Brave and Well: Conversations helping mental health professionals build a sustainable, profitable, and values-aligned business

Decolonizing Mental Health & Building a Business from an Empowered Mindset with Dr. Ebony Butler

• Vanessa Newton • Season 1 • Episode 20

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In this energetic and powerful episode, Dr. Ebony Butler and I talk about her journey through overcoming a poverty mindset to growing a practice and a product-based business.

Dr. Ebony is a Licensed Psychologist and Food Relationship Strategist who has made it her mission to help women of color heal and thrive in the areas of trauma, including racial trauma and recovering from food and body trauma experienced through diet culture.

She is the host of the Food is Not Bae Podcast, author of the book Food is Not Bae, and creator of My Therapy Cards®, the first-ever self-exploration card deck for Black women and other women of color.

Tune in as we explore:

  • Learning not to live from a place of fearing poverty
  • Creating systems and processes that take you from making money to building a business
  • The power of pivoting in business and in life
  • Realizing you can’t do it all by yourself and getting the help you need
  • Using social media as an archive tool and not for comparison
  • Setting a price point that is right for you and your business, showing up at that level, and trusting the community to support you

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Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Brave and Well podcast. I'm your host, Vanessa Newton. I'm a group practice owner and social worker. I'm also a Latina entrepreneur, mom, and recovering, perfectionist. On this podcast, we teach mental health professionals how to build sustainable, profitable, and values-aligned businesses. Here, you'll hear all about decolonizing the business side of private practice and supporting the entrepreneur and the therapist. We'll. Music. Also invite fellow therapists and healers to share their stories. Our time together will be raw, honest, vulnerable, and held together by joy. If you like what you hear, subscribe to our newsletter at braveandwell.com slash newsletter-signup. Thank you for listening. Music. All right, y'all, I am pumped for this episode. We have Dr. Ebony here, who is ready to dive in with me and answer some really great questions. I'm so excited to have her. I have admired her from afar, and I've met her many, many times. And it's always such a pleasure and just such an honor to be in her presence and to be in in community with her. And so without further ado, Dr. Ebony Butler, PhD, is a licensed psychologist and food relationship strategist who has made it her mission to help women of color heal and thrive in the areas of trauma, including racial trauma and recovering from food and body trauma experienced through diet culture. Dr. Ebony works alongside women to help them develop skills and increase their relationships with others themselves and their bodies aligning with her passion to break through barriers that make it difficult for black people and other people of color to access quality mental health care. Dr. Ebony created My Therapy Cards, the first ever self-exploration card deck for Black women and other women of color. Since its launch in May, 2020, Dr. Ebony has expanded the card deck to include a teen edition and men's edition. The expansion of this resource has made self-insight and discovery work more accessible and affordable. Boom. So excited. Dr. Ebony, welcome. All right, y'all welcome back to another Brave and Well podcast episode. I'm your host, Vanessa Newton, licensed clinical social a social worker, group practice owner, and entrepreneur. And today we have the Dr. Ebony on the podcast and I'm so excited you're here, welcome. Thank you so much, I'm excited to be here. Yes, so I have admired, observed, witnessed Dr. Ebony from afar for a long time. And only, I guess I would say like in the last year or so, right, we met in person and have been in community together. So this is really exciting to have you on the podcast and I'm honored to have you. So let's jump in. Tell us about you, the work you do, and we'll dive into your story a little bit, but just give us a rundown of who you are. Yeah, so I'm a licensed psychologist in Texas and a large part of my work is centered around trauma and trauma recovery and helping black women, other women of color regain their power, regain their voice, learn how to speak up, set boundaries, ask for what they want and need. Trauma takes that away from us. So a lot of the work that I do in session is just kind of helping us get back there. I'm also licensed across some other states through the SIPAC, but people who I work well with are people who are interested in thinking through how trauma has impacted them, the way that is kind of left its mark and how to regain their power back. I'm also a food relationship strategist where I do much of the same thing, but in the realm of our relationship with food, how do we let go of diet culture and begin to make choices for ourselves that's not rooted in rules and the trauma that I think comes with the fitness industry, diet culture, colonization of our food and that kind of thing. I'm also the creator of My Therapy Cards, which is a card deck that I created for black women, men, and teens to help us gain some insight into the things that may be blocking our ability to show up and create the lives that we want around mental blocks, habits, triggers. And so I created the card deck So people could see themselves, one, represented in this field when people of color have not been represented well or have been marginalized. So that card deck is there with tools to accompany processing through the cards. I'm also a business consultant to other therapists and coaches to help them build their businesses in ways that school just doesn't teach us how to do. And so I want to share a lot of what I've learned. I've invested so much time and money into learning how to do the thing that I do and to create my niche and to really have a sustainable business. So I wanna impart that into other therapists and coaches bit. They can also do the same thing and then teach other people so that, honestly, we can decolonize the field of mental health. Because I honestly think that part of the colonization is having the wealth and the prosperity and the success belong to people who don't look like us. So that's what I do. And that's why I do so much. And you have, I mean, really, like your story is inspiring. You've built an incredible business, businesses and think for for people listening and for me too, who are either working full-time, that day-to-day grind, and who are aspiring to start their own business or have just started or are in the thick of it. I think your story is really inspiring. So I'm curious if you could just share kind of the process and your journey from when you first started to where you are now. You know, I knew, I always knew, I'm gonna be real honest, always knew that I was gonna make some money. I just didn't know how it was supposed to happen. That's right. I always tell people the story around being in grad school. And you know how on the first day they tell you, well, you don't come here to make money. You don't get into this field to be rich. And I remember just always feeling out of place. And I was like, who are they talking to? I didn't really know. The reason I went to school and to get a PhD and all that stuff was to escape poverty, not to run head first into poverty. So my background is being from Mississippi, raised by a single mother, education was always my way out. Education was my way out, for better or for worse. Continuing to evolve as a student and then professional has been a trauma response probably, but also one that has worked to get me out of the place that I was in. And I was always committed to doing that. And I saw the exit being education. And I was like, that's what I'm going to do. So when I would go into these spaces where they were like, well, you're not going to make money. I was like, no, this is absolutely not fitting for me. And I don't know who they're talking to, but I'm not going to internalize that. So I always wanted to do the thing that was going to be the thing that I could leverage the most. That's just always been my personality. So in grad school, when they said, where do you want to do your internship? I was like, the VA, because the VA pays more. The VA has better opportunities coming out. You get to be a different GS level. And once I'm in the VA system, it's hard to leave. So all of this has been my line of thinking. Don't want to do academia. It feels way too triggering for me. The parish, the published or parish, was way too triggering. And I was like, I can't be in a space that's unstable like that. I need stability. So did that. And then once I did the VA and bounced around from different VAs, I was like, OK, I. Could do more kind of organized work. And so that's when I went for paramilitary type environments. But then I knew that those environments wouldn't give me the flexibility that I needed and wanted. I've always been a person who was like, it doesn't matter what I'm doing, I'm going to do what I wanna do how I want to do it. It didn't always fit within the structure of government agencies or municipal agencies. So I started a private practice in 2019. So I've always been just employed full-time. Then private practice came in 2019. Prior to private practice though, in 2015 is actually when I started my first business. And I started that business with my sister. And it was just something that I did on the side. And then we pivoted in 2019 to do the therapy stuff. So once I started building, building, building, I got to a place where I said, okay, this is something that is viable. I'm going to leave my full-time job when my part-time job or my side thing can support me like my full-time job can. You know, in comes 2020, the pandemic, we launched my therapy cards. I was able to generate income to the point where it was paying me like my full-time job was paying me and that's when I created an extra strategy. And that's how I got to where I am today. And so now I'm just interested in trying to figure out how this business can remain sustainable, but also how can I do all the things that I have in my mind to do while maintaining my sanity? Because I'm always thinking of something new and I'm always thinking of different ways, of course, to make money, but also how to create a business that lives even when I'm not here. So that's now where my focus is. I worked on some trauma stuff in therapy, figured out I don't have to keep trying to run from poverty. I'm not there. So having my, you know, based myself in reality, now I can focus on how can I create something that actually lives on beyond me? So that's my focus now. Oh, I feel that to my core. I feel like a lot of what you're saying is exactly. Things that have come up for me in my journey of, I grew up in poverty. I grew up with a single parent as well, and education has always been kind of ingrained in me for better, for worse. But we don't talk about the in-between, right? The in-between of like going from that environment all the way to what other people see as successful. Right. And just the struggle, the joy that comes with it, too. But also being in a space of, you know, how do I make this sustainable long term? I feel like that's where I'm like that. I'm always think I'm a visionary. I think 10 years ahead. And I'm like, where do I want to be? Let's do that right now. Let's do all of it right now. Not to slow myself down. It's like, okay, you can't do all of it today, but let's keep it moving, right? Like, how do we keep moving? So that's where I am. And I really have been focused on like, this person always comes to mind, but Kate Spade, her empire, right? Is here way after her. So now I want to create, It's gotten me out of the creating, creating product services, but also put some, put your SOPs in place. Yes. Put your business plan in place. Like put those things in place so that when you are not here, if something happens, you literally can bring somebody in who can do the things, the same thing. So it's a pivot in my mindset too around what this actually looks like, what building a business looks like. When I first started out, building a business just looked like making money. Now I'm building a business, it's like. How do you actually be an empire? How do you actually be a business and stay? That's the thing. How do you stay a business? Even when Dr. Ebony is off doing something else, who can be in the business of doing the work that Dr. Ebony has dreamed for us to do? And that's what I want. When I decided to take this sabbatical, this second maternity leave is when I realized that that I needed to do those things, right? I needed to build those SOPs. I needed to create systems and develop processes and systematize my business so that I could step out of it and step away from it. And doing that has really allowed me to see, well, it is possible to not be in this day in and day out. And that's the dream, right? That's the goal that you, that's my dream is to make money in my sleep and to build something that can live beyond me for my descendants and so on and so forth. So yeah, I mean, I think it's important for folks listening to that. That's what I wish someone would have told me when I first started of like, spend the time creating those systems, you know, writing things down, putting things in on paper, because because that's how you grow. That's how you get to step out and create and be the visionary of your business. And that's it. Like I would love to just dream up stuff all day and have somebody else execute. Right. That's the journey. That's the journey. Exactly. Yeah. So you talked about pivoting in your business and kind of in life. Like, what does that look like for you? Yeah, I've had to pivot so much. I've had to, and I'll start as early as I can remember. I like to be transparent in my journey because I don't think that success is linear. And I want people to understand that the setbacks is what helps propel you to where you are now. So the first time I remember having to pivot was right out of my undergrad program. So of course, you go through school and you get all these praises and accolades around being the smart child and the smart kid, and you get all these awards. So you go through undergrad and you're like. Surely, I'm just going to apply to a PhD program and I'm going to get in because I'm smart. Well, I did not. And so my first pivot went from having to stop applying to PhD programs to go get a master's. So that was in, I got a master's in clinical psych. And so that was my first pivot and I was like, I really don't want to do this. I had my mindset on, of course, having a PhD by the time I was 25. That did not happen. I was like, that was my first pivot, very bummed. After I got my master's, I said, well, surely I'm going to apply now to PhD programs and I'm going to get in. Didn't I get in and had to work a year, right? So that was another pivot. So went from clinical psych to counseling psych. So that year gave me an opportunity to really see what I didn't want to do and I didn't want to do clinical psych anymore. So got into a PhD program. All the things went OK. But then going into the VA, all these disappointments along the way around not getting the rotations you want, not getting picked up by the VAs you want, and not getting into the programs. So there's a constant pivoting that happens in this career and in the trajectory of it. When I got to business, though, I was a weight loss coach. Let me back up. In 2015, my first business was me being a weight loss coach. I had a business with my sister. And we started that business because we lost weight and people ask us questions around like, how did you do that? We were like, let's teach the people. Well, I'm a front facing person. I can talk to people all day, but my sister is not. My sister is very quiet. She's a behind the scenes person. So we were I wanted her to be for facing front facing, talking to the people, coaching like I was. That's not who she is. So the first, I think, experience of tension came from us doing that when she decided that she was going to take a step back. It gave me an opportunity to really reevaluate, why am I doing this? Does it feel aligned? and it did not. Being a weight loss coach as a black woman felt, eventually started to feel very oppressive. And I felt like I was starting to get into the territory of telling people you're not good enough unless you're skinny. Which was a lot of my trauma stuff coming out that I know that I was projecting onto other people. And I was like, this doesn't feel aligned. I don't like this. I can't do this. But what can I do that I can tap into the skills that I know around psychology and behavior? And how can I pivot in a way that allows me to feel more aligned? That's where the food relationship stuff came from. So how can I move away from diet culture to teach more about just how we show up in a more authentic way as I do my healing work too? So my first major pivot in business was that going from partnering with my sister to identify myself as a food relationship strategist. I was mainly showing up online. We'll probably talk about this later. I was mainly showing up in social media as a coach because I didn't know how to be a coach and a therapist online. So many ethics, I didn't want to cross any lines. I didn't want to blur any boundaries. So I was like, I'm just going to be a coach. Then as I started to learn myself more, my last pivot, I would say, or my second to last pivot, I would say, in business came when I decided I was going to do therapy more online and open the private practice in 2019. So in 2019, that's when I decided I was going to do full on. I'm going to do therapy. I'm going to do food relationship stuff. But primarily, I'm going to be front facing as a therapist, a clinician, that kind of thing. The last pivot came, honestly, when the therapy cards launched. The therapy cards were not supposed to be therapy cards. They were supposed to be full relationship cards. And then the pandemic hit and I was like, oh, I've got to do something else. And that's how we came up with my therapy cards. Isn't it wild how you can think about something in your mind and you can see something for yourself? And either your inner dialogue or the universe or higher being or whatever tells you, nope, that's not it. That's not it. Yeah. That's not it. That's not it. And you either have to follow that or try to push it out of the way, but it still presents itself. It's still, and there's a lot of, that's not, it's in business. And it's like you were saying, if you don't listen to it, it can really get you in a place where you're just stuck. If you are a person who's thinking, well, I have to do it this way. And if you don't have some flexibility, it can really become a push and pull in business that really does not have to happen. But I've heard so many, uh-uh, that's not it. You know, that's not it. That doesn't feel good. So part of being in business and being, an entrepreneur is learning how to listen to yourself. But there is so much stuff that you have to work through in order to even begin to feel comfortable listening to that voice. Because had I not done some healing work and understood my own trauma and trauma responses, I would have still been like, but no, this is what I have to do. Right. Instead of thinking, you know, understanding that's not aligned. That's not who you are. That's a complete trauma response and you're trying to do that so you be you're safe when that doesn't serve anything else in your life. And so learning how to pivot when that happens hasn't usually beneficial. And you have to trust yourself. I was right before being on this call with you. I had an intake with a potential leadership coach that I want to work with. And I've never worked with a leadership coach before, but I feel like I need to now. And I was kind of telling her, you know, my goals and and stuff, and what she was saying was like, it sounds like you need to trust yourself more. And I was like, but I do trust myself. Wait, but do I trust my, you know, questioning like, maybe I don't trust myself. And that brings up so much. So now I'm sitting here thinking about like, what does even trusting myself look like? Have I not trusted myself and just been doing what I thought I should be doing? You know, so many questions. So what you're saying, it makes me think about this idea that as entrepreneurs, as business owners, we do have to trust ourselves and we have to listen to our intuition and our gut. Cause I always say like, my gut is the first to tell me what it is, what my next step is. And I have to fact check that. It can be really confusing. It can be really confusing to figure out, is it my gut? Is it my fear? Is it somebody else? Like, is it somebody else's voice? So really sitting with it sometimes is necessary to be able to understand. You know, we've talked about how part of building a sustainable business that can live beyond us requires us to get creative, but also think about what is that thing, right? What is that offering or that product or that system or whatever? You've managed to create a physical product that is known around the world at this point. I mean, it's very successful. We've had a lot of opportunities that have come out of this amazing, you know, resource to folks. Tell us, how did you make that happen? And what would you say to someone who's wanting to create a product, to sell in their business? You mentioned your leadership coach. One of the ways I was able to make it happen was to, understand that I couldn't do it alone. So many of us want to DIY every single part of our lives because money is scarce, money is low. We think we have a lot of money limitations and issues around money and beliefs and our money stories kind of hold us back. But one of the things that I realized was like, if you're going to bring this to life, and if this is really going to be something that you feel in your gut is going to be, you cannot do this by yourself. So I remember the day that I got the thought, it just hit me out of the, it was like, duh. I was literally sitting here thinking, okay, I want to bring therapy. No, no, no. It was a food relationship stuff. I want to work with people. It was actually both. I want to work with people who probably can't pay me the rate that I'm asking, but I also want to work with people where there are limitations around laws and ethics. What I eventually want to do is create this relationship deck, but I also want to move into the therapy cars where we can, in about five years, what I said at the time, when the full relationship deck does this thing, move there next to provide therapy to folks or therapy tools to people who can't access therapy because of our laws and our ethics and things like that. Then I remember it hit me. I was like, do I do an e-book? Do I write a book? Like. Do I do a podcast? What do I do with all this stuff that I feel like is necessary? And then it hit me one day, it was like, duh, put it in a car deck. Just like that. And I remember getting on Instagram and I text Audra and I said, if I have this idea, I want to create something and that I think only you can help me do. And then I told her what it was, because I had worked with her before. She said easy. And I told her more. She's like, oh, that's easy. Then I told her more. And she said, oh. Yeah, it's easy. She came back to me like two weeks later. And she was like, I was at this event just so happened to be there. And look at these card decks that these people have created. And here are the vendors to make this happen. I signed up for her mastermind. And I was like, we're going to make this happen. And I looked at her mastermind. I've seen how much that thing cost too. It was, it's an investment. It's an investment. And I was, the reason I messaged her is because I had been burned by another coach who I'd invested $7,000 in and I got nothing, absolutely nothing. Part of why I got nothing was because they didn't know what they were doing. I didn't know who I was, that nobody knew what to do with me as a therapist last coach. So they were giving me some very kind of like generic things to do. And I was like, I can't do that. And everything they will come back with, I was like, I can't do that. I can't do that. I can't do a full therapy session online. I can't do a lot of these things, right? So when I got with her, I was like, you've listened to me before. You've heard me say, I can't do some things and you've thought outside the box for me. So I'm gonna choose you to work with again. Then I ran the idea by some people who I talked to in DMs all the time. And I said, if I created a card deck, would you buy it? And they were like, yes. And these were target clients or customers, right? They were like, yeah, I do it. So this is also a strategy that people can use to test out things. I never told anybody else about it. I worked with Audrey behind the scenes and then in 2020 we launched it, but I couldn't do it, by myself because I didn't have access to vendors. I didn't have access to a launch strategy or how to market this, which people don't understand needs to be the main thing that you do. It's like you can have a product that if you don't market that thing to where you're sick of talking and about it is not going to do the thing for you that you need. This is me. This is me, Ebony. You know, I have this book. I don't market it. You got to market it, Vanessa, to the point where you're sick of hearing yourself talk about the book. But why am I so scared? This is like my thing, right? The thing is my thing is belief. And so one of the things I'll just kind of talk to you about the opportunities that have presented itself. So when I launched the Card Deck and I got all these opportunities and people were wanting to know. The main question people kind of ask is, how do I get out of my head? So that's the business consulting for me from that too, right? So I had this successful launch of a six-week program, but even the feedback in that six-week program was, you gave us a lot to do, I'm still stuck here. So that's why I'm backing up now and doing the membership around mindset. Like we're only gonna tackle mindset and trust and confidence. Because you can't do when you are here. No. And you're stuck here. Because a lot of what holds us back is not that you don't have a good product, not that people don't believe in you, it's the us who has trouble believing in ourselves. It's the us who think. We project onto people what we are thinking and think that they're gonna think the same. And it's like, well, nobody's gonna want this, nobody's gonna buy this, nobody's gonna, this is just business. So getting out of our own way. Has had to, it's been the most significant exposure therapy I've had to do in my life. When I don't want to post Vanessa, I'm literally like, oh my, if I post another reel about these cars, I'm going to scream myself. I'm sick of it. But then you have to remember, you know about them. Everybody does not know about them. That's right. Yeah. I mean, You don't show them, they won't know. Hey, y'all coming to you to share an awesome resource that I don't know if you all know about, but it's my workbook called laying the foundation for your private practice, a workbook specifically for mental health professionals who wish to launch or grow or refine their private practice or group practice. Now this workbook captures all of the exercises that I have gone through specifically with my business coaching clients to help them build sustainable, profitable, and values aligned businesses. We go through everything around money mindset, around running your numbers, and making sure that you are implementing the profit first model into your business. We talk about how to identify your ideal client, how to identify alternative streams of revenue that are outside of traditional one-on-one therapy. We talk about marketing strategies, branding, self-care. This workbook is jam-packed with every resource you can think of that'll help you get started from beginning to end to get you ready and set up to have an amazing practice that supports your vision, your future, and you, most importantly, having time to give back to yourself so you can continue to grow. You can purchase the workbook at my website, braveandwell.com. Or just go to bravenwell.com and click on book. Music. I remember when you first launched your My Therapy Cards, and I think the other, a couple months ago I was on your page and I looked back, I scrolled back all the way to when you first posted about that launch and I look at that post and I scroll back to the top for where you are today and I'm just like, holy shit, like total transformation, complete growth and I know that social media is a huge part of your platform and a huge part of your process, like you have a huge following, right? And I'm curious, like how has social media supported your business? What is your relationship with social media? You know, what has that been like? You know, for the most part, I have a healthy relationship with social media, but also I spend way too much time on social media. So I really like it. I do like it and it's worked. It's worked. Where it gets to be a toxic relationship, I think, for me is when I get in my own way and start comparing myself around where I should be based on what other people are doing. It is so easy to get lost in the noise of social media. So part of what my strategy is, is business. Post and keep going. Post and you can't worry about how many people like this post because some of your opportunities have come from posts that don't even have the metrics that social media tells you is a successful metric. So a lot of talking myself down happens around social media. However, I've now understood social media to be a tool and I use it as such. It's a marketing tool. So I pour a lot of money to be quite honest into ads on Instagram and Facebook and TikTok, now and I've done so on LinkedIn. But it's a tool that I use to get more eyes on the work that I do. So now my strategy is what do they have to offer to get more eyes on the work that I do? Okay, this period that we're in is real. I'm going to do real. This period that we're in, we're doing carousels. I'm going to do carousels. This period that we're in, we're doing stitches. I'm going to stitch. Right? So part of the strategy is doing that so that you drive that eyes, right? My last reel that I did a stitch was 30,000 views. I'm going to retarget those folks so that they keep coming back and keep seeing my ads, right? And that's the whole strategy. And you have to start thinking, yes, your business is small. But also this is what Old Navy is doing. This is what Gap is doing. This is what Adidas is doing. This is what all these brands that you keep seeing are doing. They're retargeting you. And so how do I begin to think like them? And you use social media as like your phone book. It's your way to have people come to your page, look through your library, see what you are about. And then they can say whether or not they wanna work with you or buy from you. People, I think a lot of times when you're not strategic about social media and you're just getting caught up in the likes, you can forget that this is also a library. This is an archive. This is your archive. This is your vault. So if nobody ever knows who Vanessa is and they never speak to me, do I have enough information on here where they know how I sound? Do I have enough information on here that they know what I do? And that's how I use social media. What do people need to hear from me? What gives them access or information around who I am? If nobody ever wants to make themselves known, how can they go here and say, yeah, we want to have our own? No, we don't want to have our own. And it's there. So when you use it like that, I think it helps take away the pressure of needing to be. A influencer or a person who's getting all these views all the time and going viral all the time, you don't need to go viral for folks to find you. They just need to be able to find you. And so how do you make that happen? And that's how I use it. It's such a poignant way of using the app because for so many folks, like it's about the likes and the comments and you know, is this the right color scheme? Can I get a cute cover page? Like it's about the aesthetic of it versus, is, like you said, the business of it, the analytics. Like, how are we using the data that it's presenting to us and the tools that it's giving us to make our audience either get to know us or realize we're not for them? And what are they consuming? What am I giving them to consume? I think for me, I get so stuck on the personal piece of it because I think I'm such a personable, like I just wanna talk to everybody, but I'm not using it for a purpose. Like for business, it's not a tactic. It's more of like a personality thing. It's gotta be a tool. Yes. It's gotta be a tool just like your podcast is a tool. Right. Social media is a tool. How do I, which platform, where are my people? Right. Where are my people? Where are the people who want to listen? Where are the people who want to purchase? Yes. Those are different people. Yeah. And they're hanging out on different platforms, right? There may be some overlap, but they're hanging out in different places. Just like me, because I love this because I don't show my face on a podcast. Yeah. And so you got to get comfortable showing your face too. Yeah. Because the thing is people, okay, we don't need to ever see the face of Old Navy. Right. And I use Old Navy a lot because when I get sick of sending emails, I remember that they send me 10 emails a day. And I said, well, I'm going to start being like Old Navy and I'm going to send these people, if they don't want it, they'll unsubscribe. And if they unsubscribe, they don't want my information anymore. and the life cycle of them being a customer has faded out. So I use these people as examples for how I can show up. So nobody ever has to know the face of Old Navy because Old Navy has put in time with showing who they are and who they represent and the faces of Old Navy. So if you don't wanna be the face, Vanessa, who can be? Who can be? It doesn't have to be your face, but who can be? And that's the way, because people buy, of course, this is very old news, but people buy it from people they trust. Right. That's right. And how can we trust you if we don't see you or see your face or some representation of the people you serve? Right. Do I see myself represented in you and your business? And it doesn't ever have to be your face, but can I see myself represented in your business, being helped in your business? And that's why it was so important for me to put brown folks, black and brown people on these cards, because I wanted us to see ourselves represented. If I don't see myself on there, I can't see myself using them. That's the other thing I've realized. You're for nobody if you are for everybody, right? Yeah. And for me, I've just realized that my ideal client and the folks who come to me are black and brown folks. That's it. That's it. Yeah. That's it. And I'm okay with that. people will also question themselves around, oh, you're closing off. No, you're not. You're making yourself available with the capacity that you have. And you are showing up more fully because you've identified who you work well with and the people who work well with you. You don't have to be available to everybody. And I think that scarcity mindset, well, if I don't open it up to everybody, I won't be as successful. Yes, you will. Yes, you will. You do not have to. I love that you say, you don't have to be for everybody. You can choose the people who you want to serve and show up fully there. And those people are going to support you. And we have to get rid of our own scarcity mindset. And also, we have to get rid of our own internalized bias around what Black and Brown folks can pay for and what we can't pay for and how success looks in the Black and Brown community. Can we talk about that, please? That was my next question about talking about money. Because I know that you created the card deck for also for accessibility, right? And I think as someone who owns a group practice with mostly black and brown therapists, right? There's, it's a million dollar question that everyone's afraid to talk about is what do you, what does it mean to ask for what you're worth from folks who are black and brown, who you think can't afford you? Yeah. How do you become wealthy or have a profitable business when you think that, oh, I want to serve black and brown communities, but they can't afford me. So then what? One of the things, and I talked about this in my coaching program, one of the things we got to understand is that we got to stop limiting the amount of success and wealth that lives in the black and brown community. We got to stop thinking that money is white, point blank period. We think that money is white because we've been conditioned to think that way. We have money. Black and Brown folks drive Nike. We have helped keep Nike relevant 100%. We have helped restaurant industry, the branch industry. We have money. We have money. The hair industry, the makeup industry, Black and Brown women have done that. So the fashion industry, like we drive a lot of this, but the thing is a lot of us have internalized bias and internalized racism around. The money that we think black and brown folks have access to. And we've got to do a lot of fact-checking around it. We've got to do a lot of fact-checking because we're still holding on to this idea that money does not exist in these communities, and it does. And if you are asking for a particular rate, you've got to understand that we run the gamut. Like, we span the spectrum. There are going to be black and brown folks who cannot afford you and black and brown folks who don't want to work with you because you're too low. That's right. That's right. Even at the rate that you're at, they don't want to work with you because you're too low. One of the things we have to do is stop recognizing that is, well, stop saying it's binary, either we have money or we don't. There's a spectrum. When I came out with the cars, people were like, I don't know why you have these priced at $49 when you know we don't have money like that. I said, no, no, no, no, no. We do have money, but if these cars are not for you, that's the problem. Not that we don't have money. This just does not fit your budget. And if it doesn't fit your budget, doesn't mean that it doesn't fit someone else's budget. So as clinicians, as entrepreneurs, I think we've got to show of understanding that even in the black and brown community, You can be for everyone. So, one thing that I do to help with that is I try to scale as much as I can to serve as many people as I can. If you can't afford this debt, you can consume free content on social media. You can consume free content on the podcast. I do free webinars throughout the year. You can consume that content. Then, if you can, you can do the deck. If you can't do therapy at the rate that I have it, you can do the deck. If you can't do therapy at the rate that I have it, then there are some other opportunities where I'll host a small group sometimes, and then you can do that. But that's the way that I try to show up in the community because I know we span the spectrum. And so our work as entrepreneurs, also the last thing I'll say is to worry about what's going to keep your business sustainable, not what the community has or doesn't has because the community will support you. The community has supported so many other people, it will support you. So how do you create a sustainable business? What's the price point that you need to have? How do you align yourself with people who can pay the price point that you're asking them to pay? Yes. And you may ask me this, but this is another thing that I'm going to say that's last. Are you showing up according to the price point that you're asking? Yeah, that's a damn good question. All right, so it's so far beyond what people can or cannot pay. Sometimes it's just us. Are you showing up as a $200 an hour therapist? Right. Or are you showing up as a $50 an hour therapist? Not to say that anything's wrong, but you're going to attract two different type of clientele, two different type of people. And that's okay because we span the spectrum. Who are you targeting and how are you showing up in that space? Oh yes. Everything you said. And I wanted to say this. We had, so when we decided to hire director of equity for our practice, we worked with a DEI consultant. And one of the things she said to us, she's a black woman, and she said, when I look at your pricing model for your therapist, you look like a non-profit agency to me. You are not a community clinic, you are not a non-profit, you are a for-profit private practice and you should be charging, your clinician should be charging as such. And that hit me like in my gut. I was like, holy shit, like I didn't even think about that because when I think about accessibility, I'm thinking about how can we make this affordable for you? But what does affordability look like? That's not for me to decide. That's right. That's not for you to decide. And this, this idea of what you're saying that we have associated the fact that money is for white folks or is white, right? That, that is so real. And I think, and it's such a smart move for you to diversify what you offer to be able to serve different folks in different spaces, because that person who consumes your free content on Instagram may one day be able to afford you for therapy, right? There's something for everybody and you can serve the community and be in service of others if you are being authentic to yourself and serving yourself first. That's right. Because if you're not serving yourself, Vanessa, what's going to happen is you're going to get burnt out and you're not going to want to show up. You're going to be frustrated and you're not going to show up in your full capacity. Asking for your rate, asking for what you need and what your business needs to thrive and be sustainable helps you to to maintain a level of creativity that you can't have if you're not getting paid. It's the same thing if we were on a job and they're saying, you know what? Because a part of the thing is, we would not accept from jobs the rates that we accept for ourselves. And companies said, we're just gonna pay you.$20 an hour to see 50 clients a week, you're like, that's just not okay. But when you start working for yourself, it becomes okay because of our limiting beliefs and our stuckness and a lot of those things. But we really have to get out of the space of doing that to ourselves and understanding what do I need to show up fully. And in order for me to show up fully, I can only take, a certain number of clients a week. So if I can only take a certain number of clients a week, they're going to have to be able to pay this so that I can do the work that I meant to do. Right. And you got to understand that that's you. And you can grow. So you don't have to come out the gate with this number, right? You can grow. I started out at 120. And it was from other therapists who told me you, I was actually a Latino woman in the community. She said, you got to go up. You can't, you can't do that. And so I inched my way up as I felt comfortable. Right. You know, and so you can do that and you can have that in your business to where you feel comfortable. And a lot of us do have to do our mindset work around money all the time. And so don't put this pressure on yourself to have it all figured out now. Give yourself space to grow and continue to grow with your business as your business grows. You don't always have to be, and honestly, you won't always be serving the same people. You're going to grow. Your community is going to grow. You want those people to be able to grow with you. And you also want to be able to target different sectors of your community as your business grows. So if you keep that in mind, then you may have a little less fear around raising your rates or charging accordingly to what you feel like you need. That discomfort of growth, of having your business grow and starting to make money that you never thought was possible, sitting in that space. Yeah. Yeah. That, I know for me, was really uncomfortable. Yeah. And questioning myself of, damn, what does this mean? You know, if now I'm starting to make money, now I'm starting to get visibility, now people are starting to work with me, that feels really scary. It's so scary. And it's so vulnerable because now your more eyes are on you. Yes. So if you mess up, more people can see. Right. And if you don't, if you struggle with confidence around not knowing what you're doing, more people are critiquing you, more people are critical, and more people to compare yourself against. It is really scary, I'm not going to lie. When the cars launched in May, I knew that this was going to do something that I didn't think that it would do, but I didn't think it was going to do that. But I knew it was going to do more than I thought it was. It was one of the most uncomfortable times. I was so nervous because the influx of people coming into my inbox, coming into the community. It was a lot at one time. And I think we have to be honest that growth is uncomfortable. It's a very vulnerable place because people, everybody's not going to think that what you're doing is great. There are some people who are going to say, we don't like it. And they're going to look like you. They're not going to like it. Right. And it doesn't feel good. It feels very hard to navigate. And it feels very, it kind of like feels heavy on your chest when you're like, but I created this for us. And then people saying, but I don't like it. You could have done more. Or you shouldn't have done that, you know. And so it's just that feedback also comes with growth. And that is sometimes what people are protecting themselves against when they stay insular and they stay isolated. So I get it. And it's uncomfortable, you know, as you stopped playing small, right? And you become more visible and you take those risks and you are out there. I mean, that's part of being an entrepreneur is we're constantly taking risks. Every decision is is a risk. Every decision. And so it is, it's uncomfortable all the time. I always say I'm brave and afraid all the time. All the time. I love that. I love that, me too. I can go on live and that's a lot to unite. And then I'm like, all the things I feel great while I'm there. And then I'm off and I'm like, did I say something that was too much? Did I come off too forceful? Like, did I make somebody upset? Like all these things are going through your mind all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh, this conversation just gives me a lot of energy and I think it will give a lot of folks energy too because a lot of what you're saying is stuff, that I know me as a brown woman, I feel all the time. And why a lot of folks that I work with are still at a place, the stage of contemplation. Should I do this? Should I not do this? What's my next step? What do I need to do? But I'm scared, but what if this is not the right decision? And they stay stuck in that space for too long. For too long, yeah. And at some point we just got to do it. Yep. And the worst that can happen is that we have to pivot. The worst that could happen is that we have to pivot. Right. That's okay. That is okay. Pivoting is actually really okay. It teaches us a lot about ourselves. Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Ebony, this was amazing. Thank you. I enjoyed the conversation. You gave me so much to think about, so much that I haven't even shared with my own community that I'm like, why don't you talk about this stuff? So I enjoyed the questions. I think it's great. Oh, well, I want you to share what do you have coming up? How can people find you? All of that. Yeah, I'm on social media, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook as Dr. Ebony online. I'm on TikTok, it's Dr. Ebony, and I have the therapy cards. We actually have a couple's deck that we'll be launching this summer. That's exciting! So I'm excited. It's my first time announcing, so I'm excited about that. That's amazing. I know, I'm so excited. It's my birthday month, so I'm gonna announce it. Yes, it is. Happy birthday. I'm gonna announce it, so that's my thing. If you wanna check out the cards, you can go to mytherapycards.shop. And if you wanna check out who I am, you can go to drebney.com the membership. I forgot about the membership. So I have a monthly membership opening up for therapists and coaches who want to work through some of this mindset stuff, really get some foundational pieces for moving through their business in a way that will help them create a sustainable business. So that'll be launching this month too. And where can they find that? So they can find that on drebney.com as well. Well, I'll link all of this in the show notes. So you all have access to everything and can refer back. And thank you so much again for being on the show. I really appreciate you. And it's just always a joy to be in your presence. Let me tell you that. Oh, thank you. You too, Vanessa. You too. I love it. Thank you. All right, y'all. Thanks for listening. Until next time, stay brave. Thank you so much for listening to the Brave and Well podcast. You can find links and resources from this episode the show notes at www.bravenwell.com. 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