Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / A Sex Therapist Had 4 Days to Leave Her Job and Start Her Own Business: Rachel Dorneanu

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A Sex Therapist Had 4 Days to Leave Her Job and Start Her Own Business: Rachel Dorneanu · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:00
  sex therapy across the lifespan is what we're doing.
• 0:02
  We're located in Cumming, Georgia,
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  spelled C-U-M-M-I-N-G, by the way.
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  ~
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  a lot of people, when they see a therapist,
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  they're like, my god, you charge so much And I'm like,
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  Yeah, for many reasons, for expertise and training and my sanity
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  and keeping the lights on but also
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  the emailing, the networking, the documentation,
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  the case treatment summaries, There's a lot of stuff that they don't see
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  on the back end.
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  that is what makes me a really lovely therapist and person to talk to,
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  and that's not to be braggy at all,
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  So I'm a little bit of everything in that and to be able to work with
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  an audience and
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  client base that really gets me and I get them and we can kind
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  of finish each other's sentences,
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  that's pretty cool.
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  she's like, So can you be done by Thursday?
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  I was like, hang on. Wrap up a whole practice of like maybe a hundred people
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  in four days and start the whole practice?
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  Why not?
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  All right, Rachel Dorneanu, welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.
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  Thanks for having me, excited to be here.
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  Yes, we're excited you could take the time.
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  so Rachel, you've been an entrepreneur for several years now and you've
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  had quite an interesting journey how you got here.
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  Just to set the stage for our listeners,
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  can you talk about your backstory and how you became an entrepreneur?
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  Yeah, how lengthy you want me to go.
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  Well that's on you. I guess let's start from the top.
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  Yeah, all right. So I was always the mom,
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  friend, the listener, the shoulder to cry on,
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  empath kind of person, even when I was growing up.
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  I figured why not make it a career out of it and make some money on the side.
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  Can't hurt. I went and got my bachelor's in psychology and I applied
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  to a master's program thinking that having schooling was enough to
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  get into my master's in social work,
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  and that was not the case.
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  I was flat out rejected pretty damn quickly.
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  So, with that, they were saying you need way more experience.
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  Just having a degree is not enough anymore.
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  And I was like, Well, where am I gonna get experience with being a psych major?
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  So I had a buddy of mine that was working out in Montana in the town of Eureka,
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  Montana, is about eight minutes from the Canadian border.
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  And I said, Okay, what do I do out there?
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  And she said, It's a therapeutic boarding school for teens.
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  town of like eleven hundred people maybe is pretty small and I said why not?
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  So two weeks after I graduated with my bachelor's I moved out to Montana,
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  had a lovely time of being close to Glacier National Park,
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  but a not so lovely time of being in a town
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  of very conservative individuals was not the vibe for me.
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  I decided to go back to Georgia to be that's where I'm based,
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  is in Atlanta, Georgia, to go and get my master's to become a counselor
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  and there's a whole process for anybody that cares
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  To know you're welcome to reach out,
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  and I can give you a full rundown of all the licensure requirements
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  of hours and supervision and training and all the fun things.
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  But I got my master's in counseling,
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  and I knew I wanted to be in private practice as soon as humanly possible,
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  so I chose to find an internship in counseling,
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  and so I applied to 50 different private practice sites in the Atlanta area.
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  I narrowed it down to my top 10,
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  interviewed at four, and got into the
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  Private practice that I wanted.
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  I'm a bit of a go-getter and high achiever,
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  if you can't tell. ~
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  Ha ha ha.
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  So from there, an internship at a private practice.
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  Knew I wanted to get my licensure as soon as humanly possible.
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  So I joined two different private practices and balanced two caseloads,
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  two calendars, two of everything,
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  and got licensed in September of 22.
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  The interesting thing was as soon as I told my boss at the time,
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  I like, my gosh, I'm finally fully licensed,
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  I'm so excited She's like, you wanna go?
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  And I was like,
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  go where? And she's like, no, like leave the practice.
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  I know you want to start your own anyway.
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  And I like, cool. Okay. And she's like,
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  so payroll is due on Thursday.
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  So can you be done by Thursday?
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  I was like, hang on. Wrap up a whole practice of like maybe a hundred people
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  in four days and start the whole practice?
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  Why not? So I did not sleep for four days,
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  but I got it figured out and started the practice four days after
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  I got fully licensed and left the group practice and started
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  my own.
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  and had everybody complete paperwork and do the full transition.
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  I think I was a little fucking insane.
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  But we figured it out. And I've been in private practice on my
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  own with having associate licensed people over time.
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  We've grown to have high school level interns,
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  undergraduate level interns, master's level clinicians.
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  this fall we've got a master's level clinical intern from UGA,
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  Go Dogs. from there we've got different associate level people that
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  are specializing in really amazing things and we're basically sex therapy across
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  the lifespan at this point.
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  Okay. All right. appreciate that whole backstory and a a lot to unpack there.
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  I mean, first of all,
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  seemed like you had a lot of obstacles on this path once you know
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  Mm.
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  what knew what you wanted to do and like you said you're a go getter.
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  it's interesting paradox because you had this awareness that you're
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  the shoulder to cry on, you're the empath,
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  but yet you're highly motivated and like just
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  don't seem to stop. It it seems like it's a little bit of a paradox there with those
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  two types of your personality,
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  huh?
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  I think so, but I think that is what makes me a really lovely therapist
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  and person to talk to, and that's not to be braggy at all,
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  but it's just that if I can connect with people that are highly sensitive,
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  neurodivergent, neurospicy, if you will,
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  because that's all me. And then be able to have the people that
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  are the high achievers, recovering perfectionists,
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  people pleasers, trouble setting boundaries,
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  trouble saying no, all of that's me.
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  So I'm a little bit of everything in that and to be able to work with
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  an audience and
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  client base that really gets me and I get them and we can kind
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  of finish each other's sentences,
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  that's pretty cool.
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  Okay. All right. So and along this path,
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  right, you get the schooling and then you're told you don't have enough experience,
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  but like you said, the first instinct was like,
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  Well, how am I gonna get experience if you're not willing to give me a chance?
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  you do the Montana thing.
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  the conservative lifestyle or the vibe out there was not for you,
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  so you left that pretty quick.
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  And then so you figured out what do I need to do?
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  I need to intern. So
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  Yep.
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  you made this list, you found the ones,
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  you made all the applications,
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  you finally find the spot to intern,
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  and it took how many hours to finally get your full certification?
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  My full
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  licensure. so it takes around three thousand hours,
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  which is a combination of direct client care and indirect.
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  So that can be documentation, networking,
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  marketing. We were just talking about networking a little bit ago,
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  that it is a
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  full time job to network and market yourself.
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  And with grad school, at least the grad school that I went to,
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  there's no heads up of how to market,
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  how to run a business, how to do that.
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  Because they want you to go into community mental health or a higher level of care,
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  where things are just kind of handed to you rather than become
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  an entrepreneur and build your own practice and figure things out from there.
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  So that's been a fantastic shift.
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  I know there's a lot of other therapists that I work with that have said
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  the exact same thing.
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  Okay. And was that was always a goal in mind for you too,
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  is to have your own practice once you got all this?
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  Percent. Yeah.
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  Okay.
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  All right. And so it was a long road to even get qualified to do that,
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  get the licensure. When you're on that road,
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  was there ever a point in time you thought about giving up?
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  I mean it would have been so much easier to take like a receptionist job.
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  I'm really good at that. I know how to just smile and charm people
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  and answer a phone. I did that in undergrad to be able to pay for sorority dues
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  and all of that. So I had a a lovely time with that.
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  There's times it'd be easier do that but I knew that my goal was to have
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  a private practice and to have some kind of wellness,
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  holistic space at some point. And so I'd pick myself up on my bootstraps
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  and just kept on going.
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  Okay. All right. And then so like you said,
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  when you finally got your full licensure,
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  you were so happy and then your boss at the time is literally just trying
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  to get you off the payroll as quick as possible.
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  And but it sounds like she she basically shut like just pushed you out the door.
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  So when that happens, what's going through your mind?
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  ~ gosh, I I was in complete shock.
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  I was hoping maybe I'd have a couple months to slowly transition and tell clients
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  I was tapping out and it was so abrupt.
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  I wish that had been handled differently.
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  I don't wish my boss any ill will,
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  but it's just there's things that could have been handled in a different way.
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  ~
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  of being able to say like, hey,
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  congrats, it's so wonderful. I'm excited for you.
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  When did you plan to have an end date?
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  When did you want to start telling clients and transition slowly so that they
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  had continuity of care and they knew what was going that could have been handled
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  differently just from like an ethics side and mental health side
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  of things for myself, for clients.
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  I was
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  pretty dang stressed of okay, well thank goodness I already had
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  all this paperwork filled out and prepared when clients would transition.
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  I have been building that while I waited for the board to approve
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  my license because I mean that took six months in itself.
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  I had to wait six months for the board to give me a full licensure.
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  There was lots of back and forth of not having the precise date
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  on something matching up with the supervisors.
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  It was absurd. but with that
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  I figured it out and then I had a really,
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  really lovely nap as soon as I was done with one practice and I shifted over.
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  Okay. And so d you said you had about a hundred clients at that time?
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  Yeah, so I say maybe like forty to fifty were active and then some were inactive
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  were in like this transition stage.
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  So I needed to make sure that I could
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  thoroughly do a full treatment summary and case closure and be like,
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  hey, last chance if you ever wanted to do therapy,
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  this is where I'm going. this is what's gonna happen to your file.
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  You have to make sure you have full documentation of everything
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  and be very thorough. And if anyone needs a referral,
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  then you have to have at least three referrals for each person that asks for one.
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  So I mean it's a lot of back and forth,
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  which is smart from an ethics and mental health side that everyone has some kind
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  Continuity of care people are taken care of,
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  but a lot of admin on the backside that you don't get paid for.
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  Like a lot of people, when they see a therapist,
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  they're like, my god, you charge so much and private pay.
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  And I'm like, Yeah, for many reasons,
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  for expertise and training and my sanity and keeping the lights on and all of that,
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  but also because there's a lot of stuff you don't see on the back end of.
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  the emailing, the networking, the documentation,
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  the case treatment summaries, treatment plan.
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  I mean, it goes on and on. There's a lot of stuff that they don't see
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  on the back end.
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  ~ okay. Interesting. Interesting.
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  And then how's that work from a non compete standpoint?
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  Like if you're leaving a practice and you're starting your own and these
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  are your clients, right? Are you able to basically take those clients
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  to your new practice?
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  So that's the interesting thing.
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  with being in Georgia, a non-compete will not hold up unless there's like
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  an absurd reason. So there's that peace
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  Because I had already told my boss,
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  probably four years before that I eventually wanted my own private practice,
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  she had a heads up that I was planning to go.
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  So it was a heads up of like, hey,
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  if you give a certain day's notice,
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  then you can just take them with you,
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  or if you want to have some kind of payout structure and that kind of thing.
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  It depends on the practice. I personally don't follow through with that
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  on my practice that I run anymore because I want to make sure that the client
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  is the top priority, not necessarily of my practice making
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  money.
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  Off of someone taking somebody else that treats the client like their property,
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  that feels weird to me. so I'd much rather say,
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  like, hey, if you're leaving, ideally give me at least 30 to 60 days heads
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  up so I can make sure that I'm aware of the changes to the budget,
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  I'm aware of changes to the platforms and all the other things that you're connected
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  with, that clients are aware, that you're letting clients know.
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  But from there, I'd if the client has a really lovely relationship with that
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  therapist, they need to go with that therapist.
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  Okay. Makes sense. All right. And then so it sounds like this whole time,
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  you were super focused on just the therapy requirements and those type of tools.
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  So when you
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  Mm.
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  finally get your full licensure and you're you're kicked out the door
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  and now you have to start your own practice,
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  how prepared were you for the business aspect of that whole situation?
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  Sure.
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  Yeah, so in terms of the paperwork piece and documentation and running
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  an electronic health record system,
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  pretty solid. That wasn't too terrible because I'd already used
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  the health electronic health record system I was gonna use,
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  which is simple practice. but things that were concerning was
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  the financial like profit loss margins and keeping up with doing QuickBooks
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  eventually having payroll and all these.
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  things I've had to teach myself or do an absurd amount of like YouTube rabbit holes
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  of how to run some of these things because grad school didn't prepare me.
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  The practices that was part of they didn't really have us do a lot
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  of the billing side of it. Like running a credit card,
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  sure. Having to know all of the analytics and the reports and what happens
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  if something's missing, none of that is really covered because that's more
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  of the admin side. It's pretty rare to have associate level people doing
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  the admin billing insurancy
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  kind things. I don't take insurance personally but with that it can
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  be a whole nother ballgame.
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  Okay. All right. like you said,
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  you went on YouTube, you figured it out,
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  you just kinda did it yourself.
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  Mm.
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  you got everything kind of switched over and and set up within a matter of days.
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  what was it like then launching the practice and getting clients?
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  Yeah, so thankfully I had done an absurd amount of legwork doing
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  my own marketing and networking from gosh.
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  So I got I started my master's level internship in twenty eighteen and then
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  I left the practice in September of twenty two.
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  So I had all of that time to go and market and network myself.
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  I went to
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  so many networking events. I went to ones that had 50 plus people where
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  you had to go around in a circle and do a three-minute elevator pitch.
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  As a little baby intern, I was terrified.
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  I was like, what do I say? What's an elevator pitch?
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  What is that thing? And then I eventually got comfortable going up
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  and talking to business development reps and saying,
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  like, hey, I'm Rachel, this what I do,
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  these are my specialties, I'd love to connect with you.
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  Let's go grab coffee. And they're like,
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  You're an intern? I was like, Yeah.
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  How else am I gonna go?
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  clients. So they were like impressed,
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  which I mean was fun for me.
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  for any like interns that are listening,
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  if you ever want someone to help pay for a meal or a coffee,
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  just go talk to a BD rep and be like,
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  hey, I really want to learn more and hear your spiel.
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  Can we go get lunch? And they have it in the budget to get them a meal.
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  And so that's how I went through most of internship.
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  I got a bunch of free meals and free coffee.
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  All right. All right, that's a hack for any interns out there that are listening.
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  That's right.
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  all right. So you you figured things out.
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  I guess initially were you just doing specific types of therapy?
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  And then like how d how did you land on becoming a sex therapist?
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  Yeah, so think for like any intern that's starting off their hours is like,
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  hey, I'm a generalist. I will work with anything to make sure that I
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  get my hours towards licensure,
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  right? I mean, if you have to have three thousand hours of some kind of care over
• 15:16
  a certain amount of time, you're doing just about whatever you can.
• 15:19
  And then from there you're able to niche down and be like,
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  Okay, I'm really burned out by working with X.
• 15:24
  So like for me, I am such a sensitive flower that I cannot handle.
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  Grief, hardcore active trauma,
• 15:33
  high conflict divorce cases. That's not my jam.
• 15:36
  There I have some lovely recommendations if anyone listening needs them.
• 15:39
  I'm well connected in that way,
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  but I'm not gonna touch that because that's not where my heart is.
• 15:44
  So my heart has been in more of the neurodivergent
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  people from religious and conservative backgrounds,
• 15:51
  relationships, and then into the sex therapy realm.
• 15:55
  So with that one, all of those are tied in.
• 15:58
  There's so much that can affect sexuality,
• 16:00
  your intimate life. And so where I got started with that,
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  I used to sneak Cosmo magazines under my bed.
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  a teen because I was raised in a conservative home.
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  You weren't supposed to have access to stuff like that.
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  So I would like walk down to the local drugstore and get going
• 16:14
  in the Cosmo magazines and bring it home and read it under the flashlight
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  and be like, ~ that's so cool.
• 16:19
  Yeah, I can't believe you're s you're allowed to do that and whoa,
• 16:22
  that word is something I've never heard of.
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  Now I want to go and research it.
• 16:25
  So I was loving that. So shout out to Cosmo.
• 16:28
  If you ever want to feature me I would be happy to be featured and have
• 16:32
  a little full circle moment. but I think that
• 16:35
  That's what led to it. I took a undergrad class about human sexuality
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  and I thought going in it would just be a birds and the bees talk and this
• 16:44
  is some things that you can do to have a spicier sex life.
• 16:47
  But it was so cool that the professor did an evolution of desire,
• 16:52
  like the history of how
• 16:54
  Gosh, so many different things occur.
• 16:56
  Like, there's a book called Sperm Wars,
• 16:58
  of understanding how and why interacting with different partners,
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  there ends up being like a sperm war inside the woman's body.
• 17:05
  Fascinating. The history of kissing,
• 17:07
  just like so much of like a historical perspective on how intimacy
• 17:10
  has changed over time. My mind was blown.
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  I was like, okay, now I need to be part of this somehow.
• 17:16
  And
• 17:18
  Some of the first clients that I had in my internship were some people that were
• 17:23
  wanting to open their relationship to not be in just
• 17:26
  a monogamous partnership anymore.
• 17:28
  They wanted to open things up and going into BDSM and Kink.
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  I was like, I don't know what any of this is,
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  but I am so in. I want to read more.
• 17:36
  And so I started going and researching trapeze in Atlanta
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  and different nudist colonies and all sorts of things,
• 17:42
  so I could understand what the heck all of this means,
• 17:45
  because you have to know.
• 17:47
  What you don't know very quickly.
• 17:49
  And from there I was able to find some AASECT certified sex therapy supervisors.
• 17:56
  And so AASECT is, basically like sex educators,
• 17:58
  counselors, therapists of America kind of thing.
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  And so from there you have supervision,
• 18:02
  more hours, more supervision, more trainings.
• 18:06
  But probably one of the most interesting things I did was going
• 18:10
  to a something called a SAR.
• 18:12
  Which is a sexual attitude reassessment.
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  You have to do that every few years if you're gonna be a certified sex therapist.
• 18:18
  So I decided why not go one of the sexiest places in the world,
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  Amsterdam, in the red light district.
• 18:24
  And I had my SAR there of where I got to interview sex workers and go
• 18:30
  and see a space of where people were performing different kinds of sex shows
• 18:35
  for the audience and seeing how people interact with people during
• 18:39
  the daytime versus the nighttime.
• 18:41
  in the district and how the community feels about having that in their town,
• 18:45
  in their city. So all that was fascinating.
• 18:48
  I ate that up and I'm now a certified sex therapist.
• 18:52
  All right. Wow. So that's that's how it all happened.
• 18:54
  And from there, you niche down,
• 18:57
  based on the other types of trauma or the other types of things that
• 19:00
  you realize was not for you.
• 19:02
  since you've had your own practice and you've had this focus on sex therapy,
• 19:06
  how's the business scaled since then?
• 19:08
  Yeah, so it's been really fun to watch.
• 19:11
  Anytime that I'm on like social media or LinkedIn or especially going in
• 19:16
  any kind of networking event, is people that I don't even know,
• 19:19
  they're like, Are you the sex therapist?
• 19:20
  I'm like, I don't even know who you are.
• 19:22
  How do you know that?
• 19:23
  And they're like, don't worry,
• 19:24
  we've talked about you at the office.
• 19:25
  I'm like, I hope it's a good thing.
• 19:28
  They're like, no, it's all good things.
• 19:29
  It's all good things. Don't worry.
• 19:30
  But it it feels weird, at least like within our little therapist community,
• 19:35
  that people are aware of like who I am and what I do.
• 19:37
  So that's just wild to me. past that,
• 19:40
  in terms of growing things, I've had people reach out wanting
• 19:44
  to have like supervision from me as a sex therapist.
• 19:47
  I'm working on that, give me like another year.
• 19:49
  It's on the
• 19:50
  to do list of fifty other things.
• 19:52
  But that'll happen at some point.
• 19:53
  There's people that have joined the practice just to be able to work
• 19:56
  and have some kind of sex therapy guidance and be able to have any kind
• 20:00
  of wait list or other people that reach out that might need a lower
• 20:03
  fee they can work with me and go from there
• 20:05
  the practice at this point has six of us including myself that are some sort
• 20:09
  of level of therapist. So the sex therapy across the lifespan is what we're doing.
• 20:14
  We're located in Cumming, Georgia,
• 20:16
  spelled C-U-M-M-I-N-G, by the way.
• 20:19
  ~
• 20:20
  So love that for marketing that kind of does the marketing for itself.
• 20:24
  That's super fun. I mean we've got people from infertility,
• 20:28
  birth loss to perinatal, postpartum,
• 20:31
  kink, relationships, LGBTQ plus,
• 20:35
  polyamory, swinging, alternative lifestyles into perimenopause,
• 20:40
  menopause, postmenopause, all the pauses into end-of-life,
• 20:44
  caregiver burnout. I mean, we've got the whole spectrum,
• 20:47
  man. I'm really excited.
• 20:48
  excited about it.
• 20:49
  Okay. All right. Wow. Yeah. So like you just listed it all,
• 20:52
  but you've got the full spectrum of therapy there.
• 20:54
  clearly you didn't see it going this way when you started out,
• 20:57
  but
• 20:57
  what what what would
• 20:58
  Not at all.
• 21:00
  you say is the most valuable lesson I think you've learned through this this whole
• 21:06
  journey of going through the the adversity and the
• 21:09
  not quitting and giving up and then figuring out what you really want to
• 21:12
  do and then scaling out this practice with all the sex therapy,
• 21:15
  what's the most valuable lesson you think you've learned?
• 21:17
  I'd say two things. One to trust myself and know that can handle just about anything
• 21:24
  that's thrown my way and if not I can ask for help and then pass that
• 21:28
  this is gonna sound a little woo-woo but being able to like speak things into
• 21:31
  the universe to manifest things that if I'm wanting to have Cosmo reach
• 21:36
  out to me one day, I put that into on LinkedIn the other day.
• 21:40
  I was like, anyone have a contact?
• 21:41
  I'm putting it into the universe.
• 21:43
  We're gonna see what happens. And then same with like wanting to grow
• 21:46
  the practice at some point with maybe one day I'll have a whole wellness center with
• 21:51
  a coffee shop, tea shop attached.
• 21:53
  That's like the end goal. being
• 21:54
  able to speak
• 21:55
  that into existence and telling people about my goals and dreams that there's bound
• 21:59
  to be somebody that I don't know that they know that can connect me
• 22:03
  and things have worked out pretty damn well so far.
• 22:46
  Okay. And given that it's worked out so well,
• 22:48
  you've scaled the practice, you work in all these different areas
• 22:51
  and you're helping people with these issues,
• 22:53
  what's been the best part of it for you?
• 22:57
  But so hard.
• 22:59
  truly being able to help people on like a bigger scale.
• 23:04
  So at first it was just one-on-one therapy,
• 23:06
  one-on-one coaching kind of stuff,
• 23:08
  which has been lovely. I still love doing that.
• 23:10
  That's still easily like the happiest part of my day.
• 23:13
  It doesn't feel like work. And then from there being able to teach
• 23:17
  and guide people that are associate level,
• 23:19
  master's level people, say like,
• 23:21
  hey, this is how I do therapy,
• 23:23
  you're welcome to do something different because you're gonna know yourself best
• 23:26
  and your client best.
• 23:27
  And really use that to tune in and have a lovely therapeutic relationship.
• 23:31
  But the things that have worked for me in terms of marketing,
• 23:34
  networking, having a website, SEO,
• 23:37
  all those extra businessy things that grad school and life doesn't really teach you,
• 23:41
  I've been able to pass that down and watch it just spread throughout the team,
• 23:47
  being able to have the different levels of interns to learn things.
• 23:51
  We have mentor power hours every month of where they just get to interrogate
• 23:55
  me for an hour.
• 23:56
  about how I got here, help with resume review,
• 23:59
  interview tips, writing personal statements for grad school,
• 24:02
  all those things. I love being able to give back to the community.
• 24:05
  Okay. All right. And Rachel, if people want to find out more about your work,
• 24:09
  what's the best way people can find you online?
• 24:12
  Yeah, so for therapy, we're at Sage Counseling Wellness.
• 24:16
  So that can be on any social media platform.
• 24:18
  I think we're on just about every platform humanly possible.
• 24:21
  And then the website is SageCWS.com.
• 24:25
  If you're looking for coaching,
• 24:27
  speaking, business coaching, yoga,
• 24:30
  all of that, that's racheldorneanu.com
• 24:33
  Okay, and we will link all that in the show notes for everyone.
• 24:36
  All right. Well Rachel, thank you so much for taking the time to be here
• 24:39
  and sharing all this incredible wisdom from your journey with our listeners.
• 24:43
  We greatly appreciate it.
• 24:45
  Awesome. Thanks for having me.