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Episode 2: Therapy As A Second Career and Taking Action with Diana Liao
193 Plays1 year ago
From Intern to Entrepreneur is the podcast for counseling graduate students (and other grad students in mental health fields) to start planning their journey to private practice while they're still in graduate school! Host, Cori White, started planning her journey while she was still in her graduate program and it paid off BIG to start planning EARLY.
In this episode of From Intern to Entrepreneur, Cori interviews Diana Liao. They talk about therapy as a second career (being a "career changer), being flexible and smart as an entrepreneur, taking action, and being a travel therapist!
About Diana:
Diana Liao is a licensed psychotherapist, coach, and corporate speaker from NYC. She helps adults in New York and beyond navigate challenges related to life transitions, identity, self-worth, relationships, and career. She's particularly passionate about working with diverse populations, including the Asian, Pacific Islander, and South Asian (APISA) communities, and works with them on issues of belonging, marginalization, and other complexities that arise from living in the US as a minority. She is also a co-founder of Bridges Mental Health (@bridgesmentalhealth), a mental health directory and therapist community for Asian, Pacific Islander, and South Asian Americans. Along with the Bridges team, Diana co-hosts "Beyond the Couch," a weekly podcast exploring Asian American mental health and identity.
Prior to practicing therapy, Diana worked in advertising, marketing, and photography. Diana has found that her own winding path has given her a unique perspective and ability to connect with different people and their struggles.
Diana has been working remotely since 2022 and slow-mading her way through Mexico, France, Southern Italy, Taipei, Cape Town, Croatia, and now Montenegro. Next up on the list: Valencia, Spain!
To connect with Diana, follow her on instagram at @therapywithdiana!
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
This is from intern to entrepreneur, the podcast for counseling and therapy graduate students who want to start planning their journey to private practice while they're still in grad school. I'm your host Corey White.
Building a Successful Private Practice
00:00:11
Speaker
And within three years of graduating from my master's program, I had a six figure thriving private practice in large part because I started planning my path while I was still in grad school.
00:00:21
Speaker
This podcast is full of stories and information meant to give you ideas about how you can carve your own path to the therapy career that you want. Please note that when you're listening to this podcast, licensure laws and requirements vary from state to state. So check with your state board about what you can and can't do on your journey. And without further ado, enjoy this episode of From Intern to Entrepreneur.
Interview with Diana Liao
00:00:46
Speaker
Hey, grad students. This is episode two of From Intern to Entrepreneur. On this episode, I am interviewing Diana Liao, who I just found so cool. I just met her for this podcast interview and she just reminds me of the person at the party that I want to be friends with. She's super cool. She is a licensed psychotherapist, coach, and corporate speaker from New York City and she helps
00:01:09
Speaker
adults in New York and beyond navigate challenges related to life transitions, identity, self-worth, relationships, and career. She is particularly passionate about working with diverse populations, including Asian Pacific Islander and South Asian communities, and she helps them work through issues of belonging, marginalization, and other complexities that arise from living in the United States as a minority.
Diana's Career Transition Journey
00:01:33
Speaker
She's the co-founder of Bridges Mental Health, which is a mental health directory and therapist community for Asian Pacific Islander and South Asian Americans. And along with the Bridges team, she co-hosts Beyond the Couch, which is a weekly podcast for those communities.
00:01:48
Speaker
Prior to practicing therapy, she was working in advertising marketing and photography. And this is one of the main things that we get into in this podcast interview is her experience as a career changer, which I love that term. And all of the different things that come along with being a career changer, both that are maybe struggles, but then really are enhancements.
00:02:10
Speaker
to your therapy career. So if you're a career changer, you're not going to want to miss this episode. She also talks about being a travel therapist. So at the time of this interview, she was living in Montenegro. I am sure by the time this interview airs, she will be off to somewhere even cooler if that's possible.
00:02:28
Speaker
And in the interview, she talks about how she did little stepping stones to becoming a full-time travel therapist. So if you're interested in any of these things, you are not going to want to miss this episode. And without further ado, meet Diana.
00:02:52
Speaker
Hi, Diana. Thank you for being on the From Intern to Entrepreneur podcast. I'm really happy to have you here.
Life as a Travel Therapist
00:02:58
Speaker
I'm really excited to be here too, and really nice to meet you as well, Corey. Yeah, that's awesome. I want to jump right in, though. And I want you to give our grad student listeners an idea of what your life looks like now, just in general, or whatever you think is important. OK. Well, I am talking to you from Montenegro.
00:03:21
Speaker
where I have been staying for the last three weeks. Yeah, so I'm a psychotherapist, I'm a licensed mental health counselor, and I have been working remotely, slow nomad, I think it's called slow matting, but slow matting my way through different countries. And currently I'm in Montenegro, but I've been
00:03:46
Speaker
Moving through Europe, I was also in South Africa earlier this year and Asia at the end of last year. So I have my practice on the road and I've been doing this for about almost a year now. Yeah. So that's like the big news. That's the headline. But I'm a psychotherapist in private practice doing therapy sessions online with my clients who are all based in New York and New Jersey. That is super cool.
00:04:16
Speaker
And I think it's really cool for grad students to hear that like, oh, it sounds like you've designed a life as a therapist in the way that you want it to be. Yes, I have. It's, you know, it took some time to get to this vision of my life, but yeah, it's happening though. That's awesome. All right, well then let's rewind and tell us a little bit about your journey to becoming a therapist.
00:04:43
Speaker
Yeah, I think even that has been a journey just because I did not start out as a therapist in my first career. I graduated with a political science degree and ended up working in advertising.
Returning to School and Starting a Practice
00:05:00
Speaker
So that was already just, you know, confusing for me when I first got out of school and I had a career in advertising, marketing,
00:05:09
Speaker
event planning for the first 10 years, first 10 or 11 years, I gradually became more and more unhappy, made a career change, decided that I was going to go back to school to become a therapist. So that whole first section was a lot of confusion and conflict as I thought about going back to school again. I already had gone to grad school once. I was still paying off my loans for grad school the first time.
00:05:39
Speaker
And then I made that change to go back to school in my mid-30s. But when I went back to school, I think once I started, it became very clear that it was the right choice for me. And it was more about the decision to go back that really had me stuck for a little bit. But I ended up going back to school. And I think because I was a career changer, I was pretty clear that when I went back to school,
00:06:09
Speaker
like I want a private practice, this is the plan for myself. And I think that it really helps me that I had had work experience and had done marketing and kind of had a business sense that I developed from the first career. So to me, I think the second time around going through grad school and then, you know, eventually starting my own private practice was a lot easier than I think for some
00:06:39
Speaker
you know, other people perhaps because of my, um, my first career. But yeah, I think all of it together, it was, uh, quite a winding path. Yeah. And I think that when I went through my grad program, there were so many people who were like career changers, like you're calling them. I mean, I guess I would characterize as one too. I was a bartender for like 10 years. And then in my journeys, I went back. Yeah. So
00:07:05
Speaker
I do think there's definitely a different perspective when you're going into it in a little bit more mid adulthood and having different experiences. And I also think it's really cool that the way you're describing it is that those experience actually really
00:07:21
Speaker
propelled you in your career as a psychotherapist, which is sometimes, I don't think people think about it all the way in that, right? You go to, I think that some people look at this in grad school and they go, okay, well, this is my second career. And it's totally different from my first career. Not recognizing, no, there's probably a lot of ways in which you could use that first career to your advantage. Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. And I think this is how I see the mental health profession, generally, it's like,
00:07:50
Speaker
We just get better at it with age, with life experience, because all of it counts, right? It's our life experiences, our interactions with people, our work experiences that give us more capacity to connect with people, to have patience, to hold space for all these different experiences that our clients might be having. Yeah.
00:08:14
Speaker
Yeah, and I don't know, something that you said just sparked this thought too. I also think for me, graduating, I think I was 33 when I graduated, there was also a little bit of a, okay, I need a private practice because I need to make some money. I'm about to be in my mid 30s. Like, it's time to get this old. So there was a little bit more of like an urgency that was built in, where I think it I think it helped me. I don't know if you feel the same. Oh, no, absolutely.
Financial Discussions in Therapy Careers
00:08:41
Speaker
I think after you are humbled,
00:08:44
Speaker
You know, you're making money and then you have to go back to grad school and then you're not making any money for at least a couple of years. Right. And then you come out of school and well, actually even during school, I know, I don't know if you had the same experience, but I think a lot of therapists in school are told that, you know, you have to prepare yourself for a career in which you are not going to make a lot of money. You can do all right, but you're not going to make a lot of money. And I remember thinking that's not happening. I'm going to have a prime practice. I cannot not make money.
00:09:14
Speaker
because I've just spent a few years not making money and I need to catch up, I need to make this work, right? So I felt the same way. I was highly motivated to figure it out, to get the private practice up and running as quickly as possible. Yeah, I had a similar but a little bit different experience where nobody was really outwardly saying, you're not gonna make any money, but nobody was talking about money. And nobody was broaching the subject that
00:09:44
Speaker
there wasn't money to be made in certain areas. And they were saying, but you have to work in those areas. So it was kind of like, we're going to dance around this topic, but we're not going to actually say the word money. So you're going to get this idea that you're going to need to be broke, but we're not going to talk about it. And so yeah, I know when I got my first job offer, I was like,
00:10:05
Speaker
Oh, damn, like, is this just what it is? And I didn't feel like I could ask questions about it. Because I was like, this must be what people make. Like, this is wild. I'm gonna be a bartender again. So yeah, I do think there's really not enough conversation on money and finances in the student space. Yeah, definitely not. And
00:10:30
Speaker
There's not a lot of talk about business building either. I think most people think about, I did hear students say that they wanted a private practice eventually, but none of us were actually talking about that at any point. We were talking about the clinics, we were talking about the hospital settings, we were talking about all these other opportunities, but not private practice. Right. Because I think there's a parentheses usually around that.
00:10:57
Speaker
in 20 years, right? Yeah. In 10 years. Broke to continue after I'm on the side as a second job. Right. Right. Right. As a little fun project. Exactly. That is a moneymaker. But as you know, just something else I do. Then help me understand you graduate. What is your journey then to private practice and to Montenegro?
Navigating Licensure and Experience
00:11:24
Speaker
So
00:11:25
Speaker
You know, I think I had done my practicum and my internships in, first of all, in a hospital setting just because I wanted to see that acute care setting. And then I moved into an outpatient setting and then got hired by the clinic that I had been interning at. And I thought, okay, well, I still need to do my hours right now. And there are very few places that are willing to supervise a mental health counselor. I'm from New York and in New York, the mental health counseling
00:11:56
Speaker
profession is relatively new and there's a lot of social workers there. And a lot of places were like very hesitant to hire mental health counselors. So I think that that was already something working against me. So I felt like I had to just take this job and actually it was good experience I thought. And, but you know, a clinic is a clinic and people burn out very quickly. A lot of like crisis management. I was working in New York city. So definitely saw a lot when I was working there.
00:12:26
Speaker
I knew that it was going to be like that though. And I kind of like was just counting down. I was like, okay, just count in segments of six months. Cause I need to stay about a year and a half to get all my hours and then I can get my license and then I can go off on my own. And so I was just really just putting in the hours, right? Doing, doing work. And after I got my license, I took the exam, got my license. I started applying for jobs at group practices where I could
00:12:54
Speaker
I was thinking I would work for a year for someone else, see how they do their systems and just learn properly how to run a private practice. And that's what I did. I worked at a place in Midtown Manhattan. And it was also not very high paying just because they were accepting insurance in network. And in New York City, the reimbursement rates for insurance is very low compared to other places in the country.
00:13:24
Speaker
And so they were not paying a lot. And I, you know, I just kept suffering this low pay. I even tried to negotiate with them and I got like an increase of $3 per hour or something, but you know, it was something that I had just like thought like, you know, I want to do it the right way, but I'm not going to stay too long. So it was about 11 months later, 10 months later, I just like, okay, I think I can figure this out.
Private Practice During COVID
00:13:49
Speaker
I'm just going to start off on my own while I still work for them.
00:13:53
Speaker
And that was right before COVID happened. And so I actually even launched an online practice in 2019. I did a training online and thought like, okay, I can start this on the side while I'm still working for this group practice. But at that time I found like I wasn't able to keep anyone. They all wanted to see me in person. And I was trying to explain like, no, no, this is online therapy. We meet online, you know? Like, but I want to see you in person. Why can't I see you? You're in New York, right? And I said, yes, yes.
00:14:23
Speaker
So I thought, okay, maybe I'll start with like a brick and mortar location. Let me get an office space, really commit to it. And then I'll tell people I'm leaving to travel because living abroad was always something I had planned to do. And I was just trying to figure out how to make it work. So I thought maybe I do need to commit to like an in-person practice first. And then I'll tell everybody I'm moving and hopefully we'll have developed a good enough relationship that they'll stay with me, right?
00:14:53
Speaker
So that was the plan. I secured office space for two years, and then I moved in. That was about February 2020. And then COVID happened. I was very lucky because I had read my contract, and I knew that there's no way for me to get out of the lease unless I found someone else to replace me. And I remember asking the landlord, like, well, I'm like a new business owner. I don't even know if this is going to succeed. I'm going to sign a two-year lease where I have to sublet my space to other therapists.
00:15:23
Speaker
That was my sort of like second income idea that, okay, I can be a landlord. I don't need the space the whole time and I can grow into my space while still, you know, making sure that I'm covering my rent. So it was a good idea prior to COVID. But then when COVID happened, like I actually had asked him about, you know, if I need to get out of this lease, is there some other way I can exit? And so he said, okay, well, you're going to have no problem filling the space, but you know what, fine, I'll write something in. You just need to pay three months of your, um,
00:15:54
Speaker
rent and then you can just exit the contract, cancel it. So that was, it was smart and you didn't even like, you had no idea. They came from a place of like doubting, doubting myself like just in case I fail at this, right? I just want to have an exit. And I remember like with Diana, let me stop you there. Let me actually challenge that. Like I think that that is also coming from a place of you being smart.
00:16:20
Speaker
and covering your base, not blindly going into something without thinking about potential ways it might go. Because I don't think it would mean that you failed if you couldn't fill the space. It might mean any number of things, like there was a global pandemic, for example. Being an entrepreneur is thinking
00:16:39
Speaker
is thinking out different outcomes that aren't necessarily a dream.
Risk Assessment and Flexibility
00:16:43
Speaker
So anyway, I just wanted to pause and challenge your talk. That is true. It's like the risk assessment part of me. It's like, wait, what else? What other terrible things could go wrong here, right? And it's necessary, right? It's necessary when you are building a business to think about both the risks and benefits. So yeah, so within the month, I think I emailed him in April and I said, you know what? I'm out.
00:17:08
Speaker
here, I'll pay for the next three months. And then I was just thinking like worst case scenario, I need the office space, I can find another office space later on. But yeah, I had just like, you know, decorated office, bought all my furniture, just resold it all on Facebook marketplace, like, okay, well, let's just, that's a loss, but let's move on. So, you know, everybody went online after that. And it was such a automatic transition for all my clients to do that. And during that time, I
00:17:38
Speaker
had put in my notice at the group practice. I've done that earlier, but they had this like three or four month period that they wanted me to stay on and then the pandemic happened. And I ended up taking quite a few of my clients with me because, you know, even my group practice said, we don't want to disrupt the, you know, the relationship. There's so much going on. So for me to start my private practice during the pandemic, you know, I'm sure a lot of therapists that started their own private practice felt the same way. It was just like very busy, right? Just
00:18:09
Speaker
everybody was suddenly wanting to be in therapy. And so I felt like extremely lucky that it was so easy, I suppose, easy and seamless for me to do it.
Growing a Private Practice
00:18:23
Speaker
But I think the downside of that was that I just said yes to everybody and was very tired after the first year. And the second year, I just kept building and saying yes. And
00:18:36
Speaker
I made a lot of changes to my private practice throughout. Like I went from accepting insurance to at the end of the first year telling people I was no longer accepting insurance and I was going to be private pay. So there was an adjustment. So there was like each year there was some new thing that I was introducing to private practice. And then after maybe like the first year I started doing corporate webinars as well because one of the companies I had been doing contract work for
00:19:04
Speaker
started adding this as a resource because they realized so many people were working from home and not doing very well with it that they started adding all these mental health workshops for their employees. And that was something that I'd never done before. And I never really thought I'd like to do in presentations. But I thought, here's a new skill set. Let me just say yes and see what happens. And it became something that I actually really enjoyed doing and is a nice way to sort of balance out the intensity of one-on-one therapy sessions
00:19:34
Speaker
and like doing like a Zoom workshop where it's more like teaching.
00:19:41
Speaker
Hey, grad students. Real quick, before we get back to this interview, if you are loving the idea of being a part of a community of like-minded graduate students who want to own their own private practice one day, then you need to head to Facebook and join my Facebook group from intern to entrepreneur. There's already a community set up of graduate students who one day want to own their own private practices and be entrepreneurs just like you.
00:20:07
Speaker
So head over to Facebook, join that group and stay in the loop and get connected with people who are doing things that you want to do. Back to the interview. You know, I think that a lot of times
00:20:23
Speaker
I know this was my experience where I used to, when I was in grad school, I was listening to all these podcasts about people that were doing the things I wanted to do. There would be times when I would go, but how did you get that opportunity? That sounds great, but I'm not going to get that. How did you get that corporate opportunity? I think we're very similar because I was doing a lot of the same thing. I was listening to so many podcasts about private practice, about
00:20:47
Speaker
people who are traveling. So yeah, I think it's really helpful to see the idea and just like hear how other people do it. And that's why I love this podcast. So I, let's see, I just, you know, I think going back to just having a business mindset, maybe a risk kind of thinking, where am I going to get my referrals from? Like where, and thinking about that pretty early on when I was still working for the group practice, because they were,
00:21:13
Speaker
successful from getting a lot of referrals from the local colleges, counseling centers. And they were just established. So I was thinking, when I go out onto my own, how am I going to get referrals? And so one thing was, OK, what are all these new tech companies that are coming out? And at the time, Headway, Alma were sort of coming into the space and helping therapists
00:21:39
Speaker
panel on insurances and the upside of that was that you didn't have to do it yourself. And then also you could also, you could decide not to accept insurance at any point and it wouldn't impact you. So I explored meeting with all of these tech companies and another one that came up were like EAPs, employee assistant programs that also have a network of therapists. I thought, okay, I can have a referral stream from them as well.
00:22:06
Speaker
And Modern Health was one of the companies that I ended up connecting with. And they were a little bit different from other EAPs, but they were a startup. And I thought, well, why not just like make connections with all of these companies and see what happens. And so I ended up working with them as a therapist initially. But I think because of the pandemic, they decided to start launching these workshops and they asked if I would be interested in doing it.
00:22:33
Speaker
And I just said, yes, and didn't really have any experience. They asked for, um, if I had a video, like I, no, no, but I think, you know, at the time they were just like, we need to do this. They were willing to take a risk. I think people were just trying to come up with solutions very quickly. And I think that's the upside of working with a tech company. Like they, in the very beginning, it was very much like, well, can you give a presentation on this topic? We'll help you write the deck and let's work together on it.
00:23:01
Speaker
And it was just very fast. And I think I was used to that way of working because I had worked in marketing before. So I said yes, and I started doing them and they went well. And I got a lot of positive feedback on that because we would send out surveys after each webinar. And at the time, there was also this rise in like anti-Asian racism that was happening.
Expanding Services and Offerings
00:23:24
Speaker
And so they started having me, they started requesting like workshops for
00:23:29
Speaker
just helping people understand why this is happening for any allies that wanted to support their Asian employees and friends. So I started doing combating anti-Asian racism workshops. And then now their offerings have just expanded. Like if you go to Modern Health's website of these workshops, there's everything from coping with anxiety,
00:23:56
Speaker
just like a primer to stress and burnout, having difficult conversations, emotional resilience, developing like a positive sleep routine, self-compassion practices. So they have like these workshops on all different mental health topics. And so that's something I've just continued to do over the past two years. So the way I got it was a combination of luck and just saying yes. So.
00:24:22
Speaker
Yeah. Well, there's so many things in that, that particular part of your story that stand out to me as like, okay, that's an example of you using your past skills to promote yourself now. Because I'm also thinking like, yeah, well, you knew how to navigate a corporate world a bit. Right? And so yeah, that experience to go, I know how these companies maybe operate in some ways. You also use the skills that you were doing to kind of market yourself. It sounds like
00:24:49
Speaker
Another thing that I like about what you're saying is that I think is transferable for grad students to understand, you went into that opportunity thinking that you were offering one thing. And you left it open that when they came to you with an opportunity, you were flexible and you pivoted to what they needed. And so that makes you really an asset to that company in that
00:25:12
Speaker
you're there for what they need. And of course, I'm not suggesting people need to go, okay, well, do whatever so that you can make some bucks. But you had already gone into that experience going, this is an alignment, this is some way I can help. You just listen to them for what help they needed, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I knew that it was something that was going to be scary and challenging because I had never really enjoyed giving presentations. But I think once I started to do them, I realized,
00:25:42
Speaker
Oh, in the past I was giving presentations on topics I didn't really care about. It's very different when you have a passion for what you're doing and you're interested in the topic. And so it felt very different this time around. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Okay. I paused you though. So pick me back up and help me understand how you get from, all right, now my practice is all virtual.
International Practice and Adaptability
00:26:07
Speaker
And again, I'm in Montenegro.
00:26:10
Speaker
Yeah, so I, you know, I spent like the first couple, I think it was like 2020, 2021, just, you know, focusing on building up my practice and at the same time, you know, like probably most early career therapists doing a lot of training. I was doing so much training because, you know, there is that part of you that thinks like, oh, and I think also that's one misconception is that grad school prepares you to be a therapist.
00:26:38
Speaker
Grad school gives you the right to be a therapist, but unless you're doing like a PhD program with specialized, you know, clinical training, you're going to come out of grad school needing to do more specialized clinical training. And so I was, you know, doing EMDR training, somatic experiencing training. So I had all these, like a couple of areas that I went into with my training and I was pretty busy with that, but I knew at the back of my mind that I still wanted to find some way to take my,
00:27:08
Speaker
practice outside of the country and go live elsewhere for a bit and maybe even travel while I do that. And so I think after 2021, after I had started building up these workshops and I had a thriving practice, I thought, okay, I have enough work and actually I'm really burned out. And so I think the burnout really contributed to motivating me to think about, okay, when am I going to
00:27:36
Speaker
make this big lifestyle change of, you know, leaving New York, moving to a less stressful environment where the attitude is not just work, work, work, or I can make less money because the cost of living will be lower. So all of this kind of was on my mind at the end of 2021. And so beginning of 2022, I decided to do a test. I went to Mexico for three and a half months. I booked an Airbnb for one month in three different cities.
00:28:05
Speaker
then spent a couple of weeks traveling through Mexico, just to see if I could do it from overseas. I picked Mexico because it's easy to get to from New York. I can fly back if I had an emergency. And the time zone is pretty similar, just one hour difference for me. And I didn't even have to switch my cell phone. The plan worked in Mexico. So everything was very easy to do. And after three and a half months in Mexico, I realized it was less stressed out. I could easily do it.
00:28:33
Speaker
was more relaxed and just really feeling like, and Mexico wasn't even like the place that I really wanted to go to. It was just a test. So after I got back to New York, after that time, I decided to pack up my apartment. I emptied it out and I just rented it out. And the people that took my apartment asked if they could take it for two years. And they offered more money than I had listed it at. So I thought,
00:28:57
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. You want me to leave for two years and find another place to live for two years? I could do that. So leave. Yes, exactly. It was a little stressful, the packing up and all that, but you know, I knew I was like, okay, I know this is going to free me up to do what I've been wanting to do for, you know, many years. Like this has been on my mind. I think it was, had been on my mind for like at least 10 years by that point. And I had been slowly trying to figure out how I was going to get there. And, and like, so
00:29:26
Speaker
Fast forward to, I think it was September. I had one last training to do last year in San Francisco. I finished it for somatic experiencing. And then from there, I left San Francisco and headed to France, Italy, Taiwan, South Africa, Croatia, and now I'm in Montenegro. So I've been doing it for since September last year.
00:29:49
Speaker
And remind me, well actually, you didn't tell me so. What year did you graduate from your master's program? It was January of 2017. Okay, so you're talking about like six years between you graduating from your master's program and you living that you want to live, right? Like, yeah, that's not that long of a time.
00:30:14
Speaker
for you to have made so many moves and you know some transitions. Another thing I want to point out though is that the way you did things to me I find very smart and I think that grad students should hear that it's not black and white it's not all or nothing. You said that while you were still at your other job you started your practice right so you were
00:30:39
Speaker
testing what it would be like. Yeah, you also said that when you went to get your lease your space, you found a way to get out of it just in case you needed to write so you're committing to doing something but also being really smart about it. When you decided that you were going to travel, you picked a place where you could test your theory.
00:31:00
Speaker
so that you could continue it if you wanted to or you could make adjustments and pivot if you needed to. And I just think this way of you living in the gray space around trying to create your career is
00:31:11
Speaker
something that people need to think about. And listen, some people are bigger risk takers. That's great. I'm not saying that that doesn't work. But when you have security, I think that you make better decisions about what's working and what's not working. So I just want to highlight that, that I think that's a really good strategy. Yeah. And I think I learned that from my first career in which I
00:31:36
Speaker
You know, I started out very risk averse. You know, I didn't make any real big changes. I changed jobs because I thought it was the job, but I think I knew for a while that it was the industry and the work that I didn't want to do, but I was so stuck. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I think when I finally started to take action and I started to see like positive outcomes, I realized like, you know what?
00:32:03
Speaker
Taking action is always the way to alleviate stuckness, anxiety. And if you can take action in a way that feels like, okay, could I reverse that decision? Yes. It's like, I realize also just very few decisions in life are irreversible. Like, yeah, there are a few things that you can't undo, but most times you can decide, okay,
00:32:27
Speaker
I went to grad school for a semester. I hated it. I'm just going to not go back, right? Like, yes, you're going to lose some money here and there. But if you don't take any action, what you have to lose is far greater, right? Like your potential, your future happiness, all of these things. Yeah, I love that. What advice do you have for career changers that could potentially expedite their decision making?
00:32:57
Speaker
If that, does that make sense?
Advice for Career Changers
00:32:59
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I think it goes back, you know, partially to taking action, right? This is not something that you can like think your way through like, will this be right for me? Um, I think a lot of people that come to me to ask about making this change, they feel for salt that it might be too late for them, that they've already invested so much energy and time into their first career. Like.
00:33:23
Speaker
how do I know this is going to work out? They want to really make sure that it works out for them because they feel like they have a lot to lose by leaving that first career. And I try to contextualize that, do you really have a lot to lose? Because if it doesn't work out, couldn't you go back to that previous career? Also, you don't really sound like you even like that first career. You just want it as a safety, right? And I think part of it is just learning to break down like, OK, what is that next step that you need to take to help get you to more
00:33:54
Speaker
certainty or more clarity on whether this is the right career for you. What does that look like? Is it talking to another therapist? Is it talking to the admissions department at a grad school? Is it applying to grad school, going to or taking like a class that you might need to take for any sort of like prerequisites, but just like exposing yourself to
00:34:19
Speaker
the next step along that path and seeing how you feel afterwards. Like each step is more information for you to learn from and have feedback for yourself, right? And so I think part of it is just like, how can you do that while you're still working at your job? Maybe that can be a way to feel safe, right? Or if you have more risk tolerance, being able to just say like, okay, I'm gonna quit, or I'm gonna save up money so that I can quit and take some time to really think about this. But I think taking action
00:34:49
Speaker
is always helpful, like it always moves people forward. Yeah, absolutely. And what advice would you give then to career changers in how they can navigate their most pragmatic periods? Yeah, I'd say like, like remind, like just remember that your previous work experience is so valuable, right?
00:35:18
Speaker
And think about, you know, what people you want to work with. Like, and I think that I tell people that of course, like when I first started out, I thought about the people that I work best with were younger versions of myself. And so, you know, I think bring in your previous work experience, see if there's anything there that you can tap into because those skills are applicable. You might not know exactly how initially, but they are.
00:35:46
Speaker
And think about how you might want to combine that. And think about how that then combines with your new specialty, which is mental health. And maybe this is applicable to more than just career changers, but I think my initial idea of being a therapist was like, OK, I'm just going to be a therapist in private practice. That is my new skill set. But since becoming a therapist, what I've realized is that it's actually bigger than that.
00:36:16
Speaker
being a therapist makes me a subject matter expert on mental health. And then what I want to do with that can go anywhere, right? Think about what that means, being a subject matter on mental health, and then consider how that expands your opportunities beyond just seeing people in private practice in one-on-one therapy sessions, because that can really go to so many places. Yeah. And when you combine those two pieces of advice, I think that that's really great. Like you are,
00:36:46
Speaker
when you combine this idea that you have a previous life, you have a previous career and you have skill, you are an expert in something else with, and now you are a mental health expert. If you can find a way to package those in a way, even if you're not explicitly saying it, if you can find a way for yourself where you go, you know what, I can combine those two expertise, then you absolutely are setting yourself up for success in more than just one-to-one clinical work,
00:37:16
Speaker
your ability to increase your income, which expands your ability to not burn out from doing so much one-to-one work, which expands your ability to be flexible in your schedule. Right? So flexibility is, and keeping an open mind and being adaptable has always been really helpful. And I think what you just said there about like expanding the opportunities, I think
00:37:41
Speaker
I also thought, you know, I'm going to be perfectly happy being a therapist in private practice. Of course, that's what I thought in the beginning. But as you start to get into the work, yeah, there's this realization that, oh, yeah, seeing a lot of people one on one is very draining. And the effects of that are real, right? Like burnout, compassion fatigue. And you don't really experience that until a little bit later on in your career after you've been doing it for some time. But then when it happens, like
00:38:11
Speaker
then you don't have to freak out about it because you realize like, oh, I can do other things, right? Or if I mix things up, it doesn't feel like this. I can find some sort of balance between different mental health related sort of work activities, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's great. Now, the last two questions you may have,
00:38:32
Speaker
already answered, but you can just reiterate your answers if you want. So what advice do you have for someone that is practical advice, who wants to start their entrepreneurial journey?
Entrepreneurial Mindset and Action
00:38:45
Speaker
Yeah. There's, there's, there's, there's a few things, but I guess I could say like, you know, don't, don't shut down your ideas. Be curious.
00:38:59
Speaker
let your creativity go. Like maybe you have this idea of what becoming a therapist is like, but be open to changing it as new opportunities come up or as situations change. And I think for me, because I was coming up during a very strange time, right? During a pandemic and all these things where we had to immediately shift. And I was like, okay, we have to, there's no choice but to change, right? To evolve.
00:39:28
Speaker
And I think that has served me really well, and so I would encourage people to do that, to be curious, to be creative. And the last thing, also ask for help, ask for support, because sometimes if we're in private practice and we're alone, right, we just think we have to do everything ourselves, but I think it's so important to find a peer group to either commiserate with, to seek support from, and to know that you're not alone, even though sometimes it can feel like
00:39:56
Speaker
really lonely to be in private practice. And I think that does get to people at some point. But finding a group of supportive therapists to bounce ideas off of, to seek support has been really helpful for me as well. Yeah. And those two concepts really go together nicely because once you allow yourself to engage your creative side and engage
00:40:19
Speaker
creativity with how you help people. If you have a group of people that you trust professionally, you can bounce those ideas off of them and go, what are the ethical concerns about this? If there are any, how might I do this? Do you know anybody that might need this? Like, does anybody on your caseload need this thing that I'm creating? So it really, I think it's symbiotic in that way. Those two pieces of advice, I love that.
00:40:43
Speaker
So then what is the mindset advice that you would give someone who was interested in an entrepreneurial journey? Yeah, I think this is related to the taking action piece, which is, you know, don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Taking action of any kind moves you forward. Perfection is an illusion and striving for it can can be paralyzing. So
00:41:11
Speaker
That's a hard lesson that I've learned from my past experience. And now that I've learned it, it's like, I just want to tell everybody, please, please take action, you know, do something towards that dream or that goal that you have and then see what happens. Yeah.
00:41:27
Speaker
Yeah, you can go back and adapt it if it didn't turn out the way that you like. Or what I imagine you've experienced, because I know I've experienced this, is that you find out nobody knew it wasn't perfect by your definition. They were happy to have access to it. Yeah, exactly. This is awesome. Diana, if somebody wants to connect with you or get in contact with you or learn more about what you do, how should they find you?
00:41:55
Speaker
Well, I have a very inactive Instagram, but at least on my Instagram, there's a link that actually has more ways to reach out to me. So at therapy with Diana on Instagram, or you can also look me up on my website, which is DianaLiao.com. And yeah, feel free to reach out.
00:42:21
Speaker
and ask any questions. Yeah, I do respond to emails, so you can definitely reach out that way. Yeah, that's awesome. And I'll make sure to connect people who are listening to this with that information so they can just click, click, click, and then get in contact with you. If they have any questions about any of the things that you're doing, I mean, I imagine this concept of you being abroad and still having a psychotherapy practice and living your life and exploring, I imagine that that's gonna be pretty interesting to a lot of people.
00:42:50
Speaker
In fact, we may need to have you back on so you can talk a little bit more about how that, the logistics of that, the ethics of that, the creating a schedule around that. Yeah, I imagine that people would have a lot of questions about that. So thank you so much for your time and for giving your expertise and sharing your journey with our graduate student listeners. And I hope that you enjoy Montenegro. Thank you. This has been so fun. And yeah, I would absolutely love to come back to talk more about that piece.
00:43:21
Speaker
I hope that you loved this episode of From Intern to Entrepreneur, and if you want to learn more about what we talked about, check out the show notes. If you love this podcast and you want to support me in continuing to create content for entrepreneurs, then please share this with a friend, a grad student, who you think might want their own private practice one day, and also like, subscribe, and review this podcast wherever you're listening to it.