A Personal Story About Freedom, Flexibility, & Building a Sustainable Business (Episode 40)
Therapists are no strangers to the emotional weight of the holiday season—especially when clinical work overlaps with a deep desire for rest, family time, and presence. In this reflective, personal episode, I share the story behind building Walker Strategy Co and the pivotal moment that reframed my understanding of flexibility—not as a bonus, but as a non-negotiable part of a sustainable practice.
Whether you're navigating packed caseloads, struggling to hold scheduling boundaries, or feeling pulled between professional and personal demands, this episode invites you to rethink what flexibility really means for your work and your life. You’ll hear why flexibility isn’t something you earn after hitting certain milestones—it’s something you build into your business from the very beginning.
Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:
1️⃣ Why flexibility in your private practice is directly tied to your emotional well-being and clinical effectiveness
2️⃣ The hidden culprits—like undercharging and people-pleasing—that can sabotage your schedule and energy
3️⃣ What a truly flexible practice looks like (hint: it’s about more than time off) and how to start building one now
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Hey everyone. Here we are, episode 40. Happy Thanksgiving week to our US based folks. This episode will probably be a little bit shorter, but it's a little more of a personal reflection and just some thoughts I have as we step into a holiday week, Thanksgiving week and most holidays, they naturally cause us to reflect on what matters most.
As you're hearing this episode, I'm spending time with my family in Colorado, my daughter, my husband, my son and I flying to Colorado. Hopefully our flight went okay and are spending time with family to celebrate this week. And as I think about therapists and the holidays I know that clinical work, especially in the holidays, is. Incredibly emotionally demanding always, but especially now. I even asked my own therapist as I was leaving my session last week. I said, do you like the holidays? She said, well, they're sure not boring. But this is an emotionally demanding time, both for how you're showing up for your clients, but also for you, right?
The holidays, you're not immune to them. You have your own feelings and experiences around them. And I talk to so many of you who crave time to recharge and be with your family, and especially now in these holidays, a desire to be present. But I see a lot of you tied to, if not rigid schedules, at least mindsets that keep you busy, that prevent you from being able to experience the rest you're really going after.
And I observe therapists unintentionally recreating their agency days, even in private practice. So today is more of just a reflection on the concept of flexibility and not as a luxury, but as a truly essential part of a sustainable practice. I wanna share my own story.
Like I said, this will be a little more personal about how I've built my business around this belief, but also how I see it playing out in the practices of the clinicians that I know and support and work with. Now, if you're a member of my Facebook group, you might know this story, but when I decided to start Walker Strategy Co, I was still working at a very large agency.
So this was outside the nine to five thing. So I was working on Walker Strategy Co in the evenings and on the weekends. And then in the nine to five kind of toiling away at this agency, I really felt like a cog in a wheel. I was helping rich executives get richer. There wasn't an impact. To my work that I could see or feel.
And I started Walker Strategy Co to create purpose-driven work, to feel like I was doing something meaningful to support a population that I care deeply about and that I had personally benefited from. And that's really what led me towards starting this business.
Now, fast forward two years. I started it in 2019, and then in 2021 I found myself in the lobby of a hotel. Downtown Nashville, six months pregnant and unexpectedly faced with an ultimatum. My boss essentially told me, Anna, you can keep your job or you can keep your business.
And while it was the hardest decision of my entire life, also the best one, guess what? I chose the business. I chose Walker Strategy Co. The impact, the flexibility, the long-term alignment in favor of the short-term stress and the lying awake at night wondering, are we gonna be able to pay our bills, especially when this baby comes.
I did it anyway and I did it scared. I also did it without knowing what motherhood was gonna bring. I didn't know what it was like to be a mom. I didn't know what it was like to be a working mom. But that life is about to change dramatically and that the thing I felt most confident in was not my job, but myself.
And that moment in that hotel lobby taught me that flexibility isn't something you wait to earn someday. It's something you build for from the very beginning. It's the end goal that you keep in mind from the get go. Now, you may never face that exact moment, and I hope you don't, but every therapist does hit a version of this crossroad at some point in their career, especially those who choose to open a private practice where I have a decision to make, maybe something has to change here, and the way that I view flexibility for therapists,
is Really a combination of reliability, like a feeling of safety in your business and margin, margin in your schedule, margin in your energy, margin in your life? That's how I view flexibility and when I see it play out in practice owners, I feel like it's a combination, again, of being able to rely on your business, that it feels sustainable enough that you can step away from it and truly rest.
And the margin to do the other things outside of serving your clients or toiling away your business. So it's way more than just time off, but it's an ability to be present for the life you ultimately want. I hear so often from you that you want time with your kids. You want rest between sessions. You need emotional margin and to work more with clients that let you up more than drain you.
You want at the end of the day to be able to do more than work, to not be so depleted after working or working to grow your practice, that there isn't room for anything else. But I think what is really interesting about this idea of flexibility for therapists is that it's also tied to your clinical quality.
You cannot pour from an empty cup. You know that. And your personal wellbeing has a direct effect on your therapeutic effectiveness. So flexibility, unlike many careers, isn't optional here. So how do you create that in your practice? How do you build something that is flexible? Now, I remember my real life proof of flexibility when I was like, oh, I've got it now.
It was actually the two year anniversary of leaving my job. So my daughter was going on two years old. And my nanny caught the bug that we had had, and she wasn't able to come. So instead of panicking, instead of having an angry boss to email or things to reschedule, I had to move a few things around.
But then I just spent the day with my daughter, and I remember taking a picture at our kitchen counter as she was coloring, and I was reading a book like, oh, here's what I built for, right? No guilt, no paid time off requests, no scrambling. But an ability to be present today. Our team at WA Strategy Co has what are called Flex Fridays.
We, have no meetings on Fridays. You check in when needed. You sign on. When works for you, you complete your work as you're able, you use the day however you need to, and I love Fridays. Sitting at the park and watching my kids swing or getting that long overdue haircut again,
really just instilling that ongoing gratitude of, I'm so glad I made this choice. I'm so glad I built my business this way today as I am in Colorado. I'm so glad I get to do this with my family. And that contrast with when I was in nine to fives where taking trips to Colorado. I still had to work and I had to balance paid time off and I had to find quiet places for meetings and there was a lot of guilt and expectations that I carried there with me.
That's what I want therapists to experience a practice that supports their life instead of competing with it.
And when I run across therapists who are in this tension, I think the culprit of flexibility is often difficult to put our finger on, but undercharging I think is a big one. When your fee isn't set up in such a way that you can work with margin and still pay the bills, then you force a too full caseload and it eliminates the margin you need.
There's also that people pleasing tendency that I can empathize with on a deep level of taking clients at times that don't work for you. Struggling to hold those boundaries of, Nope, I don't take sessions past 4:00 PM or fomo. You know, we talk about that a lot when it comes to niching, but this idea of essentially saying yes to anyone that walks through your door instead of the clients that you know are gonna fill your cup.
Up taking on clients that you know might drain you in the name of a client. And while that can be short term helpful to your bank account, it is long term potentially detrimental to your wellbeing. And there's a balance there. There's a time and a place to take on a client, of course, if you can serve them well, even if they aren't a perfect fit.
And there are times to protect that. I also often see clinicians forget to plan for time off, and so every time they need to take time off, their kid gets sick or their nanny falls through and they're scrambling instead of building in the buffer for rest or the unexpected.
I think at the core of this is so often watching clinicians allowing fear to run their schedule instead of strategy. Maybe you can only see clients while your kids are at school. And yet I see clinicians worry that then they can't fill their schedule and so then they open up time after school or after bedtime even instead of trusting and building a strategy where they get those clients for those time slots.
And I don't mean to sound glib here. I know that there's a lot of work required in these things, but there's a fundamental motivator here. That is either fear that I can't, or that I won't be able to figure it out, or a belief that I will. I heard from a clinician friend of mine last night who just raised her rates to $400 a session, $400 a
session. And she was terrified to do it. Well that Was two weeks ago, and she sent me a check-in. she's gotten five inquiries. Two consults and a returning client who was totally fine with her increased rates. And as she was thinking about what's next for her practice, she was stating some pretty lofty ideas.
And she said, you know what, if things work out, which when I put my mind to things they do, then X, Y, Z. And what a cool attitude: if things work out, which they do when I put my mind to them, then what? What if you took on that idea?
What if you used that to build the structure and the schedule in your practice? Flexibility is not something you earn. Like I said, that's really what that hotel lobby showed me. This is something you choose and you build for not something you work toward. You don't deserve it.
After you hit certain goals, you deserve to build it in. Now, it's not after your practice grows. It grows because you build the flexibility you need into it.
Now, of course, flexibility is gonna look different for every therapist. I know people that do early morning 5:00 AM sessions. I know people that go to 11:00 PM right? So it's not a matter of timing. It's not a matter of fee, but it's identifying what actually matters to you. There's some intentionality around how you build and structure your practice.
There's financial structure that supports your time off and supports your financial needs, not just your financial bare minimum, but your financial wellbeing, boundaries that are firm, and that you're able to uphold a caseload that is designed to protect your energy. That actually does let you up. So flexibility is of course, personal, but it's gotta be intentional.
It's gotta be something you plan for.
I've learned over my own therapy work in the last handful of years that my top value, my top personal value is security. And so much of what I teach as a marketing expert for therapists, and also what I do as a business owner is in search of security. It's helping people discover what it means to create a secure and predictable business.
And that's where I ultimately see flexibility coming from your practice. Can't feel flexible if it isn't predictable, if it isn't reliable, right? And so I see that predictability come from things like your niche. And that marketing and client conversion engine we talk about and your regular sustainable marketing rhythms that become part of your business and your workflow systems that are supporting those consistent inquiries
like this is so much more than just flashy websites. It's so much more than words that sound good. It's about helping you build something. That you can rest in because I know better than anyone as a business owner myself, that if my business feels unstable, so do I, even if I'm not actively working. But when you build something that does feel reliable and predictable, when you step away, then you can truly sign off.
Right? You can truly rest. That's what I want. For the clinicians that we work with. That's what I want from you as you listen to marketing therapy, whether you use one of our programs or hire us or not, like that is not the goal here. I hope you hear that when you invest in your practice.
In order to build these kinds of things, you are opening up this possibility of a reliable, predictable, safe practice. I wanna give tools to you that allow you to work with the right clients to charge sustainable life-giving fees to avoid that panic, hair on fire, spaghetti at the wall, chaos that often accompanies feelings around marketing.
I want you to build ultimately a practice that you feel safe stepping away from.
Now, Thanksgiving, which is this week, is my favorite holiday of the year. It's my favorite day of the year. I love the cooking. I love the baking. I love the parade. I love our free family, Turkey trot that we do on Thanksgiving morning, the cousins playing, and especially getting to be in Colorado with my family.
I am realizing as I prepare for that trip, and of course you'll be hearing this while I'm there, that I'm being given the gift of presence, which is something that my old work structure didn't allow, and I want you to have the freedom to be fully present in your moments, in your favorite holidays, in your favorite days.
Hopefully you get a little bit of that this week and hopefully. The continued effort and investments you make into your practice, whether that's listening to a podcast, learning something new, trying something different, whatever it is that leads you toward a place where you get to experience that flexibility and that safety and that reliability that I believe you deserve.
And that will serve you and that will serve your clients. We are, of course, in the middle of our five days of deals. Right now it's Tuesday when this episode is releasing, which means all of our Squarespace templates are 30% off, and we've got some incredible deals remaining this week.
You can get all of those details@walkerstrategyco.com slash bf 25 if you're interested in shopping them. But more than anything, I wish you, our US based folks, a restful, grounding, present Thanksgiving week. If you're not in the US, then I hope that this week brings you those same exact feelings.
And I hope that whatever you do next in the rest of this year and in 2026 leads you toward a practice that supports your life, not overshadows it, not competes with it. But it allows you to enjoy not just your work, but all the beautiful things outside of it. Thanks for being here today. I'll see you next week.
Resources & Links Mentioned:
The Walker Strategy Co website: walkerstrategyco.com
Five Days of Deals (including 30% off Squarespace templates): walkerstrategyco.com/bf25
Squarespace Templates:walkerstrategyco.com/templates
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About Marketing Therapy
Marketing Therapy is the podcast where therapists learn how to market their private practices without burnout, self-doubt, or sleazy tactics. Hosted by Anna Walker—marketing coach, strategist, and founder of Walker Strategy Co—each episode brings you clear, grounded advice to help you attract the right-fit, full-fee clients and grow a practice you feel proud of.
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