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Rachel: we are pretty darn isolated. As therapists, for those of us that are practice owners, for those of us that do coaching and consulting, we don't talk to each other a ton
we need more community with each other. that building and development of community is what can help us build a successful and sustainable business.
Every therapist, entrepreneur, and helper hits a ceiling. What's beyond that ceiling is where things get interesting. Welcome to Diversify Beyond the Chair, the podcast. This podcast is for therapists, entrepreneurs, and helpers that are building income, impact, and freedom beyond one-on-one sessions, or those that are just curious about what that could look like.
I'll take you behind the scenes of my own road beyond the chair, and you'll hear from other fellow travelers about their road. I'm Rachel Bentley, licensed therapist, group practice [00:01:00] owner, and consultant. You don't have to do this alone, and I'm rooting for you.
Rachel: .
Welcome to our very first episode of Diversify Beyond the Chair: the Podcast. I can't tell you how excited I am to be here with you today. My name's Rachel Bentley, and I'm your host. This podcast is very special to me, and I hope that you enjoy it as well as we move forward.
So for those of you that don't know me my name is Rachel Bentley. I'm a licensed therapist in Michigan. I also have advanced training in IFS or internal family systems and really integrate parts work into all of my personal and professional roles I am also a group practice owner. I own a practice here in Michigan.
We are a mighty group of about 30 clinicians. We are LGBTQIA+ owned and affirming. We strive to be anti-racist, and our hope is that [00:02:00] we can provide a secure space for all people so I'm proud of the work that we're doing. Our practice is called Cor, C-O-R, Counseling I also am the founder and CEO of my consulting company, Next Level Private Practice, where I help therapist entrepreneurs and other helpers start, grow, and diversify their businesses.
So I wear a lot of hats, and I'll share some stories, about some of those roles as we progress through in the show. but I'm just glad to be here with you today.
In terms of starting this podcast, Diversify Beyond the Chair, i'll share a few reasons why I wanted to start the podcast.
as I have been in all of the professional roles that I mentioned, I've noticed a few things, especially in the past few years. First, we are pretty darn isolated. As therapists, for those of us that are practice owners, for those of us that do coaching and consulting, we don't talk to each other a ton, and we're pretty isolated in [00:03:00] our work.
And in my opinion, we need more community with each other. that building and development of community is what can help us build a successful and sustainable business. Now, is it absolutely necessary? People would debate about that, but I believe it's a very helpful addition to the work that we all do.
the other thing that I've noticed over time in all of my roles is, sometimes when we even start to dream about a new idea or how to use our creative gifts in other ways, even having an idea about doing something new can bring up a lot of self-doubt, perhaps self-judgment, perhaps we receive judgment from others.
So a lot of our parts take the lead when we're trying to dream big or do new things. And for some of us, it may be difficult to even to get to a point where we can even start to dream. So I've noticed those things, and I've also noticed, I'm meeting a lot of therapists, therapist [00:04:00] entrepreneurs, and helpers that want to do something more.
They want to do something beyond one-on-one work. I want to be clear that there's nothing wrong with one-on-one work. In fact, it's very important. I myself still maintain a small clinical caseload. But we also have a lot of gifts and talents that can reach far beyond the therapy room and far beyond one-on-one work.
So over the years, as I've worked with, a lot of therapists in my own practice, worked with therapists under my consulting company, we're talking about starting and growing, perhaps diversifying. What I notice is that, myself included,
we often hit a ceiling. Maybe some folks would call this a wall.
but how I, conceptualize this is that we may be hitting one or more of seven different ceilings so when I think about the first ceiling that I hear a lot of folks talking about is the income [00:05:00] ceiling so if we look at, how much money can we actually make by spending X amount of hours in the therapy chair or in offering one-on-one services.
There is a ceiling with that because we only have so many hours in the week, and we can only see so many clients one-on-one. So that income ceiling is a real thing for many of us. Another ceiling that I think about is our capacity ceiling. So maybe you do have a full caseload. Maybe, your plate is full, from a work perspective, but you don't have a lot left to give.
You wonder if you can continue to sustain what you are. Maybe you're feeling burned out. Maybe you have reached your capacity with one-on-one work. The third ceiling that I think about is the freedom ceiling. For those of us that are already entrepreneurs that perhaps are practice owners or business owners of some sort, I know I believed I would have more freedom, more autonomy if I was able to run [00:06:00] my own company or practice.
But the truth is, when we're doing a lot of one-on-one work, when we're in that chair hour after hour, our freedom is really determined by the needs of our clients. And some of us, don't want to take time off, can't afford to take time off. We're working more than maybe we thought we would if we, do own our own business or company.
So our ability to have freedom and autonomy can be capped or we may hit that ceiling Another ceiling that I think about is our creative ceiling. If we are, seeing folks session after session, we may begin to feel a little bit stagnant, maybe bored.
we may wonder "Yeah, I'm a good therapist. I've evolved clinically over time, but how else could I use this creativity or these ideas that I have in different ways?" So there's almost like a longing to have more creative outlets Another ceiling that I think about is the connection ceiling, which is definitely one that I [00:07:00] hit, after starting my group practice.
I felt pretty alone, first as a therapist, then as a group practice owner. I wondered who else understood what I was going through and some of the things that I never knew I would face as a group practice owner. And so there was a longing for connection, for community. and also not just, with anyone, other people that were also willing to be open to talk about the hard, to talk about the success , to talk about the...
I guess, the trials and tribulations of being a therapist and/or a practice owner or both. And so building that community felt really important, and I definitely hit that connection ceiling. Another ceiling I think about is the impact ceiling. Many of us, maybe most of us, maybe all of us as therapists and helpers, we want to have positive impact on our clients
and for those of us that own practices, perhaps on the [00:08:00] communities around us so I think that we all wish to have some positive impact. And if your work is focused around one-on-one client work, you really can only impact the number of clients you can see every week.
So maybe you want your impact to grow or get bigger. And the final ceiling I just wanna talk a little bit about is the growth ceiling. So maybe you don't feel challenged anymore maybe you're a little bit bored, a little bit stagnant, and you want to grow. You want to do something different, something new, fresh perhaps
but you can only grow as much as you can grow in the session after session, hour after hour of that one-on-one work. So maybe one of these, maybe many of these, maybe a few of these ceilings resonated with you. And stick with me until the end of the episode 'cause I'll tell you more about a quick and easy way to elicit a big-picture view of what ceilings you're hitting right now just to clarify, if you are going to be listening to the podcast.
Rachel: [00:09:00] The podcast is called Diversify Beyond the Chair, and I want to, define what that means, from my view or my perspective.
So diversifying beyond the chair means building income, revenue that doesn't, depend on more one-on-one sessions or doesn't depend on maintaining the number of one-on-one sessions you have right now forever. So there are a lot of ways that therapist entrepreneurs and helpers are doing this. I'll just give a few examples today, but in future episodes you'll hear the stories of many that are diversifying right now.
but this may be, becoming a trainer, and there's a lot of different capacities in which you could train others. Maybe you wanna host your own events, retreats, conferences, summits, et cetera. Maybe you wanna build a course. Maybe you want to be a coach or a consultant. Maybe you want to write a book, dive more into public speaking, perhaps develop a membership community.
Maybe you're thinking about going the group [00:10:00] practice route There are a lot of different, ways that therapists, entrepreneurs, and helpers can diversify this is not an exhaustive list that I just gave and
you will also hear me reference this, idea of the road beyond the chair.
So how I see the road beyond the chair it's how we actually get from an idea that we have to an actual launch of a product or an offer that we put out there in the world for people to benefit from. The road beyond the chair is essentially the framework in how to diversify. This is something that I developed and that I'll talk more about in future episodes.
On this road beyond the chair you get to explore the options that are out there. You get to choose your path. You get to move down. You get to choose what you want to do, how to build it, how to launch it, et cetera. And I also want to say, for me, for others that have diversified, there are roadblocks and detours on this road that will pop [00:11:00] up at any given time, and, myself and the guests on the show will share really the true road.
Not just, "I launched this thing and I'm highly successful," but what was hard, what is still hard, and what were some of, the detours, the roadblocks. And maybe in of these roadblocks really had us pivot down a whole new road as a result. know that's part of the journey and, part of the journey that you'll hear on the show
For this first episode, I, want to just share just a little bit of my road beyond the chair. And, the road at seems a bit long, when I think about, starting out as a here in Michigan, we a limited licensed therapist, or maybe in your area, associate level.
but just fresh out of grad school, trying to gain all of my clinical hours for full licensure. So when I think about that process, obtaining full licensure, starting my own solo practice that then evolved to a group practice, that then evolved to [00:12:00] creating a consulting company, that is quite a road.
I won't tell that whole story today. But where I wanna start is, when I started my consulting company, Next Level Private Practice, which was a few years ago I really created Next Level, it's sort of like a twofold One of the reasons is something I mentioned earlier, which was that longing for connection and community among therapist entrepreneurs in private practice.
And so the first thing that I did with Next Level is start a Facebook group that at first was really Michigan-based to connect Michigan therapists in private practice together, 'cause we really didn't have a group like that at the time. And, The group has grown over the years, and we have people from all over the country and internationally in the group now.
But that was the first thing that I did to really start to get to know the work of other people, what people were struggling with, what was working well for people. we ask questions there. We support each other there. So I'm really proud of that community. And the [00:13:00] second of the twofold of starting Next Level was really the ask.
I had therapists, approaching me in my local community, asking me, " How did you start this group practice? How do you, do A, B, C, D inside the practice?" So it varied from people wanting to know, the basic logistics of how to get started, all the way through the journey of growing a sustainable and profitable private practice, group practice.
I was getting all of these asks. I was being asked, "Can I pick your brain? Can I meet you for coffee?" that kind of thing. And, it dawned on me at some point that there was a need. There was an ask. And I needed to decide how I wanted to structure. If I wanted to be a consultant, what did I want to consult about?
What did I want to teach and train about? teaching and training has always been, a part of the work that I've done even, prior to starting my practice. So it felt like a good natural fit. There was an ask. There [00:14:00] was a way to build more community. So at th- at that time, it seemed like a no-brainer.
So I developed, Next Level Private Practice as a separate company, separate from my group practice, and, began to offer some one-on-one consultation to folks that wanted to start and grow their practices
Over the last, I would say, year or two, I started to notice with my own consultees people I'm in community with, sharing and asking questions in various Facebook groups, I started noticing a narrative about diversification.
I started, being asked questions like, how do I start a course?" Or, "Could I take all of my clinical knowledge and turn that into a training curriculum? I think I wanna write a book." There were all these ideas that as therapists were growing their practices, they started thinking, what else could I do?
I see these other folks doing these things. Could I do them, too?" As a result, another ask was born, from the people that I serve. And [00:15:00] I realized the consulting company, it can't be just about ask. It also has to be, what I want to do, what I am passionate about.
I, I want to say, and I'll say this a few times in different ways in this episode, we have a lot of gifts and talents that we bring to the table as successful therapists, and we probably could be good at a number and a variety of things. Just because someone asks us to do it, doesn't mean that we have to.
I think we have to weigh out, the ask and what we're passionate about and what we want to do, and that might change and evolve over time, by the way. So as I started hearing, these stories of diversification or these questions about I wonder how so-and-so did that.
And oh, Rachel, by the way, how did you start your consulting company? How did you decide what to offer when? What about this summit that you hosted how do you do that? what is that? and I realized that this is an area of passion for [00:16:00] me, to hear people's ideas, to help them develop those ideas, bring them to fruition, market them, launch them.
I enjoy doing this myself in certain aspects of both of my companies. I can't say I loved every aspect of the development, but there were certain things that I knew I really liked or really sort of dug into for myself, and I realized, wow, I could actually help people diversify beyond the chair as a result of all that happening, talk about evolution of the consulting company,
I developed a retreat called Diversify Beyond the Chair. it's held every year in Las Vegas. we held our first version of the retreat in 2026, and, my vision was, again, to have people come together that maybe had an idea or were diversification curious, maybe they had already launched an idea but weren't sure how to market it further.
But just these, diversifiers coming together in a room, the [00:17:00] attendees, alongside an amazing group of speakers that, had diversified, that were able to tell their stories and mentor and give advice and, empower, the attendees. I was one of the speakers myself in 2026 it was a retreat, you know.
And when I think about retreats, they're typically smaller in scale. I think we had 30, 35-ish folks. I like for this event be smaller in nature so that we can get to know everyone there, what their dreams are, what their ideas are, and help them. it's easier to do that in a smaller group versus, versus a larger type event But what happened as a result is there was just all this big idea energy in the room.
There were people collaborating. There were people helping each other, building community with each other. So I got to see this event come to fruition that really combined this idea of building community with other people that wanted to do similar things and actually helping people diversify and really build their [00:18:00] road beyond the chair.
What ended up happening is that over fifty percent of the people that came in twenty twenty-six signed up for twenty twenty-seven almost immediately. So that gave me peace of mind that I was on the right track with this retreat. after, the retreat ended we launched twenty twenty-seven.
So twenty twenty-seven will happen, and my plan is to have the retreat every April in Las Vegas. but after the retreat, I really started thinking about, okay, this was as cool as I thought it would be. I had a number of people say, "This is the best retreat I've ever been to,"
we have a lot of testimonials, on our website about it. But I started thinking, how do I get, this idea, this diversify beyond the chair energy, this road beyond the chair framework how do I give more people access to this kind of information? ' Cause I think this really could be a life-changing experience
you know, sometimes if you have the right people in the room with you and the right framework and the right support, you can [00:19:00] actually bring an idea to life. and this has happened for me with the right people in the right room and the right support. but I thought, "How do we expand this?" so the idea of this podcast was born.
The idea of a course was born, and we have a mini workbook, that people go through in about thirty minutes you're exploring a lot of different possibilities, about how to diversify and if you even want to or if this is even the time for you.
So I developed this whole ecosystem around the idea of diversifying beyond the chair so that I could give more people access to this kind of information and this kind of energy
Now I talked about, hitting ceilings, and often when we hit ceilings, this is a reason that we consider diversifying. so maybe we want to diversify. but there's also something to be said for will we reach a point where we need to diversify? And what I mean by that is over the [00:20:00] years, starting a practice in 2019 and then being hit with COVID in 2020, seeing the post-COVID boom and now seeing
what's happening since the post-COVID boom sort of ended, and there are a lot of shifts in the industry happening. There are venture capitalists trying to buy our industry. We have insurance payers trying to buy portions of our industry. We have a lot of corporate-type folks trying to take over our industry, and this has, Really caused some problems for solo and group practice owners, for private practices trying to fill caseloads, trying to be reimbursed by insurance companies if they are, billing insurance.
The way that I would say it now as a group practice owner is it's just a lot more difficult today to build a profitable and sustainable group practice than it was post-COVID. And so with all of that being said, we may really want to look at is there a need for us to not have all of our eggs in one basket, and that could mean, we're a solo [00:21:00] practice owner that, has a decent sized caseload and makes decent money, but we need alternate or contingency plans, if you will, to earn income or revenue.
One example. and I'm not saying this is in a scare tactic. I'm not saying we have to go diversify right now. I'm just saying if we look at the writing on the wall, I don't think it's a bad idea for us to develop other ways to earn money if insurance reimbursing becomes more difficult, if reimbursement continues to be cut, if we're private pay clinicians, if some of our clients, begin or probably already are at the point of not being able to afford our services.
So with this writing on the wall, diversification may become a need for some of us
So as we turn around the bend of getting ready to wrap up our first episode, I want you to know that on this podcast, you're going to hear stories from therapist entrepreneurs and helpers, and they're going to lay out their road beyond the [00:22:00] chair, why they decided to diversify, what the roads look like, those roadblocks and detours that we talked about.
And, in every episode, we'll give you a tangible takeaway or action step or little piece of advice that you can take. and, maybe you take that to begin thinking about your road. Maybe you're already on your road beyond the chair, and the things that we say in the podcast can help move you forward on your road So you'll hear from me, you'll hear from other therapist entrepreneurs that have diversified, and then you'll also hear from some other experts that can help us implement some of our ideas and strategies.
We'll have, a good mix of people on the show to really help you start to think about diversification, to build the road, to continue on the road, just depending on where you are now
So speaking of wherever you are now, I want you to know wherever that is, if you, are a therapist right now that works for someone else, if [00:23:00] you are a solo practice owner or a group practice owner, if you, are a diversifier yourself, maybe you don't see a clinical caseload anymore, but you want to continue to diversify.
Wherever you are, you're welcome here. Whoever you are, I hope that you can benefit from hearing the stories and getting the tangible takeaways of others that have done this. And, maybe you have a bunch of ideas. Maybe you don't have any ideas at all yet. Maybe it's hard to narrow down your ideas. Again, maybe you, have tried to implement or launch an idea, and it hasn't been as successful as you've hoped, or maybe it's been really successful, but you want to do something different.
Wherever you are, you belong here with us on the Diversify Beyond the Chair podcast. I promise a takeaway, a piece of advice, something that you can take with you at the end of every episode. And what I wanna share with you now is,
I talked earlier about the seven ceilings, and I invite [00:24:00] you to go to our website, nextlevelprivatepractice.com/podcast, and there you can grab your, Find Your Ceiling Calculator.
It takes about three to five minutes to fill out, and it gives you a big picture view of what ceilings you may be hitting right now. And sometimes this is just the first step for folks when we think about, what are the ceilings or the walls that we're hitting right now.
It can help bring clarity to what we may wanna do next. So Find Your Ceiling Calculator over at our website you can find everything that we talk about on the podcast over on our website at nextlevelprivatepractice.com/podcast. So feel free to check us out there. And, I look forward to having you here with us for the Diversify Beyond the Chair podcast. And I will say this today and remind you every time we meet that I'm rooting for you.
See you soon
[00:25:00] Thank you so much for joining us today. If something in this episode stirred something up for you, just notice it. All of your parts are welcome here. To hear more about our services and to access free resources, visit us at nextlevelprivatepractice.com/podcast. And if this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend who may also benefit or who may be dreaming about what's next.
As always, I'm rooting for you. I'll see you next time on the road
