We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Katie Gamby a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Katie, thanks for joining us today. Can you share a story with us from back when you were an intern or apprentice? Maybe it’s a story that illustrates an important lesson you learned or maybe it’s a just a story that makes you laugh (or cry)?

I had many supervisors over the course of my life, but Wendy Nathan was by far the most impactful. I interned with her while I was wrapping up my PhD and was completely overwhelmed and burnt out with school and the counseling field. I remember she took me to Panera one day and sat me down and through the conversation I told her that I wasn’t going to work in the field after I was done. She looked me square in the eyes and said, “yes you will.” I really honestly hadn’t had anyone be so direct with me before. She continued and said, “you’re burnt out, that just means you need to take care of yourself, that doesn’t mean you need to leave the field for good. And, burnout is the worst time to be making lifelong decisions.”

I have kept that nugget of wisdom with me since that time. She showed me how to open a counseling practice where everyone got equal say in how it runs, pay therapists their full rate, and lead from a place of abundance instead of scarcity. I always ask myself, “what would Wendy do?” in almost any situation and I credit her as the reason for my thriving business and for the values I have in business and in life. I have no idea where I would be today without her guidance. support, mentorship. and gentle challenge all those years ago.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m Katie Gamby, I have been in the psychology, counseling, and higher education fields for the better part of 15 years. My PhD is in Counselor Education and my Master’s is in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. I have been working as a counselor since 2014 and started my private practice.,The Wellife, at that time as well.

Ever since I entered the counseling field, I have been passionate about wellness. I’ve always seen human beings holistically and how our wellbeing is affected by not just our physical health but our mental, emotional, spiritual, occupational, and various other facets. I’ve always envisioned a wellness space that focuses on holistic care and invites people with a variety of healing modalities to provide help to those who are hurting. We work with other counselors, professional coaches, yoga instructors, nurse practitioners, and massage therapists all out of the same space and we are diligent in creating an environment for not just our clients to thrive, but each other to thrive too. One startling statistic I heard in graduate school was that the burnout rate for counselors is 2-3 years after graduation. That just was not okay with me. I can’t change everyone’s experience, but if it is within my control to create an environment where people want to show up to work, I am doing that.

The Wellife was born out of that vision, to create a “WELL LIFE” for every single person that comes into or works out of our space. I think we are doing that and it is one of the accomplishments I am most proud of. Now, I get to co-run the business with my business partner and husband, Mike, and I feel incredibly overwhelmed with gratitude on most days for how we get to serve and be served by our community.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

For most of my life in graduate school and beyond, the focus was always on climbing the ladder to get beyond where you currently are, and while there is nothing inherently wrong with that, I got to the top and looked around and realized that it wasn’t so great up there and the people up there with me weren’t the people I wanted to emulate my life after. So, I guess, I would recommend deciding if the ladder (whichever one it is for you) is really the one you want to be climbing and to build relationships with the people on each rung, to truly care about them, and not just step on them to get ahead.

Any advice for managing a team?

In business there can be such a focus on “the grind” and I don’t think any business owner doesn’t know what that is like. There are late nights, fires to put out, and vision to cast, however, when I get around other business owners, I often times see a huge focus on “the product” or “the experience” or “the consumer” at the expense of deep care for those who are investing their time, energy, creativity, resources, etc. into the brand or business. We start to see humans as robots or those we can profit off of and as soon as we do that, I feel like we lose.

High morale comes from feeling deeply cared for. It means caring about things that people often don’t see as important: like remembering someone’s birthday or buying snacks that folks like or giving them the ability to create spaces that serve them. Yes, more money is always better too! But truly, I think most employees want to know that they are making a difference and they want to be able to work in a way that aligns with how they best function. How I’ve decided to do that is I create “Designed Alliances” (I learned this through my professional coach training through an amazing organization called Lark’s Song) with each of the people I work with to figure out how we can best function when we work together. It outlines what I need to know about them to work with them effectively, how we best manage conflict, and how they best receive feedback. I’ve noticed that this helps us align ourselves if something hard comes up and we can always come back to our Designed Alliance if we need to make changes.

Contact Info:

• Website: thewellife.com
• Instagram: @thewellife
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-wellife/
• Other: Insight Timer: Find me at https://insighttimer.com/katiegamby for guided meditations

Image Credits
Kelly Klein & Lark’s Song