[WHITNEY]: The Faith in Practice podcast is part of the Practice of the Practice podcast network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you start, grow, and scale your practice. To hear other episodes like the Imperfect Thriving podcast, Bomb Mom podcast, Beta Male Revolution, or Empowered and Unapologetic, go to practiceofthepractice.com\network.
Welcome to the Faith in Practice podcast. This is Whitney Owen’s recording live from Savannah, Georgia. I’m a licensed professional counselor, group practice owner and a private practice consultant. Every week through personal stories or interviews, I’m going to help you learn how to start, grow, and scale your private practice with a faith-based perspective. I’m going to show you how to have an awesome faith-based practice without being cheesy or fake and you too can have a successful practice, make money and be true to yourself. Today is episode 10 and I’m going to be interviewing a longtime friend, Dawn Gabriel. In the episode. I’ll talk a lot more about my relationship with her. She is super special to me and also talk about how do you have faith in private practice?
When I interviewed Dawn, I was just blown away by the amount of faith that she has and the work that she’s doing and it really inspired me, honestly, in my own practice for how can I make more leaps of faith and think more about my decisions with wisdom instead of sometimes looking at what seems like the next best step, which sometimes it’s really great for your practice, right? I mean, we want to be logical and thoughtful in our steps, especially looking at our numbers and what seems best for the practice, but it’s not always about that. I was just consulting someone the other day and I said, ‘You, let’s look at your finances. Let’s look at what’s going on.”
But sometimes you got to pray about it, you know, and you got to think about it. And sometimes the things that we do that are faith-based don’t necessarily look the same as someone who doesn’t have that faith-based background. Or someone might think, “Well, that’s crazy what you’re doing.” And, you know, it does sound kind of crazy, but I have to do what I know is the right thing to do. And so, I love how Dawn brings this into the interview and it’s so inspiring in the way that she steps out in her faith. So, I’m excited to have interviewed her and for her story to be shared with you on this podcast. So, let’s get started.
All right, welcome to the Faith in Practice podcast. This is Whitney Owens. I love that you’re here with us today. I want to encourage you that if you haven’t yet, that you would rate and review the podcast so we can get the information out to more people. So however, you listen to it and get in there and give me some stars and let’s get more people listening to the podcast. I also have a Facebook group. If you want to be a part of that, it’s a Faith in Practice Facebook group where we just kind of talk about business and faith and how we’re doing all that together.
So, I’m particularly excited today because I’m interviewing a dear friend, but also an amazing therapist. She was also, did some help for me in my own practice building. And she’s got a great practice out in Colorado. So, this is Dawn Gabriel and let me just kind of give a bio on her. She is a consultant coach and owner of Authentic Connections Counseling in historic Castle Rock, Colorado. She helps people achieve freedom from what’s keeping them stuck. Dawn is trained in EMDR and uses it with coaching clients to address and clear limiting beliefs, fears, and self-sabotage. Her coaching helps people set goals, create attainable action plans. When she isn’t working, she is a busy mother of two energetic boys, finding new restaurants with her husband, enjoys hiking and connecting over a good shot latte with friends. So, hey, Dawn, how are you?
[DAWN]: Hey Whitney.
[WHITNEY]: Good, good. Yeah, you liked that bio, huh?
[DAWN]: Oh yeah.
[WHITNEY]: Wonderful. Well, let’s talk, I’d want to share a little bit with people kind of how we met and how we know each other. So, I’ve known Dawn for almost 10 years.
[DAWN]: Wow.
[WHITNEY]: We met at a psychiatric hospital, right?
[DAWN]: As clinicians, not as inpatient ourselves.
[WHITNEY]: That’s right. That’s right. And I always like to tell people that Dawn also met her husband at an interesting place.
[DAWN]: Yeah, we met in jail.
[WHITNEY]: That’s right.
[DAWN]: Not as inmates.
[WHITNEY]: That’s right. So,
[DAWN]: Yeah, Dawn and I met at a psychiatric hospital out in Colorado when I lived out there and she was really at the beginning of me starting doing private practice. She gave me the leg into the first practice that I ever worked at. So, she really got me going there and also did supervision for me during that time and we had an interesting story, which I guess we might get into if we want to. But something interesting happened at that practice and we started our own a week later and that’s how the story goes. So, yeah. So, Dawn, why don’t you share with people a little bit about where you have been and where you’re at now in private practice?
[DAWN]: Yeah, so, it’s going to be a similar story as yours Whitney, because we kind of started at the same time. When I was working at the psych hospital, I just noticed that that just wasn’t my heart. I really wanted to do private practice. So, I started just part time in the evenings, so working full time at the psych hospital and then part time taking clients individually at night and then eventually, left the psych hospital to join a nurse practitioner of psychiatry. She started her own practice. So, I was an independent contractor with her and Whitney came with. So, there was about six, I think, six of us or seven of us therapists that went over and started a practice as independent contractors. And I think it was only a year or so. I don’t remember how long, but I came back from maternity leave and the nurse practitioner let us all go. She said, “All the therapists are done today.
[WHITNEY]: She called it bloody Monday.
[DAWN]: Yeah.
[WHITNEY]: Bloody Monday, I think it kicked us all out of that [inaudible 00:06:14] and everything.
[DAWN]: It was crazy. We were like, “We need to call our clients. This is so unethical. We have clients booked today.” Anyway, so I just remember walking into the room with all the other therapists going, “Okay, let’s start our own practice.” And within a week, I think there was four of us, maybe five at that time we left, started our own practice within a week. We found an office, we got a website up, we picked a name and we all just kind of joined together and shared space. We didn’t really do our practice together. We just kind of used the space together and kind of did life together as therapists.
[WHITNEY]: Yeah, that was pretty crazy. We gave ourselves a group name, which is really great because then we were able to refer within one another, but then we also each had our own setup businesses. So that’s definitely a way to do a group in a less traditional way, I guess. Oh boy, I was scared out of my mind because that was the first time I was going to have to go on my own. And I was so young and new to this, but having the group really helped me move forward.
[DAWN]: I remember that. I remember you being scared. We all were, but it was a great community and we learned a lot and we tried to do lunches and peer consult and support one another. And then everyone started moving away. We actually, we all had babies. I think every single one of us had babies and we all helped each other through maternity leave. And then we, people started moving away. So out of the five of us, it went down to two or three. And at that time, I moved to a different city nearby to Castle Rock, and I just really felt like I wanted to start my own practice. I had already had one, my first son and I knew I wanted to have a second one and it’s hard to go through maternity leave when you’re running your own practice.
And I thought, “How can I still make money and stay home with my son? My, well, I had a second son, but stay home with my baby and still make money. And I thought, “Well, I’m kind of used to running my own practice and I like helping other people.” I had been doing a lot of supervision at that time too and I thought, “Why don’t I just start a group and do independent contractors on my own?” And so, I kind of fumbled into it and, started the practice in 2015, and then got pregnant in May, like a month later.
[WHITNEY]: Of course.
[DAWN]: Of course. And then like went through the pregnancy and maternity leave, I hired three independent contractors and then just started slowly growing. I came back the second year but, I was in over my head and freaked out and realized I need to really make this more of a business. So that’s when I hired some business coaches and really started focusing on it like the end of year two.
[WHITNEY]: So, did you hire all three at the same time? All three clinicians?
[DAWN]: The first one came with me, from our practice Whitney, right after you moved from Mountainside Counseling Group, she, Lynn came with me. And then I had two good friends I actually went to grad school with and they approached me and said, “Hey, we want to join your practice.” And I was like, “Really? Okay.” I didn’t have a lot of confidence in what I was doing and so I was shocked that they wanted to join, but, and they’ve been with me the whole time. That’s Dave and Trish Holbeck. So, yeah, those three, yeah, within a month of each other.
[WHITNEY]: Wow. That’s a lot to take on. I think a lot of people that I’ve talked to are like, “Oh, how many do I hire?” And they only want to hire one at a time because they’re scared. So, are you glad you took on three at one time? Did that end up being helpful for the business?
[DAWN]: Yes. At that point we only had one office and half of another office. So, I owned an office and then sublet another office out and they only wanted like one or two days or two or three days. So, nobody wanted four or five days, which now fast forward now into my business, I don’t really hire independent contractors or employees who only want one day because it is the same amount of work one person working one day than the same person working four days. And it’s more business sense to hire someone who wants to work three or four days. That’s just the little tip.
[WHITNEY]: Yes, yes. We like tips. So, tell me about, so you had the first three and then kind of go from there.
[DAWN]: Yeah, and then I hired, then I was scared out of mind financially. So, I just hired whoever like, “Oh yeah, I’m going to hire this person.” This works. We need to make more money and they’ll bring clients in.” And it didn’t really fit for our culture. So, I went through two or three therapists that wasn’t a fit and it was really demoralizing, but I realized I wasn’t hiring for my culture that I wanted for my center and my passion. And so, then I kind of got true on what I really wanted and started interviewing differently and hire different clinicians. And now I have an amazing team of eight therapists.
[WHITNEY]: Yeah, it’s awesome. Can you talk more about that because I get a lot of questions about that too. Like what is your culture and how do you interview and hire based on that to get the right people?
[DAWN]: Yeah, and actually this is perfect because when we did our practice Whitney, we weren’t necessarily a faith-based practice. We just saw whoever came in the door from insurance. It’s how we got referrals, but now we’re, I’m a full private pay practice and when I switched to this group, I knew I wanted to do a faith-based practice. And I knew, even though we can sit with clients at any place they’re at, if they have no faith or different faith or they are new to the faith, it doesn’t matter. We can sit with them wherever, but we do advertise a little bit saying we can integrate the Christian faith for those people who request it. And so, I knew my team, I wanted them to be Christian counselors, I mean Christians and therapists. And so, but what happened was I noticed some people can say they are Christian counselors, but don’t really have a grounded, a true grounded faith and, I needed to interview more on that culture.
And so, because our team, we do a lot of team building, we do a lot of team meetings, we do team retreats and people want to join our practice because of our community. And I want to make sure we’re all grounded in kind of, not the same place in our Christian work, but at the same place, I mean, our heart wanting to pursue God in our own life and how, what that looks like sitting with clients, whether they’re believers or not. And so, I had to up my game on the interview process and I actually invited Dave and Trish, who’ve been with me this whole time as kind of spiritual directors with me. And so, we do a group interview after I do the initial interview. They interview and then I come back around. So, we do like a three-stage interview process to make sure it’s a good fit for our team.
[WHITNEY]: I love it. And you have contractors still.
[DAWN]: Yeah. I know it’s a little bit easier in Colorado because I know there’s a big thing about employees versus contractors, but Colorado, it’s kind of the culture here, a lot of independent contractors and it works for us.
[WHITNEY]: And can you talk about how do you interview in such a way to find out where they’re at in their faith in a way that doesn’t demoralize them at all, but gets you to the culture that you need.
[DAWN]: Yeah. So just kind of having them talk about their journey, like, “Tell me about your faith journey. What does it look like? Where have you been?” And then they usually will respond. I also am listening if they’ve been in counseling. I know that sounds crazy and you could probably never ask that in a regular type of job interview, but I want to hear that they’ve been in counseling and they’ve worked on their own crap.
[WHITNEY]: Yes. I’m all of that.
[DAWN]: Because what I noticed is, I had, and just with working with therapists in general, not necessarily my team, but if they haven’t worked on their stuff, it comes out in their sessions and it comes out with their clients and that was causing some problems.
[WHITNEY]: It also comes out with their employees and their boss.
[DAWN]: Yeah, that’s what I mean. Like I was, so you’re constantly dealing with different issues and if they’re not working on it, it’s super hard. But then you’re finding yourself as the owner in a situation like, “I’m spending a lot of time with this therapist and something needs to change.” And there are times, I don’t want to make it sound like I don’t want to spend time with my team, but without going into detail, it’s you want to be able to spend time with your team. If they have a hard time in life, that’s fine. You want to work with them, but you don’t want it to be a thing that they could be working on in counseling. Sorry, did that make any sense?
[WHITNEY]: It definitely makes sense. Yeah, and you have to set those healthy boundaries for yourself as an owner that you can help your clinicians, but you can’t be their therapist.
[DAWN]: No, no. And that’s why I brought Dave and Trish because at one point I was so driven to make it work business wise and financially that I was just looking at numbers and this person could bring in this many clients or this many clients and when I’m just looking for a financial game that didn’t work for me. So, I won’t do that again. I just really want to interview, “Does this person get along well with the team? Do they want to join the team?” Because I have also had clinicians who came in and I didn’t realize, but I was a landing board, I mean a stepping stone and they would stay for a year or less and then go start their own practice, like five miles away and take all the clients with them. And it was just really demoralizing and I’d be like crying and all over the place like, “I’m quitting. I’m going back to being my own.” The reality is I can’t work by myself in private practice. I need a group, but yeah, it’s all about the interview process in my opinion.
[WHITNEY]: I totally agree. I have had similar stories to you and have had some tears and some rejection and moving forward. I think I was just talking to somebody about that idea that when somebody leaves it’s easy for us to just get so caught up in the rejection and in that aspect and forget, “Oh wait, God wanted me to build this practice and He’s got a direction for me.” And like, “This is going to work out and look at all the good stuff that’s happened.”
[DAWN]: Yeah, that is so true, Whitney. This is the thing. We just moved into a new place two months ago and that is the thing that impacted me the most. I realized how much, even though I say, I want to have God as the center, there’s times I take back all the ownership and I’m like, “No, I have to do this and have to work my business plan.” And I get so focused that I do forget what about, what does God want for this place and this practice? And I feel like the last few months have been a complete overhaul on that faith journey of stepping out in faith and reminded me He gave me this dream, He gave me this passion. It’s not about who leaves or who stays. I can still go on. And I had a really good friend who left the practice and it was a different experience than the other people leaving, but she and I had to work through it because she was a super close friend and I had to, we are still good friends and I had to really face some hard things and hard truths and it was actually good.
[WHITNEY]: I love it.
[DAWN]: Yeah.
[WHITNEY]: Yeah, can you talk about the new space that you’re in? First of all, how did you decide to take on a new space and do you rent it or did you buy it and how’s that transition been?
[DAWN]: Yeah, so we were in a space for three years. It was, like more of a business building with like attorneys and tax accountants and, or anything really. And it was a small space. We had like a suite of two and a half offices with a lobby, which we loved, but it just, we started expanding and it just didn’t feel as comfortable. And so, I was looking for months for places and Castle Rock has a really high growing population right now. And anyway, so I almost was signing on one place and I thought, “Let me just check my other options.” And I called the guy and said, “I need to look at this one place.” And he’s like, “Oh, it’s full, but I think I have what you want, but we’re renovating it and it is this little house.” And so, I was like, “A house? Ooh, that’s kind of like a dream practice for me space.”
And so, I went in and he was finishing up the renovations. It was gorgeous and it’s a little house. It’s only 1400 square feet, but it has four offices, conference room, kitchen, two different lobbies, two bathrooms, and it’s perfect. So, I knew immediately when I walked in, like I could viscerally feel that this has to be ours, but it was way out of budget and I was like, “There’s no way.” And so, I started running numbers and I realized if everyone was full, we could make it happen. But we weren’t full. We were at like 50 to 60% because I had just hired two new clinicians and they weren’t full, but they wanted to be, and for us to get full, we had to have a new space anyway. So, it was kind of like that leap of faith. And I did, I prayed, I talked to my husband, sought some mentors and just kind of got some direction and still the numbers didn’t match.
And I, but I felt God was saying, “Do it. You have to. This is what you wanted, this is your dream, I’m giving it to you. You have to take the leap.” I’m like, “But the numbers don’t match.” And I felt like He said, “You need to trust me, stop doing everything on your own. You need to be in a place of fear to trust me. Almost not fear, but you need to trust me.” And I’m like, “No, not financially. That scares me.” And then on top of that, Whitney I don’t know what everyone believes about tithing, but I feel like it’s one of the only places in the Bible that says, “Test me.” God says, “Test me on this tithe.” And I felt like God said, “And by the way, you need to tithe off of everything that comes in before you pay your clinicians, before you pay anything. I want you to give 10% back.” And I was like, “Well, that makes no sense.” But I decided to do it. And we’re two months in, we’re going on our third month. I still sometimes don’t know how we’re making the bills, but we are making all the bills and we’re getting new clients every day and it’s working. It’s crazy. So, I don’t know if that’s good business.
[WHITNEY]: No, no. I like it. Well, the point is that when we do things from a faith perspective, it’s not going to look like the world’s perspective and it’s going to look a little different and people aren’t going to get that. And yeah, that’s why we’re doing this podcast. This is why we have the whole network of Faith in Practice. It’s because it is going to look a little different yet it’s going to be business to.
[DAWN]: Yeah, and, but business coaches would like freak out about that. Probably.
[WHITNEY]: Yeah. Well, good thing that you’re a business coach for people and you can say you did all that
[DAWN]: And it’s beautiful. And the thing is, this place, we’ve already, people just love this place. It’s a very cozy, beautiful house and people have already felt more destigmatized by the mental health because they just love coming here. I have clients who come early just to sit in the lobby and hear the spa music and smell the oils and just relax.
[WHITNEY]: Oh, well hopefully next time I’ll get to visit. I had gone out to Colorado for Killin’It Camp back in October of 2019 and I was supposed to go down and stay with Dawn at night and see the new space but then the snow storm came through and there was no way of driving to the airport from Castle Rock right after the snow storm. So, I did not get the pleasure, but hopefully there’ll be another trip to Colorado before too long to see it. But I’ve seen pictures and boy, that is so cute. So cute.
[DAWN]: Thank you.
[WHITNEY]: I love it.
[DAWN]: We love it.
[WHITNEY]: Wow. So, stuff has happened and that’s for sure. That’s great. So, talk about the, you were telling me before the podcast that you’re decreasing your client load, so I’m hoping to take on more coaching. So, tell me about the work that you do with therapists and coaching.
[DAWN]: So, I’ve been a therapist now, 14 years and I could tell my compassion, fatigue and burnout was getting a little high, but I think that’s because I’m also running a team and it’s a lot more energy, different energy when you’re running a group practice. And I realized I needed to have space for my therapists for issues that came up with the group and then for my own personal family, like personal soul care. and so I realized like I didn’t want to totally give up clients a hundred percent, but I started noticing a lot of therapists started coming to me, oh because I started a counselor’s therapist network, there’s about a hundred therapists who’ve joined and we have monthly networking and training meetings and about 15 to 20 show up at those. And I’ve been, a lot of them were asking me like, “Hey, do you do any coaching or can you meet with me and can I run stuff by you?”
And so, I started realizing, “Oh, I need to, I want to do coaching” Because I love it. I love working with therapists. I feel like you can just dive in right away. You don’t have to do all the tons of rapport building because they want, they know what they need. They know what they want, they just need someone to process it with them. And so, you can just dive to a different level. And so, I do, I also am trained in EMDR and I actually am trained in a positive psychology part of EMDR, which is not necessarily for trauma. It’s more to get just the blocks and the stuff that’s stuck in our head.
For example, like I don’t deserve to raise my rates or I am not getting enough clients where, but I can tell I’m sabotaging my business or I don’t know if I can go full time in private practice and quit my other job that I hate. So, things like that, that block us as therapists, EMDR quickly moves it through a different process and we can do it over video, over Skype or anything really to end the, the therapist client will be able to tap and get through the issues. So, it’s like a hybrid version of EMDR and I love it. A lot of people are seeing great results and feeling better and yeah.
[WHITNEY]: Yeah, that’s what a great service that you provide. And I love this idea and I think this is so common for us that we start out kind of finding something we like and people just kind of start asking us for something and then we see, “Wait, no, this could actually be something.” Like, I think a lot of therapists start that way. Or at least I did. People were coming to me for advice and wisdom all the time and I was like, “Well, I might as well go get an MA in counseling and do this.” You know, I’m already doing it. I love the way people are just coming to you for that and then by owning a group practice, you can take down the client load a little and invest a little bit more in some other things. That’s awesome.
[DAWN]: Yeah.
[WHITNEY]: Cool. Cool. You know, a question that I also get, if you can kind of speak to this, how do you differentiate the counselor and the coach, especially when you’re doing some coaching that has a little bit of a therapeutic part to it? Like you don’t do intake paperwork with someone that you’re coaching, do you? Or like, what’s the difference?
[DAWN]: I do a little bit of, I wouldn’t call it intake. I just have them fill out a form. Like, “What are you looking for? What are your goals?” Because I want to see that they’re goal-oriented and it’s not past-oriented. So, for me it’s been, that’s been the hardest thing to answer because for 15 years I’ve been client focused on a therapeutic level, not coaching and it, and I, especially with trauma and EMDR, you go a little deeper into trauma. Like that’s not coaching. So, for me, I definitely draw the line of, is this trauma-related or is it somewhat, and if it is, then they need to be more of a counseling client. But the coaching I’ve noticed is more, if it is a therapist wanting to grow their business, they have really specific business goals and they know what’s blocking them. It’s more high functioning basically and they’re more motivated and involved so you’re not teaching a lot of skills per se. It’s more you work together in that relationship and you set goals and it’s a lot quicker and it’s only a few sessions. It’s not like a client, which, that you’re seeing six to six months to a year.
[WHITNEY]: Yeah. Awesome. So, Dawn is going to be so kind as to offer a 30-minute free consult or like a coaching call if you’re interested in working with her so you can kind of get to know her. So, you can just send her an email and it’s [email protected] and get in touch with her. I don’t even know if we actually talked about the name of your practice, but it’s Authentic Connections Counseling?
[DAWN]: Yeah.
[WHITNEY]: Yeah, and because I lived in Colorado for a time, I get people all the time asking me, “Oh, where should I go?” And I’m always referring them to Dawn’s great practice and what she’s doing. So, I ask this at the end of every episode, but what do you feel like Christian counselors need to better understand or know in private practice?
[DAWN]: Hmm. The first thing that popped into my head is that you can still be a great business person and a Christian counselor. I think sometimes we get confused with, we should be giving away a lot of our services for free. And I think we should be giving back to the community, but like schedule that, make a point to do that, but it doesn’t mean we have to do that for everything. We still need to make a living and, it’s good to get some good business coaching and combine that and learn how that feels good for you.
[WHITNEY]: Yes. That is always a hot topic in the counseling world, but definitely in a faith-based perspective and what people want from you and they feel people will give you a hard time for having high rates, but maybe they think is a high rate, but yeah, you got to build a business, got to take care of yourself. You’re going nowhere.
[DAWN]: Yeah. And I think the other thing would be, to really lean into the, what does it look like to integrate the faith into the practice? And sometimes you’re not saying anything for ton of sessions, if the person is a nonbeliever even, or it doesn’t mean you’re pulling out the Bible and thumping it over their head. It’s really like talk with people in your field and figure this out because it looks different for each person and it might look different for you than the person next to you. And I don’t know, I love the discussion, I love that you’re doing this Whitney. I think it’s so cool because we need to talk about it because we’re, it’s foundational to who we are. And then we get confused when we’re sitting in the office, what that looks like ethically and I think we just need to keep having conversations about it.
[WHITNEY]: Yes. Well, thanks, Dawn. I appreciate your time on the show and your vulnerability and talking about the tough stuff and yeah, your practice is going to big places. So, we’ll have more information in the show notes on how to get in touch with Dawn. And we’re so excited about moving forward in this business together.
[DAWN]: Thanks Whitney.
[WHITNEY]: Bye.
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