We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Emily Lewis a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Emily, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.
Risks are typically known for being challenging. Oftentimes they push us far outside our comfort zone and encourage us to embrace discomforts and uncertainties on a whole new realm. Even though they can be extremely uncomfortable, they often result in some of our greatest achievements and increase our sense of competency.
For me, choosing to start my own private practice was not necessarily a risk I was looking or planning to make. I was comfortable and had grown tremendously as a mental health clinician at the private practice group I was a part of. It had functioned as my training environment, my security network, and a space that helped me grow confident in my abilities as a therapist. I was grateful for the opportunities I had both been given and independently earned while there, as this group was the only professional environment I had known as a graduate student, Licensed Professional Counselor Intern (LPC-I), and fully Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC). Considering a transition in my professional career felt daunting, but entertaining the dream of starting my own practice proved to be a slow and steady race. It was spurred onward by friends, family, and colleagues who, honestly, had more faith in me and my abilities than I did! It started with small tangible steps to understand more about each aspect of business ownership. And, yes, it was really quite overwhelming! But I slowly learned about different software I could utilize, marketing strategies to implement, rental options and agreements, necessary documents to create and acquire, and so much more. Each and every step felt risky. Yet sitting on this side of the equation, 3.5 years after successfully launching my own practice, I can confidently say that those risks were all worth the end result. By ‘worth the risk’ I don’t mean that there aren’t days where I wonder ‘how did I do this?’ or ‘what does continuing forward even look like?’ Each day offers a step. The complete confidence and certainty that I hoped would eventually fall into place still hasn’t—and I don’t really anticipate it ever will. But I think that’s the key. Courage isn’t acting without fear—rather, I think it’s more accurately about taking steps in the midst of it.
Risks are hard. Risks are overwhelming. Risks can leave us questioning. And, I believe and have experienced, that risks can be worth the journey.
Emily, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I own and operate a private counseling practice where I offer both individual and couples therapy. I have experience working with children as young as 2 years old, adolescents, college age, and ‘professional’ adults. I am trained in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and am a Certified Autism Spectrum Disorder Clinical Specialist (ASDCS). DBT provides clients with tools to increase their mindfulness of emotions and experiences in order to interact with them more effectively – ultimately to have more control over the emotion than the emotion has over you. My ASDCS certification allows me to expand my offerings in working with individuals on the spectrum, which is a passion of mine. I enjoy providing those with Level 1 Autism a listening ear and skills to navigate society and their own circumstances. I am also pursuing certification as an Advanced Grief Counseling Specialist because I also believe walking through someone’s grief experience with them is a truly unique privilege. I chose this certification because I specifically want to spend more time learning how to support individuals in this journey more effectively. To make my practice more accessible and convenient for my clients, I offer virtual sessions as needed or preferred. I am also licensed in the state of Maryland where I offer virtual session appointments to clients 12 years of age and up.
Unlike a majority of therapists in my area, I truly enjoy working with a variety of client demographics. My experiences create flexibility in the clientele base I am able to serve. When working with young children and adolescents, I find that parent involvement is pivotal to the process. Because of this, I will dedicate session time (and even full sessions) to processing with and coaching parents on what their children and I are working through in our time together. Adolescents can require a bit more rapport building as we cultivate trust in our relationship, and that is a challenge I always enjoy! College age individuals and young professionals are dealing with so many varying factors in their lives, and transitions can be so overwhelming. My goal is to provide them with the sounding board they might not have elsewhere to validate those emotions and experiences, all the while working to navigate them effectively.
Like I said, I work with a variety of populations! I have intentionally built my practice to reach many needs because I am eager to provide well-rounded services to the clients I serve!
What’s been the best source of new clients for you?
There are so many avenues to pursue referrals for new clients! For me personally, I have relied on resources such as virtual directories, doctor’s offices, churches, friends, family members, school counselors, social media, other Licensed Professional Counselors (LPC), and even clients’ word of mouth. Most of these community outlets are typically serving clients that fit within the demographics of individuals I would like to serve. It has been both a challenge and a privilege to get to know so many of the resources in my area that are also providing care to these people!
The greatest honor with referrals, for me, is when a client refers me to someone they know. It communicates their care for their friend, family, coworker, etc. as well as their trust for me and my competency as a therapist. I’m truly so grateful for all my referral sources but clients in particular are the ones I cherish most.
How did you build your audience on social media?
If I’m being completely transparent, social media management is the hardest part of my job. Prior to starting my own company, I had literally zero experience with it. I’ve seen it talked about in TV shows, and I have friends that specialize in it. So even though I’ve always found it interesting, I honestly felt it was entirely out of my scope. Well…surprise! It’s actually a crucial part of owning and operating a small business! It’s yet another risk and uncomfortable challenge that I have had to learn to interact with. Lucky me!
Truthfully though, difficult as it may be to budget time and incorporate it into my weekly tasks, social media marketing has provided such a growing opportunity. I am by no means an expert—truly I could not be farther from an expert, and I’m genuinely not just being modest! Creating content ideas feels exhausting most days, and determining what people will enjoy and relate to can seem nearly impossible. Don’t even get me started on how borderline illiterate I am when it comes to Canva. While it can be fun at times and engages my small capacity for creative tasks,
I’ve learned to humbly ask (not as often as I should) for help from friends who are much more proficient than I am. I’ve been taught to work smarter and recycle and refresh some previous content to minimize my exhaustion with the process. I’ve learned to ask myself how frequently I’m capable of committing to generating and sharing something on a week to week basis. And in the meantime, I’m publishing at least one post or reel a week.
That’s it. That’s my secret. It’s not noteworthy. It’s not guaranteed to cultivate increased business for you. It’s not a 5-step plan. It’s just a lowly counselor trying to stay present on social media and remind people: they’re not alone, there are helpful tools to incorporate into daily life, this is not a substitute for pursuing your own personal therapy, and also, by the way, please tell your friends and family I offer counseling services.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.emilylewis.co
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emilymlewiscounseling/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/emilymlewiscounseling
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/emily-m-lewis-counseling-fort-worth
Image Credits
logo by Hutson Creative (https://www.instagram.com/hutsoncreative/)