Centering Inclusivity and Anti-Racism in Your Therapy Practice with Kenya Crawford

Kenya Crawford [00:00:00]:

I early on thought shared identity meant shared values. Therefore, we would be in community. And I quickly learned that just because we're, you know, maybe two queer folk of color or two black folk like that, doesn't mean that we also share this similar value around anti-racism. And learning that lesson was really challenging because I had to interrogate, you know, the people I was collaborating with or the people that I was consulting with or the people that I was, you know, seeking partnership with. And early on, I didn't feel as emboldened as a pre licensed clinician or an intern to say, yeah, I'm not going to work with this person or this organization. Now. I feel really comfortable doing that. But early on, I didn't have that privilege to do so.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:00:47]:

This is Heard Business School, where we sit down with private practice owners and industry experts to learn about the business of therapy together. I'm your host, Michael Fulweiler. Understanding the human spirit is the beating heart behind every successful therapist. It also forms the cornerstone of a thriving business grounded in true connection. My guest on this episode of Heard Business school is Kenya Crawford. A dynamic force in both therapy and consulting, Kenya's journey is one paved with passion, authenticity, and a relentless commitment to fostering inclusive spaces. She started by building a client base through a community of clinicians and later transitioned into racial equity work focusing on black queer individuals, individuals exploring non monogamy, which significantly broadened their audience and reduced burnout. Today, Kenya shares their insights on navigating the transition from a virtual practice owner to a highly sought after consultant.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:01:43]:

We'll explore their innovative approach to value based pricing, their creation of anti oppressive rate structures, and the formation of cultivating healers. A support space for clinicians of color dedicated to anti racist and sustainable practices. Kenya opens up about the challenges of breaking away from traditional therapy practice, the evolving landscape of anti racist consulting, and their strategies for making a substantial impact in both individual lives and organizational frameworks. Here's my conversation with my friend, Kenya Crawford. Enjoy. Kenya Crawford, welcome to the show.

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Kenya Crawford [00:02:19]:

Hey, y'all. I'm excited to be here.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:02:23]:

I'm excited you're here. I've been looking forward to this conversation since we launched the podcast. As have I. I am very excited to dig into your work as a private practice owner, also your work as a consultant. Before we get into that, I'd love to start with your personal mission, which is to foster spaces of radical and authentic healing. Can you talk about why that's so important to you?

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Kenya Crawford [00:02:53]:

So I would say that's really important to me because as a black or woman. In the field of mental health, I frequently felt this pressure to conform, in a way, to what traditional therapy is supposed to look like or sound like or feel like. And I realized early on in my training that a lot of the training that I was receiving or the supervision that I was receiving was really steeped in white supremacy, and that's why I was struggling to connect with it, and that's why my clients were struggling to connect with it. So it became really important for me to find other clinicians, other scholars, who sought to create radical, authentic healing, because I realized that that's what I needed to be able to survive this field. That's what I needed to be able to move through this field authentically so that I could show for my clients authentically and really create a space of healing for them.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:03:48]:

When you say steeped in white supremacy, how did that show up? What did that look like?

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Kenya Crawford [00:03:53]:

Okay. I would say one of the main things that I frequently think about early on in my training as a clinician is the ways in which I was expected to code switch with clients. And I started to realize that when I was in my graduate program and code switching in my foundations class, that's the thing that got me the a. But when I was codeswitching with my clients in internship, that's the thing that lost me clients. So I had to realize that the way in which I was being taught to connect or build alliance wasn't actually working for the population that I wanted to work with. And that's because the training I was receiving was steeped in so much racism, which really challenged me to start to kind of explore, like, what does it mean to be anti oppressive? What does it mean to be anti racist and kind of decolonize my work.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:04:41]:

You just mentioned you approach counseling and supervision as a black queer woman from a decolonized, anti racist and anti oppressive lens. Can you talk a little bit more about what that means in practice?

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Kenya Crawford [00:04:56]:

So, for me, it's a practice in recognizing that as a clinician, even with marginalized identities, I hold power, and I need to be able to interrogate that power to ensure that I'm not causing harm. And the reason why I find that being anti racist or anti oppressive or decolonizing my work is so important is because without it, I'm going to cause harm, not just to my clients, but to my community, but also to myself. It's so much more than this, like, cute catchphrase that people put on their bios or in their psychology today, if they're still using psychology today. But it's for me, it's something that's interwoven in every aspect of my work. It's interwoven in the way that I talk about healing. It's interwoven in the way that I do consultations. It's interwoven in the way that I talk about rates of with clients. And for me, it's so necessary because it helps me to survive this field, because we all know this field is draining and exhausting and hard.

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Kenya Crawford [00:05:53]:

But this lens helps me feel like I can continue to be here for maybe another 10, 20, 30 years.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:06:00]:

Yeah, it goes beyond putting BLM, right? Like in your bio on Instagram or Twitter, which I know a lot of people have done in the last few years, unfortunately. I'd love to talk about your path to private practice. I know you went to Penn State for undergrad and then Columbia, which is very impressive for graduate school. What was your path to private practice like? Did you go into private practice immediately after getting licensed?

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Kenya Crawford [00:06:29]:

So I did my internship in graduate school and private practice and then worked for an agency and then worked for two group practices at the same time, which is a very interesting pathway to private practice. I think one of the things I really valued about being in private practice as an intern is that I was able to kind of like test out a lot of different things without being worried about my income because I was an intern, right. I was still in school. I didn't have to worry about it in that particular way. And it helped me to understand the business of being in private practice because unfortunately, graduate school does not teach you how to navigate the business of private practice, which is why I'm so grateful for a podcast like this, because many of us don't understand the business piece of it. And for me, I was able to see, you know, what does it look like to navigate a claim and a super bill and navigate insurance or marketing or website design or all of these elements that are so crucial to running a fulfilling private practice.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:07:33]:

And did you feel like you were able to learn those things from working at the group practices? I actually haven't heard of someone working for two group practices simultaneously. Would you recommend that?

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Kenya Crawford [00:07:45]:

Oh, that's a good question. I don't know. I think it worked for me. I enjoyed working for two different group practices because I was able to see how, how different practices can be run, and I was able to kind of pick and choose like, oh, I like this, but I don't like that. But I like the way they're doing this over here, but I don't like that and really use that to help guide my business. And I don't know if I would have had that knowledge so early on if I wasn't working into group practices. But it was also really challenging because I'm going to two group supervisions and I'm going to two team meetings and all of that. But I was able to get my hours really quickly, which was a nice bonus in the end.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:08:27]:

How did you navigate going from those group practice jobs to private practice? What was it like with the clients that you were seeing? Were you able to have them come with you? What were those conversations like with the practices? How was that experience for you?

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Kenya Crawford [00:08:44]:

That was a very hard process for me, if I'm being completely honest. The roles that I had at both of those group practices, I was in sort of a leadership role. I was a clinical director at one and a clinical supervisor at the other. And there was a lot of, I don't know, I felt very beholden and I had so much care for the clinicians that were there. So I felt really guilty leaving. But to this day, there's so many clinicians that were in both of those practices that tell me, you know, if you didn't leave, I would have never thought that it was possible for me to leave. In many ways, I do think me leaving was modeling for them that, like, you can do private practice, you can leave that group practice and you will be okay. And, you know, the world's not going to end, which I think a lot of people in group practice get so scared about.

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Kenya Crawford [00:09:31]:

They're terrified of opening their own business and doing it for themselves. So it was hard, but I'm happy I did it. I can't see myself anywhere else.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:09:40]:

How did you get clients in the beginning? Were you able to have clients come with you, or did you have to start doing marketing? You mentioned marketing being one of those business challenges that therapists don't learn about.

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Kenya Crawford [00:09:54]:

So marketing for clients has never been a concern for me. I think because I've consistently built community of other clinicians that has never been a challenge. Most of my clients came with me. Some of them we took a pause, and then they came back years later, which I always love because I get to see them kind of grow and use the tools and skills that we worked on and bring it back to the space. But marketing became a challenge when I started to do other work around racial equity or around supervision or support groups or training. So marketing became a challenge there because I had to market very differently for therapists than I do for other clients.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:10:33]:

I definitely want to talk more about that in your consulting work. Before we leave private practice, though, I am curious, were there any other challenges that you faced when you first started your business? Maybe on the financial side of things, figuring out how much to charge or how to manage your money, how much to pay yourself, anything like that?

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Kenya Crawford [00:10:55]:

It's interesting. I feel like people frequently ask me if money was the challenge and that I don't want to say it wasn't a challenge, but I think I knew that challenge was coming, so I had an idea of how to navigate it. I would say the biggest challenge for me was finding community that was aligned. I early on thought shared identity meant shared values, therefore we would be in community. And I quickly learned that just because we're maybe two queer folk of color or two black folk, that doesn't mean that we also share this similar value around anti-racism. And learning that lesson was really challenging because I had to interrogate the people I was collaborating with or the people that I was consulting with or the people that I was seeking partnership with. And early on, I didn't feel as emboldened as a pre-licensed clinician or an intern to say, yeah, I'm not going to work with this person or this organization. Now.

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Kenya Crawford [00:11:55]:

I feel really comfortable doing that, but early on, I didn't have that privilege to do so. So I would say finding a Lyme community has been probably the biggest challenge for me in this work.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:12:06]:

And when you started your practice, or were you practicing in the city, in New York, did you get an office or was this a virtual practice?

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Kenya Crawford [00:12:14]:

So I was virtual before the pandemic, so I was actually really privileged in that way. I remember so many clinicians, like really struggling with Doxy and Zoom and all these things, and I was like, I love it here, guys. What are you talking about? This has been amazing for me. When I was working in the two group practices, one of them was in person, and that was a bit of a challenge. But I've always loved virtual work. I've always loved working from home, so it's been great for me.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:12:42]:

What about the types of clients that you work with? Did you have a defined niche when you started your practice, or has that evolved over time?

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Kenya Crawford [00:12:54]:

It's definitely evolved. I've niched down, which I was afraid to do early on in my work. I thought that would lead to me not having enough clients, which is funny to say now that I kind of look back on it and think about how many black queer folk are in New York City. But at the time I was worried that I wouldn't get clients. So early on, I think I had shared, you know, I was only working with either folk of color or queer folk. And now I've been very clear of, like, my niche population is black queer folk who are exploring non monogamy. And I, early on, I was terrified to say that. I was terrified that I wouldn't get any, any clients in that regard.

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Kenya Crawford [00:13:35]:

And now I have a waitlist that I can never get through. So I'm grateful to be in this position.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:13:41]:

Isn't that amazing? We've talked about on this show how the more specific you are and the smaller your target population is for your practice, actually, the larger your audience grows in terms of who is interested in working with you. And it feels counterintuitive. You'd think, well, I'm shrinking my addressable market with this really specific niche. But the reality is like, well, you're actually increasing your chances of attracting clients who want to work with a therapist who does what you do.

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Kenya Crawford [00:14:19]:

Absolutely. And you're decreasing your chances of being burnt out in the work. I find that when clinicians are working with this huge variety of clients, that takes so much more capacity and energy for us because we have to do more research, we have to go to more conferences around this, we have to do more labor to really be able to craft that skill. Versus if I have a very tight niche, I can really continue to double down in that area and make sure that I'm giving the best quality care to my clients.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:14:49]:

I'd love to segue into your consulting work, which is something that you and I have talked about a lot. How did you get into consulting? It was something that you actually started when you were in school, right?

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Kenya Crawford [00:15:02]:

Yeah. So I fell into consulting. It wasn't something that I wanted or thought I could do or thought that was for me. I was always, never. I heard people say they weren't a consultant. I was like, what does that even mean? Like, I don't. I don't get it. And now to be a consultant and to be successful in consulting, I'm always shocked at that because it wasn't something that I wanted.

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Kenya Crawford [00:15:26]:

But for me, I fell into consulting because a colleague of mine heard me talking about creating healing spaces for queer folk, and she told me about a colleague of hers who's in South Africa that needed some support in creating residential areas in the residence hall at the university for queer students. And I was like, oh, have they tried this? Have they thought about that? Have they. And then she just looked at me. She was like, so do you want to consult with them? What do you mean? I can't. I haven't graduated. I'm still in school. Like, I can't get there. And they were like, they'll pay for you to come.

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Kenya Crawford [00:15:59]:

I flew out there for two weeks and did a consulting project with them. So it was incredibly shocking, incredibly surprising, but it really showed me that consulting is really about the relationships that you have and the knowledge and expertise that you're willing to share. And once people see that within you, they want to kind of get that knowledge from you as quickly as possible. So that's how I started consulting, and now it's kind of, you know, evolved in more racial equity work around workplace racial trauma, which it's an interesting thing to say that I love doing that work, but I do, and I've been enjoying it ever since.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:16:39]:

So for that initial consulting project, how did you even think about pricing that? Because I know that that's a challenge that a lot of people have, not just therapists, like consulting. It sounds great, right? Consulting is the business of expertise. You're selling your mind, not your hands. Like all of these things, you're helping companies to build out strategies. This all sounds great in theory, but how do you charge for that? How did you think about it in that initial project? And then also, I'd love to chat about how that has evolved over time as well and how you think about.

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Kenya Crawford [00:17:15]:

Pricing today, that initial project, I think I went to my colleague and I said something like, I want to say it was like $700 for two weeks because I was terrified to say anything more. And she looked at me and laughed in my face, and I was like, wait, is that too much? And she was like, can you add a zero? And I was like, what do you mean, add a zero? I don't understand what you're saying. And I'm grateful for that colleague because it was really helpful for me to hear large numbers in that way, because as a girl from Philly, I did not hear numbers that large. I didn't think about projects in that way so early on. I would say consulting and figuring out rates was a guessing game for me. But one of the things I always tell people, particularly other clinicians that I coach, is that you're not just charging for the hour of the labor that you're providing. You're charging for the impact of the expertise that you're providing. So if I'm providing you knowledge and expertise, that is going to completely, drastically shift the way that you do business.

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Kenya Crawford [00:18:23]:

And that drastic shift results in, I don't know, 12% of an increase in revenue. That is what I'm charging for. I'm not charging for the 3 hours that I've sat with you and your team to talk about redistribution of wealth in this organization or talking about new policies in this space. So for early clinicians that are getting into consulting, I frequently tell them to charge an hourly rate that's around their clinical rate, maybe a little bit higher. And then as they start to get more experienced, they'll start to realize the impact of the work that they're doing, and then can charge a rate based off of that impact. That's kind of how I get there. But I always tell folks, don't forget to think about the labor that you're not thinking about right now. Because one of the things I've learned in consulting is what the person asked for on day one is infrequently what happens in the project or what they need.

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Kenya Crawford [00:19:18]:

Or what they need. Right. There's a. Can we jump on a call really quickly? That's not a quick call, turns into an hour long consulting conversation. Or can you actually extend on this service or do a little bit more of this, or do a little bit more on that? So I always let my consulting clients know early on, like, this is the original scope, but there's an opportunity for this to shift, and there's an opportunity for this to evolve as we learn more about your needs in this space.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:19:44]:

This is really helpful. When I started consulting, I learned about this idea of value based pricing. So instead of hourly based pricing, where you're charging an hourly rate, you're actually charging based on the value that you're creating for the client. And I actually initially thought it was about my value. So what am I worth? And that's how I charge, but it's actually, what is the value that I'm creating. And to your point, if you're able to help to increase revenue or maybe decrease employees leaving the company or increase retention of employees, that does show up. And the bottom line, and in my experience, that's a key component if you're consulting with an organization, is like, how do you tie it back to the bottom line? Like, how do you tie it to a revenue number? Because then people can justify the investment.

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Kenya Crawford [00:20:43]:

Yeah, that's one of the things that I add in my proposals. Like some of the research that we'll tend to kind of pull out is what are some of the discrimination lawsuits that are in that particular agency or in that particular field or industry? And I say, well, you could pay me or you could pay this lawsuit. Which one would you prefer? And typically that helps them move forward in the proposal.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:21:05]:

The question that I will ask in a discovery call in an initial conversation with a potential client is, what would happen if we didn't work together? What is the cost of not working with me? That can also be a helpful framing of, like, yeah, it's expensive to invest in this consultant, but to your point, if we don't, here's what could happen, and that outcome feels worse or more expensive.

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Kenya Crawford [00:21:32]:

That's a good one. I like that.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:21:34]:

How did you go from doing this consulting project when you're in school now to working with organizations and companies?

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Kenya Crawford [00:21:43]:

So early on, when I was working with folk of color, a lot of our goals was around kind of healing workplace racial trauma. And I think one of my biggest challenges as a therapist is not being able to control the actions of other people in my clients lives, even though I may want to. Right. I can't control the racist thing that my client's supervisor does or the really oppressive policies that are coming through in their company or the microaggressions in a holiday party. And as I was sitting with all of these, I can'ts, I really started to challenge myself and say, wait a minute. Yeah, you can, Kenya. You can kind of come in and do this workshop or do this consulting around policies or inform them of the impacts of microaggressions and how all of these elements are disrupting the companies and organizations ability to thrive. And once I sat back and thought about it like that, I said, well, my work could really be around disrupting racial trauma before it gets to my couch.

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Kenya Crawford [00:22:50]:

And that's kind of how I frame my consulting work with companies. Like, I started this work as a therapist. I've seen directly, individually how impactful it is. Now let's make this macro change so that it's not impacting either of us.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:23:03]:

I love that framing of going to the source before it gets to you in the therapy office. I'm curious, and I know this is a loaded question. I'm curious how the interest has changed in anti racist.

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Kenya Crawford [00:23:21]:

I already know where you're going with this one.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:23:23]:

Like, pre 2020 through 2020 and now today, like, what has that looked like in terms of the demand and interest?

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Kenya Crawford [00:23:31]:

It's comical, but it's actually very. I'm slightly grateful for it. Early on, I think I was nervous about seeing such a huge diphthere and racial equity work. But what I've realized now is the clients that I'm either still working with, that I've started working with in 2020, or the clients that are coming to me in 2024 are the clients that aren't engaging in performative activism. They're the clients that actually want to create a work environment that is striving towards anti racism or working to disrupt these systems of harm. Versus the 2020 organizations that just wanted to do a 1 hour workshop to make everyone feel better and then stop talking about racism a month later. So I would say, like, early on, it was really hard for me to decipher that in 2020 because I didn't know which questions I needed to be asking. I didn't know how to navigate that with new consulting clients.

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Kenya Crawford [00:24:27]:

Whereas now there are a lot of consulting clients that I decline. I think I decline more consulting projects than I accept them because of that concern of we might be working together for years. I want to ensure that we're a really good fit. And there's not going to be a request. I had a consulting client. Well, they weren't my client. They wanted to be a client. And in our intake had said, you know, we really love your word, Kenya.

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Kenya Crawford [00:24:52]:

We really want you to come in. But, like, you keep saying a term that we're hoping that you won't say in the training, I was like, what is it? We're like, you keep saying white supremacy. Could you, like, not say that in the training? And I was like, I don't think we're the right fit, and I think you need to find someone else. Right. But early on, as a consultant, I would hope that I would have the courage and the ability to say that. But for a lot of consultants, I think that is a really hard decision. I think when your payment is on the line, when you need to pay bills, I think it can be hard to make that decision. And that's one of the reasons why I won't go into racial equity work full time, because I don't want my finances and my well being to be tied to equity work.

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Kenya Crawford [00:25:39]:

Knowing how much performative activism is out there.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:25:42]:

What are some of the questions that you ask to decipher if a client is performative or not?

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Kenya Crawford [00:25:52]:

Well, one, I really like to ask them about why me and why now. Because I think when these requests start to come through, it tends to be a conversation around black history month or a conversation around a conflict that just occurred. And they just want to kind of, like, throw a person in there to kind of put a band aid over the issue. So I really like to listen out for people who understand the work that I do and want Kenya Crawford, not just any DEi consultant, because I don't do Dei consulting. I do racial equity work. And if you're not able to understand the difference between that, then I don't know if we should be working together. Right. So, one, I want to make sure that we're aligned in the values of.

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Kenya Crawford [00:26:38]:

But I also like to ask folk, my work is steeped in challenging you. Are you open to be told that you're wrong in front of other people? And sometimes people are like, oh, I think so. I'm not sure, because that's what I'm here to do. Right. I'm here to give you information that's not always going to feel good. And if you're not willing to be open to that, we're wasting our time. And my time is very precious. So I don't want to waste either of our time.

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Kenya Crawford [00:27:09]:

So those are some of the questions.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:27:11]:

That I asked for therapists who are listening, who are interested in getting into consulting, but they may not be sure what they can even consult about, or they're thinking about what is a consulting offer that I could create. What advice would you give to them?

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Kenya Crawford [00:27:32]:

I would say consult around the things that you enjoyed. Consult around the things that you can't stop talking about, and consult around the things that you want to learn more around. Right. And I think particularly for therapists, sometimes I will witness other therapists kind of fall into consulting in a way that doesn't align with what they actually want to be doing. Right. So I'll hear a therapist say, you know, I want to be consulting around, you know, neurodivergence in the workplace, but now they're doing a workshop on anxiety. And I'm like, what? Yes, you can do a workshop on anxiety. I'm sure you have the knowledge and expertise, but you're kind of stepping out of the niche that you said you wanted.

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Kenya Crawford [00:28:21]:

So now everyone in that room is going to think you're an anxiety expert and start requesting you for anxiety work. And now you're not doing the work that you want to do. So I think it's really important for people to be honest about what they want to do and stay there and continue to stay there.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:28:35]:

I've worked with therapists around helping them to build a consulting offer. Another thing that I've seen happen is a therapist goes in to an organization they're consulting with, a leadership team or executive team, but then it just basically turns into group therapy with the team or a support group. I think also not falling back into how you operate as a therapist, I think is important, which can be a.

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Kenya Crawford [00:29:07]:

Really hard boundary to find because people hear that you're a therapist and they want to dump all of their stuff on you. So definitely holding those energetic boundaries would be very important.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:29:20]:

How do you differentiate between therapy, consulting and coaching? Because coaching is a whole separate type of offer and service that I think listeners may be unsure where those boundaries are.

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Kenya Crawford [00:29:36]:

It can get murky, I will say. But for me, I look at therapy and most of my clients are long term clients I've been working with for five plus years, and that work is much slower. It's much deeper, it's much more ingrained into the history of my client and how they got to where they are. I only coach other therapists, so I think it's really easy for us to both understand the limits of the work. But when I am coaching, like sometimes I'll do some anti racism coaching with consulting clients and stuff does come up, right? We're talking about racism. Of course there's going to be some moments where people are maybe crying in a coaching session, but I always let them know early on, like, the goal of this work is not for me to be healing your racial trauma, but for me to maybe label it and highlight it for you and then give you the referral or the resource to healing this in another space. So I think for me, once I start to feel like I'm pulling out narrative therapy tools and eFT tools and I need to step back and say, hold on, I shouldn't be asking who's the pursuer and the withdrawal here. I need to be engaging in something else.

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Kenya Crawford [00:30:48]:

I just have to kind of put on a different hat when I jump into those spaces and really remind myself that I'm not the therapist in the room, I'm the consultant in the room.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:30:56]:

That's a great point. I also love what you said about when you're thinking about consulting and a topic or something that you want to be consulting about, thinking about something that you want to learn more about. One of my favorite parts about consulting is that you get paid to learn to. When a company brings me in to help them with marketing, I don't know the answers. I don't know what they need, but I'm going to find out and I'm going to be able to find out faster than they are because of my expertise. But coming in, I don't have the answers. I think that to me also was very freeing and that was something when I first started consulting, that was a challenge for me. And I'm curious if this is an experience that you had as well.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:31:45]:

It's like there's this tremendous amount of pressure the company is bringing me in. They're paying me a lot of money. What if I don't know how to help them? If I don't have the answers, then what happens?

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Kenya Crawford [00:31:57]:

Okay. I'm so grateful that you named the piece around I'm getting paid to learn. That is honestly my favorite part about racial equity consulting. You're paying me to read a book that I was going to read anyway? Absolutely. Like, this is divine. So that is something that I really love. And I think that's why it's so important for us to stay in our niche. Because if you were paying me to read a book in a different category, I don't know if I would feel the same way.

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Kenya Crawford [00:32:22]:

But in terms of kind of managing the pressure of solving the problem, I kind of disrupt the idea of it being a problem in a way, kind of in a similar way that I do for therapy, in that your experience of this system is not your problem, it's the system's problem. Right. And I think when I start to look at it in that way, I'm less connected to solving something or achieving a check mark of a goal. When it comes to consulting, I'll frequently tell consulting clients like, yeah, what we discussed in this consulting call may look very different than the goal that we achieved three years from now, because a large part of our work early on is actually understanding what the problem is, like, what the issue is in the space. Because I'll be honest, most of the people that I speak to in the consulting call don't actually understand what the problem is. They think they do. They think they have an idea. They see the concern, but they don't see how they got there.

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Kenya Crawford [00:33:26]:

And my role is really around uncovering that and helping them get closer to creating a space that is more inclusive or more anti racist in various ways that we've established in our work together. So I think it's really important for me to be clear about what my work is. Right. Like, I'm not going to come into an organization and make you anti racist in 30 days. Right. Like, that's not what I want to do, but some people will ask for that, and I have to let them know. Like, this isn't something you just check off a box and it's done. It's a journey that we are consistently working on.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:34:01]:

I love that I'm laughing because what I see a lot as a marketing consultant, companies come to me and they say they have a marketing problem. What I learn is they actually don't have a marketing problem. They don't need to do more marketing. They actually have an audience problem. They haven't defined who their target audience is. So the marketing that they're doing isn't resonating. And if they just did more marketing, it's not going to work. Right.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:34:33]:

So I think uncovering and getting beneath that presenting concern to me feels like a great parallel to therapy in some ways. Right? Like therapists are trained to kind of go deeper and try to uncover what's really going on below the surface of. To me, therapists are actually very well qualified to operate as consultants. Even the initial intake and assessment process that you do with a consulting client is not that different than what you would do with a therapy client.

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Kenya Crawford [00:35:07]:

Very similar. I might be biased, but I think therapists make the best consultants because we are so relational, because we do want to go deeper, because we do really want to understand what's happening and we're not trying to kind of do a quick fixed in two days.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:35:20]:

I love that. Yeah. I think therapists here, consulting or consultant, and they think the first thing they think of is like McKinsey, right? Oh, like, oh, I'm not that. But that's just one part of consulting or one part of the industry.

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Kenya Crawford [00:35:36]:

And we get to be the industry that redefines what consulting looks like.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:35:40]:

Can you expand on that?

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Kenya Crawford [00:35:42]:

I think as therapists, we also get to be the ones that are redefining what entrepreneurship looks like. We get to be the ones that are redefining what it looks like to own a business. And I think for a lot of clinicians, we hear these terms like business owner or consultant, and we're like, no, that's not us. And I have to remind folks, like, you're already doing it. You just don't realize that you're doing it or you think that it needs to be done in this particular way that isn't aligned with your values. And I really like to kind of challenge folks to interrogate where they learned that message from and re narrate one for themselves.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:36:13]:

I love that. I talk to therapists all the time who tell me, I'm a therapist, I'm nothing. A business person. If you're in practice, you actually are a business owner. Yeah. So that framing and identity, I think is really important. I want to come back to pricing. So we talked about pricing consulting services.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:36:35]:

You also leverage an anti oppressive rate structure in your business. Could you talk about one like what that is? And then how do you set that up for your business? And how do you think about what the tiers are and how to evaluate which level folks qualify for?

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Kenya Crawford [00:36:54]:

I created the antidepressant rate structure, actually, back when I was working in those two group practices. And I realized that both ways in which they were navigating rates and finances weren't working for the clinicians or the clients. I created this structure so that I could still provide accessible care while also still surviving in New York City. And it was really important for me to be able to balance both. And what this structure does is it gives clients an assessment. It's a pretty short assessment, and they do it on their own. I don't ask them to share their answers with me because I think that's their information. But I do ask them to share how many yeses they said yes to in the various questions.

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Kenya Crawford [00:37:35]:

And the number of yeses determines which tier they're in. Anything from reparations, which is the highest tier, all the way down to, excuse me, redistribution, which is the highest tier, all the way down to reparations, which is the lowest tier. And what I really value about having different tier structures for my clients is that it allows for them to create almost like a community care amongst my caseloads. And I think my favorite part about having this structure is I've had some clients that were at the reparations rate and then got a really great job or really came into a large sum of money and they'll come to me and say, you know, Kenya, I want to move up to the redistribution rate. I want to actually pay more because I was only able to receive this service because you had this reparations rate. And I know that if I start to pay a little bit more, that opens up your spaciousness to continue to provide accessible care to other clients. So for me, that's my favorite part of having it, because we're able to still create accessibility. While I'm not falling into the trap that I think a lot of clinicians fall into, of being kind of overworked and undervalued and under supported by taking on, you know, 40 clients in insurance a week and not being able to pay their bills or manage their business well.

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Kenya Crawford [00:38:55]:

So that's why I created the anti frustrate questionnaire.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:38:59]:

Could you share what a few of those questions are or the criteria that clients respond to?

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Kenya Crawford [00:39:07]:

So some of the questions are around, can you pay your bills on time, if you were to come into a large debt, is there someone in your family that you can ask a loan from or receive money from? Are you a homeowner? Right. Do you pay any loans? Right. Are you in a large amount of credit card debt? Right. And it's really trying to understand the financial privilege and class privilege of the client that I'm working with, because I started to realize that particularly in New York City where I was working, some folks salaries were not always matching their class privilege. And I think early on, and when I was working in those two group practices, what people were doing was, well, if this person has this salary, we'll charge them this amount. And it worked for a little bit. And then there were every once in a while we would have someone who didn't have a salary at all because they didn't need to have a salary and we were giving them a sliding scale rate, but they had a tremendous amount of wealth from their parents or whatever it was. So it allows us to really interrogate money in a different way beyond just the number of salary and create spaciousness for equity in this work.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:40:17]:

I love this framework as an alternative option to, I don't take insurance. I have my cash pay rate. I offer a sliding scale. But how to determine what that sliding scale fee is feels very vague. I think for a lot of therapists, maybe it's dollar 50 instead of $150, but that also just feels sort of subjective. Right. So I think having these sort of predefined levels that people self identify into, I think is helpful.

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Kenya Crawford [00:40:58]:

Yeah. Because it takes our stuff out of it. I think so many therapists have their own money stuff, have their own scarcity and get really nervous saying, you know, $225 an hour or saying these big numbers, and they're like, well, I don't know if I'm worth that. I don't. I don't know if I'll be able to serve my community if I, if I charge those rates. And I always remind folks that, like one, we also have to work through our own internalized racism of what that means. Right. Because if I'm saying that I will never be able to serve my clients if I charge this rate, what I'm saying is that my clients don't make that amount of money, but they do.

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Kenya Crawford [00:41:33]:

All of my clients are folk of color and there are folk that are at redistribution. So what am I saying, actually? Right. And really recognizing that accessibility can be this broader conversation. And I also kind of started to really think about this when I was having more issues with insurance. When I was working in those two group practices, because there was a client I was working with, she had insurance, but her copay was like a $100, which was something that she couldn't afford at the time. I went to my clinical director at the time, and I said, you know, can we do sliding scale? She said, she can apply, afford $50, we're going to move forward with that. And the director was like, you actually can't do that. And I was like, what are you, what are you talking about? Why can't I charge her less? And my director says, well, technically, if we accept her insurance, she has to use her insurance.

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Kenya Crawford [00:42:19]:

We're not allowed to give her a sliding scale. I was like, what do you mean? This doesn't make any sense. I'm trying to make it more accessible for her. Why do I. Why am I forced to use this? And that's one of the reasons why I stopped using insurance, because it didn't make any sense for my desire to create accessible healing for my clients.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:42:37]:

I think this is a great point. Some clients who have insurance may have out of network benefits as well that they can take advantage of. And with that said, they're still going to have to match that deductible. If their deductible is really high, they may not even be able to get to that point where they're able to use their out of network benefits. Love to talk about cultivating healers. Can you explain what cultivating healers is and why you started it?

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Kenya Crawford [00:43:07]:

I started cultivating healers because I wanted to create a space for clinicians of color that were really passionate about building anti racist, sustainable and inclusive practices. And I started this space because I couldn't find anything like it. And I was really struggling, like I shared earlier, in finding a lot of community and cultivating healers provides support groups, training and coaching for clinicians that are hoping to incorporate these different lenses into their work. And I think one of the things I really struggled with as we kind of even started this conversation today is going and receiving trainings or going to conferences. And the idea of working with folk of color was always an afterthought, right? I would go to like an hour long CEU on depression, and then the last five minutes would be like, well, this is how you apply it to black women, or this is how you apply it to queer folk. And I'm like, why are we only getting five minutes? So one of the reasons that I was so passionate about cultivating healers is because I wanted to really amplify the voices of other clinicians of color because I knew the work was being done. We just weren't doing it all together in a space. So cultivating healers is really a space for a community of us to really continue to disrupt and decolonize this field and create more sustainability for us because there's not enough of us, and a lot of us are leaving, understandably.

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Kenya Crawford [00:44:38]:

So. I get it. But I'm trying to keep us in for a little bit longer so that we can survive this field together.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:44:45]:

I love that there was this unmet need, something that you couldn't find, and so then you just went and created it. And I think one that's just super inspiring, but also, I think that's such a great takeaway for our listeners to really, like, create that space that you want to see and want to be part of. If it doesn't exist, if it's not.

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Kenya Crawford [00:45:14]:

There, go and create it, because you're probably the person that needs to do it.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:45:18]:

What kind of ces and trainings are you offering? What are some of the topics that folks may be interested in learning more about?

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Kenya Crawford [00:45:26]:

Yeah, we offer trainings on incorporating anti racism and senior clinical practice, anti racist clinical supervision, navigating neurodivergence. We're launching another course in the next few weeks around navigating suicidality from abolitionist lens. We're actually revamping that one. I'm super excited about it. Some of our guest speakers that have come in have talked about gender expansive youth, have talked about neurodivergence, have talked about maternal mental health amongst black women, fatphobia in the black community. So it's been a really beautiful learning space of clinicians of color really dismantling the field.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:46:08]:

What are some challenges that you're experiencing today as you try to balance consulting work with therapy with this online space that you've created? There's a lot on your plate. How are you managing that, and what are some of the challenges that you're working through?

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Kenya Crawford [00:46:28]:

I would say that is the biggest challenge. There's a lot on my plate, and with that, it makes it really hard to stay focused on one goal. And I'm someone who loves the creativity of being a business owner. But sometimes creativity can be distracting, and it can result in me wanting to launch multiple services at the same time or launch multiple products at the same time. And it's been a challenge, but it's also been a fun challenge because it's challenged me to stop thinking that I need to be the one to do everything and recognize that I can delegate. I can bring in guest trainers. I can bring in community partners or other organizations to do this with me so that I'm not alone in doing this work and we can get to these multiple goals, but I don't have to do it all by myself.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:47:18]:

How do you think about bringing in help or outsourcing? Do you have a team around you that you've built?

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Kenya Crawford [00:47:27]:

Shout out to my team because I would not be here without them. I have an amazing administrative assistant that keeps me grounded and keeps my calendar intact. I have a social media manager, a website developer and a brand manager. I have an amazing lawyer, an amazing accountant. I have a team that is consistently pushing me but also reminding me me to stay very clear and focused on my goals because we'll all get together sometime and they're like, Kenya, you said one thing. How did we turn to 50 other goals? And I'm like, but guys, I think we can do it. I think we can just have another cup of coffee and make it through. It's nice to have a team because it's not just on me, but also to remind me and reflect back my own values and my own needs.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:48:16]:

I'll say, I love that when I email you, I hear from someone else because that tells me, like, you do have support and you are, like, bringing in help because you're doing a lot.

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Kenya Crawford [00:48:30]:

I am. I am. And I wouldn't be able to do it all without having someone there. And it's, I think one of the hardest parts for me in private practice early on was how isolating it was. Being the person that needed to update the website and respond to every email and do the billing was too much. And now that I've been able to delegate, I am able to really focus on the pieces of business that I'm really passionate about.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:48:52]:

As we wrap up this conversation, what's one thing that you want therapists to take away if you could distill it down? I know that you've shared so many amazing insights and frameworks. Curious. If there's just one takeaway for folks from this episode, what would you want that to be?

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Kenya Crawford [00:49:13]:

Stop waiting for people to give you permission to attack your dreams. Just go for it.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:49:17]:

Kenya, thank you so much. This has been an amazing conversation. Where can folks connect with you? If they're interested in learning more about.

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Kenya Crawford [00:49:25]:

Your services, you all can find me on Instagram and Twitter at Kenya Crawford or my website, kenyacrawford.com.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:49:35]:

Great. Thank you, Kenya.

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Kenya Crawford [00:49:37]:

Thank you.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:49:38]:

Thanks for listening to this episode of Heard Business School brought to you by heard the financial back office for therapists. Visit the Heard Resource Hub at joinheard.com to support you in your journey as a private practice owner. And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube, Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you in the next class.