Uriah: Hi, this is Uriah with Productive Therapist and this is “10 Questions with the unstoppable Katie Read”. Enjoy!
Hey, Uriah, it’s Katie. Thanks again for asking me to do this. I’m just gonna go ahead and start answering questions. I guess one second here. Okay.
#1 What is your name and job title or license title?
Hey, I am Katie Reed. I am a licensed marriage and family therapist. Been licensed for many years, licensed in California and Arizona. And currently I can, you know, my job title, which you asked me here, it changes a little bit because I feel like I am a strategist, a business strategist, a marketing strategist for therapists. And I also use the word consultant. At times I use the word coach at times. I use them all somewhat interchangeably.
And the reality is, I’m also a course creator. Most of what I do are creating courses and then taking therapies through the various courses that they sign up for.
#2 What do you love about your job or your business?
What do I love about it? I love working with therapists. You are my people. These are my people. And I love getting to be around other therapists. I feel like we have a language. You know, we have this language that other people don’t necessarily have. And I love that we can connect on that level.
And I love that even for my therapists who are outgrowing their offices and maybe they’re moving into consulting or maybe they’re moving in to building their own online course, that we are able to say, okay, well, let’s talk about your ideal client and we’re able to talk about those people and their needs. On this deeper level, because we’ve come from years of exploring the human psyche and human potential and all of these things that we all get so motivated and so excited to talk about.
So that is my favorite part of my job. I also love, honestly, that it’s really creative. When I outgrew my private practice and branched into consulting and coaching, I just found that my creativity grew in this whole new way. And I love it. I love it. Love it. Love it. And it feels so free to be working in this way. Sometimes therapy can feel a little constrained in the ways that you’re able and not able to help people.
But working in this way just feels really free. And I love that.
#3 What are 1-2 things that you always do in the first 60-90 minutes of your day?
This next question, what are one or two things that you always do in the first 60 to 90 minutes of your day? So this one’s kind of funny. I’ll tell you a story about this one. The short answer is I have to sit with my six year old for usually a good hour in the morning with him sitting mostly on top of me. I have to be cuddling him at all times. And if I try to shortchange him, any of that, there is hell to pay.
He is very unhappy about it. He is super cuddly. He tells me he loves me about a thousand times. You know, he wants cuddles and kisses the whole time. And really where this all started is that as a baby, he didn’t sleep like ever, like clinical levels of non sleeping. Like finally, by the time he was four, we finally found a sleep neurologist. And it was the first time ever in his life in four plus years that he had slept through the night was with the help of the sleep neurologist.
So we were, as you can imagine, like indescribably sleep deprived. And for many of those years, he might sort of sleep fitfully on and off for maybe 9:00 p.m. until about 1:00 in the morning with a couple wake up, send a couple whatevers here and there. And then at about 1:00 in the morning, he was awake and that was the end of it. And I would have to bring him downstairs because there was no point he was not getting back to sleep.
And I would just sit with him in the dark on the couch and maybe I would give him a toy or whatever, you know, like whatever it would be to try to make those hours go by where I was so deliriously tired, all I wanted to do was sleep. But he was wide awake and just needed attention and energy. And so we developed over the years this habit that he and I sit together and he’s still he sleeps much better now, but he’s still a very early riser.
So he’s still up most days by five.
And he wants me down there and he wants me cuddling him. And the world is just not right for him if I don’t do that. So typically in that early morning time, I’m cuddling with him. I’m having my coffee, which thank God for coffee.
It’s how I survived those early years. And I, like, I very much missed when I had my youngest and I was suddenly awake with him. I missed my journaling. That used to be my morning thing. So I have got, as he’s gotten a little bit older, I have started I will do my journaling there when I’m sitting next to him and I’ll try to do that. And it’s a little funny now because I journal now on the computer and he taught himself to read when he was about four.
So now he can read journaling and he’s like sitting on me like a little bit awkward now. So I need to be a little more aware of what I’m writing since I’ve got this little kid who’s very curious about it.
But typically now I’ll give him the iPod. He will play with that for a while. Well, I’ll do my journaling and drink my coffee and then I’ll go off. And once I am released from that particular mommy duty, I’ll go off and exercise, try to meditate for a couple minutes, do those things that start my day.
#4 What is your go-to drink or snack for productive energy
I go to drink or snack for productive energy. You know, I find as I’m getting older, I might have told you in the past, like, oh, it’s this protein bar or whatever I’m finding.
I’m really needing to put down the more and more processed foods. So there’s not they don’t have one popping off the top of my head. I can tell you I really love the breakfast I eat a lot of mornings, which is just my own random invention. I, I love the Fage Greek yogurt, the fat free Greek yogurt. I love that for some reason. I love that one particular brand. I’ve tried other ones that I didn’t like as much. And I’ll mix that with a little bit of peanut butter and some fruit, like a banana or berries or whatever fruit we have. And then I’ll pour some Fiber One cereal on top and just sort of mix it all up together. I have to say, it’s delicious. Keeps you full for very long time.
I highly recommend it. I realize Fiber One, that’s a pretty processed cereal, but kind of sounds like an old lady cereal too. Well, here we are.
#5 What does a very productive day look for you?
What is a very productive day look like for me? I would say for me, a very productive day. It has to include some amount of conscientious parenting. Some time when I actually conscientiously say I’m giving time to my kids right now, I’m paying attention to them. They’re not sort of secondary in the background, but that I am with them and we’re together because if I go to bed at the end of the day, on days when I haven’t done that or I was too busy or distracted, I just don’t feel as good about myself or as proud about myself as a parent like I, I need to give them that dedicated time.
It’s also, you know, every day is so different, which is one thing that I love now about coaching. So there are days, if I don’t have a lot of client sessions, that I just get to be creative all day. And I love those days when I get to feel really productive, like I wrote something new or I built a Web page or I, you know, did something creative for my business.
I love those types of days when you just feel like you’re getting a lot done. And I work limited hours, obviously, right now with COVID everything is weird. But in general, I only really work when my kids are in school. So I really had developed a lot of systems to try to be as productive as possible in those limited working hours.
#6 What is your favorite way to rest and recover?
My favorite way to rest and recover. We live outside of Phoenix. We are about two and a half hours from Sedona. When I was 19, I took a road trip with an old friend of mine. And Sedona was one of the places that we passed through. And it blew my mind. It boggled my mind. I had never seen anything like it, and it never, ever crossed my mind that I would eventually live relatively close to there.
And so one of my all time favorite things to do now is to drive up there with my family. My kids are still little, so we’ll go pick like an easy hike somewhere. Everywhere you hike in Sedona, the views are so breathtaking around every corner. And I just feel so restored. I know it’s a cliche because everybody goes to Sedona and feels totally restored. It’s not like this is something I discovered, but nobody else has ever thought of before.
But I just love it there. I’ve never seen anything like those red rocks and I adore them. So that’s my favorite.
#7 Are you a Mac or PC person and why?
I’m a Mac person. I’ve been a Mac person for several years. I don’t really have a why. I found they were easier out-of-the-box to just open up and get going on than a PC, and that meant a lot to me.
#8 What is one of the best business books you have read?
What is one of the best business books I have read? This is interesting. I’m reading a book right now that I actually really like. It’s always hard to say the best because you have to think back years on these things. I have always liked everything by Seth Godin, for example. I like I think Russell Brunson has a lot of great marketing books with really actionable tips about how to market and how to write things and how to create websites or, you know, how to sell your course, how to sell your this or that in ways that really are based on research and data.
And this is what the marketers know. So I love all that stuff. But I’m also reading a great book right now, which I believe is called “The Storyteller’s Secret.” And it’s all about the use of storytelling in anything you do. And basically in speaking from stage or in marketing yourself or in growing your practice like any of those things that, the impact of story. I think, honestly, I read this book and I just reflect on the fact that that is why I became a therapist, because there is nothing better than sitting in a room and just hearing the story of someone’s life.
The real true story, not the highlight reel, not the Facebook version of someone’s life, but the real true nitty gritty. What happened to you? How did you feel about it? What did you do? How did that affect you? How did you change? How did that change you like? How did you move through it? There’s nothing better to me than just getting to sit and listen to people’s stories. I could do it for ever.
And so I love that. And so this book is great because it’s reminding me of all of that.
#9 If you were a hot sauce, what would your spice level be? (1-10 with 10 being the hottest).
If you were a hot sauce, what would your spice level be? So funny, because I think if you ran into me on the street, you’d be like, and she’s like a five.
Like, she just looks like a typical suburban mom driving her typical suburban mom SUV. And in so many ways, I am your typical suburban mom. But then I think the people who know me better would be like, oh, yeah, that one. She’s like an eight. Like, she is kind of spicy behind the scenes. Like, get her going. She’s a little spicy. So for the people that know me well. They’ll be like, oh yeah, yeah.
It’s on the down low but it’s there.
#10. Where can people find out more about you and what you do?
Where can people find out more about me and what I do? Well, you can come on over to my website: katieread.com. And that is Katie r-e-a-d dot com. And I forget if you put in the w w w or you don’t put it in, but like one way is dead and one way is my website.
And you can learn more about the clinician to coach program if you’re a therapist ready to outgrow the office, but also if you’re a therapist who just wants to grow your freaking practice because you just don’t have as many clients as you want or as many full-paying clients as you want, then you should check out Savvy Practice, which is my entire practice-growing system, and it’s only $37, and it’s a total no-brainer and it’s a lot of fun over there.
So anyway, thank you, Uriah, for having me. This was awesome. Everybody, thanks for listening. Have a great day!
Bye.
