The Practice of Therapy

Gordon Brewer
Well, hello, everyone and welcome again to the podcast. And I'm so excited that this episode has finally happened. And then I had the one and only rock star, Rachel bond with me, Rachel is, is is the person that makes all this happen. And so Rachel, welcome.

Rachel Bond
Thanks for having me, Gordon. I'm so excited. Yes, so Rachel's

Gordon Brewer
getting to getting to edit her own episode. So, Rachel, as I start with everyone, tell folks a little bit about yourself and your story and how you've landed here. And all of that

Rachel Bond
was going to grad school about three years ago, I had a job that helped pay for my tuition. But I still needed some extra cash. So one of my professors from undergrad suggested that I check out this website called Fiverr. And it's an online freelancing website. I was trying to think what I would be good at. And what I like to do well, I like to write and I like listening to podcasts. So I put up my very first gig was writing people's podcast show notes. And that's how I met you, Gordon? Yes. And from there, we took our communication off of Fiverr. And Gordon, you started pushing me to do more things like editing the podcast, doing your social media and uploading everything to WordPress, even though I might have fought you along the way. I was like, are you sure I can do this? And you're like, yes, you got this, you got this. You taught me how to do everything I needed to do. And, you know, I think I started around Episode 50. And we are getting close to Episode 200. So three years, can you

Gordon Brewer
Yeah, that's that just blows me away. Just because I'm glad you reminded me about what episode number and that's hard to believe that we've been doing this together that long. And it's just, it's a bit of an amazing thing. And as a matter of fact, you mentioned 200 in our plan, as is that this will be Episode 200. But, you know, as you've done all of this, behind the scenes, I guess two things is one, I guess what, what are the themes and and kind of things that you've heard is kind of an outsider looking in that it kind of stood out for you, in all of this

Rachel Bond
from an outsider looking in. I love the business aspect of everything that you talk about on the show. So Truthfully, I don't think you need to have a private practice to get information from this show. If you are in any sort of business, the tips and advice that you and your guests give are very useful, especially for me, someone who was kind of starting a small business, I learned so much from listening to all the interviews. And another thing that I found very interesting is listening to everything about mental health during the pandemic. I've learned a lot of valuable things around self care, and stress just from listening to the different therapists that you have on the show. And I also like the conversations that you have around work life balance. So when COVID hit, everyone was working from home. And there was a huge blur between when you're working and when you should actually be living your life. And for people that typically work from home like myself, just hearing more of those conversations was interesting and valuable, and seeing how people were taking the hit from working from home. And I just thought that was interesting, because that's something that I've been doing anyway.

Gordon Brewer
Yes. And that's been you know, I think a lot of folks have just kind of transitioned back to the office, which I have done, but we're taking more precautions, you know, what, around COVID and that kind of thing. But yeah, you're right. I think this this whole work life balance has been something that's been a big theme for me as well. Just over this past year, and just, you know, as I've shared in other episodes, just, you know, with my wife being disabled, and just all of that in turn to balance all of that. Well that's, that's good to hear that those are things that have been a valuable to you. As you have done the podcast, what have been the things that have been the most fun for you.

Rachel Bond
I love the social media aspect of it on Instagram is really fun. promoting your podcast on social media is great not only to get listeners, but to get guests on your show. And I've learned a lot about the different platforms. So we use Canva for the graphics, and we use buffer for scheduling the social media posts. So it is interesting looking at it from like a business perspective versus a personal perspective. You're kind of seeing how everything gets laid out. And I like learning about that. And I also like doing things I wouldn't typically do like On my personal Instagram, I wouldn't create an igtv. But I've been doing that for the podcast. And I think that's a great thing to utilize for any business owner. So I would recommend, especially if you're recording podcasts, or if you're even going to be a guest on the podcast, you should definitely grab that video and post it as an igtv. Because I think those have been getting really popular for you.

Gordon Brewer
Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, that's a it's been great, because I've gotten as I was just telling Rachel, before we started recording, we have really gotten a lot of folks that have really complimented our, our Instagram feed, and all of that sort of thing. And quite honestly, I have not been as active on Instagram as probably I should be. And Rachel kind of covers me on the head. So that's a good, that's a good thing. So Rachel, you want to kind of walk folks through just kind of the behind the scenes about how we do the podcast.

Rachel Bond
Oh, currently, we're recording on zoom. And once this is recording done, you'll upload it to Google Drive for me. And you also include like your intro and your outro for the week, I take those clips and I put it into my audio editing software. And I have a template set up so it goes by pretty fast. Also, like in the software, I can kind of tell if there's something that's like crazy loud or crazy, slow or low. And I go back through that, and I comb through it and make sure there's nothing going on. Like sometimes there's coffee, and sometimes there's an interruption. So I go back through and make sure that everything sounds smooth, I get it on iTunes. So that way I can put it through the level later. It's a free software, it levels it compresses and it normalizes the audio. After I get it back on to iTunes, I convert it to an mp3 so that way the file is smaller. And that's kind of at the point I can put in the ID three tags. So if you're thinking about starting a podcast ID three tags, or the artist name, album, year, genre, etc. It's just good for getting your podcast found when people are searching for it. From there, the audio is pretty much done. So I can put it on to our Lipson which will distribute the podcast to Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Google, don't forget to like and subscribe to the practice and

Gordon Brewer
right

Rachel Bond
from there. Oh, I can write the show notes. So I plug in the audio into otter.ai, which is a transcription service. It takes a couple minutes, but it will have everything that anybody said. And I put the transcript into WordPress, but I also use it to write our show notes. So if you haven't checked out the practice of therapy.com, that's where I put all of our show notes. And I also put it into Lipson. So if you're looking at Apple on your phone, you'll see my show notes. It's like a blog version of what we talked about. So that's how I originally started for Gordon was writing those blogs, and I'm still doing it three years later. still love it. Yeah. From there, everything's pretty much done for the episode. And then that's when I go into social media mode.

Gordon Brewer
Right, right. And one of the things that has been great is with the social media, since we do record on zoo, we're able to record the video. And so you want to talk about just kind of how you kind of pull the video clips and how you decide on that.

Rachel Bond
Yeah, so before we record the episode, every guest kind of gives a little blurb about who they are and what the episode is going to be about. I have a Mac, so I download the video file and I use iMovie to edit that out. And then I put it into Canva which kind of makes it look prettier. And that way you can change the size of the video file. So it will look better for Instagram if you put it through Canva first, and then you can also put it through Canva to be on Twitter so that way it's a different dimension. And then I also pull clips for the igtv on iMovie. And since I've already listened to the entire episode at that point, I kind of know what's the most interesting and I tried to pick things that really summarize the whole episode or pick something where there's a little like conversation between you and the guests rather than just one person talking. So that's how I do that with the videos.

Gordon Brewer
That's That's awesome. And that that was news to me because I I just let Rachel do her thing because she's done such a great, great job. You know the other thing about Rachel is that she has launched a nonprofit organization. And I've kind of learned a little bit about that for Rachel, I want you to tell folks about that, because I think there are probably a lot of folks out there that could probably benefit from what you're doing.

Rachel Bond
I was talking about one of my professors earlier that told me to get on Fiverr. Well, that same professor Dr. Alan Seidman, we decided to start a nonprofit together called affordable college prep. Currently, all of our services are free. We are looking for high school students, and we want to help you finish your college applications, write those essays and find scholarships. And we also help students that are looking to go to grad school as well, you can follow us on Instagram at affordable college prep. And our website is affordable college prep.com. When I went to college, I made a lot of mistakes. So I'm hoping help other students get out of school with as little debt as possible. According to the National Center for Education, only about 59% of students seeking a bachelor's degree at a four year institution have completed that degree within six years. So not only do we want students to get into that college, but we want them to graduate. Otherwise, you're going to go to college for three years have a bunch of debt and no degree to show for it. So we want to see them. Yeah, get from that application all the way to the degree. Yeah,

Gordon Brewer
yeah, that's, that's great. And how was it that you kind of came up? Or what? I guess maybe what was the passion behind all that for you, and now you kind of came up with that idea to start this.

Rachel Bond
All the things that I did, I would just tell people don't do that I made so many mistakes. For instance, I didn't know that you have to fill out the FAFSA every year when you're in college. When my sophomore year came around, I didn't have the money to go to school, I had to fill out the FAFSA very last minute. When that time came around, I didn't have a dorm, they were like rad a dorm. So I had to find someone on Craigslist to live with. That was one of the things I worked three jobs when I was in college. Wow. That's also something I would steer students away. When you are in school, you can focus on school because having three jobs and getting off campus three times a day is not the way to go.

Gordon Brewer
Right. Right. Yeah, that's, yeah, it's uh, you know, one of the things that has been kind of a theme on the podcast, is just really just time management, and just being able to really think about that. And I'm so glad that you're doing some work to kind of help people with that, around that, that whole topic. So yeah, that's great. And, of course, we'll have links to all your stuff in the show notes here. So to switch gears a little bit, I'm going to put you on the, on the spot here just a little bit, kind of going back to what we talked about at the beginning, what what particular episodes really kind of stood out for you over the last 150 that you've you've been working on.

Rachel Bond
Some of my favorite episodes from the recent past are though, episode with Whitney and James about the enneagram, they really inspired me to go take the enneagram test. So I thought that was really cool. And then I went back and listen to the episodes and kind of heard their takes their hot takes about what my enneagram number means. I believe I'm an eight, and I need to get a little deeper into it. And then Okay, how do you learn a lot at the zoo? zoom was Yes,

Gordon Brewer
Yes, I did. It was it was a great course. And I think it's still available through sight Maven. But yes. The enneagram has been something that I've really delved into a lot this past year, and really helping me not only understand, understand myself better, but it's also helped me a great deal on my clinical work and being able to pull that, pull that out. And think about that.

Rachel Bond
If you missed that episode, I highly recommend going back and checking it out. I'll link it in the show notes and I'll link the webinar. Yeah. And then Andrea Jones beating the social media overwhelm I kind of definitely relate to that because like I said, I do Gordan social media, I do other clients, social media, I do affordable college prep social media. So there's just a lot going on. I think that one was useful. Lots of tips and tricks like starting the calendar, and just making sure you're way ahead of it. That way it's not like draining your time. And then looking a little farther back. Love Rhonda Starling. I loved her episode self care during times of crisis. Yeah, that was useful just like overall it does. You don't have to be in crisis to listen to the self care episode. Love that one. And my last favorite, I put this one too Together, so it's kind of cheating, but it's a best of social justice in and out of the therapy room. So may 2020, Black Lives Matter really came into the forefront, and you had a lot of great episodes with different therapists about that movement. And I put together a best of episode and I think that one is great. If you don't have time to go back and listen to every single episode, it gives you a little bit of everything in regards to social justice in the therapy room.

Gordon Brewer
Right, right. Yeah, those are, those are ones that stood out for me to take. I think I can I can picture all of those people in there. You know, just thinking about that. So what do so again, put you on the spot a little bit? What do you what do you feel like, is something that is missing from the podcast?

Rachel Bond
Gordon? You know, I love the episodes where it's just you and honestly, here's my thought you wanted my thoughts I'm gonna give you. Here's my thoughts. So I love the interviews. I love the smell of Gordon episodes. Let's do a mini Gordon episode once a week.

Unknown Speaker
Awesome.

Rachel Bond
That's my thought.

Gordon Brewer
Okay, that's great. That's great. So, okay, that's, uh, you've put a challenge out to me. Yeah. So kind of a big announcement that's coming out of this, this particular episode. And this is gonna help hold me accountable as as well, Rachel is that I've got a new podcast that's going to be coming out, hopefully towards the end of 2021, or the beginning of 2022. But the URL is actually their kindness and compassion, calm, March, kindness, and compassion.org. Is there nothing is there yet, but got a podcast coming out. And we're going to be partnering with one of my colleagues, Kayla Tapia. And Kayla has been a therapist, in my practice here in the past, he's moved on to do other things, but she is going to co host with me, and it's gonna be a podcast about all things around. How do we integrate just kindness and compassion in our lives of being able to find life balance around that, and really advocating for ending all the polarization that we've got in the world, of really learning how to put practices in place that we can kind of live, live more, and you know, not to sound too cliche, or to Coca Cola, commercial, but more in peace and harmony with each other. And just being able to put those practices in place, whether it's through spirituality through it, whether it's through other health and wellness kinds of activities, and all of those kinds of things. So I'm looking forward to that. And so I'm sure I'm going to get Rachel on that podcast, because I just know enough about her that she would be a good, good person to talk to about those things as well.

Rachel Bond
So Wow, Gordon, I'm so excited for the new podcast. You've heard it here. First, everybody kindness and compassion. Check it out. I'm so happy.

Gordon Brewer
Yes. So good. So well, Rachel, what other? What are the things would you want people to know before we can close out this episode?

Rachel Bond
Wow. Well, thank you. First and foremost, for everybody who is listening to this. You are helping me have a job right now. I love Gordon for years going strong. so grateful. I'm so grateful for you.

Gordon Brewer
Well, thanks. Thanks, Rachel. I'm so glad we get this. And I hope we can hopefully we can do it again. Because Rachel is just such a creative person that she just does things in such a wonderful way and what it what is great. And again, this is a this is kind of a little bit of a plug for learning how to outsource well, and one of the things that with Rachel is is that I can just hand it off to her and no worries whatsoever. I don't have to worry, I don't. She takes the pressure away. And so that's a really important piece of just running any business is knowing, knowing where to outsource and how to outsource.

Rachel Bond
Yeah, that's a good lesson, especially social media that can be totally time consuming. So if that's something you're currently doing with your practice, I highly recommend checking out Fiverr or asking a colleague if they know anyone who does social media management, because that can take so much time out of your day.

Gordon Brewer
Right, right. So well, Rachel, thanks again for being on this special episode. And I'm so so glad you're part of my life.

Rachel Bond
Oh my gosh. Thank you for having me, Gordon.