October 1, 2025 • 28 mins
Today’s guest, Dr. Sumi Raghavan, PHD, joins me to talk about her powerful transition from academia to full-time private practice. She shares the motivations behind her decision, the challenges she faced along the way, and the key moments that shaped her journey.
We dive into what it was like to balance academic responsibilities while building a trauma-focused, cross-cultural therapy practice—and what ultimately led her to go all-in. Our conversation covers everything from strategic planning and marketing to niching and the emotional risks (and rewards) of stepping fully into private practice.
Sponsored by TherapyNotes®: Looking to switch EHRs? Try TherapyNotes® for 2 months free by using promo code ABUNDANT at therapynotes.com.
🎉 Want to work less, earn more, and finally build a private practice that fits your life? The Abundance Party gives you everything you need—courses, templates, expert support, and a thriving community—to help you create a 6-figure practice on your terms (even in this economy). 💰✨
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, welcome to the Abundant Practice Podcast.
I'm Allison from Abundance Practice Building.
I have a nearly diagnosable obsession with helping
therapists build sustainable, joy-filled private practices, just
like I've done for tens of thousands of
therapists across the world.
I'm excited to help you too.
If you want to fill your practice with
ideal clients, we have loads of free resources
(00:29):
and paid support.
Go to abundancepracticebuilding.com slash links.
All right, on to the show.
So I've talked about therapy notes on here
for years.
I could talk about the features and the
benefits in my sleep, but there are a
couple of things I want you to know
about therapy notes that doesn't typically make it
into an ad script.
First is that they actually care if you
(00:50):
like their platform.
They don't only make themselves available on the
phone to troubleshoot so you don't pull your
hair out when you get stuck.
They also take member suggestions and implement those
that there's client demand for, like therapy search,
an included listing service that helps clients find
you, internal and external secure messaging, clinical outcome
measures to keep an eye on how your
clients are progressing, a super smooth super bill
(01:12):
process, real-time eligibility to check on your
client's insurance.
In my conversations with the employees there at
all levels, they all really believe in their
product and they want you to love it
too.
Second, they are proudly independently owned.
Why should you care about that?
Because as soon as venture capital becomes involved,
the focus shifts from making customers happy to
(01:33):
making investors happy.
Prices go way up, innovation plateaus, making more
money with as little output as possible becomes
the number one focus.
With over 100,000 therapists using their platform,
they've been able to stay incredibly successful and
they don't have to sacrifice your experience to
stay there.
You can try two months free at therapynotes
(01:53):
.com with the coupon code abundant.
Welcome back to the abundant practice podcast.
I'm your host, Alison Parere, founder of abundancepracticebuilding
.com.
And I am here with Sumi Raghavan.
And we are going to be talking about
making the move from academia into private practice.
Sumi has lived experience of this and is
(02:14):
going to share all of it with us.
Thank you so much for being here.
Thanks for having me.
I'm excited.
Yeah.
So kind of talk us through, you're in
an academic position, you're working that life.
What made you start a practice on the
side?
Yeah.
Thanks for asking.
I was in the very fortunate and rare
(02:36):
position to receive, to like get an offer
for a tenure track position after grad school.
And when I started, I was not even
fully licensed yet.
And I thought, I am going to be
teaching about clinical work.
I'm going to be teaching about diagnosis, assessment,
(02:59):
treatment.
And then later I would go on, when
I moved into faculty of the graduate program,
I was teaching clinical skills.
And I thought two things.
One is like, if I were like in
music school, I would want my music teacher
to actually play their instrument.
And if I think of it that way,
I want to be a professor that is
(03:20):
able to talk about clinical work in the
present, rather than down the line, be like
10 years ago when I saw patients.
Right.
So I really wanted to know what I
was doing and teaching while I was doing
it.
The other part of it was very pragmatic
because I was tuned into the fact that
academia can be unstable, unreliable, that I wasn't
(03:46):
sure that I would want to do it
forever.
So to speak, I thought this is a
backup that I could always jump into.
And if it gets to be too much,
I can always stop.
Yes.
I love that.
The last piece of it, to be honest,
(04:07):
was money, right?
It's a source of income on the side.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, and I love that you're like, I
need to know what I'm talking about when
I'm teaching people things.
And did you find that that changed how
you taught clinical skills as you did more
and more therapy?
Yes, it really did.
(04:27):
And I really felt like when students asked
me about practice, they liked, they, I think
they felt a greater confidence in what I
was sharing because it was based on present
and past experience.
And I think that it gave me a
(04:48):
lot of credibility as someone who ran my
own practice, which many of them ultimately wanted
to do.
Right.
And so I think those two pieces were
helpful for just like the rapport with students
that buy in and their sort of confidence
in my, what I was delivering.
I think I also felt like the things
I was saying when I talked about building
(05:10):
the therapeutic relationship, when I talked about not
just different treatment modalities, but like understanding experiences
that clients have like grief and loss.
I really felt like I was talking about
it from a place of direct current content
knowledge, not just rehashing things that I had
learned in school.
(05:31):
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so now you're working two jobs at
this stage, right?
You've got your part-time practice.
You've got full-time tenure track work or
not tenure track, tenured work.
Yeah.
In the beginning tenure track.
Yeah.
Before I got tenured.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you've got a lot of work you're
doing.
Yeah.
(05:52):
And what becomes the point for you where
you're like, I want to do more therapy
and less.
Yeah.
Professor work.
So in the peak of COVID.
Life shattering from so many, like, wait, what
am I doing with my life?
What a privilege that my primary crisis in
(06:13):
COVID was professional, right?
Um, I was pregnant with my second child.
I was, uh, we were cramped into our
apartment in New York city with our toddler
and working from home, teaching online, doing therapy
online.
And it became really, I mean, we were
(06:37):
all experiencing a mass global trauma.
We worked and we were experiencing it differently,
but it was profound.
And the need for mental health services was
profound.
And the state of New York had like
a volunteer hotline for, if you were a
mental health practitioner and you wanted to volunteer
for like crisis, I reached out to them
to volunteer.
They ended up not calling on me, but
(06:59):
I was like, I can like supervise volunteers.
If you want to like, I'm a New
York state licensed psychologist.
Um, I started feeling like everyone was struggling
and I wanted to be able to serve
more people clinically.
I really love teaching.
(07:19):
And I felt very conflicted about it, about
the idea of leaving, particularly when I knew
I'd be going up for tenure.
But I think I started just feeling like
I knew that people would really need support
to process everything that we were experiencing on
a global scale.
And so I thought if there was a
time to pivot, maybe this terrible mass trauma
(07:44):
presents a business opportunity.
And that combined with the fact that, you
know, a little bit facilitated by COVID, there's
been a crisis in higher education and the
nature of my job was going to change
partially result of financial challenges at my institution.
(08:08):
And with tenure would come certain increased expectations
of leadership, teaching things were changing structurally in
a way where I was starting to wonder
whether I could even maintain a small practice.
And so it felt like a choice moment
(08:28):
where I was like, okay, either I'm going
to go all in an academia and I'm
going to take tenure.
And which is what I've been working for
what I thought I was wanted.
I'm going to do this, but this is
going to be it.
And I may need to step away from
practice while I'm balancing these increased demands and
go back to it later.
Right.
Or, or I walk out what is for
(08:52):
sure a one-way door and I expand
the practice.
I gamble on the fact that people are
going to want to need therapy in the
coming years and that perhaps a virtual life
will lead more people to reach out in
a different way.
(09:12):
And I was balancing those two things.
And then personally, I had my second child.
I felt really overwhelmed.
I was like, I'm doing too much.
And I, it's a, it's an interesting thing.
I work a lot with burnout in my
(09:33):
practice.
I work with a lot of high achievers
who have high demand professions and who become
disillusioned because they work so hard and it
turns out not to be what they thought
it would be.
And I think I felt a bit of
that with tenure.
I was like, wow, I should be so
excited.
I should feel so proud of myself.
I should feel so good.
(09:53):
And I instead felt anxious.
And I was like, I don't know if
this is what I want.
And knowing that it was a one-way
door felt really scary because you don't walk
away from tenure and then go back and
get another tenure-direct job.
It's not common.
Right.
But I felt like there was going to
(10:15):
be a need for clinicians.
There was going to be a need for
clinicians who understood trauma, who could work cross
-culturally, who, you know, are available, like have
availability.
I could do that.
So maybe this is the time.
It's so interesting how everything just aligned.
(10:38):
I mean, in retrospect, very clearly in order
to make this decision, but I'm sure in
the moment it was wrenching.
Right.
I mean, and it was such an uncertain
time.
If, you know, you remember like, what is
going to happen with COVID?
How long are we dealing with some level
of this?
Will anyone ever be back in the office
five days a week?
Are people going to want virtual therapy long
(10:59):
-term?
I, you know, these were all uncertainties.
Will I be able to scale up?
I don't know.
Like, yeah.
But as I describe it retrospectively, it feels
like a neat narrative.
But at the time it was a lot,
it felt like risky.
Yeah.
So every academic listening right now with a
small private practice is wondering, like, do you
(11:21):
regret the choice?
Was it clearly the right choice?
How do you feel about it now?
No, I don't regret it is the short
and easy answer.
I miss teaching the first year that I
wasn't teaching.
I used to get that feeling in my
body in late August, early September of like,
(11:42):
oh, wait, like I'm not, nothing has changed
for me.
Or like these moments where I really wanted
to be in the classroom.
And I really do miss that.
And the more time passes, the more I'm
aware that that part of my life is
in the past.
And so there's some, there's certainly a sense
(12:04):
of loss, but there's not a sense of
regret.
Okay, good.
Yeah.
I mean, there's a grief when you love
doing a thing and it's not available to
you every day, the way it was before.
Certainly.
Yeah.
There's grief there.
And it sounds like you're in a less
overwhelming position now than you once were.
Yeah.
(12:24):
It sounds too, like I talk a lot
about making your priorities, your actual priorities, which
is not something most Americans do.
You know, we put so many things in
front of the people and life that we
care about.
We always put work first as Americans.
(12:44):
And I feel like private practice gives you
the opportunity to shift that.
Yeah, that has certainly been the case for
me.
But I, you know, I have to check
my privilege on this in that when I
made this transition, I, I'm married.
My partner has a steady and reliable income.
We talked about, we sort of gamed it
(13:06):
out money-wise of like, how many clients
do you need for this to work for
us?
And like, it is a risk.
I mean, you talk about, this is like
what you talk about all the time is
like, people don't fill up their practices.
People don't always get steady streams of referral.
There are great, great clinicians.
It is a hustle to do this work
(13:29):
individually in a different way.
And once you, I think, get in the
rhythm and get the hang of it, it
has, it's, it can be so self-driven
and directed and make, you can make space
in the ways you want.
I have found.
But I recognize that that's not how it
(13:49):
shakes out for everyone.
And it's hard to make that happen.
Yeah.
I mean, you have to be committed to
the marketing.
And typically if you're committed to marketing and
you're doing it right, you will get something.
But it's, it's never as fast as any
of us want.
And sometimes, you know, you get bad information
(14:10):
and you're doing the wrong thing for a
long time.
And that can really wear on your confidence.
Yeah.
And I love that y'all had the
conversation.
Like you did the math.
You didn't just talk around it.
And a lot of people get in bad
situations because they're like, yeah, I mean, I
think I probably need about this many clients,
but they don't actually do the math because
(14:31):
they're not really known to be mathy either.
I think we had, we've had to, I
mean, like we have two kids and there
was this sort of like, okay, well, what's
your, what's your business plan.
And I do think a lot of therapists
don't think of themselves as business people or
(14:53):
as people who run a business, but we
are, if you are a private, like solo
practitioner running a private practice, if you're in
a group, you're in a business, you cannot
say, well, I just have no business sense.
Like that won't work for you.
Yeah.
This is not to be a successful solo
practitioner.
(15:13):
You cannot reject engaging with some aspects of
business.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And I hear like, I'm not a guess
what now you are, you're learning, you're learning
marketing, you're learning business.
And it's not even like the advanced forms
of business or marketing.
(15:33):
We're really lucky in that respect that our
business model is not very complex.
Yeah.
So yeah.
Yeah.
So, okay.
I'm hearing we, for anybody in a similar
position, you need to get really clear on
the financial side of things before making the
leap full time.
Yeah.
(15:53):
You need to know what you're doing marketing
wise so that you're able to continue to
get clients in the door.
Yeah.
I think you need to have a plan.
I mean, nothing's foolproof, right?
Right.
Like I've, I've been lucky to have a
fairly steady stream of referrals.
I don't have long periods where I'm below
(16:14):
my count, but it certainly happens.
It happens to everyone where sometimes a couple
of people graduate and terminate treatment and you've
got openings for longer than you thought you
would.
And you get like an abundance of inquiries.
And so I do think you have to
have a plan around marketing.
You cannot just like hope it works out.
(16:36):
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
I think if we treat our marketing plans,
like we treat our clients, you don't just
hop in there.
You think about them.
You review notes.
You have a treatment plan.
You, you know, you're going to provide much
better care if you're doing these things and
(16:56):
you're going to get far more results in
your practice if you bring that same intentionality.
I think also, you know, you mentioned you,
you have a lot of academics who listen
to your practice, maybe where I was a
few years ago.
If you have small practice and really I
had a small practice, like it was one
day a week.
Sometimes the most clients I had was four,
(17:17):
but the infrastructure for expansion was in place.
And what is that infrastructure?
I had a website.
I had an office.
I had a psych today profile.
That's it.
Got it.
Yeah.
And I expanded all of that.
Your connections with the university, did they give
you, like, were you getting referrals from people
(17:38):
you knew there?
No.
Okay.
That wasn't, that wasn't where I got clients.
So that's important for people to know, like
if right now you've got a small practice
and people are sending you like from your
current workplace, they're sending you people.
You need to build other referral sources before
you leap.
(17:58):
Yeah, that was true for me.
Yeah.
I mean, because my role at the university
was as a professor and a researcher and
not a clinician.
And so I couldn't get referrals from like,
I couldn't take students.
There's a potential conflict of interest.
Right.
Some of my colleagues in my department would
(18:18):
send me referrals because they knew me as
colleagues, but those are not large sources of
referrals for me.
Yeah.
And you can still nurture those relationships when
you're and they'll still send you people.
And I sent people to them.
Another thing you did is like the way
that you niched.
Can we talk about that?
Yeah.
(18:39):
Oh, can I also just, I can't like,
I hate niching the concept of it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What do you hate about it?
Cause I know you're not the only one.
I don't think I am.
I almost like, I hate the word.
Like when people say it, I'm like, it
gives me the ick.
I hate it because I'm a generalist and
I think that a lot of clinicians are
generalists and we can do a lot of
things.
(19:00):
And so I think in some ways it
does a disservice to the range of our
skills and abilities to suggest that we do
one thing.
I also know how affirming and meaningful it
is for clients to see on a website
or on a profile.
This person specializes in like chronic medical illness
or something like when they see that they're
(19:20):
like, oh, that's me.
I know how meaningful that is for clients,
but I, I really tried to walk a
line.
I also am like, I'm a little bit
of some, a little bit of a commitment.
I mean, part of what I loved about
academia is that I didn't have to pick,
I didn't have to pick, like I could
teach, I could do research, I could do
(19:41):
practice.
I could see a couple of clients.
I did not have to like choose a
entirely.
And so with niching, I was sort of
like, I don't want to say I do
one thing.
I work with a lot of different like
populations.
I'm interested in a lot of different things
and I'm skilled in a lot of different
(20:01):
areas.
And so I really thought about, you know,
how do you get clients though as a
general marketer?
What the marketing advice people tell you is
you have to niche, particularly if you're using
social media, because the algorithms drive traffic based
on specific content.
(20:24):
And if your content is all over the
place, it confuses that.
Right.
So I thought about these things.
I thought about what I was doing and
how I wanted to market myself.
And so I tried to pick, because I
couldn't pick one thing, I just couldn't.
I was like, all right, what are the
(20:45):
things that you're really passionate about, care about,
and are like common threads through your training,
through your academic work?
One of those is culture and cross-cultural
work.
I've always worked with BIPOC populations.
I'm interested in, and I'm also interested in
the idea that everyone has a culture and
looking at cultural history, you don't just have
(21:06):
to be a visible minority to have a
cultural history.
And so I thought, okay, I'm going to
talk about that.
I'm going to put it, make sure that
that is on my website.
I'm going to make sure that that is
infused into how I even talk about other
things on social media.
The other thing I thought about was the
idea that I work with a lot of
(21:27):
people in high demand professions who are struggling
with burnout, struggling with overwhelm, anxiety, balancing all
of the demands, both personally and professionally.
And I can talk about that.
And that's a solid niche for social media.
The sort of social media universe is not
(21:49):
saturated with people talking about burnout.
It is saturated with people talking about parenting,
for example.
But like, I work with a lot of
parents.
I am a parent.
I'm interested in parenting.
I don't talk about that on my website.
I rarely talk about it on my social.
It's not a niche that I advertise.
And that was a choice that I made
because I was just like, I can't just
(22:10):
like say every single thing I do.
And there's a lot of people who say
they do parenting.
So let me say I do burnout because
I do.
Let me talk about culture because I think
it's important for people to know that for
a client who is seeking a culturally competent
therapist, they want that flagged.
And then the other common thread of what
(22:31):
I work with is trauma.
I have studied trauma.
I did my master's in dissertation research in
trauma.
I work with trauma and trauma is quite
general as you know, and that many, many
clients have some exposure to our experience with
trauma.
So I'm going to talk about that.
And so I picked these three areas to
(22:53):
highlight on my website and on my social.
But I also have sort of these couple
of areas of work that are very, very
niche, which is in the category of trauma.
I work with journalists and media professionals who
(23:14):
are trauma exposed through their work.
So think about folks who news people who
are covering, you know, mass shootings or covering
violent crime, who are covering really, really trauma
(23:34):
facing things.
And they are often some of the first
people on the scene.
They are talking to the survivors.
They are bearing witness with their own eyes
of the kind of direct aftermath.
A lot of journalists that are covering like
climate disaster, right?
They're seeing and they're asked and tasked by
(23:57):
the work that they do to maintain a
level of distance and objectivity.
And yet they're carrying those things with them.
Mm-hmm.
I received training from what was formerly the
Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.
It's now the Global Center for Journalism and
Trauma.
And this is a very specific area of
work that I call out on my website,
(24:19):
but I receive referrals from that because it's
so specific.
Right.
Right.
If someone were to ask me, how did
you niche down without niching down?
I would say I have this super niche
down area, trauma exposed journalists, something that I
think a lot of people don't think about.
And because it's so specific and because I
was trained by an organization that works with,
(24:41):
that has trained many clinicians to do this,
I get referrals specific to that.
And then I have these three very broad
areas, trauma, culture, burnout.
And I know in my heart that I
work with people dealing with a lot of
things that are not any of that, but
I can't possibly call all of that out.
(25:02):
So I picked one super specific thing and
three general things, and I try to highlight
that I do all of that.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
And it's working well for you.
It's working for me.
Yeah.
It's working.
And I think that you have finessed it
in such a way because that is such
a hyper-specific niche that like, you know,
you will always get referrals for that.
(25:24):
Yes.
I know I will, but I also know
that doesn't fill a practice because of how
hyper-specific it is.
And burnout, it's interesting because we are, like
you were talking about how it's not saturated.
I think it also depends on your algorithm
because I get more things about burnout in
my feed than parenting at this point.
Right, right.
Because you're right.
It is the algorithm.
Yeah.
(25:45):
So many people are burned out, right?
I mean, like we're in a culture that
almost demands burnout just for like basic functioning.
That's right.
Burnout is by design in a culture that
equates worth with work.
And particularly for many, you know, sort of
high achieving folks, it is by design.
(26:07):
It's almost inevitable.
Yeah, absolutely.
I like the way you wrangled the niche
idea into something that works for you.
It's palatable for you.
It's not something you had to like that
felt unaligned that you had to force.
Yeah.
I think that it would have been hard
for me to choose one thing.
And even still, I think about like, what
(26:28):
if I want to like burnout is what
I sort of foreground on social media, but
it's not all what I do.
Like, what if I want to change that?
And I've just sort of tried to settle
in a space of like, what I really
want is for people to know that I
can do lots and lots of things.
And yeah.
And it sounds like you're getting people outside
of your stated niches because and that's one
(26:50):
of the powers of a niche too, is
it makes you look like an expert in
something.
So it makes you look more competent in
general.
So that's the hope, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think the fear is people worry that
you can only do that.
But the hope is that people see that
expertise speaks to high levels of competence across
the board.
Right.
Right.
And that's what I see more in people
(27:10):
when they niche.
It's like, I mean, I've kept probably no
more than 60% of my caseload on
average has been my niche because I also
don't want to just see one presenting concern
all day long.
So yeah.
Yeah.
Amazing.
Well, thank you so much for talking with
us, Sumi.
(27:31):
I hope that some other academics out there
who were like juggling both have some clarity.
Yeah.
I hope it's helpful.
I know how hard that decision is and
I feel grateful that I have that, I
had that to fall back on.
I do think that it's a valuable skill,
but I know it's a really hard decision.
(27:53):
Yeah.
Well, thank you so much.
This was such a great chat.
Be well.
You too.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, welcome to the Abundant Practice Podcast.
I'm Allison from Abundance Practice Building.
I have a nearly diagnosable obsession with helping
therapists build sustainable, joy-filled private practices, just
like I've done for tens of thousands of
therapists across the world.
I'm excited to help you too.
If you want to fill your practice with
ideal clients, we have loads of free resources
(00:29):
and paid support.
Go to abundancepracticebuilding.com slash links.
All right, on to the show.
So I've talked about therapy notes on here
for years.
I could talk about the features and the
benefits in my sleep, but there are a
couple of things I want you to know
about therapy notes that doesn't typically make it
into an ad script.
First is that they actually care if you
(00:50):
like their platform.
They don't only make themselves available on the
phone to troubleshoot so you don't pull your
hair out when you get stuck.
They also take member suggestions and implement those
that there's client demand for, like therapy search,
an included listing service that helps clients find
you, internal and external secure messaging, clinical outcome
measures to keep an eye on how your
clients are progressing, a super smooth super bill
(01:12):
process, real-time eligibility to check on your
client's insurance.
In my conversations with the employees there at
all levels, they all really believe in their
product and they want you to love it
too.
Second, they are proudly independently owned.
Why should you care about that?
Because as soon as venture capital becomes involved,
the focus shifts from making customers happy to
(01:33):
making investors happy.
Prices go way up, innovation plateaus, making more
money with as little output as possible becomes
the number one focus.
With over 100,000 therapists using their platform,
they've been able to stay incredibly successful and
they don't have to sacrifice your experience to
stay there.
You can try two months free at therapynotes
(01:53):
.com with the coupon code abundant.
Welcome back to the abundant practice podcast.
I'm your host, Alison Parere, founder of abundancepracticebuilding
.com.
And I am here with Sumi Raghavan.
And we are going to be talking about
making the move from academia into private practice.
Sumi has lived experience of this and is
(02:14):
going to share all of it with us.
Thank you so much for being here.
Thanks for having me.
I'm excited.
Yeah.
So kind of talk us through, you're in
an academic position, you're working that life.
What made you start a practice on the
side?
Yeah.
Thanks for asking.
I was in the very fortunate and rare
(02:36):
position to receive, to like get an offer
for a tenure track position after grad school.
And when I started, I was not even
fully licensed yet.
And I thought, I am going to be
teaching about clinical work.
I'm going to be teaching about diagnosis, assessment,
(02:59):
treatment.
And then later I would go on, when
I moved into faculty of the graduate program,
I was teaching clinical skills.
And I thought two things.
One is like, if I were like in
music school, I would want my music teacher
to actually play their instrument.
And if I think of it that way,
I want to be a professor that is
(03:20):
able to talk about clinical work in the
present, rather than down the line, be like
10 years ago when I saw patients.
Right.
So I really wanted to know what I
was doing and teaching while I was doing
it.
The other part of it was very pragmatic
because I was tuned into the fact that
academia can be unstable, unreliable, that I wasn't
(03:46):
sure that I would want to do it
forever.
So to speak, I thought this is a
backup that I could always jump into.
And if it gets to be too much,
I can always stop.
Yes.
I love that.
The last piece of it, to be honest,
(04:07):
was money, right?
It's a source of income on the side.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, and I love that you're like, I
need to know what I'm talking about when
I'm teaching people things.
And did you find that that changed how
you taught clinical skills as you did more
and more therapy?
Yes, it really did.
(04:27):
And I really felt like when students asked
me about practice, they liked, they, I think
they felt a greater confidence in what I
was sharing because it was based on present
and past experience.
And I think that it gave me a
(04:48):
lot of credibility as someone who ran my
own practice, which many of them ultimately wanted
to do.
Right.
And so I think those two pieces were
helpful for just like the rapport with students
that buy in and their sort of confidence
in my, what I was delivering.
I think I also felt like the things
I was saying when I talked about building
(05:10):
the therapeutic relationship, when I talked about not
just different treatment modalities, but like understanding experiences
that clients have like grief and loss.
I really felt like I was talking about
it from a place of direct current content
knowledge, not just rehashing things that I had
learned in school.
(05:31):
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so now you're working two jobs at
this stage, right?
You've got your part-time practice.
You've got full-time tenure track work or
not tenure track, tenured work.
Yeah.
In the beginning tenure track.
Yeah.
Before I got tenured.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you've got a lot of work you're
doing.
Yeah.
(05:52):
And what becomes the point for you where
you're like, I want to do more therapy
and less.
Yeah.
Professor work.
So in the peak of COVID.
Life shattering from so many, like, wait, what
am I doing with my life?
What a privilege that my primary crisis in
(06:13):
COVID was professional, right?
Um, I was pregnant with my second child.
I was, uh, we were cramped into our
apartment in New York city with our toddler
and working from home, teaching online, doing therapy
online.
And it became really, I mean, we were
(06:37):
all experiencing a mass global trauma.
We worked and we were experiencing it differently,
but it was profound.
And the need for mental health services was
profound.
And the state of New York had like
a volunteer hotline for, if you were a
mental health practitioner and you wanted to volunteer
for like crisis, I reached out to them
to volunteer.
They ended up not calling on me, but
(06:59):
I was like, I can like supervise volunteers.
If you want to like, I'm a New
York state licensed psychologist.
Um, I started feeling like everyone was struggling
and I wanted to be able to serve
more people clinically.
I really love teaching.
(07:19):
And I felt very conflicted about it, about
the idea of leaving, particularly when I knew
I'd be going up for tenure.
But I think I started just feeling like
I knew that people would really need support
to process everything that we were experiencing on
a global scale.
And so I thought if there was a
time to pivot, maybe this terrible mass trauma
(07:44):
presents a business opportunity.
And that combined with the fact that, you
know, a little bit facilitated by COVID, there's
been a crisis in higher education and the
nature of my job was going to change
partially result of financial challenges at my institution.
(08:08):
And with tenure would come certain increased expectations
of leadership, teaching things were changing structurally in
a way where I was starting to wonder
whether I could even maintain a small practice.
And so it felt like a choice moment
(08:28):
where I was like, okay, either I'm going
to go all in an academia and I'm
going to take tenure.
And which is what I've been working for
what I thought I was wanted.
I'm going to do this, but this is
going to be it.
And I may need to step away from
practice while I'm balancing these increased demands and
go back to it later.
Right.
Or, or I walk out what is for
(08:52):
sure a one-way door and I expand
the practice.
I gamble on the fact that people are
going to want to need therapy in the
coming years and that perhaps a virtual life
will lead more people to reach out in
a different way.
(09:12):
And I was balancing those two things.
And then personally, I had my second child.
I felt really overwhelmed.
I was like, I'm doing too much.
And I, it's a, it's an interesting thing.
I work a lot with burnout in my
(09:33):
practice.
I work with a lot of high achievers
who have high demand professions and who become
disillusioned because they work so hard and it
turns out not to be what they thought
it would be.
And I think I felt a bit of
that with tenure.
I was like, wow, I should be so
excited.
I should feel so proud of myself.
I should feel so good.
(09:53):
And I instead felt anxious.
And I was like, I don't know if
this is what I want.
And knowing that it was a one-way
door felt really scary because you don't walk
away from tenure and then go back and
get another tenure-direct job.
It's not common.
Right.
But I felt like there was going to
(10:15):
be a need for clinicians.
There was going to be a need for
clinicians who understood trauma, who could work cross
-culturally, who, you know, are available, like have
availability.
I could do that.
So maybe this is the time.
It's so interesting how everything just aligned.
(10:38):
I mean, in retrospect, very clearly in order
to make this decision, but I'm sure in
the moment it was wrenching.
Right.
I mean, and it was such an uncertain
time.
If, you know, you remember like, what is
going to happen with COVID?
How long are we dealing with some level
of this?
Will anyone ever be back in the office
five days a week?
Are people going to want virtual therapy long
(10:59):
-term?
I, you know, these were all uncertainties.
Will I be able to scale up?
I don't know.
Like, yeah.
But as I describe it retrospectively, it feels
like a neat narrative.
But at the time it was a lot,
it felt like risky.
Yeah.
So every academic listening right now with a
small private practice is wondering, like, do you
(11:21):
regret the choice?
Was it clearly the right choice?
How do you feel about it now?
No, I don't regret it is the short
and easy answer.
I miss teaching the first year that I
wasn't teaching.
I used to get that feeling in my
body in late August, early September of like,
(11:42):
oh, wait, like I'm not, nothing has changed
for me.
Or like these moments where I really wanted
to be in the classroom.
And I really do miss that.
And the more time passes, the more I'm
aware that that part of my life is
in the past.
And so there's some, there's certainly a sense
(12:04):
of loss, but there's not a sense of
regret.
Okay, good.
Yeah.
I mean, there's a grief when you love
doing a thing and it's not available to
you every day, the way it was before.
Certainly.
Yeah.
There's grief there.
And it sounds like you're in a less
overwhelming position now than you once were.
Yeah.
(12:24):
It sounds too, like I talk a lot
about making your priorities, your actual priorities, which
is not something most Americans do.
You know, we put so many things in
front of the people and life that we
care about.
We always put work first as Americans.
(12:44):
And I feel like private practice gives you
the opportunity to shift that.
Yeah, that has certainly been the case for
me.
But I, you know, I have to check
my privilege on this in that when I
made this transition, I, I'm married.
My partner has a steady and reliable income.
We talked about, we sort of gamed it
(13:06):
out money-wise of like, how many clients
do you need for this to work for
us?
And like, it is a risk.
I mean, you talk about, this is like
what you talk about all the time is
like, people don't fill up their practices.
People don't always get steady streams of referral.
There are great, great clinicians.
It is a hustle to do this work
(13:29):
individually in a different way.
And once you, I think, get in the
rhythm and get the hang of it, it
has, it's, it can be so self-driven
and directed and make, you can make space
in the ways you want.
I have found.
But I recognize that that's not how it
(13:49):
shakes out for everyone.
And it's hard to make that happen.
Yeah.
I mean, you have to be committed to
the marketing.
And typically if you're committed to marketing and
you're doing it right, you will get something.
But it's, it's never as fast as any
of us want.
And sometimes, you know, you get bad information
(14:10):
and you're doing the wrong thing for a
long time.
And that can really wear on your confidence.
Yeah.
And I love that y'all had the
conversation.
Like you did the math.
You didn't just talk around it.
And a lot of people get in bad
situations because they're like, yeah, I mean, I
think I probably need about this many clients,
but they don't actually do the math because
(14:31):
they're not really known to be mathy either.
I think we had, we've had to, I
mean, like we have two kids and there
was this sort of like, okay, well, what's
your, what's your business plan.
And I do think a lot of therapists
don't think of themselves as business people or
(14:53):
as people who run a business, but we
are, if you are a private, like solo
practitioner running a private practice, if you're in
a group, you're in a business, you cannot
say, well, I just have no business sense.
Like that won't work for you.
Yeah.
This is not to be a successful solo
practitioner.
(15:13):
You cannot reject engaging with some aspects of
business.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And I hear like, I'm not a guess
what now you are, you're learning, you're learning
marketing, you're learning business.
And it's not even like the advanced forms
of business or marketing.
(15:33):
We're really lucky in that respect that our
business model is not very complex.
Yeah.
So yeah.
Yeah.
So, okay.
I'm hearing we, for anybody in a similar
position, you need to get really clear on
the financial side of things before making the
leap full time.
Yeah.
(15:53):
You need to know what you're doing marketing
wise so that you're able to continue to
get clients in the door.
Yeah.
I think you need to have a plan.
I mean, nothing's foolproof, right?
Right.
Like I've, I've been lucky to have a
fairly steady stream of referrals.
I don't have long periods where I'm below
(16:14):
my count, but it certainly happens.
It happens to everyone where sometimes a couple
of people graduate and terminate treatment and you've
got openings for longer than you thought you
would.
And you get like an abundance of inquiries.
And so I do think you have to
have a plan around marketing.
You cannot just like hope it works out.
(16:36):
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
I think if we treat our marketing plans,
like we treat our clients, you don't just
hop in there.
You think about them.
You review notes.
You have a treatment plan.
You, you know, you're going to provide much
better care if you're doing these things and
(16:56):
you're going to get far more results in
your practice if you bring that same intentionality.
I think also, you know, you mentioned you,
you have a lot of academics who listen
to your practice, maybe where I was a
few years ago.
If you have small practice and really I
had a small practice, like it was one
day a week.
Sometimes the most clients I had was four,
(17:17):
but the infrastructure for expansion was in place.
And what is that infrastructure?
I had a website.
I had an office.
I had a psych today profile.
That's it.
Got it.
Yeah.
And I expanded all of that.
Your connections with the university, did they give
you, like, were you getting referrals from people
(17:38):
you knew there?
No.
Okay.
That wasn't, that wasn't where I got clients.
So that's important for people to know, like
if right now you've got a small practice
and people are sending you like from your
current workplace, they're sending you people.
You need to build other referral sources before
you leap.
(17:58):
Yeah, that was true for me.
Yeah.
I mean, because my role at the university
was as a professor and a researcher and
not a clinician.
And so I couldn't get referrals from like,
I couldn't take students.
There's a potential conflict of interest.
Right.
Some of my colleagues in my department would
(18:18):
send me referrals because they knew me as
colleagues, but those are not large sources of
referrals for me.
Yeah.
And you can still nurture those relationships when
you're and they'll still send you people.
And I sent people to them.
Another thing you did is like the way
that you niched.
Can we talk about that?
Yeah.
(18:39):
Oh, can I also just, I can't like,
I hate niching the concept of it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What do you hate about it?
Cause I know you're not the only one.
I don't think I am.
I almost like, I hate the word.
Like when people say it, I'm like, it
gives me the ick.
I hate it because I'm a generalist and
I think that a lot of clinicians are
generalists and we can do a lot of
things.
(19:00):
And so I think in some ways it
does a disservice to the range of our
skills and abilities to suggest that we do
one thing.
I also know how affirming and meaningful it
is for clients to see on a website
or on a profile.
This person specializes in like chronic medical illness
or something like when they see that they're
(19:20):
like, oh, that's me.
I know how meaningful that is for clients,
but I, I really tried to walk a
line.
I also am like, I'm a little bit
of some, a little bit of a commitment.
I mean, part of what I loved about
academia is that I didn't have to pick,
I didn't have to pick, like I could
teach, I could do research, I could do
(19:41):
practice.
I could see a couple of clients.
I did not have to like choose a
entirely.
And so with niching, I was sort of
like, I don't want to say I do
one thing.
I work with a lot of different like
populations.
I'm interested in a lot of different things
and I'm skilled in a lot of different
(20:01):
areas.
And so I really thought about, you know,
how do you get clients though as a
general marketer?
What the marketing advice people tell you is
you have to niche, particularly if you're using
social media, because the algorithms drive traffic based
on specific content.
(20:24):
And if your content is all over the
place, it confuses that.
Right.
So I thought about these things.
I thought about what I was doing and
how I wanted to market myself.
And so I tried to pick, because I
couldn't pick one thing, I just couldn't.
I was like, all right, what are the
(20:45):
things that you're really passionate about, care about,
and are like common threads through your training,
through your academic work?
One of those is culture and cross-cultural
work.
I've always worked with BIPOC populations.
I'm interested in, and I'm also interested in
the idea that everyone has a culture and
looking at cultural history, you don't just have
(21:06):
to be a visible minority to have a
cultural history.
And so I thought, okay, I'm going to
talk about that.
I'm going to put it, make sure that
that is on my website.
I'm going to make sure that that is
infused into how I even talk about other
things on social media.
The other thing I thought about was the
idea that I work with a lot of
(21:27):
people in high demand professions who are struggling
with burnout, struggling with overwhelm, anxiety, balancing all
of the demands, both personally and professionally.
And I can talk about that.
And that's a solid niche for social media.
The sort of social media universe is not
(21:49):
saturated with people talking about burnout.
It is saturated with people talking about parenting,
for example.
But like, I work with a lot of
parents.
I am a parent.
I'm interested in parenting.
I don't talk about that on my website.
I rarely talk about it on my social.
It's not a niche that I advertise.
And that was a choice that I made
because I was just like, I can't just
(22:10):
like say every single thing I do.
And there's a lot of people who say
they do parenting.
So let me say I do burnout because
I do.
Let me talk about culture because I think
it's important for people to know that for
a client who is seeking a culturally competent
therapist, they want that flagged.
And then the other common thread of what
(22:31):
I work with is trauma.
I have studied trauma.
I did my master's in dissertation research in
trauma.
I work with trauma and trauma is quite
general as you know, and that many, many
clients have some exposure to our experience with
trauma.
So I'm going to talk about that.
And so I picked these three areas to
(22:53):
highlight on my website and on my social.
But I also have sort of these couple
of areas of work that are very, very
niche, which is in the category of trauma.
I work with journalists and media professionals who
(23:14):
are trauma exposed through their work.
So think about folks who news people who
are covering, you know, mass shootings or covering
violent crime, who are covering really, really trauma
(23:34):
facing things.
And they are often some of the first
people on the scene.
They are talking to the survivors.
They are bearing witness with their own eyes
of the kind of direct aftermath.
A lot of journalists that are covering like
climate disaster, right?
They're seeing and they're asked and tasked by
(23:57):
the work that they do to maintain a
level of distance and objectivity.
And yet they're carrying those things with them.
Mm-hmm.
I received training from what was formerly the
Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.
It's now the Global Center for Journalism and
Trauma.
And this is a very specific area of
work that I call out on my website,
(24:19):
but I receive referrals from that because it's
so specific.
Right.
Right.
If someone were to ask me, how did
you niche down without niching down?
I would say I have this super niche
down area, trauma exposed journalists, something that I
think a lot of people don't think about.
And because it's so specific and because I
was trained by an organization that works with,
(24:41):
that has trained many clinicians to do this,
I get referrals specific to that.
And then I have these three very broad
areas, trauma, culture, burnout.
And I know in my heart that I
work with people dealing with a lot of
things that are not any of that, but
I can't possibly call all of that out.
(25:02):
So I picked one super specific thing and
three general things, and I try to highlight
that I do all of that.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
And it's working well for you.
It's working for me.
Yeah.
It's working.
And I think that you have finessed it
in such a way because that is such
a hyper-specific niche that like, you know,
you will always get referrals for that.
(25:24):
Yes.
I know I will, but I also know
that doesn't fill a practice because of how
hyper-specific it is.
And burnout, it's interesting because we are, like
you were talking about how it's not saturated.
I think it also depends on your algorithm
because I get more things about burnout in
my feed than parenting at this point.
Right, right.
Because you're right.
It is the algorithm.
Yeah.
(25:45):
So many people are burned out, right?
I mean, like we're in a culture that
almost demands burnout just for like basic functioning.
That's right.
Burnout is by design in a culture that
equates worth with work.
And particularly for many, you know, sort of
high achieving folks, it is by design.
(26:07):
It's almost inevitable.
Yeah, absolutely.
I like the way you wrangled the niche
idea into something that works for you.
It's palatable for you.
It's not something you had to like that
felt unaligned that you had to force.
Yeah.
I think that it would have been hard
for me to choose one thing.
And even still, I think about like, what
(26:28):
if I want to like burnout is what
I sort of foreground on social media, but
it's not all what I do.
Like, what if I want to change that?
And I've just sort of tried to settle
in a space of like, what I really
want is for people to know that I
can do lots and lots of things.
And yeah.
And it sounds like you're getting people outside
of your stated niches because and that's one
(26:50):
of the powers of a niche too, is
it makes you look like an expert in
something.
So it makes you look more competent in
general.
So that's the hope, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think the fear is people worry that
you can only do that.
But the hope is that people see that
expertise speaks to high levels of competence across
the board.
Right.
Right.
And that's what I see more in people
(27:10):
when they niche.
It's like, I mean, I've kept probably no
more than 60% of my caseload on
average has been my niche because I also
don't want to just see one presenting concern
all day long.
So yeah.
Yeah.
Amazing.
Well, thank you so much for talking with
us, Sumi.
(27:31):
I hope that some other academics out there
who were like juggling both have some clarity.
Yeah.
I hope it's helpful.
I know how hard that decision is and
I feel grateful that I have that, I
had that to fall back on.
I do think that it's a valuable skill,
but I know it's a really hard decision.
(27:53):
Yeah.
Well, thank you so much.
This was such a great chat.
Be well.
You too.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.