GRACE KIM: HOW THERAPY SPARKED A PRIVATE PRACTICE | EP 179

How Grace became a therapist

‘Becoming a therapist was not my original goal going into grad school. I come from a Master of Social Work background, so I had gone into grad school thinking and planning that at the end I was going to pursue a career in clinical social work … hospital social work specifically.’ – Grace Kim

As Grace explains, her journey to becoming a therapist and running a group private practice in Canada today has been a winding road. 

While she started grad school with a certain plan in mind, by her graduation, the plan had changed. At first, after graduation, she worked in child welfare, community mental health, and in some hospitals. 

‘Throughout [those] years post-grad, strangely enough, an opportunity opened up for me to move into the therapy world with a group practice that was made up of largely clinical social workers with a medical setting background.’ – Grace Kim

Taking off the golden handcuffs 

Grace joined this group private practice in 2018, six years after she graduated. It was a scary transition for her at first, going from a secure, salary job to a billable hours-based income. 

‘It was definitely risky because I was used to cushy benefits and a comfortable vacation policy with time off, and things like that, so it was scary to go from knowing predictable income to, “Oh, I only get paid if I work hours, and it is scalable based on how hard I work.”’ – Grace Kim 

At that time, however, Grace was newly married and living in a home with her partner where they enjoyed dual income streams, so the risk of going into a financial red zone, so to speak, was low. 

‘I was like, “Okay, one of us has a stable salary, it’s okay if I take on this risk and maybe forfeit that stable income for some risk, some financial instability, [but also] leeway and grace period to grow and take a pay cut as my caseload was building” during that time.’ – Grace Kim

Jules’ tip: if you are not in a position to share expenses with another person, build up an emergency fund to the amount of about six months to give yourself that same sense of financial security to leap into private practice.

Grace’s advice to listeners 

Networking is your friend! Or it can be, if it’s not already. You can be a wonderful, highly skilled clinician, but you need to get your name and your practice’s name out there. 

Connect with other brilliant therapists to plug into the referral and sharing network. The more we support each other, the more clients get seen, the more good work gets done, and the more we all change our communities for the better.