such as Good Morning Washington, Headspace, The Wall Street Journal, HuffPost, Washington Post, CNBC, Business Insider, Bustle, Essence Wellness House, and Therapy for Black Girls. Serving as a grief and trauma expert for over a decade, Dr. Robinson left a full-time academic appointment to pursue entrepreneurship full-time. She launched her private practice and ultimately created a sustainable profitable group practice that generates multiple seven figures. After experiencing burnout and postpartum depression, and cumulative personal losses, Dr. Robinson shifted her attention from full-time clinical practice and began to dedicate her time to helping other mental health entrepreneurs launch successful practices while honoring a deep and profound desire to work with underserved communities. It is such an honor to welcome you here today, Dr. Robinson. How are you?
Dr. Ajita Robinson:
I'm well. Thank you so much, Emily, for having me.
Emily St. Amant:
Now, one thing you didn't include for me to add here was some stats about your success. So over 300 speaking engagements at this time, 50 plus sponsors, you have 2,000 something happy clients. That is impressive. So I just want to say our listeners are in for a treat and we are so thankful that you are here to share your expertise with our members and audience, and thank you again for joining us today. So, let's hop into it. How did you decide to start a private practice way back when to begin with?
Dr. Ajita Robinson:
I think like many of us do, on accident, right? And so I knew that I couldn't continue to serve the way that I was serving. In addition to being a full-time professor, I was also working in other settings and in schools and outpatient clinics part-time, and a lot of what I was experiencing was a gap between being able to offer the services that clients needed versus what the organization would allow. I've always been committed to just doing good work and serving people who were in the midst of sorrow and trauma and grief and wanted to remove the administrative red tape of doing that. And so I knew I could do that if I was at the helm of deciding how care was being delivered and deployed, and that led me into private practice.
Emily St. Amant:
Yeah, I think that's a common experience for a lot of people that start off in the field working for someone else, or in agency settings, a lot of your autonomy to practice care in the way that you are taught to and feel like you need to ethically do so is not always possible. So I think that's commendable. You shared that, I think, a lot of people want to go into private practice so they can take better care of their clients, right?
Dr. Ajita Robinson:
Absolutely.
Emily St. Amant:
If there is anything when you were first starting off getting the ball rolling, was there anything you would do differently?
Dr. Ajita Robinson:
Oh, absolutely. I would do quite a bit differently. I think one of the things that really impacted the growth of my practice, and we grew pretty quickly, was that I still did a lot of things myself under the false assumption that if I did it myself, one, that no one else could convert clients, right? So I answered my phone way longer than I should have. The business actually couldn't afford for me to be an administrative assistant. I'm a very expensive administrative assistant with my billable hour is a hundred plus dollars. I needed to actually be in the therapy room, and as I grew my practice, my team needed me to be able to be in a leadership role, supporting them and their needs and the overall client care.
And so I think I certainly would have hired more administrative support sooner. I would not have done my marketing as long as I did. Marketing needed to be done. Marketing did not need to be done by me. And so I think that's something that a lot of us end up doing when we start our practice, is we wear all of the hats and it doesn't mean that that's where we should actually spend our time. It affects the practice's ability to grow and our ability to serve long-term without experiencing burnout and running into that cumulative fatigue.
Emily St. Amant:
Okay. Gotcha. So getting some of the things off your plate so you can really focus on your clients, that probably would've been a lot more helpful. That's some great advice for people to not be afraid to ask for help and to elicit help from others.
Dr. Ajita Robinson:
Yeah. And that doing it yourself is not free. Your time has a price, right? There's a price that, again, the business often can't afford to pay financially and otherwise. It really needs you and your genius. And so I learned that lesson early on and have tried to just honor and adhere to that.
Emily St. Amant:
Yeah. I think that's a good way of looking at it, for sure. It's just thinking about, "What am I focusing on and what else could I be doing with my time?" That's very valuable. And if you had to say that there was one thing that all therapists that are considering private practice should know, what would that one thing be?
Dr. Ajita Robinson:
I would say that your time in whatever it is that you agree to accept as a form of payment for your time is not your worth. We internalize whatever it is that we set our fee at. There's a lot of money shame in private practice that's unnecessary, that if you decide to do pro bono, that doesn't make you any less of an experienced therapist. If you decide to accept insurance or not, that does not translate into or correlate with your worth or value as a therapist. And so it really is what you've decided to accept as far as your knowledge, skills and abilities and the space that you hold for clients.
And so really use a data-driven approach, an approach that's not emotional when possible so that you can do that work, and that setting a fee that allows you to have stability in your own life is something that you absolutely deserve. And that earning that, a stable income, is not in conflict with serving those who may not have access to therapy. And so to really ground ourselves in a mindset that is conducive to successful business development and not like we don't have to be martyrs in this process. And so I think that piece is super important.
Emily St. Amant:
So, yeah, it sounds like it's a both/and. You can serve the people that you want to serve, but also you can take care of yourself in the process and it doesn't have to be about competition, right? Yeah. So I think that that's some great advice for people to just think about, what's going to be best for me and what I'm doing and let that be it, right?
Dr. Ajita Robinson:
There are so many of us that have built businesses, unfortunately, that have disembodied us and they're actively trying to back out of what they started. And so if we can build a business with intention, one that also honors you, it allows us to do this work long-term, and we are so needed. That is something that I certainly would encourage folks to think about intentionally going in.
Emily St. Amant:
Yeah. That's super important. Speaking of maybe some myths that are prevalent about private practice, what are some myths that people might have about being in or starting a private practice that you have found that it's just not true?
Dr. Ajita Robinson:
It's not easy. It is work, right? Working for someone else is hard. Working for yourself is hard, and that we absolutely need to commit to doing the work, but that it's not all work, right? And so a lot of people come in or are attracted to private practice because of this myth around freedom of time. And that is not something that comes in the beginning. It is a lot of work, right? Many of us come from spaces where we don't have a business background, and so we are in a space of learning what we don't know we don't know as we're building the thing, and that you aren't supposed to know. It's a new thing, and I think the myth around it being easy and that freedom of time being something that is immediate, those are big myths that get in the way.
I think other myths is around having to decide whether to accept insurance or not. That's not an either/or, right? We are a hybrid practice. Mine is. So we accept insurance and we don't accept some. That you do get to choose. There isn't one right way or one way to build a private practice. It doesn't even have to be a client-facing private practice. I think a lot of us get into that trap of, if we build a private practice it means that we're seeing clients. That's also not the case. And I think the last thing that I'll talk about on that piece is that what happens once we launch a private practice, because there are way more clients who need services than there are of us mental health professionals. There's been a shortage for a very long time. I believe that will continue.
But what happens is, is that once we start private practice, we find ourselves kind of full with clients, some of us a little faster than others. Again, not a competition. It's just the way that that works, is that we think that once we are full it means that we have to scale to a group practice. And I just want to normalize that being full does not mean that you must scale to a group, that you must do more, that you must hire other therapists to provide services. That there's other ways for you to scale your impact that doesn't include moving into a group practice. That is not something that all of us desire or that all of us even enjoy. We think that that's the next logical step, and some of us absolutely regret that. So I just want to give people permission to understand that that's not a requirement that you have to scale to a group, that we really get to choose how we navigate this journey and that it's a unique and individual one for all of us.
Emily St. Amant:
Okay. Gotcha. So knowing if you really want to be a solo practitioner, if you really want to take other people on, and making that decision before you're sort of in crisis mode, or where you have a lot of people that want your services and need your services. I see that being so connected to the need to protect yourself from burning out, because I think that we are experiencing a lot of burnout in the field because the need is so great, and we counselors are so few, right?
Dr. Ajita Robinson:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's another layer of work, a different level of identity as a leader, as a supervisor. It's another layer of responsibility. You're responsible for someone else's livelihood and someone else's professional development that we just may not desire. And if we embark on that journey, whatever it looks like, whether it's group practice or even private practice, and we find that it just depletes us in whatever way, you get to change your mind, right? You get to change your mind about how you're serving, who you're serving, when that is happening, or even the services that you thought you wanted to offer. You get to change your mind. I think a lot of us are in the midst of navigating that now, is that the way that we have been trained to serve no longer aligns with our ability to serve and remain in this field. I think that is an important part of this journey in general, whether you're in private practice or not.
Emily St. Amant:
Yeah. So what would be some advice for people that find themselves in situations like that, where they are feeling like they can never do enough, but they don't know what else to do, but this is not sustainable for them?
Dr. Ajita Robinson:
Absolutely. I think thinking about what is working, and I always like to think about kind of like we do with clients, if whatever the problem is wasn't there anymore, or whatever the dissatisfaction or the ache or the pain or the dissatisfaction, whatever it is, what would it look like if that was removed? And to have folks imagine whatever that ideal is. And then going back to the reality and saying, "Where's the disconnect, and what do we want to do about that? Do we want to do anything about that?" Because we may find ourselves thinking or realizing that what we are currently doing isn't the problem. It's how we're doing it, or when we're doing it. Some of us start off working in the evenings and we realize that that significantly affects our quality of life, and so we find that we want to change the hours of our operations.
And so that, again, is something that you get to choose. I changed the age group that I was working with. For half my career I work with adolescents and kids, and now I work exclusively with Black women first generation doctors. That's a very different shift. Still some childhood parts, but a very different population. And I think the key was being able to identify what was it that I was still grounded in? What was that I was curious about that I needed to explore? I think if we treat it as an exploration, that leaves room for curiosity. It leaves room for us to try things out. We are not making definitives because what if we try that and we don't like that either? I think giving ourselves just the room to be curious about what's next and what else might be out there, and taking some of the limits that are often self-imposed off of how we do this work.
Emily St. Amant:
Yeah. I think that's so important to stay curious and stay open. Did you have an idea exactly what you would be doing 10 years ago?
Dr. Ajita Robinson:
I did not. I actually didn't intend to go into academia. What I did know, and I knew from a very young age, is that I thought I would be a psychiatrist. So it's interesting, is that I pursued that route and realized that as a result of shadowing, that that was not the way that I wanted to serve. I knew I wanted to work with urban African American youth and their families who were impacted by trauma, but I thought I was going to do it in the legal system, and so I went to law school. And while there, I realized that, "Hey, a lot of what's happening is trauma and if we can provide some prevention and some intervention before they get into the criminal justice system, we can change and impact the trajectory of their life and the quality of their life."
And so that led me back into the counseling realm where I was studying grief and trauma in a different way. So I really had to give myself permission to explore the things that I thought I was curious about or that I thought I wanted to do so that I really could identify how I was being led to serve. I ultimately worked with that population for a very long time. It's the context of my dissertation, but it really was a function of being open to pivoting and being open to, "I think I'm interested in that, but let me go find out. Let me find out what that actually means and if that still aligns for me." And in some cases, in many cases, I didn't finish law school. I realized that that felt like it was too late in some regards and so I needed to pivot again without interpreting pivoting as a setback or without interpreting it as failure, right?
Emily St. Amant:
Right. I think that's so important because it sounds like you were tenacious enough to try one thing after another and figure out what worked for you, and then it led you where you are now, which is incredible. I think a lot of people have things planned out for the long run, but when it comes down to it, a lot of people who are very successful didn't exactly imagine where they are right now, right?
Dr. Ajita Robinson:
Absolutely. And the path isn't straight, so I always try and remind myself to not compare my chapter one to someone else's chapter 10, because you can very easily believe falsely that you're behind or that you're not doing enough or that you're not enough. And you have no idea where they have gone and what they've navigated to get where they are. You also don't know whether or not, there's a price that you pay on these different journeys and it may be a cost that makes sense for them that doesn't make sense for you. So I think that it's so important for us to recognize that we have our own path and you'll end up where you are supposed to be as long as you honor yourself.
Emily St. Amant:
Absolutely. So, bringing you back to the beginning, I think, because that's where we hear a lot of people maybe even drop out of the field or maybe switch gears or maybe have to reevaluate their careers, the launch phase of launching a private practice is so important. So what is something that you wish you knew before you even started that launch phase that could maybe be helpful for people to get from, "Oh, I think I want to start," to, "I'm starting to actually like becoming a successful private practice owner."
Dr. Ajita Robinson:
Absolutely. I call these CEO habits. I think one of the things that really impacts us, and this was also true for me, although I had a business background I had never run a private practice. I had always worked in someone else's business, even as a business development specialist or income strategist. And so I was learning to be a CEO for the first time. I think that's something that, as therapists, we have to remember that we are first the CEO when we own our practice and who happens to be a therapist. I mean that with all the respect and grace and kindness, but it hurts us when we lead with our therapy hat in situations that require us to make decisions as a CEO, because sometimes they are in conflict. We tend to be very heart-centered people as therapists and the business doesn't care about your feelings, right?
The business needs to survive. The business needs revenue, so your primary function as a CEO is to generate revenue. You have a fiduciary responsibility to make money, and that often feels in conflict to some degree with the way that we were trained, that we didn't enter this field because of money. But that doesn't mean that there isn't money to be made in this multi-billion dollar industry, and that, again, we can still create access and we can still create financial stability and do amazing life-changing, life-saving work because they're not in conflict. And so I think adopting CEO habits that we often kind of throw our sign up, especially in this new online stage, and we don't put in the business infrastructure that we need.
So I would have wanted more guidance around, what are the foundational elements of establishing a practice that is stable? A practice that also supports you having a life? A practice that creates room for those that you want to serve, but also creates room for you to be something other than a therapist? A whole person. I'm a mom and all these other hats that I wear and oftentimes my therapy hat or my CEO hat trumps those things. They take up a lot of space. I think being able to find balance on the front-end, as opposed to clawing out balance on the back-end because we're so depleted, I think those types of things would really help us on the front-end, is really understanding, what are the foundational elements about running a business that we need to know? And being intentional about pursuing that knowledge and those skills and investing in that. I think that's super important that we just really commit to.
Emily St. Amant:
Yeah. So learning how to be a CEO basically, and being okay with it and-
Dr. Ajita Robinson:
Absolutely.
Emily St. Amant:
... about finding the balance of wearing two different hats. When you have your therapist hat on you're a therapist, but when you're operating as a CEO that has to keep a business open and you're generating income to live off of to be okay with the decisions that you make wearing that hat, right?
Dr. Ajita Robinson:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Emily St. Amant:
So, given all the success that you've had, I think that our listeners would love to hear, maybe what are some of the top three things that you have found that have contributed to your success in private practice?
Dr. Ajita Robinson:
I think being super clear about who I served, and I always say from a marketing perspective, a confused mind doesn't buy. Our clients need to know that we are talking to them and that means that in any marketing, any online footprint that we have, that we are intentional about using language that our clients understand. We're so used to talking to one another and we don't think of it as jargon, but that is not the way that your client describes what's happening to them, what they're struggling with. Oftentimes we struggle with being able to talk to clients in a way that they feel seen, heard, and held. And marketing ourselves is something that is super important, that we are uniquely trained to do that because we are uniquely trained to see people.
That is at the very core, is being able to identify who you are talking to and what actually matters to them. I want us to not be afraid about marketing feeling like selling. Marketing is serving all day long. That's one thing that I want us to understand and to just hold as true. I think the other piece is, don't hide from the numbers, right? I think sometimes because we have money fear and we don't know what all the numbers mean, or we set these goals and we don't know if they're realistic or whatever. Whatever the negative feeling is, we have to confront that because it will absolutely sabotage your business, but it'll also sabotage your ability, again, to serve.
If we don't know what the basic overhead is, whether or not we can afford to even pay that for an administrative assistant or another clinician, we're just kicking the can down the street. We're going to have to address it at some point. And so let's really get the people connected to us that maybe that is their gifting that can help us in navigating whatever our money narrative or money shame or discomfort is, because the business, that is going to be a recurring task or recurring thing. I used to have a lot of anxiety about that, and one of my favorite things to do is to run payroll because we can. I so enjoy being able to compensate my team well without having to worry about there not being enough. And then I think the other piece, the other thing that I would share is that none of this happens in isolation. You deserve community.
You deserve to be in community with folks who don't perceive you as competition, who understand the uniqueness of what it means to be a therapist and a business owner, and what it means to have to go to your next session and hope that you've done the best that you can. We recently have been holding space for a therapist in our community who've lost a client, and some of them have lost the client because they have transitioned to... They're doing well and they no longer need to come to therapy, but we have this bond with our client and some of them have lost clients because that client has died and we are second-guessing if we did enough. Did we miss anything and can we go to the services?
You need to be in spaces where people understand that walk without question, with amazing empathy and compassion and the ability to see and hold space for you, because you are caregivers and nurturers in every other aspect of your life. And so, just a reminder that you are not alone in doing this journey and that you don't have to do it by yourself, although it is a business you may only own. You may solely own, you get to have community and that is so important for us to be able to continue to do good work and to feel good about that work that we're doing. Those are the things that I would share.
Emily St. Amant:
Okay. Wow. So, knowing your client, not being able to speak to them via your marketing, not being afraid of money, not being afraid to confront the books, so to speak, when it comes to money, and to make sure that you have a community, because again, I think that we all, we're such an individualistic culture that we live in, but that's not how we're wired. We're wired for connection, we're wired to have support and to have that sense of, "I'm not alone in what I'm going through." That's incredibly powerful. No matter how successful you become, that need is always still there, right? So those are, I think-
Dr. Ajita Robinson:
Absolutely.
Emily St. Amant:
... incredible things for people to keep in mind. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Robinson, for joining us today. We are, again, so honored to have you on the podcast as our guest, and I know our listeners are going to really benefit from a lot of the things that you shared with us today.
Dr. Ajita Robinson:
Thank you. As always, it's a pleasure anytime I get to connect with you folks at ACA. And so thank you for all that you all do for the community and profession.
Emily St. Amant:
Thank you so much. This has been a episode of The Voice of Counseling from the American Counseling Association. Thank you so much for joining us and we'll see you all next time.
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