Mastering the CEO Mindset for Success with Brandy Mabra of Savvy Clover: Ep. 44
Episode Overview
- Episode Topic: Welcome to Mastering Counseling, In this insightful episode of Mastering Counseling, engage in a thought-provoking conversation with Brandy Mabra, the Founder and CEO of Savvy Clover Coaching & Consulting. The central theme revolves around shaping the CEO mindset, focusing on high-achieving female private practice owners. Brandy draws on her 15 years of extensive experience in business management and leadership to illuminate the key mindset shifts and leadership skills necessary for confidently navigating the business side of private practices.
- Lessons You’ll Learn: Listeners are in for a treat as Brandy unveils practical strategies for streamlining operations, building effective teams, and fostering a “ride or die” dream team – all geared towards practice elevation and sustainability. The episode unfolds with valuable insights into the often-overlooked areas in understanding the business side of private practices and how Brandy guides practitioners in addressing these blind spots. Throughout the conversation, there’s a strong emphasis on empowering female practitioners to embrace their CEO status and lead with confidence.
- About Our Guest: Brandy Mabra is a dynamic CEO and a Business Coach with a rich background in the healthcare business. As the founder of Savvy Clover, Brandy is dedicated to helping private practice owners grow their businesses strategically. With an international reach, Brandy’s expertise extends globally, making her a sought-after mentor in the counseling industry. Her journey, experiences, and mission drove her commitment to private practice success.
- Topics Covered: From the challenges of private practice operations to the transformative power of owning one’s CEO status, the episode delves into various aspects of business growth in the counseling industry. Brandy shares success stories where practitioners, through embracing their CEO roles, have experienced profound changes in their practices, achieving not only growth but increased profitability. Practical strategies, mindset shifts, and leadership skills are unveiled, providing a comprehensive guide for practitioners at every stage of their entrepreneurial journey.
Our Guest: Brandy Mabra-The Savvy Mentor for Private Practice Empowerment
Brandy Mabra is the CEO of Savvy Clover and a renowned Business and CEO Coach with a mission to empower high-achieving female private practice owners. With an extensive background spanning 15 years in business management and leadership, Brandy brings a wealth of experience to her coaching approach. As the founder of Savvy Clover, she is committed to guiding practitioners through the intricacies of the business side, helping them not only survive but thrive in the evolving landscape of the counseling industry.
Brandy’s coaching philosophy revolves around instilling the CEO mindset in her clients. Her unique approach emphasizes mindset shifts and leadership skills essential for navigating the challenges of running a private practice with confidence. Dedicated to practice growth, she assists practitioners in streamlining operations and building effective teams, enabling them to break free from daily operational challenges and propel their practices to new heights. Brandy’s expertise extends globally, making her an international private practice coach, with clients from the Cayman Islands to Hong Kong.
Beyond her role as a coach, Brandy is passionate about demystifying the business side of private practices. She believes in simplifying complex concepts and making them accessible to practitioners at all levels. Her commitment to empowering female practitioners to embrace their CEO status is evident in the success stories she shares, where clients have not only experienced transformative changes in their practices but have also witnessed increased profitability. Brandy’s journey is marked by a dedication to providing valuable resources and guidance, ensuring her clients scale and leverage their practices successfully in the ever-evolving counseling industry.
Episode Transcript
Brandy Mabra: What are you building and why? Because when it comes to mission and vision, people have to have buy-in for why they come to work every day. And it’s really important. You don’t want folks who are coming to work every day, who are bored and just here to collect a paycheck. You want them to be a partner with you as you’re building your practice, as you’re growing your practice. So that way they’ll be more open to working more hours, seeing more folks, taking on additional projects, helping with maybe writing, pausing procedures, all of those things that you really need for a team to be involved in order to get to the level of growth that you want to get to.
Becky Copeland: Welcome to Mastering Counseling, the weekly business show for counselors. I’m your host, Becky Copeland. I’ve spent 20 years working in education in the role of both teacher and school counselor. Each episode we’ll be exploring what it takes to thrive as a counseling business owner. From interviews with successful entrepreneurial counselors to conversations with industry leaders on trends and the next generation of counseling services, to discussions with tech executives whose innovations are reshaping counseling services. If it impacts counseling, we cover it on Mastering Counseling.
Thank you for tuning in to Mastering Counseling. It’s so good to have everyone here and especially to have Brandy Mabra, who is the CEO of Savvy Clover, where she is a business and SEO coach to especially women. Thank you for being with us today, Brandy.
Brandy Mabra: You’re welcome. Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Becky Copeland: I was looking into your work, and there are so many testimonials about how you’ve helped many people and many tips that you give on your website. You have your own podcasts as well, so we have a lot that we want to share today. You have been in this for 15 years or so in business management and leadership. So how about you tell us how that all began and how you’ve tuned your focus into female private practitioners?
Brandy Mabra: Yeah. Well, I always start with way back when I come from a long line of folks in my family and health care. And so even over Thanksgiving, since we’re at the time of this recording, we’re in the Thanksgiving and holiday time when we were just laughing because all of us literally are in healthcare or affiliated with healthcare. So fast forward 15 plus, almost two decades later, I’ve been able to build a really robust business and leadership career. So I’ve been over private practices, small private practices, and corporate practices with large hospital systems. I’ve been on the payer side, on the provider side, working with large hospital systems and large multi-site practices. Just a little bit of everything. So when I got to a place in my career where I felt stuck and I wasn’t too sure what the next step was, I decided to venture off into having my own business and becoming a full-time business owner. And so at this point in time, I would love to say that when I first started, I was really keen and knew exactly what my niche was and want to do amazing work with private practice owners, but I will say that’s not really the case.
So I started off with health care professionals and it was more in a creator-oriented way because I’ve been able to work my way up the career ladder to C-suites. And so when you are able to do that, especially as a woman, and then especially as a woman of color and a black woman, then that says something as well. So I started to get asked like, how were you able to do that and how you’ve been able to make the amount of money you’ve been able to make, give me all the secrets. And I tried it, and I hated it because people have asked me, what about your resume and how do I interview and how should I get found on LinkedIn? And it just wasn’t my cup of tea. And so I dived into business coaching because of all my business experience. And then private practice owners started to hear that I had all this healthcare experience building, leading, and growing multi-million dollar group practices and they found me.
So after that I just really enjoyed the work. It was like the best of both worlds because I felt like I was sitting on so much experience and I know for the clients, especially the clients that I work with, they didn’t go to school for business, they didn’t go to school to be a leader, they didn’t go to school or necessarily lead teams, I should say, or to go to school to manage. And I’ve been doing that forever and ever, I feel like. And so it’s been really nice just to share my knowledge and just show up authentically and be able to help too. So yeah, I always believe, especially from a God perspective, God always finds your calling and helps you find your calling. And so that’s where I know that I’m perfectly aligned.
Becky Copeland: It is funny, I feel like sometimes when you have knowledge about something, you think everyone understands it, and then you come to find out that people, there’s no reason they had to learn it before, and so they’re going to learn it from you. So tell us next just how you came to focus on helping female private practice owners.
Brandy Mabra: Well, essentially the same thing where my journey and the folks who reach out to me, the most are female practice owners. And with that, I believe it’s because there are so many more challenges that we have as women. Like, even for me, I’m a mom trying to balance home and work and busyness with trying to build a business. A lot of the clients that I work with are moms, and so there’s just a different type of struggle that we face, especially as business owners. And with that, work has just been very passionate to me, partly because I can understand it from a female perspective. I can understand it from being a partner instead of another. I can understand it from being a mom. I can understand it just from the daily balance of trying to make it work. And when you’re goal-oriented and ambitious and have big goals and dreams, it can sometimes be challenging and you can feel guilt and all the things.
And so with the clients that I work with, it’s really fun because it’s fun to watch the transformation. It’s fun to see a lot of times when they come to work with me that they’re stressed, they’re overwhelmed, they’re feeling they don’t have time or their teams are just taking over. And so they’re working. What I literally say the early mornings or late nights and the weekends and they’re burned out. I have seven-figure practice owners that I work with who want to sell their practice for a dollar. So it’s really fun to watch once they start to take their power back. When it comes to their practice, when it comes to their team, when it comes to their schedule, when it comes to all the things that that we lovingly like to put on our plate, that we don’t necessarily have to and really take control over the areas of their life that they are, that they can control. So it’s just a really nice niche. There are for full disclosure, and just to be honest, there are men who reach out to work with me. And so I do work with a couple of men. But for the most part, everyone that I work with is definitely woman.
Becky Copeland: That’s awesome. I love that, and it seems like a lot of the people we talk to, the more narrow they focus in, they’re just more highly skilled at helping those specific people. A big part of Savvy Clover is about helping practices grow. So how do you specifically help them streamline their operations? And just to be able to be the most efficient practice and CEO owner they can be?
Brandy Mabra: Yeah, we focus on the details from the start. So one of the things I say is you have to show up with strategy and intention. So from the get-go, we go through every area of their practice. And so I believe that there are six pillars of business excellence. There’s something for every practice that I’ve ever worked in. It’s as soon as I get started or what I’m focusing on a continual basis. There are always those six pillars. And so we look at marketing, what they’re doing to bring more business in the door. We look at the money piece to make sure that they’re set up for success when it comes to their financial partners, that they understand their money, that they’re confident making financial decisions.
As a CEO of their business, we look at how they’re doing things, not so much what they’re doing inside their practice, but what their systems are, what their processes are, what tools they use. Are they making sure that they’re utilizing their tools fully? As with most practices, a lot of their operations are centered around EHR systems. Well, most times the EHR system isn’t always used to its fullest capability. And so we work through some of those things and whatever obstacles that are happening when it comes to the efficiency and effectiveness of how things are happening inside the practice, we make sure from a team perspective, which is probably a bulk of the work that that we do, either because they’re in a place where they need to hire, they’re ready to hire, they’ve hired multiple times, they have might even have fired, or we need to fire.
So there’s a lot of things that happen in order for them to have an engaged team to make sure that they’re showing up confidently as a leader of their practice, that their team has the buy-in that they need when it comes to the practice. So a lot of times I find with the clients that we work with, they’ll hire, but they’re not either leveraging their team to the fullest capability or they feel that they’re bothering their team if they want to give them additional responsibility. Some of some of their team members are highly overpaid, so sometimes we’re having to go back and rework payment models and really get clear on what the job description is. What did you hire them for? Why did you hire them, or are they actually measuring up to performance goals, those types of things? And so it’s all about structure. It’s all about in the details and the structure to make sure that they’re aware of what’s happening with their practice. So like I said, it’s really fun to watch the transformation because they go from being overwhelmed to now having that structure and things feel more in alignment and easier for them. As we’re navigating the practice.
Becky Copeland: They basically get a mini Master’s in business because we never. I did hear from someone a couple of episodes ago that someone in a mental health field, they were going to get a little bit of like business ethics or something, because as more and more people are doing telehealth and there’s such a need and there’s so many people working in the field, but this is the spot where everyone feels unqualified. So equipping people is so helpful to them. Let’s talk about and I do love the phrase ride-or-die. And your website talks a lot about having a ride-or-die team. And what are some of the practical strategies that a practitioner would use to make sure that’s happening? Or like, what do they look for in people they want to hire? Talk to us about ride-or-die.
Brandy Mabra: Ride or die, dream team. It’s all that is the number one thing that can make you or break you is your team. And so one of the things I always say is that your team is your biggest asset, but you have to make sure that you’re putting them in a position to be your biggest asset. And so with that, it all starts with clarity. Why are you hiring them? Sometimes when folks first hire, they don’t necessarily have the clarity that they need for the position. They don’t necessarily have the job description already written out or policy and procedures, or really the clarity that they need for what they’re going to do once they’re with them, maybe a year or two years, whether that team member needs to be a W-2 or 1099 contractor, like all of those things, really can either make or break the experience for you as the owner or for the team member.
So really paying attention to what do you need from this team member? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? What are the team members strengths? What are their weaknesses? What’s the schedule that they need to work? Are they open? You might initially hire them as a contractor, but you really know within the next year you’re probably going to need an employee. So that’s something that you should have a proactive conversation with. A lot of the work that we do with our clients is almost retroactive because there wasn’t a proactive approach of hiring. So we’re now going back to the team members trying to see if they can work additional hours. Maybe from a provider standpoint, can you see more people because the financial goals aren’t making sense? Some of it is.
Brandy Mabra: We need for you to be full-time, but that provider or that admin doesn’t want to work full-time, they want to work their X amount of hours and that’s what they signed up for. So before you even hire, it starts there. And just having some type of growth plan. Not saying that everybody that you do bring on is going to be with you for tens and thousands of years, but it makes it easier when you know exactly what you’re working with. The other thing, too, it comes down to your practice model as well. So what are you building really? As much not saying that it might not change or the plan might change, but at this point in time, what are you building and why?
Because when it comes to mission and vision, people have to have buy-in for why they come to work every day. And it’s really important. You don’t want folks who are coming to work every day who are bored and just here to collect a paycheck. You want them to be a partner with you as you’re building your practice, as you’re growing your practice. So that way they’ll be more open to working more hours, seeing more folks, taking on additional projects, helping with maybe writing policy and procedures, all of those things that you really need for a team to be involved in order to get to the level of growth that you want to get to. So that’s what I mean. When you have a ride-or-die doing team, is the person who is really there for you. Ride-or-die. So yeah.
Becky Copeland: Yeah, a huge investment for sure. You have to be invested in it. Right? I’m curious, just on your team or the mental health people that you’re assisting. I think a lot of them are bigger-scale organizations. Give us just some numbers randomly, like the smallest group that you work with to maybe the biggest organization.
Brandy Mabra: Yeah. I always say from a revenue standpoint, I start working with clients once they’re at six figures. And because at that point in time, whether if they’re in that solo space, still they’re booked and busy. So that’s the number one thing. Like if you are coming to me saying I need to get like in the beginner stages, I’m probably not the best coach for you compared to where you already have a good understanding of what you’re building. You might not necessarily have a strong mission and vision, but you’re booked and busy. You need to hire. You want to hire the right way. So that six-figure mark is usually where things start to change and where people start to recognize, “Okay, there’s a different level of skill set that I need for this.” I also work with clients who are at that multi-six figure and then seven-figure scaling to eight-figure.
So at each stage of business growth, I always say that there are three stages of business growth when it comes to private practice. And with that, each stage requires something different and it requires a different type of skill set. So for example, for my seven-figure practice owners, we’re focusing on leadership teams, either whether they have a leadership team or they’re trying to develop their leadership team. So that means practice manager, office manager, clinical director, maybe a marketing director, a marketing manager, a billing specialist, those folks that really take the lead within areas of your practice. And so there’s a lot that can go well in that situation. And then there’s a lot that can go bad in that situation, especially as you’re starting to delegate more of the leadership and the thinking processes that happen within a practice, compared to you being the one who was the go-to.
And so you have to really set the tone for when it comes to the practice. Two compared to six figures. We’re just really in the beginning stages of trying to maybe hire your new provider or a second provider or an admin. And so it’s really different to think about compared to multi six, multi six you’re trying to get to seven. So that looks a little bit different. And so really trying to get an understanding of the team that needs to be in place to get you to seven figures with that admin team needs to be in place, admin team usually needs to be more full-time, higher level of leadership and skill set because that person can be promoted into an office manager practice manager. So it’s really interesting just to see the different revenue levels and what’s required.
Becky Copeland: This episode is brought to you by mastersincounseling.org. If you’re considering enrolling in a master’s level counseling program to further your career, visit mastersincounseling.org to compare school options via our search tool that allows you to sort by specific degree types, tuition, our costs, online flexibility, and more. What would you say are some of the complex concepts that your clients have that you see maybe a little bit across the board with things that they struggle with? I know even some of the US engaging that business side of things, I just feel like is difficult, which is why we need the help. But what are some things that may be hard for practitioners to get past?
Brandy Mabra: It is always the financial piece at every stage. It doesn’t matter what that revenue is. So from the six-figure practice owner to the seven-figure practice owner, that money piece is it’s always a mindset shift. Either it’s coming from a place of scarcity or especially if you are, for example, if you are at seven figures and I say you need to hire a clinical director, well, that clinical director salary is something that you have to absorb. And so with that, that can feel very scary. Rightfully so. Sometimes these positions aren’t necessarily revenue-generating compared to when you hire a provider, but it’s something that you need in order for the practice to even make sense, especially at a seven-figure level of revenue. And so that can be challenging for six-figure practice owners or even the beginning level, that money piece, that investment that you have to make sometimes where business is slow and the revenue isn’t coming in the way that you want it to come in, or you need to make that next level investment. All those things can be very scary.
So it comes down to knowing your numbers, understanding, having a good financial partner, checking your money mindset. What stories are you telling yourself about your money? Are you coming from a place of opportunity, as you are putting yourself out there and really diving into all the opportunities that you have to make more money? The beautiful thing about a practice, and the reason why I love healthcare so much, is because I don’t say that it’s completely recession-proof, but it’s able to survive better than what most industries are throughout different types of economic climates and crises and everything else too. But you still have to be strong in your decision-making and your business-savvy leadership. And so regardless of how much money is coming in the door, I always find that financial picture. It’s interesting for sure. It’s really important as you’re setting up your goals.
Becky Copeland: When you’re talking about six figures, seven figures, all that, it also just makes me think about the whole taxes and situations like that. Do you provide that type of support as well?
Brandy Mabra: When I talk about financial partner, we always make sure that you have a good accountant that you feel comfortable with that is actually helping you strategize. And when it comes to your payment models or how you’re paying your team or setting you up for a good tax strategy. So that way you’re not in a position always to, oh, we’ve had clients where they’ve been in critical tax situations, and because we’ve helped them get with a better financial partner, they’ve been able to save money, they’ve been able to make more money, they’ve been able to definitely set themselves up for success. And so my goal is where my work comes into play is making sure, like as your profit and loss statements are coming through, you understand, like if you’re trying to debate whether or not you need to make that next hire, that you understand your numbers. So that way you’re a strong partner to your CPA or CFO because, at the end of the day, the financial decision is always with you as the business owner.
But if you don’t understand your numbers or if you’re relying on someone to tell you that information blindly, then that’s not a good place to be either. So we have clients who have been with accountants for years and years, and they get profit and loss statements every single month. And they don’t understand them. They don’t understand how to make decisions from them. They don’t know what to do with the numbers. They see the money coming in. They don’t sit down and look at the numbers. They just know the money is there. So we really force them lovingly to sit down, pay attention to the money, get to know your numbers, get to know the ebbs and flows of your practices. Get to know your key performance indicators. How many sessions or visits or appointments do you need in order to bring a certain amount of money in the door? What kind of payment model do you want for your providers outside of just doing what other folks are doing, because your practice might not be able to take on a certain payment model that maybe your colleague can take on. So really paying attention to what’s happening inside your practice and getting to know it intimately when it comes to the numbers piece is is how we work, which helps them when it comes to the tax part of it as well.
Becky Copeland: Okay. And I’m just guessing that as they hire their marketers, their accountants, trust is huge for them the CEO to pull away, to not have to micromanage everything. But that’s all part of the journey, I imagine.
Brandy Mabra: Absolutely. We give them a whole practice performance dashboard with all the numbers and metrics and our best practices to get them started, just to make sure that they’re getting comfortable with understanding all the details of running a business.
Becky Copeland: Now, one thing I’ve been thinking about is with a lot of the people, maybe starting as a therapist or counselor and then moving more into maybe organizing and being owning the CEO, as you like to say. Do you find there’s a rub or a shift where they miss if they pull back from seeing as many clients because they have more of a team? Do they miss it and go back and restructure? How much do you see that where they’re not quite sure if they want to back away or jump back in?
Brandy Mabra: Oh yeah, absolutely. We always go back to the reason why sometimes folks will jump back in because it goes back to that financial piece. They’re nervous that the practice won’t be able to sustain without them seeing everybody that they need to see. That’s probably what I see. The most of our folks who end up working with me are in a place where they really enjoy the business side and want to focus more on that side, but they do want to sometimes work part-time hours or see a few clients just to keep up on skill set, but they recognize that the practice, again, is taking over and that they have to pull back in some type of capacity in order to make sure that the practice is running accordingly, especially if they are not in a place where it’s an office, they have an office manager or someone that they can rely on to help run the business. But in that beginning stages, it’s a compromise. So if you are in the beginning stages, I suggest, at least give yourself half a day or a day somewhere, a couple of days throughout the month, just to make sure that you’re looking at the business side of your practice.
And then as you continue to grow your practice, what you’ll find is you’ll have to start pulling back more days in order to sustain. So even for our clients, our most tenured clients who are at seven figures, some of them have their practice completely run without them. And then there are some folks who actively see clients every day. But they again, they have office managers and clinical directors who can take on some of that leadership piece, and then they have a choice. That’s the beautiful thing is they have a choice whether they want to continue to see folks or if they want to go ahead and pull back and, you know, just have the practice run itself. So it’s according to what your mission and vision is. And the clients that we work with, I leave it where they want it to be. My whole goal is just to make sure that you’re paying attention to the business side and not avoiding it.
Becky Copeland: Right. And I’m guessing that with some of the people you coach, maybe you work with them a couple of months, they launch, and then maybe do people come back to you in a year or two and for more help, how long do you often work with people?
Brandy Mabra: Oh, well. Private practice CEO is a six-month program and actually moving towards a 12-month program because our clients who actually go through it, they get six months of support and sometimes they’re good. And then we have an alumni part of the program with the clients that I work with privately, it’s usually anywhere between 90 days to six months. I have clients that I’ve been with for a couple of years at this point in time because again, the practice is continuing to grow. You get to a new stage of business growth. There’s a new challenge. You’re not too sure how to handle it. So I’m very blessed in regards to there’s my clients that I’m here to make sure that they’re equipped, but there’s always something that can definitely happen. So for example, one of our clients, she had an office manager that ran a muck inside of her practice and we had to fix it. So sometimes there’s big situations like that. I have clients who keep me on retainer at this point in time to just so that way they can have the ability. Hey, what do you think about this? And so having somebody who has ran businesses for an extensive amount of time, or the fact that I’ve been in multiple types of businesses when it comes to health care, different climates, there’s not too much in a practice that I haven’t seen compared to when you get to it. So you’ve never seen it before. I don’t know how to handle it.
Becky Copeland: Right. So interesting. I saw on your website many people who wanted to share their success after working with you. So is there 1 or 2 stories that you love to share with us today about a practice that just exploded, or there were something that ran amok, and you were able to help them get out of the weeds?
Brandy Mabra: Yeah. So we have clients who have made more in six months working with me than what they did all of last year. We have clients like, one client particularly, then she’s on my podcast too, and she was nervous to take off Friday and was like, “No, I don’t think I can do it. I don’t have the time.” And so fast forward to six months later, after being inside a private practice CEO, she got down to where she was only working 2 to 3 hours a week in her practice, and it was because we leveraged her team. We changed some of her team members to full-time, retrained, and empowered her. And so with that transformation was really fun. Some of it is based on time. I just got another testimonial where one of our clients had to take a week off unexpectedly, and she was so heavy in the day-to-day, and so that happened in her. She checked in on her team. Her team was like, leave us alone. Deal with what you have to deal with. We got it. And they did. So that’s a win too. So sometimes it’s financial. It’s a lot of structure. It’s the empowerment of your team and the empowerment of you as the leader. And so those are some of the success stories too. But we just we add like their screenshots and different things. We just added a new one as well. So yeah, they can if you put the link in there you can go check it out.
Becky Copeland: Yes, for sure we’ll definitely talk about it at the end. And one thing I was wondering is geographically, we didn’t talk about where you’re at and how extensive your reach is in helping people talk about where you are and how that’s going.
Brandy Mabra: I am based in Charlotte, North Carolina, but at this point in time, I work with clients globally. I have a client in the Cayman Islands. I have a client I work with in Hong Kong. So I am an international private practice coach, which is fun.
Becky Copeland: Yeah. And then how does that work with the time change? They take the weird hours or you like to do some weird hours.
Brandy Mabra: Sometimes I’ll do weird hours, especially for my client that I work with in Hong Kong. So that’s like opposite sides of the spectrum. And so we always make it work. But I just feel blessed to have the opportunity for anyone who I get to work with. So it’s a blessing. God gave me this experience to share. I know that to be true. And so anytime he sends me somebody, then I take that seriously.
Becky Copeland: That’s awesome. I know even being a part of this team and the Mastering Counseling podcast, there’s people across the Atlantic helping and I love it. Just getting to connect, that’s been the great thing of all the online work and all that. It’s helped so much. Is there anything you feel that we didn’t get to talk about, or any advice for people who are thinking about going into this field, or maybe just beginning it?
Brandy Mabra: I would say at every stage of business growth, own your CEO status. That’s something I say 50,000 times a day and I love it. At the end of the day, God has given you a calling, a purpose, and a mission, and your job is to step into it right with faith and to know that everything that you need for this journey, regardless of where you’re at in it, you’re going to have every resource that you need to be successful. Just have faith and follow the journey. Definitely learn more about business. Learn more about leadership. Be a good steward of your practice and just have fun with all the ebbs and flows, ups and downs, and everything else. It’s all by design and it’s all part of your purpose.
Becky Copeland: I might know the answer to this question, but it made me think if they are in the middle of their program and studies and there isn’t any business side to it, would you recommend them taking a few courses on the side, or do you think it’s better to maybe just get themselves a coach when they’re trying to be established?
Brandy Mabra: I think having mentors is powerful. I absolutely think that you need to learn business. How you learn it? You can definitely take classes. There’s books, there’s podcasts like this that you can listen to. Just learn whatever your best environment is. Then that’s what I would recommend for you to show up. I have a graduate degree in health administration, which is the business side of a healthcare practice and healthcare business, and I learned more going through things compared to learning things in theory. So you can read a textbook, but it’s not until you really get into real life and real application where it starts to make sense to you. So I think that you need a combination of all of it. To be honest. I think you need a coach. I think you need a mentor. I think you need training. I think you need classes. I think you need books, podcasts, all of it, in order to really understand it. Because even with all the years of experience I have, I’m still learning. There’s still things I show up. I’m like, oh, that’s good. Like, let me put that in my back pocket. And so it’s again, it’s a journey. It’s a journey so.
Becky Copeland: Well, thank you so much. Why don’t you just clarify for us your website? I know you’re on LinkedIn, of course. And I think there was an Instagram page if you just want to cite all of those and I’m sure we can link it with when this goes live.
Brandy Mabra: My favorite place to hang out, honestly, is Instagram actually, so you can find me at Savvy Clover Coaching, soon-to-be Brandy Mabra. You can find me at Brandy Mabra on LinkedIn and then my website is www.savvyclover.com. So any of those places and there are free resources there to help you in your business journey as well.
Becky Copeland: Well, thank you so much for your time today. All the insights, especially on the business end of things to our listeners of Mastering Counseling. Give us your feedback on what you learned here, what more you want to learn, and just keep listening as we continue the conversation. Hope everyone has a wonderful day and we’ll hear from you next time.
You’ve been listening to the Mastering Counseling podcast by mastersincounseling.org. Join us again next episode as we explore what it takes to be a business success in the counseling industry.