Episode 92: Your Credentials Do Not Define You with Hallie Bulkin, MA, CCC-SLP, COM®

Quick disclaimer. All information, content and material of this podcast are the opinions of the speakers and is for the informational purpose only and not intended to serve as a substitute for the consultation, diagnosis and or medical treatment of a qualified healthcare provider. Hi, and welcome to episode 92 of the Untethered Podcast. Today it's me, your host, Hallie Balkan, flying solo. And before we hop in, I just want to remind everybody that we currently have applications open for our business Mastermind. So if you're somebody who has a private practice and you're looking to grow by six or seven figures this year, email supporteedthepedes.com so that you can get an application if you're interested in applying to the Mastermind. Let's go. Hello, friends. Hallie Balkan here. And you got me. Today it's going to be a short episode because I just want to bring you a really important message as we all hit reset with the new year. And this is something that just, it comes up so often in conversation, and it came up a ton of times last week. And so I feel like it's really important that I share this with. I'm feeling called to share this with everybody, not just the people who have direct message me or talk to me on social media, because I really feel that this is something that you guys need to hear. And the bottom line is your credentials do not define you. Okay? Period. End of story. We can end the episode here. We won't. Let me chat with you for a few minutes. Here's the thing. We've all been sold the American dream, right? Work hard, study hard, get good grades, go to college, get a degree, you know, get a master's, get a PhD, get whatever you're going to get. And hey, at the end of that yellow brick road, you're going to have this beautiful life ahead of you. You're going to make money, lots of success, prosperity, like all the things. How many of you have done that and now have nothing to show for it aside from letters after your name? And do those letters define you, or are they just your profession? And does your profession define you? Is that the only thing about you? Start to ask yourself these questions and sit with it for a minute. You know, why are people with master's degree, master degrees broke working harder than people without college degrees who are making millions? Like, let that sit with you for a minute. Why are there people that work really hard around the clock, juggling three jobs, let's minimum wage. I mean, working hard. I mean, I think we can clearly all agree that working hard does not equal more money. Okay? That's why my mantra for this year is do less better. Because I am also, you know, yes, maybe I make money, but I also do way too much. And I have totally crushed my adrenals. I, like, my adrenals are burnt out. And so I took the end of the year to hit reset and really focus on me and just, you know, put certain protocols in place for myself to help myself learn, like, what feels aligned with what I'm here for, what feels aligned with what I'm doing. What should I say yes to and what should I say no to, right? Because I can't. I can no longer over commit. It's not fair to me. It's not fair to my family. It's not fair to you all. It's not fair to the people, the amazing clinicians in my programs. How can I show up and be my best self if my adrenals are shot? I can't. I'm working from a place of exhaustion, and I'm constantly working around the clock, and I'm not getting enough sleep. And there is just no more of that. So here is what I, you know, here is what I have realized over my time. Have I gotten other letters after my name? Did I think it was important at the time? I sure did. What have I learned? It sure wasn't important. It is not what defines me. In fact, I would be glad to give them up. How about that? Bet you didn't expect me to say that. You know, I have them. I'll hold on to them for now. But it's like Alphabet soup, and nobody knows what they mean unless someone else has the same certification or has taken the same courses I've taken. So, you know, it's comical to me that we stress so much over getting these additional certifications. Like, take the course, get the knowledge. Take that knowledge and apply it to your patient care. But does taking a test define you as a clinician? No. It's like an obstacle. You have to get to. To get these additional letters after your name. And it can just. It's silly if you're. If you're. If you. We're being honest here. And that's why when people have asked me if feed the peas, if my course leads to a certification, the answer right now is no. Will that change in the future? I don't know. But again, like right now, this is my thought process. Process on it. Those letters don't define you. You can say your feed the peas trained. Okay? You can tell people you took that course. You were trained. It has helped people get jobs. So that's awesome. They didn't need a certification. They just needed proof. They took the course. Hey, that's pretty cool. I mean, I'm. I'm like really flattered that people. I think I've had two students recently tell me they got hired over others because they had taken the feed the peds course. They got hired as a feeding therapist. Amazing. They didn't have an additional certification. They took a 40.5 hour course. Now that's a hefty course. It's a grad school level course. But they gained the knowledge, they learned how to apply it in the course. They went out and started doing that. Okay, so do you see what I'm talking about here? Right? This all boils down to like, who decides your worth? That answer is you. You decide your worth. Not society, not the letters after your name, not your profession. Okay? And this all ties back to self worth and who you're being. And I've talked about this in past episodes. You can go look at the be do have episode that I did. I did a self worth episode. Go check those out. Those are somewhere in like the 70s if you're looking for them. And I know I've talked about this before, but it just keeps coming up, so I just feel the need to address it. And this time I'm addressing it slightly with a slightly different angle. Those letters do not define you, okay? Your credentials, after your name, do not define who you are as a human. Period. End of story. You define you. You get to decide who you are. You decide your self worth. That's all subconscious and that's all eternal. It's not external. Letters are external. Degrees are external. You and your mind and your body, that's all internal stuff that you have control over. You can choose to love yourself. Do you love yourself? Maybe that's a question you need to be asking yourself. Maybe that's something to focus on this, you know, in this new. This new year, as everybody's kind of shifting and figuring out where to put their energy, you know, so do that. Take this as an activity. Go look in the mirror. Get real with yourself. This is. This is hard for people, okay, who've never done this before. Do you love the person that you're looking at in the mirror? Do you trust that person? Do you think that person is worthy? You know, and ask yourself, am I worthy? Do I feel that I am worthy? Do I love myself? Okay? Because maybe just getting these credentials and letters is a Way to further repress how you actually feel internally. And I know I'm going like way deep here and like this is not usually where I, where we've been going as of late, but I just, we need to have this conversation, guys, because I really need a lot of you to step up to the plate here and treat these patients and you can't do that from a place of self hate. You really need to love yourself before you can fully give yourselves as clinicians to your patients and really give them the best care. Okay? You can't work from a place of being depleted, defeated, and feeling like you've always got, you're not good enough. Let that sink in. You cannot work from that place. So please work on you first and please work on getting yourself over those hurdles, whatever they may be. And if this is resonating with you, feel free to reach out to me if you want to chat more about this and stop taking providers, stop taking advice. Okay, this is the last thing I want to say. Last topic I'd like to cover today. Stop taking advice from other providers just because they have letters after their names. Do your due diligence. Do they have an active caseload? Do they have people who come to them not because of the letters after names, because they actually provide a high quality service and they're getting their patients results and their patients just freak love them because of like what they've been able to do for them. That's who you want to learn from when it comes to business. Stop taking advice from people who are broke. If someone giving you business advice is not making more than you, that's not somebody you should be listening to when it comes to business advice. So the same goes for people who have certain levels of education, right? So if someone is giving you advice, this is why sometimes like these public Facebook groups drive me crazy. There's a lot of like new people who will jump in and give a lot of advice. And like, do you like, how many patients have you treated? Really? Look for the people who have the experience. Now I'm not saying you can't get experience quickly. Okay? Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that young clinicians cannot be experts in what they do. If a clinician graduates and they spend their CF year like an slp, for example, spends their CF year honing in on a specialty and takes all this continuing ed and has the caseload to do it, and now they're out on their own doing it in their second year. Yeah, they can be specialized even though they've only been out in the field for a year. And that I'm not saying you can't be. Okay. And I'm not going to assign a specialty title. There's no specialty title police out there. So stop also listening to that bs. Like when you only work with one population and when you do all the ceus on that population, surrounding that population and you're constantly honing your skill, you are specialized over somebody else who just treats everything that's been in the field for 20 years. That doesn't make them specialized because they've been in the field for 20 years. Right. So we have to look at the features of what's actually in front of us. Like dissect it. Who is that person? What do they stand for? Do they specialize in one thing or 50 things? Do they have a thriving therapy business? If I want to learn from them, have they done what I want to do? That is what you need to ask. And that is why I know I have stepped online. I have had a lot of success. But I have been very clear that I will not coach you on something that I don't specialize in. That's why I brought other people in to teach. Feed the peas with me. My specialty with infants and toddlers and children on up. I work with toddlers on up and feeding but infants I only deal with like tots, babies. Okay. Tethered oral tissues. I don't have the medically complex experience. That's not who I am. I've always been clear about that. That's why I brought in the specialists who do have that experience to co teach that course with me. So I can teach what I specialize in. They can teach what they specialize in. Then we brought an OT to talk about sensory and other related OT based types of topics that again, like maybe I could teach on some of that but I'm not the specialist so I'm going to bring in the person who is. Okay. So that is probably why I've been super successful because I know what I specialize in and I know what my niche is and I can communicate that. And I also don't pretend to do something or know something that I don't know. Okay. Same goes for business. I've had a lot of success in business. I joke that marketing is my love language and I love business. This is why I have coached business owners for the past few five and a half years and they've all been very successful in taking the advice I've given them. Now I don't take Credit for that. They've been successful because they were able to take the advice from somebody who had done what they wanted to do. And then they turned around and they went and they implemented it themselves. They did the work, not me. They are responsible for their success, not me. But they were able to gain insight and learn from me and learn how I did it and take my processes and take my policies and take all those other things and put them in place in their own practice and shape it into their own. And then they were responsible for then creating what they created, okay? So anybody who tells you that they shaped somebody or they created that person, or they're responsible for that person's success, run fast away from them. They are not responsible. We are only responsible for ourselves, okay? And this all ties all back into this. That's why those letters after your name, they don't mean anything. So stop letting society dictate that additional certifications are necessary. They're not. Take the course, get the info. If you feel called to do the certification, by all means do it. But make sure that you have fully owned your self worth before you move into a certification. Don't do it because you feel like you have to prove something to the world or yourself even, okay? Because that's not self love. That is not self worth. That is working from a place of lack and fear and feeling like you constantly are having to prove yourself to the universe. And that, my friends, is going to get you nowhere, okay? Because you're just going to continue to work from that place and your patients will see through it and other providers will see through it. So work on you first and foremost this year, okay? So we all know, like I said, here are the three questions you can ask yourself to kind of summarize that last part. Would you want someone who says they're broke advising you on how to increase your income? Would you want someone who doesn't have a thriving practice with a full caseload, whether it's theirs or their therapy teams, to advise you on how to build a team and a caseload for your team in your practice? And would you want someone who hasn't had the training and client experiences to train you on how to work with that specialty of clients? We all know the answer to that, to those questions are no. Right? We can all agree on that. So just let these things sink in. Do your due diligence, okay? And remember that you do not need a certification to prove your worth or your knowledge base. And it's all just Alphabet soup after your name, right? So Just with all of this, remember, please remember you are who you choose to be. That is subconscious. That is, it's internal, that's not external. So all these external factors and things that you're seeking are just to cover up and more and, you know, further repress what's going on internally. Okay. Who you are is not dictated by the letters after your name. Yes, I know. Disclaimer. You need your sort of. You need certain things based on your license since you're fine. Okay beyond that. And it also doesn't define who you are as a person either. Let's get that straight. I know you need it, it's necessary legally, but it doesn't define you. So let this sit with you. Take some time with this. Listen to this podcast episode again, it's a short one. And go back and listen to the be do have episode and the episodes where I talk about self worth. And also, you know, if you struggle with money and accepting money into your life, go listen to, you know, making money in a helping profession as well. Again, those are all around like this, the episode starting with, you know, in the 70s from, from the podcast. So I hope everyone's new year is off to a great start. I am excited for all that is to come this year and we have some amazing upcoming guests for the podcast. So stay tuned and we will be in touch. Also, if you are looking for help with your business, we do still have applications open to the business mastermind that I'm putting together and that will close towards the end of January. So send an email to supporteedthepedes.com if you would like to fill out the application. It is an investment, but you're going to learn a lot of what I taught you today. You're going to learn how to love yourself, love your practice, love on your patients, love your team and everyone's going to love you back. No, but there is a big theme of, you know, subconscious identity and how do we push past these roadblocks and I teach you guys that along with giving you all the marketing and fun stuff you need to grow that practice. So again, supporteedthepeas.com if you're interested in applying to the Mastermind and I will chat with you guys on social media. Have a great day. Thanks for listening to this podcast. If you want to hear more of these Myo Tots Airway and Feeding related episodes, be sure to leave a review on Apple podcasts or pledge a small amount on patreon.com theuntetheredpodcast if you found value others you know in this space will too. So be sure to share this episode on your social media platforms and join us over on Facebook on my Facebook page at Halibalkin Biz, on Instagram at Alibulcan. And you can head over to theuntetheredpodcast.com to grab a copy of the Show Notes, where you can also subscribe to be kept up to date on the latest podcast episodes.