PRIVATE PRACTICE GROWING PAINS WITH LATOYA SMITH | EP 65

[DAWN GABRIEL]
Hi, I’m Dawn Gabriel, your host of Faith Fringes podcast, recording live from Castle Rock, Colorado. I am a licensed professional counselor, owner of a counseling center and a sacred space holder for fellow therapists. This podcast is for those who want to explore more than the traditional norms of the Christian culture. I create intentional space to explore your own spiritual path, a space that allows doubt, questions and curiosity without the judgment or shame, a place to hear another story and dive deeper into how to have a genuine connection with God.

For my fellow therapist listening, I will often pull back the curtain of our layered inner world that comes with our profession. I bring an authentic and experienced way to engage your spiritual journey in order to connect you with your deepest values for true renewal and soul care. But really this podcast is for anyone listening who’s desiring a deeper and genuine connection with God. For those of you wanting to engage your spirituality in new ways, Faith Fringes is for you. Welcome to the podcast.
[DAWN GABRIEL]
Thanks, LaToya. I’m so excited to be here.
[LATOYA]
Yes, I’m excited to have you on Dawn, and I know that we’re going to talk about a lot, especially those growing pains with group practice. The ups and the downs, the beauty of the ups, and then hindsight, the beauty of the downs as well, I guess as we’re learning. If we’re talking about being transparent, I want to be transparent too. I met, this is just for our audience I met Dawn in the spring, I believe April. I’ve said it to her before, and I’ll explain that in a second, that she’s very easy to talk to and I loved her presentation and her energy and I was like, Yoh, this is her spirit. I was like, Man, this is so good. She was talking about the highs and lows of being a practice owner and I was like, man, I can identify with all that. I felt like she was talking right to me, like, how does this woman know my business and I just met her like an hour ago? But even talking about the hiccups and even doing this podcast and for the audience, I’m just going to be transparent, this is our second time doing it, because I made some mistakes. Not some, I made a big old mistake.
[DAWN]
It’s okay.
[LATOYA]
Mistakes happen and here we’re again. So Dawn, yes just introduce yourself for people who may not know you or know a little bit about you.
[DAWN]
I’m Dawn Gabriel and I own Authentic Connections Counseling Center, which is in Castle Rock, Colorado. I’ve been a group practice owner for seven years, but a clinician for 17 years. I also do, I am the host of Faith Fringes podcast, which is where I focus more on the spiritual side for therapists, so I do a lot of soul care, spiritual formation and consulting around integrating spirituality into our business.
[LATOYA]
Every time I hear you say that, I’m like, that’s, I love every part of it. You’ve been a therapist for 17 years but a group practice owner for seven years?
[DAWN]
Yes
[LATOYA]
Tell us a little bit about that, since we’re going to be using this episode to talk about the growing pains, the highs and the lows and tell us about your experience of being a practice owner, like the ups to downs, the beauty of it all.
[DAWN]
I would say before I became a group practice owner, I was in somewhat of a similar group practice, but it was more, we all just, I mean this is how it started. I have to share this because it’s so funny, well, funny now, but I was in a group where we all shared space and we marketed together, but we were all separate practice owners. So we all had our own LLCs. It was like a joint ownership, but we didn’t even know what we were doing. The reason we did that is because we were working for a nurse practitioner under her group practice, and she came in one day, I was six weeks postpartum, so I’m bringing in my sweet little baby boy to show everyone and she’s like, “It’s bloody Monday, you’re all fired.”
[DAWN]
I was like, What, postpartum hormones raging. I don’t do well with pregnancy and postpartum, by the way. Then she said, you’re all fired. We were like, what? She’s like, “Yes, I am not making enough money off of you guys. You don’t see like,” she, you know psychiatry, they can see, like every 20 minutes they can see a client. She wanted us to see like 40, 50, 60 clients a week. She just didn’t understand therapy. So she fires us, we start our own, and within a week we started a group practice together. So I found office space, we found a name, we got a website up and we started. That’s how I started a group practice, like, we just did it in a week.

So I knew you could do it. Then when I went out on my own seven years, for the last seven years, I knew, okay, I probably could take a little more time to plan it. But I still didn’t even know what I was doing. I wanted to have a second baby and take three months off and I said, how could I make money and take three months off? So I’m like, I’ll just start a group practice. Then I stumbled along and then three years in, I definitely got more consulting and business training and I felt like the last four years have been awesome with it. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t had hiccups, I mean, the ups and the downs. I feel like the ups are, it’s been super spiritually transformational for me and I love my team. I feel like they’re like a family almost. I know some people say that’s not good, but I feel like you need to love where you work and I do. But the downs are that they, you get all emotional and you’re all up in everybody’s business and you get attached, you get attached to your practice and when you make mistakes, it’s super personal. So, yes, I don’t know, that’s just an intro.
[LATOYA]
Yes, no, but that was like, man, I got like a billion questions just off the intro because, and thank you for sharing that story. It’s even more interesting that you started your group practice work, having to pivot and transition quickly.
[DAWN]
Yes, I feel like, yes, that’s so true.
[LATOYA]
So Bloody Monday,, that wasn’t fun.
[DAWN]
No. I’m like, I’m an Enneagram three, so I can hustle and I can perform, but what I noticed, it actually set me up to like, what I notice is I could do all these things externally, but internally I could still be a mess. I mean, like I said, I had some postpartum anxiety, pretty severe. Then when my son was two and a half, my mom died. That’s when I started, that’s when I decided to open my own group practice because the group that we were with, a lot of people were moving. That’s when I’m like I’m going to start my own group practice. Literally it was the year of grieving my mom and I opened a group practice.
[LATOYA]
What made you do that at that time too, do you think, because that’s a lot?
[DAWN]
Well, I think with grief when you get to, like, I don’t believe in the stages that they go, stage one, stage two, stage three. But there is a sixth stage that they have talked about and it’s where you are in the giving back phase and the meaningful phase. I feel like I had reached that phase where, like, it really impacted me, obviously, that my mom died and just realizing I want life to really matter. I decided to have a second baby. I wanted my son to have a brother. Well, I didn’t know if it was a brother at the time. I wanted my son to have a sibling and I just was like I don’t want to work for anyone else. I don’t want to do this half group thing, collaborate that we’re doing. I wanted to do a full group practice.

Then I decided to do a faith-based practice at that point because I was not a hundred percent doing that before. I wanted a team that had the same similar faith. They didn’t have to be all alike, but I wanted that to be foundational of the spiritual realm but we can sit with clients wherever. And we don’t market as faith-based, but the team is faith-based. I just felt like life was too short. My mom died at age 63, which is young. I wanted to just have a more meaningful life and I thought, I’m going to do a group practice and this is what, like a purpose, it was a calling almost.
[LATOYA]
No, I believe that to be so. I do believe my practice, your practice, many people’s, like, it’s still ministry because there’s so much that goes on, especially when you’re a believer. I don’t know how believers separate the two that what you’re doing is not ministry and you’re serving other people and allowing the Holy Spirit to use you in the midst. So that’s a loaded year. I often say like in my own experience, and it sounds like you’re there too because I want to hear your thoughts on it, especially like in a group practice, but in life. Of course, with my group practice, it’s like, man, when those lows come and the way I describe, it’s like, ooh, it knocked the wind out of me. But what I’ve noticed, the most beautiful things come from that.
[DAWN]
Yes.
[LATOYA]
You know what I mean? It’s like, man, I would never, if I had to write the script, I would never put this stuff in the script. I don’t want this.
[DAWN]
Yes, I would never say I’m glad my mom died so I could start a group practice because it wasn’t that that equal. It was more of what am I going to do with my life and my legacy watching hers? So that’s when, but at the same time, I have to be real. You know me, that’s my thing. I’m pretty authentic. That’s the name of my group practice.
[LATOYA]
I love it.
[DAWN]
But I feel like even when I was doing that, LaToya, I still internally was draining myself too. I mean, I did grieve. I grieved well, I think, but starting a group practice, while people may be like, oh, that’s wonderful you start a group practice. It’s still hard. So I noticed I started going more into the hustle and survival mode and I wasn’t really taking care of myself, which is what actually catapulted me into figuring out soul care for therapists and learning how can we still take care of our deep inner soul while building a business? That’s why I have pivoted my consulting to that more. That’s really important to me because you can burn out.

And I did. Like the first three of my practice, I felt like I just kept falling and falling and falling. I did, I was losing, I would lose a therapist and I would reevaluate. Sometimes we reevaluate by going into a shame cycle, which I don’t recommend, but it’s true. You’re like, what did I do wrong? Sometimes you do, you need to look at what’s the culture I’m creating? What’s the contract say? Do I need to tweak things? I realized I wasn’t creating a culture a hundred percent of what I probably wanted to and it helped me develop my culture. So even though I was super devastated when therapists left and took like a hundred percent of the clients and started their own practice, I had to realize I had to get stronger as a business and a leader and I had to be very clear on my expectations and it helped develop me even though it was devastating at first. So I feel like that’s what we’re talking about today is what are the lows? But how can they develop you into being, living a life you want and having a great practice?
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[LATOYA SMITH]
Yes, there is beauty that comes from it and for those that are listening, whether you have an established group practice, you’re looking to start a group practice, listen, it’s not going to be perfect, but it’s like okay, cliché, roll with the punches. But the other side is there’s so much great that can come from it. Sometimes those moments come, it’s about the pivot. Listen, growing a group practice is going to grow you up, spiritually, emotionally, you name it, it’s going to build some character in you. Just talk about that part some more too, because sometimes we, as owners, we do want to present, well, I mean ideally, of course, we want to present well, for our team, for the community, but then we also want to lead well. And what I’ve learned a part of leading well is letting you see me in my authentic space. I do make mistakes. I am trying to be an owner and then I have, we wear so many other hats.
[DAWN]
Yes.
[LATOYA]
And I want to do them all well, but sometimes I may not.
[DAWN]
Absolutely.
[LATOYA]
Let’s talk about that in the space of juggling it all and trying to make meaning from it all.
[DAWN]
Yes. Well you know me, I call this the therapist matrix where we have so many hats and responsibilities and they’re all intersecting through ourselves. And they are such important hats and responsibility. I mean, the first one is being a human, our personal self, so knowing our own stuff. I know that’s cliché but we really need to realize as therapists, we are so, like most of us hopefully are self-aware enough to know our own triggers, but we’re also others aware because we’ve sat with clients forever and other people. So there’s others awareness and then we have our business hat on. We have our entrepreneur hat on. Some of us have our spiritual hat on. I mean, there’s so many things, like which one is going to show up? Which is most important?

I think a lot of it is learning how to, and I don’t even want to say balance, like understand the rhythm of all those are going to be fighting for attention and you have to decide which one at this moment do I need to give more voice to? Almost like parts work. If people do IFS work, like the parts work is which voice needs to be heard right now. Sometimes you have to sit, I think and take a moment to figure that out and I just want to put a big plug in for community. I feel like we need a community, it doesn’t have to be a bunch, but like two or three other group practice owners who can sit with you in that space, who can also, like, you need to be real on a totally different level with them than you do with your team because sometimes your team needs a different level of vulnerability than say a few close friends that you can run things by. Because you’re not going to run everything by your team. I think I may have lost some of the question you said, did I start talking about it or?
[LATOYA]
No, no, no. This is great because I love the fact that you said community too, which also shows that in this journey we should not walk it alone. Man, this is so much good stuff in this. I’m trying to stay focused. This goes back to, which is always and always should be the vulnerability piece and being able to find my community and my space to say I’m not doing well in this area and I need to reach out for help, which is a great point. I can’t always turn to my team and say something because they may need the leader. They do need the leader. Sometimes they need to see me vulnerable, but not, I don’t need to be crunching numbers with everybody and like this is hard.
[DAWN]
I’m selling my practice today because I’m so frustrated. You don’t need to hear that [crosstalk]
[LATOYA]
I love coffee, I do coffee, but finding a group of therapists or finding a circle that can hear you and that can get it. Like what you were saying, I love what you said a minute ago too, listen, what voice needs the most attention right now? We had a long weekend and I was just reflecting back over the last couple years maybe for me and I’m thinking, man, I sat and I love this space I’m in now. This year was rough for me, the first part of the year and business wise but then I was reflecting back last year and I’m thinking, no, it wasn’t like this, but man, I felt like I was excelling in a different area. But I feel more whole now. Like after, that storm came through, I’m like, woo, here I come, where last year things may have been great, but I didn’t have this renewed sense of self like I do right now.
[DAWN]
Yes, and I think that’s so important to look at LaToya, like what you just said. We need to remember after this emotional intensity and growth pains is over, we’re going to feel stronger but right now we can’t trust our feelings in the storm. We have to trust something bigger than that, like a bigger story, a bigger picture than right now. I think I forget that too. When I’m in the middle of something with my practice and I’m so stressed or it’s intense, I forget that it’s not going to be forever. You think I’d remember that. My coping skills that I teach everyone else, like, you think I’d remember, but it truly is like this, the roller coaster is part of owning a practice. The failures, the mistakes are part of success. You can’t have one without the other, I don’t think. It’s just like, there’s no bravery without fear.
[LATOYA]
There you go.
[DAWN]
It’s the same with group practice. There’s no greatness without the mistakes. You have to have them to learn, to get better.
[LATOYA]
That’s a great point. Again, for people that, the listeners just to know that when they come to keep pushing. I’m so glad, I’m glad you didn’t quit on Bloody Monday and then say I’m just going to quit this whole therapy thing. I’m glad you didn’t quit when it was time to that difficult year when your mother passed away, you decided to have another baby. You said, Okay, I’m going to, that’s where the Holy Spirit led you. Okay, this is what I’m ready to do. So it’s just transitions and it’s seasons. I do want to talk more about soul care. Man, I’m going to talk about more about the matrix too, but —
[DAWN]
They go together actually.
[LATOYA]
Break it on down even more.
[DAWN]
Well for me, what happened is I started noticing because I was, I feel like I’ve worked with therapists, whether they were clients in my therapy practice but then also again, when I did consulting I started and I just always networked with therapists. So I was always working behind the scenes with therapists. I was getting into their inner world. I was a friend of a lot of therapists too. So we had a great community here in Castle Rock, or we still do. So I started noticing a pattern that therapists could be really awesome clinicians, but yet not tending to their soul. What I mean is when I talk about soul care, it’s different than self-care. Even self-care, I don’t, I’m not talking manicures, pedicures, massages, working out. Yes those can be part of it, but I’m talking about the deeper, like soul care’s a little deeper.

For me, I look at it as a spiritual level, something grounding ourselves bigger than ourselves. So I feel like we forget that a lot as therapists because we’re so used to helping other people and we’re so used to, we’re more comfortable and we have such good coping skills, we can fake it on a certain level. So I just started seeing a lot of therapists not dropping down and taking care of their own stuff. Because life happens, like I said, when I was grieving my mom and going through postpartum or perinatal anxiety, realizing it was much easier for me to go to work and sit in the therapist chair than it was to take the time I needed to work on my stuff. So for me that’s what looking at the therapist matrix is like, taking care of that soul because that can, if you start there, it can infiltrate into everything else. We sometimes do it backwards as therapist.
[LATOYA]
Yes. So it’s a reminder for therapists that we are whole and we should tend to our whole selves, not just show up to work and help everybody else, but also understanding that no, you’re human. We do have flaws, we can create and grow a dope practice and just because things aren’t where they’re at, we’re still just as dope. But it’s understanding I need to tend to all of me and not just a piece of me that needs to show up for a session.
[DAWN]
Yes, absolutely. With the therapist matrix, also looking at entrepreneur, I mean, there are times when my entrepreneurial spirit is like wanting to run and go, but yet I look at where I’m at with my family right now and it’s not the right time. Or it’s not going to be the best or my business side is I want to make X amount of money. I know we always talk about getting over our fear of money, but there’s still, for me, I have to look at, okay, I didn’t grow my practice fast. Like some people hit like six figures and half a million fast. It took me like six years to hit it. I remember realizing somebody was like, have you hit six figures? I’m like, I don’t even know. It wasn’t, it just wasn’t my way of looking at things but then sometimes I get too wrapped up in that. Then, I don’t know, I just feel like you have to give space and voice to all parts of you as a therapist, as a human holistic and I don’t know if we’re the best at it because some of it’s hard, messy.
[LATOYA]
Yes. And I think, too, you reminded me of something, I noticed about myself, when I chase things, certain things, it’s like in that moment you can’t tell me nothing. Like, yo, I’m about to get this, this, this, this is this goal of like maybe a financial goal, here I come. But when I focus so hard on that, I lose sight of self. Then I end up tripping and falling. Speaking of taking care of me, I realize that I’m out of sorts. I’m not myself when that goal is my primary, because my personality, my vision, my flow doesn’t work that way, as opposed to, again, going back to authentic self and maybe it’s my vision or my passion that drives me or being led by the spirit or something. It’s like, man, I know that I’m off kilter when I’m like, money, here we come.
[DAWN]
It’s true, instead of leaving like passion and value led. I work a lot with people on let’s look at what you value and how to live from that. When I do my soul care retreats or even my soul care type mastermind groups, it’s really about dropping down into that still quiet space to hear some of the passion and hear some of the values. Because I think sometimes we’re so busy and we’re so hurried that we’re not connecting to the deeper parts of ourselves. It’s funny, so when I do my soul care retreats a lot of, there’s a lot of downtime which is unusual for conferences and retreats, but I build it in on purpose because we have to get there and there’s a lot of anxiety for therapists because a lot of them are group practice owners coming in.

They’re like, “But my team has to get ahold of me.” I’m like, “They can, they’re fine for a weekend. Turn your phone off.” There’s a lot of, yes, there’s a lot of anxiety about that but when they get there, the piece they feel is so refreshing. Let me tell you this, it makes us more creative. It gives room for more ideas. We forget that because it seems counterintuitive to slow down to get a better business idea but actually I see it every time by the end of the retreats, people are like spouting off ideas but they’re like big dreams and big ideas because they’ve had time to slow down and connect with themselves, connect with their spiritual place. So I see it actually is for me, soul care is, for me, it has helped and is the answer to our therapist matrix, it like helps us center.
[LATOYA]
So how can people, because I told you I’m coming and I believe that I’m going to be empowered by your soul care retreats, man, I think that’s going to be awesome. So how can people find it, get in touch, learn more, all that stuff?
[DAWN]
They can, I’m on social media, Faith Fringes on Facebook, Instagram, and I often will put up my specials, like my early bird specials. Or they can just email me dawn@faithfringes.com, go to my website faithfringes.com, anyway, they can reach out. I can tell them more. I’m constantly putting more retreats up. I think I’m just booking a place for January. I have one in September. There’s still some, a couple openings left if people want to come in September and then yes, I’ll probably do one in April too. I’m constantly booking new places because people really need the space.
[LATOYA]
It’s always in Colorado you said or?
[DAWN]
Yes, I’m actually, I’m working with some group practice owners who want to do it for their team and so I will come to you based on, I mean, we’ll work out a thing, but, yes, if you’re interested in me coming and training, not training but doing the soul care with your team, I can come to you. We just have to work out all the details of do you want a day retreat, do you want like overnight somewhere?
[LATOYA]
I love that. Now you got my will spin.
[DAWN]
And I also do sacred space masterminds, which is a mix of mastermind consulting and also holding space for the sacred. So we’ll do some spiritual exercises to drop down into the spiritual realm and hear what is God or the divine sharing with us right now and how can we connect to that in order to make better business decisions?
[LATOYA]
Love it. I love all of it. I told you we’re going to stay connected [crosstalk]. Dawn, before we go, what words of encouragement, more wisdom, because you’re dropping a lot of great stuff, can you give to, maybe somebody who’s in solo practice and is thinking about starting a group practice, feel like they don’t have it all together, how they’re going to manage this? And like you said, family and maybe being a caretaker, whoever they are, what words would you give to that person who wants to just start and then what words would you say to somebody who’s trying to grow and they feel like they have so much going on and it’s hard to excel?
[DAWN]
I would say to the person who’s solo and thinking about jumping into group practice, and did you hear what I said, I didn’t mean to, but jumping in, you do have to take a leap. It depends on your personality. Obviously, mine’s different than others, but you do, you can’t wait till all the fear’s gone. You can’t wait till everything’s perfect. You have to just do it. With that, I would say hire a consultant. It doesn’t have to be me. I mean, you’re a consultant, LaToya, like hire a consultant. That changed my business life and it changed my life anxiety wise because someone to help lead and do that with you makes all the difference.

I would say, yes, community, consultant and take the leap for the solo practice owner. Then for the group, growing a group, again, I think connecting with your values, but also getting a community of people that know you, join a mastermind group. Again, community has made the hugest difference. And also know, connect to your values and know why are you doing this and create the group that you love and want to, like where would you want to work if you weren’t leading it and create that. I do think team culture is huge to creating a good group.
[LATOYA]
Awesome. Well, Dawn, thank you so much. As always, I think it’s always amazing just to chat with you and now we just let a bunch of other people in on our conversation.
[DAWN]
I know. That’s so fun.
[LATOYA]
To just listen, they’re just listening to our conversation. Thank you so much. Like I said, I’m coming to Colorado or you’re coming here where I’m at, we’re just going to continue to work together. Thank you for today.
[DAWN]
Thank you for listening today to the Faith Fringes podcast. For those of you wanting to take a deeper dive into your own faith journey, you can grab my free email course, Spiritual Reflections on my website, faithfringes.com. If you’re a therapist and would want to work with me, I offer sacred space holding for you through my consulting as well as my soul care retreats. To find out more, go to my website or email me, dawn@faithfringes.com.

I love hearing from my listeners. Drop me an email and tell me what’s on your mind. You can also connect with me on social media. I’m on Facebook and Instagram at Faith Fringes. As always, if you’re enjoying this podcast, I would love it if you could show it by your reviews. Go to Apple Podcasts and leave your review so that others can find this podcast and get curious about their own spiritual journey. Thanks again for listening.

Faith Fringes is part of the Practice of the Practice network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Faith in Practice, Beta Male Revolution, Empowered and Unapologetic or Impact Driven Leader, go to the website, www.practiceofthepractice.com/network.

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