Brave and Well

Brave and Well Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Brave and Well, Business consultant, 5800 Berkman Drive, Austin, TX.

We support fellow mental health professionals launch or grow their private practices through business consultation, leadership coaching, workshops and community events.

09/18/2026

The children are calling! Have a good one y’all. ✌🏽

I grew up in a small border town in Texas.Working class. Poor for much of my childhood. Raised by a single mom who worke...
09/17/2026

I grew up in a small border town in Texas.

Working class. Poor for much of my childhood. Raised by a single mom who worked her ass off.

And I learned the rules early:

Work hard.
Get your education.
Be successful.
And never depend on a man.

So I did.

I worked my ass off.
I got the degrees.
I built the businesses.
I became the CEO.
I made the money.
I created a life that belonged to me.

I hit all the points.

And you know what else I ended up with?

Resentment. Exhaustion. And grief.

Because somewhere along the way, success stopped being something I wanted and became something I felt like I had to keep proving.

I am deeply grateful for what those lessons gave me. They got a little brown girl from a small border town further than she ever imagined going.

But these days, I’m learning something completely different.

How to be soft.

With other people, yes.

But mostly with myself.

How to travel somewhere beautiful and not make every moment productive.

How to create just because I want to.

How to be present with my babies without mentally running through a to-do list.

How to build things because they bring me alive—not because I need them to prove that I am worthy.

I never imagined this life.

I just knew I wanted a full one. One that was mine. One that I got to live on my own terms.

And somehow, I built it.

So sitting here in my cozy corner, I keep thinking about little Vanessa.

You did it, mija.

You can rest now.

There is nothing left to prove.

Your abuelito and abuelita are proud of you.

Your kids love you.

You are a great mom. You are everything they need.

Nothing more.
Nothing less.

You were always enough.

How many Latina women authors do you know?How many self-published?And how many have created something they’re incredibly...
09/16/2026

How many Latina women authors do you know?

How many self-published?

And how many have created something they’re incredibly proud of… and then quietly sat on it because being seen also means being criticized?

🙋🏽‍♀️ Hi. It’s me.

In 2022, I quietly self-published a workbook after spending 5 years consulting with therapists who kept asking me the same thing:

“I want to start a private practice. Where do I even begin?”

And so many of them were therapists of color who didn’t even know private practice was an option.

So I created a formula. I used it with therapists who went on to build group practices, create their own curriculum and IP, and build businesses they could take with them when they moved across the country.

Then I turned it into a workbook.

And proceeded to barely tell anyone about it. 😂

So in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month—and those of us who are the first, who create without a blueprint, and who are learning to let ourselves be seen—I’m changing that.

My goal:

Sell one workbook every day for the next 30 days.

One therapist. One book. Every day.

If you’ve been thinking, “I want to start a private practice, but I have no idea where to start…”

Start here.

Who’s going to be Day 1? 🤎

Linked in my bio.

09/04/2026

Take the admin day. Enjoy the slow. See what unfolds.

Over the last 2 years I’ve lost 100 pounds. Nothing fits me anymore, and I refuse to keep buying new clothes for a body that’s still changing — so here I am. Comfies. Hat nearby. Coffee shop work session.

This is what CEO life actually looks like some days. Not the blazer. Not the ring light. Just me, my laptop, and the reminder that rest and spaciousness are part of the strategy — not a break from it.

Happy weekend. 🤎

09/03/2026

A $100K month sounds incredible.

And it can be.

But one of the most important things I’ve learned as a group practice owner is:

Revenue tells me how big the business is. It doesn’t tell me how healthy the business is.

If your practice collected $100,000 this month, that money still has jobs to do.

Clinician compensation.
Payroll taxes.
Admin payroll.
Rent.
Software.
Billing.
Marketing.
Benefits.
Merchant fees.
Insurance.
Professional services.
All the random s**t you somehow subscribed to in 2021 and are apparently still paying for.

And then…

you.

This is where I think a lot of therapists get tripped up.

We hit a revenue milestone and think:

Holy s**t. I built a six-figure-a-month business.

But the question I care about now isn’t just:

How much did we make?

I want to know:

How much did it cost us to make it?

What percentage went to payroll?

What was left after operating expenses?

Did we have enough cash?

Did the owner get paid appropriately?

And what did the humans inside this business have to do to produce that revenue?

Because you can have impressive revenue and still have a business that is financially fragile.

You can have impressive revenue and an exhausted team.

You can have impressive revenue and an underpaid owner.

You can have impressive revenue and no fu***ng idea where the money went.

Ask me how I know. 🙃

Revenue is exciting. Profitability is information. Sustainability is the goal.

That’s another expensive lesson I wish I’d understood sooner.

Save this for the next time you’re tempted to judge the health of your practice by revenue alone.

09/02/2026

I love clothes and shoes and having fun with clothes and shoes.

Let’s have a moment for these cool pants I got in London. 👖

09/01/2026

I need to say something I don’t hear enough group practice owners say out loud:

Sometimes generosity is not sustainable.

When I started growing my practice, I wanted to build the kind of workplace I wished existed in our field.

I wanted therapists to feel valued.
I wanted to pay people well.
I wanted to offer flexibility.
I wanted to provide benefits.
I wanted to be understanding when life happened.

And I still believe in all of those things.

But there were decisions I made because they felt aligned with my values that I hadn’t actually run through the business.

I didn’t ask:

Can we afford this at scale?

What happens when 3 employees become 10?

What revenue does this require?

What happens during a slow month?

What happens when something I offered generously becomes an expectation?

And maybe the hardest question:

What happens if I eventually resent something I willingly created?

That’s a hard thing to admit when you’re a therapist.

Because we’re really good at turning a business problem into a character assessment.

Maybe I’m greedy.

Maybe I’m not generous enough.

Maybe good bosses just absorb this.

I don’t believe that anymore.

I’ve learned that generosity without math eventually becomes resentment.

And resentment isn’t good for the owner.

It isn’t good for the team.

And it definitely isn’t good for the business.

These days, one of the questions I ask before making a decision is:

Can I still feel good about this agreement three years from now?

Because building an equitable business doesn’t mean ignoring the math.

The math is what allows the generosity to last.

That’s one of the expensive lessons I wish I’d learned sooner.

Practice owners: have you ever made a decision from generosity that you later realized wasn’t sustainable?

08/31/2026

I opened my group practice in 2018 after three years of being a solo therapist.

I had no idea what I was doing.

I knew how to be a therapist. I knew how to care for people. I knew I wanted to create more access to good therapy and build a place where clients could find therapists who reflected who they were.

What I did not know was how to build a business.

And those are two very different things.

Nobody told me that a compensation model I chose when we were tiny could still be affecting my margins years later.

Nobody told me that I could offer something to my employees out of genuine generosity—and eventually resent it because I never did the math underneath it.

Nobody told me that a six-figure month could still make me nervous about payroll.

Or that sometimes the thing I thought made me a “good boss” wasn’t actually good for me, my team or the business.

I learned a lot of this the expensive way.

And I’ve realized there are things we don’t say out loud enough in our field.

We talk about growing a practice.

We don’t talk nearly enough about what happens after it grows.

The money.
The guilt.
The responsibility.
The resentment.
The leadership.
The mistakes.
The decisions you wish you could undo.
The weird relationship therapists have with profit.
The pressure to take care of everyone.

So I’m going to talk about it.

Not because I’ve figured out the perfect way to build a business.

Because I’ve built one long enough to know what I wish someone had told me.

And maybe I can save another therapist a few expensive lessons along the way.

Welcome. We’re going to talk about the s**t nobody tells you about owning a therapy practice.

08/27/2026

You post $175. You keep $93.

Not because you’re doing anything wrong. Because nobody ever taught us to check.

September 4th. 90 minutes. Your real numbers, and the words for telling people.

$67. Comment RESET or click the link in my bio.

08/25/2026

$25 a session. And I called it the building phase.

I never charged the no-show fee — I was scared they wouldn’t come back. Every dollar went back into the business. I wasn’t paying myself, I was funding a job I’d invented for myself.

And I could not have done it without a partner carrying the health insurance.

That’s the part we don’t say. Private practice, built the way we’re taught to build it, doesn’t hold on one income. So people think they failed at something that was never structured to work.

Six figures on the degree. Supervision, licensure, CEUs, liability, the EHR. And then we charge $60 and call it giving back.

If you’ve never worked out what you actually earn per minute — that’s where I’d start.

September 4th. 90 minutes. $67. Comment RESET 🧡

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5800 Berkman Drive
Austin, TX
78723

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