Julius A. Austin

Mind Your Business: Merging Meaningful Work with Financial Wisdom is the course every counselor wishes they had in grad school. Blending real-world wisdom with practical tools, this book demystifies the business side of therapy—without sacrificing heart. Whether you’re a student, associate, or seasoned clinician, this down-to-earth guide helps you earn a living while staying true to your calling. Covering topics like financial literacy, legal and ethical essentials, marketing, innovation, supervision, and retirement planning, it offers real-life examples, expert insights, and mentorship you can actually use. The book moves beyond private practice basics to explore diverse income streams, administrative must-knows, and modern challenges like cybersecurity and hustle culture. Written in a candid, mentor-style voice by Drs. Jude and Julius Austin—both practicing clinicians and counselor educators—this is a business book that gets it. You won’t find empty jargon or cookie-cutter advice here. You’ll find clarity, encouragement, and a roadmap to build a counseling career that’s both sustainable and deeply meaningful. From developing your own business-savvy to "securing the bag", this guide is full of the financial and business wisdom that every counselor wishes they had received in graduate school. It moves beyond private-practice basics to explore diverse income streams, administrative must-knows, and modern challenges like cybersecurity and hustle culture. Offering tangible examples, expert tips, and mentorship you can actually use, this down-to-earth guide helps you earn a living while staying true to your calling.

This highly anticipated second edition written for students, clinicians, educators, and supervisors offers practical perspectives on the lifelong quest for personal wellness. Through conversational and deeply personal narratives, the authors reveal their self-care journeys at different stages of their careers, and 39 guest contributors-ranging from graduate students to counseling veterans-share how they overcome setbacks and prioritize self-care to maintain competent, ethical practice. Topics include practicing self-care throughout your career, strategies for managing stress, establishing personal and professional boundaries, enhancing relationships, finding meaning in life, and creating a realistic self-care plan. Firsthand accounts throughout the book have been updated, and new narratives have been added on self-care practices for healing from grief, self-care for grief counselors, staying committed to self-care, global self-care practices, permission to be, creating balance among chaos, making self-care nonnegotiable, contemplations at midcareer, and self-care planning.

This pragmatic book explains the "how" of integrating counselor training into practice by bridging the gap between educational knowledge, clinical skill, and counselor identity. Drs. Jude and Julius Austin combine their personal and professional experiences with contributions from other skilled clinicians to break down the counseling process and inspire counselor confidence in the ongoing quest to do counseling well. Following an introduction to basic counseling ethics and several types of sessions, each stage of counseling is explored, including presession preparation, meeting the client, building the therapeutic relationship, managing and trusting the process, developing a unique personal style, tracking therapeutic progress, ending therapy, and postsession tasks. The discussion then shifts to getting the most from supervision, competent multicultural/antiracist counseling, and the dos and don'ts of distance counseling. A sole case study is presented throughout the book to illustrate therapeutic techniques, and key takeaways are summarized in an epilogue.

Written for graduate students who want to get the most out of their experience, this book presents down-to-earth discussions and suggestions on counselor training and life after graduation. The authors, both millennials and recent doctoral program graduates, draw upon their own personal and professional training and career experiences, as well as shared insight from a diverse group of current graduate students, recent graduates, and new professionals. The realistic, personal, and often humorous narratives throughout the book give an insider's perspective on graduate school and illuminate the emotional journey of students and new professionals. Topics include choosing and getting into a program, handling the opportunities and challenges that each year of the program presents, gaining emotional maturity, dealing with setbacks, managing conflicts, increasing cultural awareness, getting a doctoral degree, searching for a job, finding a supervisor, and obtaining licensure. Readers will also be able to peek behind the curtains of faculty meetings to glean what faculty members expect, develop skills for their first session, and create and maintain a self-care plan for improving work-life balance.