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

Hi Kevin, thanks for joining us today. Setting up an independent practice is a daunting endeavor. Can you talk to us about what it was like for you – what were some of the main steps, challenges, etc.

My path to starting my own counseling/coaching practice was serendipitous and unexpected. The product of happenstance, hard work, adventure, and luck, I’m extremely grateful for the nature of how my story unfolded to present me with the opportunity to start my own practice.

I had no idea what I wanted to do when I was wrapping up high school. At first, I wanted to continue working on the family farm to eventually take it over, but I felt like I couldn’t do that within my community at the time. As a young gay man, I didn’t feel my community was ready for a gay farmer, so I felt the need to leave. My parents encouraged me to go to college, but when I started looking at the options available to me, I was overwhelmed with choices where every major sounded interesting to me.

Feeling lost within my career exploration and within my own self due to the lack of social acceptance for queer folx like me in my rural hometown, my mental health took a nosedive. I began going to counseling to help me sort through my emotions, and I was mesmerized by the safety in the opportunity to express myself, explore my thoughts and feelings, and learn to trust myself by developing a deeper relationship to my own being.

My life-saving counseling experiences began fortifying my desire to provide this same level of love, comfort, and support to others going through similar journeys to my own. Knowing the pain I endured as a closeted child and the impact this had on my self-esteem and self-confidence, I wanted to start helping as many people as I could through their own challenges to know they are not alone in the process.

And so, I began venturing into the world of psychology. I attended grad school and graduated at the top of my class, started working in the field, and began counseling and coaching youth, adolescents, and families through trauma, coping, and growing into new chapters.

At this time, my personal life was requiring me to move quite frequently, and the last of these moves brought me to my current home in Hawaii during the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. My field was in a hiring freeze and pandemic restrictions at that time kept me isolated, so finding employment was quite difficult, but this became my opportunity to fully embrace my personal mission and purpose. Thus, I started my own practice — SafeHaus Counseling & Coaching.

It’s been a long and winding road to lead my practice into the stable foundation it’s at now, but I hold a deep appreciation for all of the ebbs, flows, ups, and downs along the way. I’ve shifted my approaches more times than I can count, I’ve faltered and made huge mistakes, I’ve gotten lost and needed to be pulled up and out of the ground. I’ve literally laid on the bathroom floor and cried my eyes out of frustration. I’ve wanted to quit and give several times throughout the years, too — but my “reason why” — the reason that I’m doing all this work in the first place continues to keep me going.

I know there’s a need for a new approach to mental health and well-being, particularly for LGBTQIA+ individuals. I’m honored to be on the leading edge of that conversation thanks to my novel methodologies rooted in respecting, celebrating, and honoring the humanity of all peoples.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I own and operate SafeHaus Counseling & Coaching, an online non-clinical counseling and coaching practice specializing in providing empowering mental wellness support to LGBTQIA+ individuals. I started my practice with a goal of meeting the specific, important, and often under-supported needs of our queer community within the world of mental health and wellness. I wanted to provide a space for folx to feel completely safe and secure in their identity, allowing them to open up within our sessions to receive the optimal level of care they are so deserving of. Frequently, as queer folx, we can feel unsafe in opening up with providers. This often stems from a lack of provider understanding and/or lack of established rapport between the provider and the client. As a result, within my practice, I focus on developing deep, authentic, and genuine relationships with my clients to ensure they feel welcome within a space that is an extension of their home. Here, once this relationship is developed, we are able to explore all areas of the client’s real-life experience in a manner that is uplifting to them, ultimately providing them with an optimal level of support reflective of their current needs and concerns.

While I have the capacity, education, background, and expertise to work together with clients on a variety of concerns, there are some areas in which I specialize, particularly surrounding sexual empowerment, religious trauma, open relationships/consensual non-monogamy, and health and wellness. Through these areas of specialty, I continue my emphasis of psychological safety for my clients so they feel comfortable in discussing these often challenging topics.

Even more, through my work, I focus on providing support from a non-clinical lens. This means that through my practice, I don’t diagnose mental disorders nor do I formally treat mental disorders. Instead of utilizing a medical model for viewing mental health conditions, I operate from a wellness- and coaching-based approach which emphasizes growth and personal development as opposed to healing. While healing is certainly part of the growth process, that’s not the main focal point of our work; instead, my work with clients highlights the growth aspect, leading to conversations that motivate the client to achieve the goals they are striving for, whether that may be increasing confidence in the bedroom, improving their relationship with themselves, strengthening their mental and physical relationship to their bodies, and/or designing interpersonal relationships that uplift their hearts and souls.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

There are countless times within the development of my business in which I had to pivot. In the counseling and coaching professions, we’re often encouraged as entrepreneurs starting our own practices to find our areas of speciality by naming our target audience, defining the population(s) we want to work with, and developing programs and services that meet specific and tangible needs that our clients are facing. On one side of the coin, this approach makes a heck of a lot of sense, but on the flip side, it’s tough to find and is overly simplistic since humans have individualized experiences that are likely to differ from the rigid and structured programs and approaches we are encouraged to design for them.

So, this is one area in which I’ve struggled. Over the years, I’ve danced back and forth between different coaching approaches, from a session-by-session model to an on-demand service model to a package-based approach and anything and everything in-between. I’ve adjusted my prices more times than I can count, I’ve pivoted my branding so much that it’s been hard for my audience to gauge a clear understanding of my brand’s image, and I’ve shifted my focus areas so much that it’s been difficult to recognize the problems my business solves.

The frequency of my business pivots has reflected my intention of meeting the needs of my clients. The reason that I do the work that I do is to help empower the mental health and well-being of our LGBTQIA+ community. Thus, it’s part of my responsibility to ensure that I am providing support that genuinely reflects the unique needs my clients – and the community at large – are facing. Still, a high frequency of these pivots and adjustments can create a lack of visibility of clarity in the perspective of the general public, thus causing my business to appear unsteady and unstable.

Walking this balance of the tightrope between flexibility of meeting the shifting needs of my clients vs. maintaining an image of stability from a business perspective has been difficult, but it’s a balance we continue to find, day by day, one moment at a time.

I truly believe that when we lead with authentic intention we can’t go wrong. Yes, it’s difficult, and yes it might create ripples of perceived instability; however, at the end of the day, this allows us to more appropriately and effectively support clients who are experiencing real-life concerns that are affecting their well-being.

Change is part of life, and change is part of business. Leaning into adapting to changing needs is a showcase of a business’ agility. And that is a highlight of a successful, human-centered business.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

My focus on genuine connection with clients has certainly helped to build my reputation within the market and within my professional field. I am confident that a strength of mine is my ability to authentically connect with those around me. Through active and empathic listening, open-ended questioning, non-judgmental perspective-taking, and honest and pure love, I sit together with my clients through the variety of their human experience — from shame, guilt, and depression to excitement, joy, and motivation.

Building a practice that centers around emotional and psychological safety, hallmarked by love of all humans and a respect for the unique stories that encompass our lives, has helped to establish my reputation as a provider who “truly gets” what clients are going through. Here, there’s no bullshit and my relationship to my client’s isn’t fake; I cherish them like family because they are family, and I am part of their home of support.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.safehauscounseling.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/safehauscounseling/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-martin-ms-chc-cpt/
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@safehauscounseling