TTE 60: It Found Me: Janeen Herskovitz’s Journey to Helping Families Living with Autism
As a parent of a child with autism, Janeen found there was a lot of help for her son, but not as much help for her and for her husband. She had a counselor who was wonderful, but could not really understand her perspective.
From both this recognition & her experience of raising a child on the spectrum, Janeen was afforded the unique perspective and inspiration to help families worldwide adjust to the unique needs of living with autism.
Links & Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- How to Win Friends & Influence People
- GoodTherapy.org
- Practice of the Practice
- ZynnyMe’s Webinars
- SimplePractice
- VSee
- Janeen’s Private Practice Website – Puzzle Peace Counseling
- Janeen’s Podcast Website – The Autism Blueprint Podcast
Thanks to Janeen for joining me this week. Until next time!
Transcript
Click here to read the TranscriptJaneen: I am.
Perry: Fantastic Janeen. Thank you for being on, I am so excited to be getting into this interview here something we’ve been trying to get scheduled here, I think a few months now and so I’m so excited to have you on the show and yeah, let me tell our audience a little bit more about you here before we get started.
Janeen: Okay great.
Perry: Janeen is a licensed mental health counselor in the state of Florida and the owner of puzzle piece counselling LLC which specializes in helping autism families. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in special education from Rowan University in New Jersey, and her my Masters of Arts in Mental Health Counseling from Webster University in 2010. She is trained as an EMDR Trauma Therapist and writes as topic expert contributor on autism spectrum on at goodtherapy.org. She’s been married to her husband Joe since 1995 and together they have two teenage children. Her son Benjamin was diagnosed with autism in 2001 and is the inspiration for her work. Janeen’s podcast the autism blueprint is published weekly and covers a variety of topic surrounding autism in the home. Janeen, gave a little overview of you there but why don’t you take a minute fill in the gaps from the intro and tell us a little bit more about you personally and about your practice.
Janeen: Sure, well my practice is in Ponte Vedra, Florida and I work primarily with families living with autism so I work with people on the spectrum themselves as well as the parents and the siblings. I also do some trauma therapy as well which I find dove tails nightly into this population because there is a lot of trauma in our autism families.
Perry: Did you say you work with people of the spectrum, their siblings and then the parents as well?
Janeen: Yes, that’s correct.
Perry: So Janeen, one thing I found really fascinating is exploring the ‘why’ with therapist. Did you always plan to focus on this or was it more like you said in your intro, the inspiration from your son Benjamin that you really got you focusing on this specific niche and this specific topic.
Janeen: You know, I often say that it found me. I always interested in counseling but the specialization really chose me because of raising a child on the spectrum so as a child I was always interested in psychology and I remember when I was about fifteen probably early teen year, my dad gave me Dale Carnegie book, How to win friends and influence people which is an odd book to give your teenage daughter.
Perry: Yeah, seriously.
Janeen: But it really resonated with me , I don’t know, I think maybe he wanted me to learn how to not be so self-centered and I just ate it up so that was introduction to self-help so it speak and then anything I could get my hands on….
Perry: Sorry about that everybody we lost some sound there and some internet connections but Janeen was telling us about how, how she was given the book ‘How to win friends and influence people’ as a teenager.
Janeen: Yeah, so when I got that book I just was all about the self -help genre of reading and I just got everything that I could get hands on and then I ended up becoming a special education teacher in my undergrad because I was interested in that as well and then had my own child with a disability and it ended just being too stressful for me to work so I stopped working for a few years , just focused and my son and then slowly went back to grad school and became a counselor.
Perry: When did you become a counselor, how long ago was that now?
Janeen: So I became a counselor and 2010 was when I finished grad school and it took a really long time to finish cause I took one class at a time over the course of about five or six years so by the time I finished, I was doing my internship with a doctor who specializes in autism, Dr. Julie Buckley, she’s her Ponte Vedra and I started working along her and it just worked out really nicely that I could provide a service for her patients that she needed. I have own practice, it’s in her building. We’re right next door to each other and we also work alongside each other to co-treat patients.
Perry: Did you specifically choose to do your internship with this doctor because of that, because you knew that was the direction you wanted to take your private practice.
Janeen: I did, yes, because as a parent of a child with autism, I found that there was a lot of help for him but not so much help for me and my husband and it was really a tough journey because I needed my own counselling and I had a counselor who was wonderful but she didn’t completely understand my experience which was fine but I just kept thinking, “Gosh, if I could provide a service for parents and they know that I’m living the life that they are living and really get,” I thought that would be pretty valuable and so far it has been.
Perry: That’s a gem right there Janeen in two areas, one, you noticed a -that’s how great businesses get started, you noticed a personal need of yours and your husband that you were not able to find and not able to get met by the current marketplace so you knew, like hey, this is a need here and I gonna go open and focus my private practice on fulfilling this need.
Janeen: Yes, oh and so when I was in graduate school, I was for a local foundation called the heal foundation and their an autism focus foundation and I was running a support group for them while I was doing a class of group so I was kind of practicing on the group and then also creating the group that I wanted to see so it was a group for autism mom and I absolutely fell in love with group work so as a result I created a basic curriculum for autism and I call it “extra special moms” and its evolve over the years but this my ninth year running it.
Perry: Tell us about it.
Janeen: Well, it focuses on the needs of the autism moms as people as women and as mothers and we focus a lot on self-care, it’s the kids that bring us together and the needs of the bring us together but I find that as a mother in particular which is the experience that I can really speak to that they tend to lose a piece of themselves if not most of themselves and just investing themselves into the child which you need to do but I had done it to the detriment of my own mental health and my own family so I wanted help others kind of navigate that learn from my mistakes.
Perry: And so you’ve been running this for nine years now?
Janeen: Yes nine years.
Perry: That’s great.
Janeen: And consistently, I was doing it several times a year, now I do it on average twice a year and have collected information after each group to figure out how long it should be in duration and time and how many people should be involved and so now words gotten out and I have group right now that started 2 weeks ago about five women and I just love it, it the favorite part of my job.
Perry: That’s fantastic, I love hearing that. Janeen, I have a question for you. Did you have any fears on opening a private practice right of the bat with a clear niche and a clear specialty that you wanted to focus on? Very often we see the transition of opening up a practice working with the general population and sort of figuring out your niche and the importance of a niche from there. It’s much more unique to see the opposite happen right off the bat with a specialty and a niche. Did you have any fears about that?
Janeen: I think I had fears about it just in general being new to the field of private practice, I think I didn’t know- what I didn’t know was great because I didn’t realize that most people don’t do it that way. I kinda was already was connected with doctor who she and I became friends very quickly because she is my son’s doctor and my son was going through a really difficult time during puberty and we were in here office maybe once a week and so she and I just got to know each other really well and started talking about the needs of moms in general and she taught me a lot about my own self-care journey so it wasn’t like, “Oh, I want to be a counselor and here’s what I want to specialize in,” it was a right off the bat, I want to help autism moms, how can I do that most effectively and so I saw counseling as the vehicle to do that. There was some fear involved but I was very lucky that I had this connection with the doctor because she was able to help me get on my feet with the private practice and then I just did tons of research, I mean I read everything I could on private practice, I listened to Joe Sanok’s podcast practice of the practice. I think I was like one of his first listeners, he calls me his like super-fan cause I liked stalked him for a while and now we’re friends but I just soaked everything that I could learn about it. It was scary and honestly, I wouldn’t been able to do it if I didn’t have my husband’s support and he works full time, he’s a high school history teacher so for awhile, I wasn’t bringing in any income to build the business.
Perry: Right
Janeen: And so thanks to his support, I was able to do it.
Perry: So Dr.Julie Buckley, you have an office in the same building as she in correct?
Janeen: Yes.
Perry: And right off the bat, was she, I would imagine was probably the primary source of your referrals at that time?
Janeen: Yes, exactly, she was the primary and then I got a website up and running, you had to learn alot about SEO and things like that but she was the primary source, yes.
Perry: And what does your marketing endeavors look like today?
Janeen: Today, I have two websites so I have one for my private practice and I have one for my podcast autism blueprint which is with Brighter Vision and I absolutely love it. I built my own website for my practice and while it was kind of fun, it’s not my thing so I learn really quickly like okay, just because I can do something doesn’t mean I should do it and I really do need to leave some of this to the professionals so the idea of creating another website for my podcast was daunting but I would say that marketing right now throughout the podcast and through word-of-mouth, I mean I’ve been in practice now for six years , this is my sixth year and I find that most of my referrals come either from Dr.Buckley or from other patients who have gone on to get better or maybe even still see me and say, “hey, you need to go and see Janeen” and they usually do.
Perry: That’s great. What does the podcast look like in terms of your marketing and why did you decide to start a podcast in the first place?
Janeen: I think the main reason is cause it look like alot of fun…
Perry: It is right.
Janeen: Yeah, it’s fun. I like to hear myself talk so that’s a plus and you know, my background is in theater and voice so I started out as a music major as a voice major and then just that didn’t end up happening but I thought well, I could use some of the skills that I’ve learned in that way to provide something to the autism community that’s free and as a bonus, you know, get a little bit more SEO and maybe people coming my way and I just, the part I love about that I didn’t expect and it’s only been up and running for a month but the part I love about it is meeting other professionals that are either are doing similar things or doing things that kind of dove-tail into what I’m doing, you know people that specialize maybe in motherhood or self-care so those are people that I’m going to be interviewing.
Perry: And these interviewees are they local in Ponte Vedra area or are you interviewing people across the nation.
Janeen: I’m doing both.
Perry: Okay.
Janeen: So the first couple-most of the episodes are me presenting that basically I’ve gotten as a result of doing the mom’s group and thinking you know what, if these moms have benefited from this material then other people will too and I started up my email list a year before the actual podcast went so I was able to kind of pull people and was it would be interested in hearing about.
Perry: That’s great and so as you’re building that email list you’re getting a sense of what people want to listen to? What kind of episodes they want and so you’re able to craft a podcast that’s really going to meet their needs?
Janeen: Yes because I have so much in my nineteen years of raising a child with autism. I mean I have a lot of experience in going through- I hate to say it but some of the most awful stuff , the puberty, you know, getting beat up by your kid when he’s having a meltdown and things that go into having to keep your marriage together, the sibling issues so I found that there was information out there on educating you child out there with autism; there’s information on different therapies for them but I wanted to focus on specifically the home and the relationships within the home and how the home is set up because our was completely up-ended and we had make adaptation to our home to keep our son safe so that was the main focus.
Perry: And that’s information that parents across the world need to be hearing and need to have access to which you’re going to be able to provide that to them through the podcast and provide such immense value to the world as a whole and that’s so tremendous.
Janeen: Yeah, I hope so and I always stress the point that I know what it’s like to live with my kid and I have experience talking to other parents about kids of varying severity in the autism spectrum world but I really just know about my experience mostly and I’ll share what I know and then people can take from that what they need to.
Perry: Janeen, do you have an plans to add on additional revenue streams to help monetize and the work you’re doing, is that in the works as well or are you right now just sort of focus on building a great podcast and building a great audience?
Janeen: I would say I’m doing both so my main focus is building the podcast , building an audience and making it as good it can be but I do want to have some multiple income revenue and that’s the next frontier for me that I don’t know that much about but I do want to do that and I’m committed to- I never recommend anything to clients that I haven’t trend myself and that I don’t believe in wholeheartedly so I do have either different products that I might mention on the podcast that I just absolutely love or have made a big difference in my life or in my son’s life and I might mention and put links on the show notes but I think that’s kind of where that might start.
Perry: I think it’s a great idea and I also think that you know- be sure Mercedes Samudio is doing with shameproofparenting.com. She’s done a really great job at building-she used to be the parenting skill by creating additional revenue streams through her website and through here audience which she…….
Janeen: Okay cool.
Perry: Yeah, definitely take a look at her and we’ll have links to Mercedes’s website in the show notes and of course, your podcast and all the great resources we’ve mentioned so far here.
Janeen: Awesome and along the same lines Perry, one of the things that just recently happen this week, I write for goodtherapy.org and I submitted a proposal to be CEU for them and that is a new frontier for them as well and they just accepted my proposal and I think the end of July, I’ll be presenting treating families, basically treating families that have autism and how to do that more effectively, just specifically for professionals.
Perry: That’s fantastic.
Janeen: Yeah, so that’s kind of another area that I’m working on which would be maybe consulting with other professionals on how to do that more effectively.
Perry: Absolutely, well Janeen, it sounds like you’re really doing a great job at continuing to keep your name out here and building an audience up across the world and I love chatting with therapists about how they built their practice and how they built such a thriving business because there’s so much different ways to do it and I’d love hear from you on what you feel like would have been the one thing you wished would have learnt in school about starting your own business that grad school just never taught you?
Janeen: Oh, that’s a great question, I wished that we just a basic business course. It seems in grad school that they discourage you from going into private practice because it doesn’t make you any money and it’s not a good way to start and these are all the things that I was told by professors and I sat there thinking, I mean I have an audience an niche audience waiting for me to help them so I kind of ignored them and I was like whatever, but I jumped into it really not knowing anything about running a business but I kept super simple , I’ve never really gone into any significant debt to do it and like I said before the doctor that I’m hooked up with was a really big part of me being able to do that but a business course would have been great.
Perry: Oh yeah, just a business 101. I hear that all the time on the podcast about how grad school people from going into private practice and I think that’s such a disservice to the community. You know small businesses, small private practices are what create group practices.
Janeen: Yes.
Perry: There won’t be group practices if you don’t start off as a small individual private practice.
Janeen: Right, right
Perry: Where’s there gonna be work?
Janeen: Yes, exactly
Perry: I mean, obviously there’s government and there’s non-profits and there are other ways to get jobs but you know group practices start from small individual practices.
Janeen: Yes, yes and I don’t take insurance in mine. I thought that I would when I first graduated and then the more research that I did into private practice, I just chose not to because it didn’t make sense for me time-wise. I’m not a very good bookkeeper so I knew what my strengths were and I knew that wasn’t gonna be one of them so in listening to Joe Sanok podcast, that really convinced me that hey, I’ll give this a go with private pay and see how that goes and its going great.
Perry: What were some of the things that some obstacles that you encountered in starting off with just doing private pay and not taking insurance?
Janeen: I would say the biggest obstacle was myself and my own beliefs because as a brand new counselor, you think, “Gosh, I don’t what I’m doing and you feel like you’re faking till you make it.”
Perry: Aren’t we all, right?
Janeen: You know, I thought, “Oh gosh, do I really know what I am doing? so it took me a little while to kind of take those training wheels of and be like, “Okay, yeah, you know what, I can help people, I can do this and this is a service that people need and value and in valuing myself and being able to say I’m worth this , not only am I worth this but I also can’t help everybody so I had this idea in the beginning that , “Oh, I’m gonna help the world, I’m gonna help all these autism moms and there are some people who aren’t going to be able to either afford my services or won’t take the time to come to counseling and so that was kind of another reason why I started the podcast and you know blogging and things like that cause I want to be able to provide content to people that can’t come in.
Perry: I think that’s such a really important thing to recognize as supposed to you can offer a sliding scale some people do but you can also provide value for free through other means, like you said, like your podcast, like your blogging and that can be very helpful to people as well while still allowing you to run a business and to make a living.
Janeen: When I ran the numbers, I thought okay, I can take sliding which I did in the beginning, first couple of years , I did a sliding scale, got my feet wet and then realized you know if I’m charging full price and seeing less clients but at higher rate , I have more time to put into this free stuff so it kind of just all even out and now I’m at the point where I don’t have a problem tell people what my rates are and their comparable to what everybody else in my area is charging anyhow so I feel good about it.
Perry: Would you mind sharing what your rates currently and what your journey to that look like?
Janeen: Sure. My individual sessions are 125$ for 50 minutes and 145$ for families and couples and that took me awhile with some kind of playing around to figure out do I want to charge more? When there’s more people in the room and when I realize the energy level that it took and the time and the expertise that it took, I thought yeah, I do. I want to charge a little bit more so that’s worked out well and I think I started when I first started somewhere around 40$-45$ a session.
Perry: Oh my gosh.
Janeen: Well, that’s was six years ago but I was thinking in the beginning okay well if I don’t take insurance I need to charge what an average copay would be and that was just my one mind blocking me in that respect, once I got licensed cause in the very beginning when I wasn’t licensed, I was still an intern, I felt like I couldn’t charge very much because I wasn’t quote on quote licensed and people couldn’t submit to their own insurance and get their own money back so once I was licensed, I did a few webinars with the Zynnyme girls, Kelly and Miranda. They’re amazing.
Perry: Yes they are.
Janeen: They totally change- I mean their free stuff is worth so much and they changed my mindset completely about money and my worth.
Perry: And we’ll have their webinars. They have 12 or 15 pre-recorded that you can listen to for free and we’ll have links to that as well as all the other great resources we mentioned in this week’s show notes at brightervision.com/session60. Alright Janeen, now we’re going to move into the final part of our interview and I just love this part we call it brighter insights and it really allows us to distilled down your experience and your advice into little sound bites and quick answers that therapists can use to inspire, motivate and excite them into growing their practice. Are you ready?
Janeen: I’m ready.
Perry: What or who inspired you to become a mental health professional?
Janeen: My son Benjamin.
Perry: What do you do to clear your head and get a fresh start in your day?
Janeen: Coffee and a shower. Very simple
Perry: I’ve gotten into that habit. I love pouring myself a cup of coffee and hopping in the shower and getting out and so I have a hot cup of coffee right there waiting for me, it’s perfect.
Janeen: Yes and that’s really it nothing fancy.
Perry: Yep and I drink my coffee black so it’s still hot but my wife, I told her about this little trick of you know, the coffee, the shower, getting out when you have it so now, as soon as I hear her getting out the shower no matter what I’m doing, I have to drop everything, run pour a cup of coffee and deliver it to her and try to get it as she’s getting out of the shower.
Janeen: That’s so sweet.
Perry: But so yeah, I mean coffee and a shower it makes my day.
Janeen: Yeah, absolutely.
Perry: What are some tools you’ve used to leverage the power of technology in your private practice so that technology is no longer a hurdle but instead an asset for you?
Janeen: An Electronic Health record which I started 2 years ago and it’s been and it’s been a god send.
Perry: Which one do you use?
Janeen: I use simple practice and I like it alot. It’s great , it does everything that I need it to do so that and also I do some online counseling so VCEE is a free online platform that similar to Skype but it HIPPA complaint and those are the two main things that have made a huge difference in my practice.
Perry: Fantastic. What’s a quote you’ve hold near and dear, something that’s help formulate your perspective on life something that has inspired or motivated you?
Janeen: Never never never give up and I think that it’s attributed to Winston Churchill but that’s my favorite.
Perry: Never never never give up.
Janeen: Yep, three ‘nevers’.
Perry: That sounds like a very tortillion kind of quote.
Janeen: I like it. It’s straight to the point and it’s literally what I’ve based my life on, I’m never give up kind of gal.
Perry: If you recommend one book to our audience, what would that book be?
Janeen: You know that there’s so many. That’s a really hard one but I think that my very favorite is just a great foundational book is The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. I think that’s how you say his name so yeah, the four agreements is one of my favorites.
Perry: I’ve never heard that one before, I have to look it up.
Janeen: Yeah, love it.
Perry: Alright Janeen, last question. If you move to a new city tomorrow, you don’t know anybody there and all that you had with you was your computer and 100$ dollars to start a new private practice. What is it that you would do on your very first day?
Janeen: I would set up a cheap website or a free website since I do know how to do it. It’ll probably take me a really long time but I know how and I would get on social media and use everything free that’s there and I would probably also want to go and just fine any autism professionals that are in the area and meet up with them and introduce myself and just try to make connections.
Perry: Wonderful Janeen, any parting advice for our listeners?
Janeen: I think because most of your listeners are therapist, I just think it’s so important for you guys to so your own work. I think that one of the biggest things in my life that’s made a difference in my practice and in life in general is doing my own counseling and my own work and not to be afraid to do that because it’s priceless.
Perry: Janeen, where can our listeners find you to connect and learn more about you.
Janeen: You can go to either puzzlepeacecounseling.com or autismblueprint.com.
Perry: Fantastic Janeen, thank you so much for being here today. We’ll have links to all the great resources as well as Janeen’s two websites in this week show notes at brightervision.com/session60. Janeen, I know I speak for our entire audience here when I say that we really appreciate you, your expertise and the great advice you’ve provided Thank you so much for being here.
Janeen: Thank you for having me, it’s been a pleasure.
Perry: And to our audience, thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have question for us email it to us at [email protected] and of course, if you’re interested in launching a website, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. Brighter Vision is the worldwide leader in website design for therapists. For less than 2$ dollars a day, we’ll build you a website that as unique as your practice, provide you with unlimited tech support and complementary SEO so people can actually find you online. To learn more head on over to brightervision.com and drop us a line through one of our contact forms. That does it for today, even with me a massive head cold here, I don’t know how much it came across but I’m having a difficulty speaking and thinking simultaneously but thank you for being here today everybody and we’ll see you next week.