What Happens When You Stop Shrinking For Your Brand with Becca Post

in this episode of all our parts, i sit down with becca post (@forwardhealingtherapy)—therapist, practice owner, and certified rebrand baddie—to talk about what it really looks like to evolve in public.

we get into the mess and magic of being a business owner and a human at the same time. becca shares why she decided to separate her personal voice from her group practice, how she navigated a full-blown rebrand, and the freedom that comes with building a brand that actually feels like you.

we also talk:

• therapist identity shifts & growing out loud
• what no one tells you about branding as a group practice owner
• staying ethical and visible in a world that loves to judge
• podcasting, pivoting, and choosing yourself again (and again)

whether you're craving a reset, a rebrand, or just a lil reminder that it’s okay to change your mind—this one’s for you 🫶

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Hello everybody, welcome back to All Our Parts. owner of Forward Healing Therapy, the myth, the legend herself, Becca Post. Thank you for joining me today.

SPEAKER_01: 0:38

Thank you for having me. It's really hard to not laugh. I feel like that's all we've been doing since we met in person for the first time.

SPEAKER_00: 0:45

Yes. Laughing, even when we met over Zoom a year ago. That's wild. A lot's happened.

UNKNOWN: 0:53

A lot's happened.

SPEAKER_00: 0:55

We have both seen life... just spin around for us lots of grief lots of transitions lots of elections too many but

SPEAKER_01: 1:07

also

SPEAKER_00: 1:08

a lot of business changes a lot of growth within our businesses it's nice to be able to do that with someone who gets it and who understands it and very grateful it's been the best

SPEAKER_01: 1:20

yeah it's fun

SPEAKER_00: 1:22

especially

SPEAKER_01: 1:22

with having different expertise makes the journey more entertaining along the way

SPEAKER_00: 1:28

yeah One, it's like salt and pepper, yin and yang. One day, it's just going

SPEAKER_01: 1:38

to be there. Just wait on it, y'all. It'll be hard launching an entire different thing.

SPEAKER_00: 1:42

It'll just

SPEAKER_01: 1:43

happen.

SPEAKER_00: 1:45

So Becca, tell us, you are going through a full rebrand.

SPEAKER_01: 1:51

Yeah, I have been since January. This will be my second. rebrand since I've opened my business and my business is almost six years old five years six five or six years old I don't fully remember it's been some time

SPEAKER_00: 2:08

what has inspired this one

SPEAKER_01: 2:12

The rebrand this time was less about the business and more about me having a space. And so for anybody listening that doesn't know who I am, I own a therapy group practice in Utah and then a coaching business for lives and coaching after therapy when you've graduated from therapy. And I own a group practice. So all of that functions in a group dynamic. And at the end of last year, I was feeling really burnt out and couldn't quite place like where the burnout was coming from and then I dove a little bit deeper because as you should as a therapist figure out like where's the burnout is it my job is it my life is it some area that's happening and I realized I felt a lot of responsibility for my thoughts and beliefs and values and the way that I think about mental health to reflect my entire team and so the rebrand this time was much more about okay I think it's time for me as a CEO as a founder as a thought leader to step out and have a platform where I can share and not necessarily feel like it has to represent every person who works for me and so I broke everything down we've got a Becca Post brand now we've got a therapy brand now and we've got an after therapy brand now and honestly those brands haven't really changed other than their several on instagram

SPEAKER_00: 3:43

even their identities are different though

SPEAKER_01: 3:45

their clients are i think like the people that we're working with are different i think my brand as becca is probably more chat gpt calls me cheeky i'm not funny i'm cheeky according to chat gpt and i got that term a little bit better a little bit more sarcastic a little bit more like raw unfiltered honest versus the brands are very like therapy and after therapy are very much geared towards what we're a business and this is what we're representing. This is who we serve. This is what it is. And on mine, I get to talk about how motherhood impacts healing, how having a team and your employees trigger things. And I get to just be more in the mess and I get the other brands express.

SPEAKER_00: 4:29

Yeah. I was thinking that the Becca Post, you, CEO, founder, total biz baddie. You, it's really allowing yourself to be seen and a allowing your identity to be separate from these two businesses that you built

SPEAKER_01: 4:48

yeah and that was what I was looking for like I just think so much of the mental health world and like the CEO side specifically and like the business side is very much profit oriented and very much like logistically focused and not the messy middle of it all and the constant evolution and the pivots and how when you have a kid it changes the way you run your business and the way you show up and there's not a lot of messy middle talk in mental health

SPEAKER_00: 5:22

no

SPEAKER_01: 5:23

and i live constantly in a messy middle

SPEAKER_00: 5:26

and we don't learn again these are things like we don't learn that will happen to us if we do go into private practice like weeks here, private practice. And we're like, great. I get to practice therapy privately on my own, but it's, it is a brand. It's an identity. It is, it is something that you are building and it should, if we're doing the work, if we're doing the investigative pieces, like it should be also evolving as we evolve as people.

SPEAKER_01: 5:58

Yeah. Like we, That's the part I think that people really don't talk about is the evolution of you as the individual means the way that you practice in a therapeutic field and you run your business and you do all those things is going to change significantly. Like the me before having a kid, that's just my most recent really big pivot, is a very different me than me now. Oh, I don't 90% of the time recognize myself. And so I think being able to talk about my belief system about mental health and the issues with it and where that all stems from and but also being able to highlight like hey I have built this successful business and I'm building this other one and there I'm still like a very messy human being

SPEAKER_00: 6:47

yeah and it's a constant evolution because returning to ourselves requires constant evolution and allowing and accepting those parts of us that want to change to change.

SPEAKER_01: 7:02

You mean all our parts?

UNKNOWN: 7:04

Look at that.

SPEAKER_00: 7:05

Look what she did there. On brand.

SPEAKER_01: 7:07

On

SPEAKER_00: 7:08

brand.

SPEAKER_01: 7:08

I'm

SPEAKER_00: 7:09

working on the branding thing. Look, that's what we've been talking about this weekend. She has been educating me on business. I've been supporting her in the marketing areas. And again, it's so nice to have some people who have strengths in different areas because it's like you learn more and you become... It's great to also hear or how other people sometimes like perceive you like people that you trust people that you know also know you like believing in that best intention for the other person so yeah what's a growing pain's been like oof

SPEAKER_01: 7:49

They've been different, I think. In this case, now the growing pains of being seen is a big one for me, especially figuring out the parts that I want to be seen, but the parts that I still want to be kept private. When you market yourself as a personal brand versus a business brand, that is a constant fine-lined balance. I think when I was under a business brand, it was easier for me to really hide a lot of things and not really have to think about what am I going to share what am I not going to share because it was dictated what was going to be shared and now that I have a personal brand I think the biggest growing pain is like how much of myself do I want to be seen and it triggers all those wounds around a being seen because I have a lot of those wounds around being heard around being liked and lovable but also around particularly having always been loved growing up being seen as someone who's really put together. Like I was always the mom of the friend group. I always had my shit together. Like I have always been seen very much as put together and running a business for me has been the least put together. I feel like I've ever been because my business grew before I had ever intended for it to grow. If I'm being like really honest with myself, it just got to the point where I hired my first employee on the therapy side and I was like oh and then six three months later I had another employee and then another employee and then and I was like oh and now I have a team of seven and it's just that was never the intention so it's just been one messy hurdle after the next because I'm always doing everything pretty much by the seat of my pants like googling how do you pay taxes and what are taxes and what are shareholders and what are these things how do you decide listening to podcasts of podcasts what's the explain to your team that they're therapists and not coaches there's so many things that I'm constantly just oh I didn't expect that to be an issue and now it is and now I've figured out how to deal with it whereas a lot of my life before that was just the way I've always been perceived is that there's always been a plan and the internal experience is that there's actually never a plan like at all you learn that coming to visit me where I'm like so I'm a terrible host she's a great host I'm a great host because I'm honest about I have really no plan I'm like do you want to go to the park with my kid do you want to go see this play like oh we have an hour to kill I guess we'll go I fly by the seat of my pants a lot but there's not the perception that most people of my in my life have of me

SPEAKER_00: 10:35

yeah that's not even what you present online so I also I love that you distinguish between like personal brand and like business brand because that is I feel like that's where I am in the sense that when Wellness LLC there is a very clear business identity and I think over the last six seven months I've been toying with a personal brand I think the personal brand has always been there but that fear of being seen that fear of people seeing the messy middle parts of you and recognizing how impactful that actually is for people who are looking for services really shifts things

SPEAKER_01: 11:18

I think it just changes the way people expect you to show up when they work together like I feel like for me that I've always almost been more messy in the way that I practice therapy and I think that created a sense of safety with the fact that I was always constantly getting clients

SPEAKER_02: 11:35

like

SPEAKER_01: 11:37

and a lot of the time I was getting feedback from my clients of I work with you because you don't have it all together very honest about not having it together and I would bring parts of myself in and I think that has made it easier because it's made me realize oh i'm not what a lot of people see but also it's made it harder because that was always one-to-one that was always in this confined space of like you and i having a conversation and not the entire world seeing it or my dad accidentally stumbling across my instagram stories on facebook because i didn't know that they connect to each other and talk to each other so we've actually been watching my stuff the whole time or like even when i started this podcast we were like joking about this because we were talking about bad content and I was like oh I batch everything for social media because I can't spend that much time on it but you're like oh I batch all this stuff for my podcast and I'm like my podcast was filmed the day it was supposed to go out because I don't know what I'm going to talk about or I don't have that spark or whatever it is and so what I just find is that the messy has created connection in my life in so many ways and the therapy dynamic for me when I first started out was what showed me how often I cut out certain pieces of myself in my life with other people because I was like therapy Becca and I was like friend Becca and then I was like partner Becca and now I'm mom Becca and business owner Becca and all these different parts of myself but there was only one place where I was ever like oh this feels like holy me and it was when I was working with clients which was always really interesting

SPEAKER_00: 13:16

yeah and that when we really start to sit and be present with that disconnect that there are versions of ourselves that haven't met one another i don't know about you but that is hard that is hard because you see a version of yourself and like that doesn't happen across the board something isn't existing across the board and then we have to ask ourselves a really hard question. What changes need to be made so that this can exist across the board?

SPEAKER_01: 13:49

Yeah, and that's what's hard with this new era of this brand and bringing in like the Becca Post brand, which still feels really weird to say because I don't think I talk about it, like the part that we keep hidden. But like even you being here this weekend and us talking about all these business things and you being like, you know a lot and you get really excited and you're really confident about it. And I'm like, yeah, I don't talk about it. And there's there's a rooted fear in being seen as a thought leader and as a founder and as a CEO and as someone who should and could probably be coaching other therapists to build businesses effectively. But there's something so vulnerable in being seen as good at the business side of therapy. I was actually thinking about that when we were driving back, we were getting Del Taco because we're in Salt Lake and she had to have her real housewives fix. But I was thinking about how my mom said to you, like oh Becca's really good at the business side and I was like she's never said that to me oh ever in like five years that I have had my business even my undergrad is in business psychology like I worked in corporate for that's how I met my husband there were times where I was like and so when she said that to you this morning and I was like how do you even know there was a part of me that was like when I talk about work things I always go to my dad because my dad was in business for his whole career right so he managed to be he was over people he was like a c representative at one point on a team and so i go to him i'm like if i have to fire this person what do i do or like how do you think about this can you review this legal document that my lawyer gave me but i'm not sure it makes sense right i go to him so like when she said that i was like how do you know it exudes out of you telling you and i know that but it was interesting it was like a slap where i was like i thought that was hidden like i thought i was doing a really good job of hiding that and then i'm like oh i guess i'm not doing such a good job but then what does that yep then we come back to that

SPEAKER_00: 15:50

and then that's the other onion too

SPEAKER_01: 15:52

because the parts can only stay apart and fall

SPEAKER_00: 15:55

yeah

SPEAKER_01: 15:56

and then they're just all out on the table

SPEAKER_00: 15:57

and you're like how do i mold you into me and then it doesn't want to be molded then it's like actually there's a completely different mold that you haven't thought of that you haven't seen yourself in and now That's the version that I want you to step into.

SPEAKER_01: 16:13

Which is like the 12th person who said that to me in the live first quarter of 2025. Like everyone I've worked with and everyone I've met in the last couple of months has been like, why are you not doing leadership things? Why are you not doing this? And I'm like, I don't have a good answer other than I'm afraid. But then again, that's also the piece I think with business owning that we don't talk about is like how often you're afraid. I can't tell you how often I'm like, what if I get fired today? My husband looks at me and he'll be like, you're in charge, right? That's a little kid part. That's, oh, what if everybody abandons me? What if my whole team quits suddenly? What if they're unhappy? What if they hate me? Like, then I'm like, oh, then I don't have the foundation to grow all these other things. And I'm not the expert in my field. I'm not doing all these things. Plus, I feel like in order to be an expert in business, you're supposed to have an MBA. And I for sure do not. I have an MBA from Google.

SPEAKER_00: 17:09

I think that's sufficient.

SPEAKER_01: 17:13

But it is. It's so much of building a personal brand is navigating the messy middle of what you present and what is life.

SPEAKER_00: 17:21

But it's, and even being a business owner, part of the, and I feel like you can resonate with this piece, is it's okay to change. Because as children, change was not, it was either scary or it either meant someone was unsafe or it meant that something was falling apart.

UNKNOWN: 17:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 17:43

The beauty that we don't always highlight with owning a business is that at any point, at any time, it changes.

SPEAKER_01: 17:52

And that is like the biggest trigger, I think, especially in the therapy industry that's changing so rapidly right now. There's something in the coaching industry that has even, it's just stayed consistent. Like the way that you have to market and the way that you sell have changed and the way that you build referrals have changed, but not to the extent dream that the therapy world has changed like therapy you went to school and you were like you'll never have to market yourself you'll just get clients off psychology today no social media no any of these things no dual relationships none of these things and then COVID happens and suddenly we're all like oh we're parallel processing we have to figure out how to use telehealth which I was specifically trained you'll never use you will never be allowed to use it you have to figure out how to bill insurance differently and do all these things

SPEAKER_00: 18:38

and you gotta learn to dance on TikTok

SPEAKER_01: 18:39

oh yeah and apparently you have to learn to dance on TikTok which I refuse to do So we're going with the meme route. But I think the therapy industry is changing so rapidly and we're not at all teaching people how to tolerate that change in a field that basically told you we're going to do one thing for the rest of your life. And now that actually not happening. Yeah. Because no one said you're going to go to therapy school and also have to learn how to become a content creator.

SPEAKER_00: 19:08

I certainly did not start grad school thinking marketing was going to be a niche area of mine, but the most exciting and the scariest part this journey has been is at any time i get to change and i get to grow with it and that's why it's there and the caveat too of at any point in time i get to stop because i also grew up thinking i always have to push myself i have to keep going i have to achieve this specific thing and so being able to tell myself no i get to stop at any point i know it gives it gives little me permission to feel seen in that space that she always lives in and it gives me like but me is i'm going to the moon so i

SPEAKER_01: 20:03

think the change piece is the hardest because once you have the business foundation and people find you and they understand what you do when you evolve past it you have to tolerate losing the followers losing the clients moving out of that space like for potentially if you have a team like the team changing the dynamics changing like there are so many things that we were taught were bad in work environments if there's constant change in a work environment means there's something wrong like I was very much taught that growing up and now I'm learning that actually that's just the way I run my business because so much of it is in reaction to a what's missing or be what have I lost or forgotten about or didn't consider or haven't taken into account and we have to really tolerate constant change. And the loss along the way is what's really hard.

SPEAKER_00: 21:01

I don't know why I'm crying right now, but I don't

SPEAKER_01: 21:06

know what's happening. Whoops. Because you're grieving no longer just being jazzed with trauma there, but it's moving into your girly pop TikTok therapy vibe.

SPEAKER_00: 21:16

We've been able to explore a lot this weekend, folks, so we've just really... We learn a lot about ourselves and that's the beauty of conversation and connection and learning and growing.

SPEAKER_01: 21:30

Yeah, but it's also the thing that no one talks about. I've worked with a lot of business coaches at this point and they all have their story, right? That's I came from doing this and then I evolved to this and then I evolved to X and Y and Z and now I'm here making a million dollars. It always somehow comes back to making a million dollars. I don't know. But the reason I'm saying that is because they use the story to connect with the buyer. And therapy has made it so we can't do that to connect with the buyer. Like we cannot sit and be emotional or raw or honest or in the messy middle of our own lives. Yeah. And that does the business side of therapy a disservice.

SPEAKER_00: 22:14

Yeah. And it stagnates therapy too like we see people saying oh I want to use chat GPT for my therapist that's a whole nother podcast I want to start using better help and I'm like oh Yeah, you can. It's because we as a field, the A, the infighting, which is a complete... That'll be on our other podcast. That'll be on the other one. Infighting's gotta stop. But we do not really sit down and look at the way that therapy has to change. It's not optional. No. We're wondering why people are going to coaching and going to people who are meeting them exactly where they are. freud is gone freud the concept of freud is gone carl rogers gone like we're entering a new era in the way that people are consuming mental health information a therefore their needs for mental health support are changing and we can either meet them where they are or force them to fit into the box that we had to fit ourselves into one's going to work better than the other

SPEAKER_01: 23:29

and the box is the hardest part that is for me I actually literally just did the whole podcast episode of this talking about my holistic healing journey and being like I couldn't talk about this like I was being told in therapy to do these things but I didn't there was shame for me bringing it to my clients like my therapist will go get an astrology reading and then I'm exploring human design over here but then I go to an ethics training and they're like never bring astrology or your human design into your clinical practice that's the thing that doppel could write you up for and you're just like so now I can secretly now I'm underground doing these things Because I don't want to fit in the box. I get out of the box, have to get brave, build a personal brand where I talk about why that's wrong and why that's bad. And that's where I was feeling stuck. We circle back to why Becca, the business owner and founder and thought leader, had to show up in the space was because I was like, I can't keep... rewounding my inner child by saying what you believe is wrong, I can't keep doing it anymore. Or I'm just going to keep living everyone else's life.

SPEAKER_00: 24:37

And while you're doing it underground, you're seeing that it's working. Oh, yeah. You're seeing that. You're seeing the results. And so you also don't want to get to a place where you're gaslighting yourself. And you're like, oh, so-and-so said this doesn't work, and it's not in the research, so I'm going to keep tossing it to the side and... compartmentalize it because that is harmful

SPEAKER_01: 25:00

isn't that the same thing with social media in this field yeah we were told no but the results on the business end are that it works we're being told it's bad for the therapeutic relationship but what you're not being told is it's how your business is going to function yeah and those are two different things that's the problem with the lack of business knowledge therapies that like coaches sometimes when they're good and well-trained are actually good at integrating the business side into the relationship. Therapists don't do that yet.

SPEAKER_00: 25:31

We're taught a couple interventions. You can't even collect payment in one of the states

SPEAKER_01: 25:37

you're getting licensed in.

SPEAKER_00: 25:38

Theoretical orientations.

SPEAKER_01: 25:42

Can't collect money. Business, money. Livable wage. Money. Resources to be a good therapist. Money. Oh, can't collect money because I'm in licensure. And that's against the rules. Right there is the problem. Oh, you're being trained as a therapist. Don't collect money from your clients.

SPEAKER_00: 26:06

True. The foundation is broken right there. But that starts in practicum, too. You're expected to work 3,000 hours. And so by the time we get to adults, we're thinking, like... Oh, this is a volunteer program.

UNKNOWN: 26:21

This is a volunteer program.

SPEAKER_01: 26:23

My job is volunteer. Because, yeah, it's starting at the roots. Like, not that interns need to be paid, but they don't. That's an issue probably for another podcast episode, but they need to be paid a wage, but also like, you're also training them out of the good of your heart because we're not being paid to take them. Like, I have an intern now. We pay her. Like, I pay her a stipend because that feels good for me and it's somewhat livable. Like, she can pay rent on it but I'm not the school's not paying me to teach her we're doing it out of the goodness of our hearts so that has to be an equal exchange of energy but when you're not teaching your practicum or intern students how to collect payment at the end of session you're setting them up to not know how to collect payment when they go into their own private practice to make money and then they burn out and then it becomes a cycle and then they go into coaching and then they're like I have to figure out how to make more money and it's at the root we should have just taught you that like how do you have conversations about money with your

SPEAKER_00: 27:21

clients? How do you have conversations? And dispel the idea that you don't go into this field to make money, that you're not going to make money in this field. We already start off with such negative messages about money, our relationships to money. And so even unpacking that box, and then that's where therapists feel like they have to branch out or expand or do a million other things that don't really feel aligned for them because they didn't learn how to make money in therapy.

SPEAKER_01: 27:55

Or how to set their rates or how to do things to make it accessible and livable.

SPEAKER_00: 28:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 28:01

But also it goes, that's the same thing with marketing. Like again, we're talking about the idea that like, oh, let's, instead of saying I'm going to secretly have this TikTok over here that my clients may or may not find, but I'm going to shove it in my paperwork that says I may or may not be on social media. Let's just talk about it from the beginning. Yeah. Okay. I have an Instagram account for my business. When you see it, I technically can't interact with you on it. We just get rid of it all up front.

SPEAKER_00: 28:31

Use common sense, folks. Use common sense. HIPAA is still a thing. Our ethics are still very much at the forefront.

SPEAKER_01: 28:42

But they don't always align with business practices. And that's where we're hitting the burnout and the problems. And that's what I'm trying to challenge in the way that I run my businesses and what I'm doing. And

SPEAKER_00: 28:56

rather than saying, okay, these two things don't seem to meet, don't do it at all, let's explore how we can meet these two things in the middle. What do these two things integrated look like? And that... Again, as therapists, we should be constantly evolving. We should constantly be curious about where we are in our business as therapists. Even if you don't have a private practice or your own business, you should not be practicing therapy the same way that you did when you got out of grad school.

SPEAKER_01: 29:35

that's like a same thing for life yeah even your like marriage isn't gonna look the same way it did when you first got married 10 years in it's like you are here as a human being to evolve and depending on what you believe like your soul has a purpose and it's here to find the purpose and to reignite and connect to that purpose but that involves evolution

SPEAKER_00: 30:01

Mic drop. Thank you so much for joining me today. A question that I am asking all of my guests this season is, what is your commitment to yourself for 2025?

SPEAKER_01: 30:12

Stick with the podcast for the whole year. God, it's so hard. It's such a labor of love. But that's my commitment to myself is I'm going to make it through 2025 with the podcast.

SPEAKER_00: 30:28

I believe in you. And I'm

SPEAKER_01: 30:28

going to let it evolve because it's already evolving. It's already done a couple of evolutions. I'm just going to let it evolve. Not going to try to control it. Ride the wave.

SPEAKER_00: 30:37

We're here for the

SPEAKER_01: 30:37

journey.

SPEAKER_00: 30:38

Thanks so much.

SPEAKER_01: 30:39

Thank you.