Corey Wilks PsyD:
What success in this job, what success as a psychologist actually looks like, right? When we talk about like, you know, the highest tiers, that ultimately means becoming the director of a program, you know, behavioral health director, maybe the president of your state psychological association. And I'm like, I don't want to be the president of state psychological association because all of these conventions are people preaching to the choir.

Melvin Varghese PhD: Hello, hello. Welcome to today's session of Selling the Couch. I hope you're doing well, having an incredible day. So today's session is all about leaving psychology for coaching. Now, you might be wondering, Mel, I thought this was a private practice related podcast, but The reality is I know that a lot of us are thinking about what we want our businesses to look like. And the reality also is that a lot of colleagues are shifting out of therapy into coaching. And today we're joined by Dr. Corey Wilkes. Corey is a dear friend. He's a licensed psychologist. His website is over at coreywilkespsid.com. And we're having an open and honest conversation about this transition. Corey, much like me, went through a doctoral program, internship, training, and became licensed as a psychologist. And just a number of circumstances led him to realize that he couldn't sustain his job as a psychologist and he decided to shift into coaching. So we're going to cover a number of of different topics. One is we just really start with Corey's career goals and what that looked like in grad school and how that kind of evolved and morphed as he went into private practice. And then we really explore what does autonomy mean for Corey and how he's really tried to design his coaching business around this ability to create autonomy. We wrap up with a couple of different questions. So the first one is what are the top three mistakes that therapists make when they become coaches? This is based on Corey's own personal experience. Corey also has a course for a coaching course and how to become a coach that he's that he's developed. He went through pretty extensive training to become a coach as well. And so just some of the mistakes. And then, you know, I feel like sometimes with episodes like this, it can be about like, you know, very like a let's do this, go in and go and forth and do this. And we actually spend a good amount of time looking at like, what are the cons of actually leaving the traditional mental health and pursuing coaching? Because, again, a big part of my responsibility and role with this episode is to give like holistic perspectives on certain things so that you can make an informed decision versus like making a decision. So we'll jump right into my conversation with Dr. Corey Wilkes from coreywilkesid.com. Hey, Corey, welcome to Selling the Couch. Thanks for having me, man. Oh, my gosh. So if if you don't know, like Corey and I have gotten to be friends over the past couple of years and you know he if you're watching on YouTube he's got like contrast him and me like complete opposite sort of appearance yes all of that right but uh we really just hit it off and uh underneath the, uh, you know, MMA and all of that stuff, really like big teddy bear and just a incredibly, uh, kind and thoughtful person. Um, just to even share a little bit, like anytime we go to Texas, Corey just goes out of his way to be like, Hey, can we hang out? Can we come visit? And just like, thank you for just being you. And, uh, I'm just so grateful for your friendship, brother. And, uh, yeah, I'm really looking forward to this conversation today.

Corey Wilks PsyD: Likewise, man.

Melvin Varghese PhD: Um, that's all you got, man. After I like, hey, hey, you know, I love you.

Corey Wilks PsyD: Like that's like, and everybody who listens to this knows you're lovable and worthy of love. So I don't know what else you want me to say other than you're awesome. Thank you. There's your validation.

Melvin Varghese PhD: Um, you know, we're talking about a topic that I know a lot of folks are thinking through and navigating, um, leaving psychology for coaching and sort of navigating that. Um, you know, like me, you spend many years getting your doctoral degree and you became a licensed clinical psychologist. What was the career goal in grad school?

Corey Wilks PsyD: So actually early on, I was a business management major, um, yeah, in undergrad. And I took a couple of business classes and quickly realized that at least the way business was framed, um, with the classes I took, I was like, this is not for me. Like there's, there's no, there's no people, right? Like all of these classes are about numbers, not about people. I care about people. And so then I, you know, I went through multiple other majors. I kind of was just adrift for a minute. And then I had this like required like adult or child development course. And it was like, you know, Professor Hinton. I was like, okay, so I was expecting some like old white dude who's just like so ancient. And he has like the elbow patches and things like when he talks, you know, chalk dust just poofs out of his armpits or something like that. That was my expectation, right? And in walked this young, like 30s, like early 30s black dude from Memphis. And he walked in, he his tattoos, he had like, like sleeves, he was he had, you know, very visible tattoos. He talked like he was from Memphis. And he was like, I'm Dr. Hinton, I'm your professor. And I was like, dude, you have my attention, because you are in no way what I was expecting. And what I was expecting was super boring. And the way Keelan, because it's Keelan Hinton, the way Keelan described psychology and how, you know, basically people are like puzzles and psychology is about helping people put those pieces in the right place. So people can understand themselves better. We can understand them better and we can kind of help people heal and grow. And that really, really stuck with me. So like literally that day, I went to what, like the bursar's office or registrar's office, whichever, and changed my major in psychology because of Keelan. And we've maintained a friendship, you know, for years after that. And I got like an undergrad, master's, and then a doctorate. And that all started with Keelan's class. So I originally wanted to go into business. We didn't start, I was like, oh, I'm going to do therapy. And I think a lot of us, a lot of psychologists, especially, we go into the therapy world because we were like, oh, if I get a doctorate, I'm at the top of my discipline. I will have autonomy and freedom. And for a lot of us, we have a degree of freedom within our sessions, but there's still a lot of bureaucracy that we have to operate within, especially if you work for a company, especially if you take insurance. And I think that, especially me, but I think a lot of us in the field, kind of grew disillusioned because it was like, Oh, I thought I would have a lot more autonomy than I actually will have if I continue down this path. And there are, there are ways like private practice, you can get more autonomy. There's some other things, but I was working in rural Appalachia in integrated primary care. So I was working within like a much larger institution with a lot of regulations, a lot of bureaucracy. And I just, I didn't have the autonomy that I need as a person to really show up. Um, so then, you know, and we'll get into this, but then I later went, you know, kind of full circle back into entrepreneurship, just without the business background.

Melvin Varghese PhD: What does, um, autonomy mean for you?

Corey Wilks PsyD: So I, I talk a lot about like core value work, which I, you know, I know, you know, and my core value is freedom and you, and freedom is synonymous with autonomy for me. And it really comes down to the freedom to do more of what I love and the freedom from doing things that I just, that, you know, burn me out. So I love being able to express myself, to speak my truth and to help others sort of clarify and speak their own. That can be very difficult to do in bureaucratic structures because there's a lot of rules. There's a lot of don't rock the boat. There's a lot of you are required to do this thing in this way, in this time frame. I like being able to use my perspective to help guide somebody else. I like being able to, you know, use different modalities to, you know, whatever is going to, whatever the person in front of me needs to understand or needs to hear, I want to be able to do that. Right? I don't like having to check off very specific boxes or phrase something very specific way or all, you know, like when I would do therapy, like, oh, I can't, I have to give you a diagnosis in order for you to keep coming back. Because if you are subclinical, then insurance won't cover it. You have to, you know, you, have to have insurance paid for it. Otherwise you can't come in. So now it's like, then you get into like upcoding and downcoding and like all those ethical issues. And it's just like, that was really burning me out. In addition to like, you are a member of this program. These are the requirements for that program. And it just, it, it didn't feel aligned in how I wanted to show up and how I deeply believed that I would be most effective. So a lot of it now is autonomy of, What is most fulfilling for me? What is most intrinsically rewarding for me, both as my day-to-day life, but then also the type of work, the type of people I want to work with? What does that look like? And then now, how can I build my life and my business aligned with those things that truly matter so that I can keep freedom and autonomy, both for myself, my personal freedom and autonomy, but also facilitating the freedom and autonomy of others? What is the best path forward to do both of those?

Melvin Varghese PhD: That's a really way. That's a great way of putting it. You talked about bureaucratic structures and the struggles and the tensions that you had right on many levels, insurance, all of that. Was there one central event that made you realize like, hey, I don't know if this is the career path that I want to keep going down?

Corey Wilks PsyD: A specific thing, not necessarily so much as like, You know, we all have our own opinions about the DSM and, you know, especially in the U S you know, how, how insurance works and things. Um, one thing I realized was so, uh, two things. The first was the, this whole idea of this is a legacy institution. We don't change things. Like I remember one of the places I worked at, um, we had, you know, an EHR, right. Cause I worked in integrated primary care. So we had this electronic health record. And this is where we put all of our notes in. At the end of this, and it was like a workflow of step one, you do this, step two, you do whatever. At the very end, it defaulted to it would send out a copy of your notes to the patient, which it was like, no, you can't do that. And part of our training was you have to go in and manually click all these boxes to make sure that doesn't go out. And it had been done like this for years. And I was like, can't we just like change the default to like not do that? And they're like, no, we can't. Like all of my bosses were like, no, we can't. I was like, I'm just going to email tech support and just ask them. Like separately from all of that, I'm just going to ask them. They're like, oh, sure, that's super easy. And then they did it, like same day. And I was like, this is the kind of stuff that it just burns me up. It's just like, you never even thought to question it because you're like, this is how we do it. And I'm like, this one change saved all of us easily 15 to 20% of the time we were doing on notes, just, just from something that was easily fixable, but nobody thought to question it was things like that. Like those, those highly just, there's this legacy bureaucratic structures. Um, and then the other thing was that I didn't fully, it didn't fully sink in until after I had switched into coaching, which we can talk about too. But, um, A lot of the therapy world defines wellness as the absence of illness. But just because you're not sick doesn't mean you're healthy, right? So like, fundamentally, my role as a therapist working in the therapy world, especially with insurance, isn't to get you to human flourishing or self-actualization or, you know, these other terms you want to put to it. It is my, my actual role is to get you to be subclinical, right? My actual role is to help you no longer warrant a diagnosis of major depressive disorder, single episode mild. That is the actual role of a therapist in, in, You know, you accept insurance, all those caveats, right? Like private practice in an affluent area, you have more leeway, but fundamentally people go to therapy or psychopathology. That is, is one of the core pieces with most of most therapy with most of the country. It is for psychopathology. So then my role is to make you no longer psychopathological, which means being subclinical, but it's like, there are plenty of people who are like, okay, you no longer want a diagnosis necessarily. but you still are in no way really thriving or flourishing. But because this is the model, and unless I take private pay or you can afford private pay, we have to end therapy, this therapeutic relationship, once insurance will no longer cover you coming because you no longer have a good enough diagnosis for them to cover it. That was the thing that really, really just burned me out because like there were people like I would work on like you are awesome and now we've worked through all these things and now you find like your head is above water and we can really help you like thrive and flourish and it was like sorry my insurance won't cover that. Insurance doesn't cover self-actualization and I'm just like damn. So that was a big thing for me.

Melvin Varghese PhD: I mean, I've run into that too. Right. And then you feel like, uh, I mean, it is, it's a formula for burnout because it's like, then what do you do? You just move to the next client, same process kind of happens. And yeah, I mean, I think I followed a very similar path, right. Of what you know questioning like my role in all of it like what it, you know, like all of that right and then this larger sort of maze that you know we often have to navigate, whether you know whatever the bureaucracies right insert whatever. Was it an overnight thing for you to like decide to leave like traditional clinical work and enter coaching or was it more like a these things keep happening? I'm teetering on burnout. I got to make I got to make a leap or I got to do something else.

Corey Wilks PsyD: It was certainly multifactorial, right? So one, I had really good experiences with my practicums and with later jobs. but my internship, one, my internship here was the closest I've come to clinical depression in my adult life. It was absolutely horrific. And that's just the whole story. But basically, No, everybody hated their job largely. And it really showed. And the place actually, after I graduated, because it was APA accredited, after they're like, we're not doing this internship anymore. And everybody left, like all the supervisors left for different jobs. Like it was, it was hellacious. But that gave me a really good glimpse into like, okay, cool. I don't want my life to look like this, this specific thing. I will avoid it at all costs. And that year, was when I kind of started, I think, dabbling and let me read some some books on entrepreneurship. Let me read some books on like the craft of writing, because it's like I have all this knowledge and all this training was like. You know, I think a lot of therapists and psychologists, like we get really disgruntled with like the self-help industry, right? And when you go to a bookstore, psychology and self-help are in the same section, right? So a lot of us with like true expertise, we look at these books and like, there's just so much like snake oil here, or so much just like the most generic things that aren't actually helping people. The issue is, a lot of those fake gurus are really good at talking to a lay population. A lot of experts suck at talking to lay people or a lot of the knowledge we have. is locked behind paywalls and academic journals that are super jargony, that even most of us don't enjoy reading, or access to us is gated behind private practice paywalls and things. So it's like, well, where do lay people turn when they want to learn actual psychology? And it's like, and personal development, like true self-help kind of stuff, where do they turn? Well, they can't really turn to us unless they find us, you know, your local provider, right? Because again, state lines and jurisdictions and geography, like that's a whole separate, even with SIPAC, that's a whole separate conversation, right? Or they go to the gurus. I wanted to bridge that gap of, I have the true expertise, but also I can speak to a lay population. So I started learning because it's like, okay, now people can get access to real information. Right. So I started that process, um, during, you know, early on, like internship kind of thing. Cause it's like, I can't keep, I have to have a backup plan. I have to have a way out of this, you know, in the next five or 10 years, cause this, I cannot do this. Um, so it was, that was part of it. Then I got a job that I, go ahead.

Melvin Varghese PhD: Can I pause you there? Cause you said, um, I knew that I couldn't do this for five to 10 years. Right. I think if I'm being honest with myself like when I was on internship and postdoc I think I was so fearful of like getting a stable job right that that thought of like entrepreneurship like didn't even exist for me so what what made you even think that?

Corey Wilks PsyD: Yeah. So like I kind of referenced before, like I went into this because I really wanted to help people and I value my freedom and autonomy.

Melvin Varghese PhD: But then I values kind of thing.

Corey Wilks PsyD: Correct. And then I quickly realized, oh, what success in this job, what success as a psychologist actually looks like when we talk about, like, you know, the highest tiers that ultimately means becoming the director of a program, the behavioral health director, maybe the president of your state psychological association. And I'm like, I don't want to be the president of the State Psychological Association because all of these conventions are people preaching to the choir. Everybody in the room knows largely everything the person up top is talking about. Most of us largely are there for CEs because we have to renew our license. And yes, this is a very cynical, pessimistic view of it. That has just been my historical experience with all these things. Occasionally you'll get somebody, a new presenter, but a lot of times it's just like, these are the same things we, we, especially at the doctoral level, we all already know. Right. Um, and then like, as like, like BHP directors, like now you are, you have a, a clinical caseload and an administrative, you know, uh, schedule as well. And it's just like, you're expected to see, especially in the medical model, you're expected to see anywhere from 10 to 16 plus patients a day, And I'm just like, so I just got to like, I just got to go from one to the next to the next. I'm like, I feel like a cog in a machine. I don't feel like I am a doctoral, like a doctorate holder at the top of my, my, my expertise, you know, in my discipline where I should have one be making a lot of money and to have a lot of freedom. I'm making good money relative to my profession, but I'm not making good money relative to many other professions. Right. And that's just that really disillusioned me because I'm like, Oh, you know, in grad school, I'm like, Oh, I'm going to get a doctorate. I'm going to have all this freedom and flexibility. I'm going to be making, you know, six figures within the first couple of years. And then you also stuff. And then it's like, you get into it and it's like, no, like you can make six figures. If you do a lot of assessments, if you see an insane caseload, but largely, I mean, maybe if you become director of a good place, but I knew directors who made like 70k. And it's just like, you have a full caseload and a full admin load, like, and you're making this, right? Because you don't know the worth, the value you bring to the table, and this place isn't gonna tell you how much it is. But your physician colleague is making four to five or six times as much as you, right? And it's just like, but then we talk about parity. It was just, it was a whole thing, man. Like it's just, so those were a lot of the things that were really like adding to my own disillusionment and burnout. But the thing that really kicked off was during COVID, I had negotiated a remote position. So I was working physically at a company, and then I was actually, we were moving across state lines. And I was like, hey, I'm gonna quit because I know I can't keep working here and live somewhere else. And I'm like, well, actually, why don't you just do a remote position? Everything's the same, we'll renegotiate your contract, but then you can keep working. I was like, oh, that's awesome. two months into that new contract, they send me an email, the COO, and she was like, hey, in 30 days you're fired. Like, no explanation. And I talked to my boss, they were like, oh, your paperwork's great, everything's on time, you're seeing plenty of people, patients love you, coworkers love you, you're a model employee, but because you are exclusively remote and we are now pulling everybody back into the clinic during COVID, just a reminder, during COVID, they were like, you're fired. So I had 30 days and three paychecks worth of runway and I couldn't get another job out of the state I'm licensed in. I wasn't willing to move back. And in order to get licensed in the new state would have taken four to six months because the board only meets every other month. And they only see like three people at a time. And they were already booked up for the next two meetings, right? More bureaucracy. And I was like, I've spent 12 plus years of my life. to get a doctorate to practice therapy. And I literally can't practice therapy anymore because I don't have four to six months to wait to get my license to then wait another handful of months to get on all the boards and stuff of the licensure stuff. Like I can't wait six to eight months to be making money. Right. And again, and this was early, early SIPAC. So that wasn't really an option. And even now SIPAC doesn't have the level of flexibility that hopefully it does in the future. So I was like, I literally cannot practice therapy right now or slash anymore. So it was like, I was burnt out, but then this was like, you know, the kick out of a nest that I retrospectively needed. Cause it was like, okay, well, I guess I'm going to be an entrepreneur now. So I guess I got to figure it out. I didn't have business training. I didn't have a business degree. Um, so I actually read about coaching. Uh, the APA had an article about how coaching was a wild West, but cause like, you know, a 14 year old with a tick tock and call themselves a life coach. Like there's, there's, there's in no way regulated. But one of the things this article was saying was because it is unregulated, people with real mental health training, if we join the discipline of coaching, we can collectively elevate the quality bar for the discipline of coaching. And we really stand out because we have such deep expertise and largely everything we do in therapy, all those skillsets translate very, very well into coaching. We just have to make a couple of modifications. And one of the guys quoted in it was Dr. Jeffrey Arbach, who runs the College of Executive Coaching. And it's sort of like a four psychologist by psychologist sort of executive coaching training program. Other people with like advanced degrees also go through it, but largely it is run by a lot of like doctoral level psychologists and things. And that really gave me a lot of comfort. Cause I'm like a lot of coaching programs I looked at were super generic and like for very like just basic stuff. I'm like, I know all of those things. And honestly, I knew a lot of what we went through in the college executive coaching. It just helped me shift my lens from a pathology model to a wellness model. That was a huge thing. It really helped me with. Um, so it was great, but for a lot of us in the therapy world, coaching is a four letter word, right? Like I remember being in grad classes and we would like actively talk trash about coaching and life coaching and all these other things. And it's just like, All of that internalized stigma held me back because there was so much elitism in the program, in the discipline itself of psychology and therapy. Some earned, some very much not, because I honestly think, man, This is a very like spiky point of view. I honestly think that therapists would be, any kind of therapist, would be better served to function, to try to emulate life coaches more than medical providers. We are taught, especially nowadays, we are taught we need to be many medical providers. We need to work alongside physicians. And an integrated model is phenomenal for patients and barriers to treatment and things. The issue is, that's what psychiatrists did. And psychiatrists like, and I could be making up some of this, who knows, but so take it all with a grain of salt, look, look it up. But psychiatrists, from my understanding, historically functioned more like therapists back in the day. But over time, so they would do more therapy and prescribe, right? Because like now a lot of psychologists are wanting to get prescription privileges. They would do therapy and prescribe, but then over time it's like, well, I can do a 10, a five to 10 minute med check and do a refill and make way more money. Cause I can see five to six people at an hour and just make way more. Let me just do that. And then I can just offload the therapy bit to a counselor, a psychologist, a social worker, whatever. Right. Well now psychologists more and more are trying to be like, oh, we should get prescription privileges so we can help with this. And it's like, that's the early phase of what psychiatrists went through. And a lot of people have stigma around talking about therapy or talking about some of these other things. And it's like, nobody has stigma about having a coach, right? And I'm not saying you should just instantly call yourself a coach, but functionally like, Oh, what are coaches doing differently? than medical providers or psychiatrists, or how we are taught in psychology, that is making them feel, the perception of them making them feel so much more approachable, and there's more excitement around working with these types of people. That I think is what a lot of us in the therapy world miss out on, is the excitement people have to work with us. And I think that is a key piece of like, we're too busy, especially modern programs. We're too busy trying to play catch up with physicians to think about, well, where are we truly most valuable and what are other disciplines that though they may not have the same level of expertise, they have a higher level of success and resonance with people. How can we learn from what is working for them and modify it to our own needs?

Melvin Varghese PhD: That's such a great way of approaching it. Um, I have a couple of questions for you before we wrap up. So one is, what do you think are the top mistake? Let's even just say one. The top mistake that a therapist makes when they become coaches.

Corey Wilks PsyD: The top mistake? OK, so the biggest one I see is expecting clients to find you in the therapy world, especially if you work for any sort of like company, they just send you referrals. Right. Um, if like, you know, when I worked for medical clinic, I never had to worry about that. Like they filled my schedule. There was a team of people whose responsibility it was to advertise, to get people or, or, you know, patients were seeing their physician. They were like, Hey doc, I'm depressed. And the physician's like, oh, cool. Go see Corey. Right. Like I never had to ever worry about that. And also I was salaried. So I didn't care if I had 10 people or one person show up because my paycheck was the same. when I worked at a private practice, I remember specifically, they bought ad placement at the local grocery store. The issue was, so they spent their marketing budget on these ads. The issue was if you like, we call it a buggy, like a cart, like a shopping cart. I'm Appalachian, we call it a buggy. You know, like where like the kid sits and like the front of it. Not, not the thing where, you know, there's like full child safety flat that goes back and forth. Not where that was where like the shopper is, you know, where you would be looking. It wasn't that it was, if I'm walking towards you, it's, it was this side of, of where the kid sits. So you could see the ad from 30 feet away, but me, the shopper who is primarily looking here, I, I couldn't see it. So I'm like, no one. can read this ad. No one is looking for this ad. Also, this ad is pointless, like nobody's ever going to see it. But you just spent your marketing budget because you don't understand advertising and marketing and outreach. But they're like, Oh, we pay for ads. It's like you you threw money out the window, you'd been better off to legitimately just throw it out the window, because and then write your number on a dollar bill. So because a lot of therapists are not trained as entrepreneurs and do not think entrepreneurially, that can be a real big issue moving into coaching because you're not just a coach. You are an entrepreneur at that point, and you have to learn customer acquisition. You have to learn marketing, copywriting, advertising, and creating content, which is content marketing. You have to learn these things largely Because without that, you are purely reliant on word of mouth, which is really hard to, to create that momentum early on.

Melvin Varghese PhD: Yeah. That's such a good point. I, um, yeah, I think, especially, I think when you come from exactly what you said, either salary positions or where there's already some sort of infrastructure or system, I definitely think that's like the biggest one. Um, what would you say is the biggest con of leaving mental health for coaching in your experience?

Corey Wilks PsyD: For me personally, like I said, I worked in integrated primary care. So I was part of an interdisciplinary team. And I really enjoyed being on a team and having like, you know, shared records and just like this, this interdisciplinary like team approach to care. That was really, really fun. Coaching largely is much more solo. However, I will say, um, what I have done to kind of, uh, get some of those like needs met. Um, even though I work largely solo is collaborating with people, um, you know, on a regular basis and, and doing like short term projects with people, um, that has been really helpful, but, but it can potentially be lonely if you come from an, like an interdisciplinary model.

Melvin Varghese PhD: Got it. I'm going to ask a kind of silly question. Is there like a group supervision equivalent in coaching? Is that like a norm or is that?

Corey Wilks PsyD: So specifically when I went through the College of Executive Coaching, which it does give you, you qualify for like ICF certification if you know what that is or care what that is, it's just an extra credential. Going through their program, it qualifies you to like fill out extra paperwork to get an extra piece of paper. I didn't, because I'm like, I have a doctorate, I don't need an extra certification. But during their program, you do get supervision, specifically. Um, with a lot of less, um, less good programs. Um, probably not because they don't, I don't think they take it as seriously because again, coaching is unregulated. You don't have to have supervision. Um, but they offer it. Yes.

Melvin Varghese PhD: And then is it the norm? Like I, and it sounds like the norm is not that. the typical coach has like supervisors or, or they're going into their own group supervision where they're discussing like a coaching client or any of those.

Corey Wilks PsyD: No, no. Like everything you did in, in like grad school for therapy coaches don't do. Because again, there's no regulation, so there's no formality to it. Like, you could literally read Atomic Habits, and I'm in no way disrespecting James Clear, like, dude wrote a great book, dude knows his stuff. But I see people, they will literally like, oh, I read Atomic Habits, I'm a habits coach now. And it's like, Buddy, you ain't, but, but there, there, there's no board saying like, Hey, you don't have this credential. Hey, you haven't had X number of hours. You can't call yourself this. It's like a nutritionist versus a dietitian. You can't call yourself a dietitian because that is a regulated term. Right. As a protected term, anybody can call themselves a nutritionist. It is unregulated. Same thing with coach versus therapy.

Melvin Varghese PhD: Yeah. Corey, the last question I have for you is, what advice would you give to a therapist who is considering becoming a coach listening to our session?

Corey Wilks PsyD: One, learn to stop seeing coaching as a four-letter word. Like so much of your skill set, directly translates to coaching. Even like your diagnostic abilities can translate, even though you're not diagnosing, right? Cause you're really good at identifying patterns and figuring out like, oh, this is probably what's going on. Let me test this hypothesis with the right questions, right? Active listening, building rapport, asking questions, like all those directly translate, right? I have a whole course that goes through all this stuff of like, here's how to actually become a coach and like, here are all the skills and everything. Like I have a course that walks through all that, but that's it, right? Like, If you're a therapist, you have damn near all the skills to already be a coach that the missing pieces are moving, like shifting from a pathology or a disease model to a wellness model. And all that really means is assume the person you're working with is already pretty healthy. And then from that assumption, move forward rather than assuming all this person has clinically significant anxiety, depression, whatever. And that is what the focus is like. No, no. The focus is rarely that because that would get you into therapy territory. The focus is typically I want more out of life than what I currently have. I'm getting in my own way. I have become the bottleneck. I have some mindset or some habit issues. And I just want help with that. I want thought partnering to move forward to flourish. That is what they want. All your stuff directly applies. If you are, if what you're passionate about falls under therapy, then do therapy. Like if you really like helping people, you know, navigate like borderline, you know, traits or suicidality or schizophrenia, or if you really like assessments, um, for like disability evals, totally cool. Keep doing therapy. But if what you're passionate about doesn't directly fall under therapy, you would probably love coaching.

Melvin Varghese PhD: I mentioned that was going to be my last question. I had one more question. You said there's this balance. Sometimes you're teetering between coaching versus therapy when you see somebody and you're like, hey, this is getting into therapy territory. Like, how do you like what are the internal questions that you ask yourself to be like to, you know, to parse out?

Corey Wilks PsyD: Great question. And this is another like mini module I have in the course. Like, hey, if you're a therapist, like here's some things to consider. A big thing, one, I have in my contract that you sign up, like you agree that if I, in my own discretion, believe what you have going on is more related to therapy. You will either pause coaching or get a therapist in tandem because though I, I maintain a license, I am not doing therapy anymore. Right. Uh, so that is really important to, to have that caveat upfront. Obviously when you're doing like a discovery call, like before you actually sign somebody, you kind of suss out some of that of like, you got some other things going on that I am not trying to go into that quagmire with you right now. Um, so there's, there's like a filtering process, but the other piece too is like, you know, I've had coaching clients before where like, we're doing business coaching. But in the midst of that, maybe they're like a loved one dies or they go through a divorce. And it's like, I can't just be like, nah, we're going to talk about revenue over here. It's like, okay, let's touch on this as so far as it directly relates to why you're, you're seeing me. And let's both mutually agree on where this line is between coaching and therapy so that if we start to. come close to this line, we both agree like, okay, yeah, this is something I should just, you know, talk to my therapist about. Great. Awesome. Yes. Moving forward. Right. The one thing very quickly that we learned that I learned in grad school was like the idea of a Yavis client. Like I think it was like young, attractive, vocal, intelligent, whatever, uh, social or something. And it was like the quote unquote, like perfect client. And I remember being told you will never get a Yavis client. because that just isn't what therapy is about. That's a pipe dream. You may get one or two throughout your career, but most of your clients aren't going to be Yavis clients or Yavis patients. Coaching largely is just all Yavis. I'm not saying like they're attractive or young necessarily, but like they're all vocal. They're all intelligent. They're all very insightful. Okay. That is a huge difference. You see too, because coaching is private pay that naturally skews a lot of the demographics and the people you're going to see, right? Especially if you charge more that just they're, they're going to be a little more stable in a lot of areas. So it makes those conversations generally a lot easier. Like, Hey, remember where we said, like this line is, it seems like you're approaching it. Or a lot of times they'll just be like, I feel like we're approaching this line where like, I should just switch and just go to a therapist. Let's get back on track and talk about this over here. That is how most of those conversations have always went. Like we might touch on it a little bit of like, oh yeah, so your mood's kind of low right now, like that's super understandable. Have you thought about getting a therapist? Oh yeah, actually I already made a call this afternoon. Cool, then you can talk with that with them. So it generally hasn't, it hasn't been the issue that when we've had ethics classes in grad school, we're like, Oh my God, like, is a banana actually a banana? Or is it like, what if they have an eating disorder? Then like, if I have a banana on my desk, like, am I actually coercing them? Like, what if I, I, I had those conversations about like, is a banana really banana? And I wasn't even like a Freudian, right? It's the whole thing. Those aren't the issues you run into as a coach, largely.

Melvin Varghese PhD: uh yeah it's incredibly like helpful to hear because i think you're right like i think when you're when you don't know the tendency then is to just kind of turn it black and white right and there's definitely more nuances there uh cory appreciate you uh i'm grateful for our friendship where can we learn more about you and the work that you're doing the world

Corey Wilks PsyD: So I am Corey Wilkes Sidey everywhere, Twitter, Twitter X, whatever, LinkedIn. My website is Corey Wilkes Sidey.com. If you go to Corey Wilkes Sidey.com, you can find all my stuff, my newsletter, the courses I've created. If you're curious about any of those, everything else I'm up to, Corey Wilkes Sidey.com.

Melvin Varghese PhD: Awesome. And I've gone through, I have not done the coaching course yet, but the values-based course, um, I recommend this course to anyone because I think just in terms of like really getting clarity on your values, um, it was been, especially I think the past couple of years, as I've really thought about the direction of STC, um, that course just going through it, um, it's just been incredibly helpful. So, uh, Corey, appreciate you, man. And, uh, have a great rest of your day. Hey there, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Corey, and especially if you are in a season where you are thinking about becoming a coach or adding a coaching component to your business. I hope that today's session has just been really helpful for you. Again, be sure to connect with Corey. Again, his website is over at coreywilksci.com. You know, I was just reflecting on this conversation and I think the one thing that I have, I took away is that decisions like this are never easy. They often have a lot of layers to it. I think one thing I've just noticed is, I think in our field, right, like there's sort of like those folks who are traditionalists are like, you know, you've got trained as this and this is the path that you need to go on. and then I think there is the other the other side of it right which is like you know I guess an extreme version is you know okay you have this training but now kind of unregulated like do what you want because anybody can hang up a shingle become a coach so I hope more than anything today's session is just giving you a little bit more of a holistic understanding of it and also giving you some resources that you may want to look into if you do want to go down the coaching route. I'm in this interesting season right of like having gone back into clinical work but then also having STC and i'm just learning like there's just a lot of things to navigate and maybe my situation is a little unique but i don't think it is because you know i've got this clinical arm and then i've got stc and we do courses and consulting and i think that's just the one thing that i would just say is like really um be up to the T when it comes to the legal and ethical stuff. So even with STC and private practice, those were like two different LLCs, two different bank accounts. I'm very clear on who I can work with in each of those domains. Again, be sure to connect with Corey over at CoreyWilkesID.com. And I hope that you enjoyed today's session. Have a great rest of your day, and I'll see you next time. Bye.

00:00:00 – Defining Success in Psychology
00:01:21 – Introduction to Coaching Transition
00:02:31 – Corey's Career Goals and Evolution
00:04:41 – Understanding Autonomy in Work
00:08:36 – Realizations About Bureaucracy
00:10:57 – The Impact of Insurance on Therapy
00:15:21 – The Catalyst for Change
00:20:01 – Disillusionment with Traditional Roles
00:22:52 – The Shift to Coaching
00:26:32 – Common Mistakes Therapists Make in Coaching
00:30:05 – Cons of Leaving Mental Health for Coaching
00:33:54 – Group Supervision in Coaching
00:35:00 – Advice for Aspiring Coaches
00:38:06 – Navigating the Coaching vs. Therapy Line
00:41:45 – Corey's Resources and Closing Thoughts