justin: [00:00:00] Welcome back to a Doctor’s perspective, local edition. Today on the show we have Mark Duno and lemme tell. He has a certification program for Christian life coaching, if that’s something that interests you. He is the the chair, if you will, of the kitchen table counseling. He’s got a master’s degree in counseling from the University of New Orleans.
He’s got licenses in both marriage and family therapy and professional counseling. He. does something called emdr, which is for like resolving past trauma and something called Recall Healing, which is psychosomatic disorders. That actually interests me a good bit too. Mm-hmm. . And he hosts these growth challenge intensive seminars and he is a local gem in the area.
Can you believe all of this right here in our own backyard. Thank you for being on the show.
marc: Thank you, man. I appreciate you saying that. That’s very nice of you. Yeah. Well, let’s
justin: see. I. There’s so many avenues that we could go down, and we’re trying to keep this a little bit shorter than my usual long podcast.
But real quick, the kitchen table counseling, I mean, what is it? Give us the the rundown and how you tie in all your degrees with this.
marc: [00:01:00] So one of my beefs with the counseling profession early on was a few experiences I had that felt pretty stale and clinic clinical. And I, when, I mean clinical, I mean kind of impersonal.
So clinical’s fine, but the impersonal side of it felt to me and I felt like I needed to be a warmer kind of space for me. So for my clients. So what my experience was, was two clinical. To in impersonal when I had a few counseling sessions in my of my own in college a few times. I had had a counselor on campus at UL US L and, and, and then later on.
And so for me, I wanted to have an experience where people would come to, to seek help, would feel more at home. And it would feel like more of a natural conversation, maybe like you were having with, with your aunt or your godmother or a close uncle, somebody who you felt really super safe with, who had a lot of wisdom and who could offer sort of an unbiased guide and, and support and be, be emotionally safe.
And so for me, we, we, and it was sort of inspired also, I would say, by my grandmother in her kitchen table. [00:02:00] So when we would. And we spent pretty much every Sunday growing up over at my grandmother grandfather’s house in Breaux Bridge. We’d have barbecue Sunday barbecue, and, you know, we would all gather around in the, in the kitchen and my grandmother would make me a homemade, homemade burger.
She’d serve up some debut ties what do they call those, those little coffee cups. And she’d make. You know, she brew coffee on the stove and that old time kettle. Oh yeah. So the, the, the inspiration comes from, I would say my experiences around that kitchen table with my grandmother and family where we just talked, you know, we talk about all kinds of stuff.
So that’s what I was going for and that’s why we named it the kitchen table. We’re
justin: looking at the website that looks a lot more comforting and welcoming and being able to put your guard down than your stereotypical. Couch or sofa cushions, you know, in an office, if you’ve ever been a counselor, you know, it’s kind of relaxing, but not nearly like a warm wood table and some fresh coffee or something like that to chat with.
marc: That’s it. That’s it. That’s our, that’s our culture, that’s our persona, that’s our authenticity. And we try to make sure we come through [00:03:00] with that, you know, in all aspects of what we do, who we are, who we hire, and all that. Once we want that culture to be be, you know, have commonality amongst who we.
And who wants to be, who’s seen by that kind of, that kind of space. And then who, who we bring on to work with us
justin: when we’re talking marriage and family therapy, and then counseling for like P T S D and, and all these emotional things that, it’s kinda like two different things. Of course they, they probably bleed into the relationships, but what would be the reason to choose someone with your credentials versus like a life coach or potentially , no offense, a social worker, but like a social worker who has a certificate to do some kind of marriage and family.
marc: Right. Well, let’s see. We’re talking about emdr, we’re talking about marriages and family stuff, and then the different, the different professions. So that’s a really good question. I think the public doesn’t always know the difference. It ultimately depends on our professional training beyond our degree and license.
So there are a lot of probably social workers out there that have also been trained in emdr, which is a way to deal with trauma and really a, a pretty effective way to healing. , but what I mean, simple, like single episode [00:04:00] traumatic events EMDR is a great tool to help quickly alleviate that kind of stress.
So any mental health professional can go get trained to do trauma resolution therapy or, you know, EMDR , a version of that. So there are lots of different versions of, of trauma resolution therapy out there, and they’re all kind of vy for, you know, supremacy and who’s the best and all that.
But you know, there’s lots of different ways to resolve trauma. That, to me, the EMDR methodology is pretty sim. I mean, I could teach somebody probably in a half an hour how to do it. Hmm. Off the street, you know, maybe that’s oversimplifying it. Maybe I think it, , cuz I know it so well, maybe it, it feels simple to me.
Maybe it’s not really true, but it feels like it’s. to do that. So
justin: that just tells you how good you are or how much you know about it to make it that simple. And you’re like, the rest of us will be like, no, no, no, no, no.
marc: maybe. Yeah, maybe that’s true. I, I try not to use jargon and, and, and big words to, to talk about stuff like this.
S so, but my basic understanding would be social workers tend to help with a lot of, well, [00:05:00] wellness, welfare related issues. Make sure everybody’s basic needs are getting. , that’s my basic understanding of social work. Counselors get trained specifically for psychotherapy, the art of therapy in a room with somebody.
Whereas social workers, I think, understand the medical model more. They understand community wraparound services and, and resourcing , kind of a sp full spectrum of someone’s social needs and counselors. And I would say even maybe psychologists learn the art and the craft of psychotherapy.
More of an emphasis, counseling my profession specifically teaches that skill. Whereas I think psychologists have a lot of, a lot more testing and clinical application and they’re become more experts on diagnoses of illness, psych, you know, psychological, mental, emotional illnesses. For me, you know, and again, it depends on where you go with your career.
Once you get your degree. Yeah. How far you take this, , your specialization and interest. So any of those professionals can become good at, let’s say emdr, cuz there’s a certain [00:06:00] protocol you follow. As long as you have good rapport, you know, good. You could connect with people well and, and use, use the models, you know.
Staying pretty close to the fidelity of the model of emdr, for example. At the same time, having enough creativity to innovate on the spot when things don’t work as planned. When you work with somebody. Yeah. Yeah.
justin: Okay. Whenever someone’s going to be taking anti-anxiety, anti-depression medicine, would you say that, Hey, you know, Part of it, but if you actually maybe discuss your issues, then maybe you could actually get off of it and not need it as much.
Or like, am I overstepping?
marc: You know, I, I don’t wanna like bash any other body’s, you know, laying there in. Right we, we depend on medication for the general population. Fewer people are willing. And feel safe enough and have enough courage to do the counseling side of it.
And you know, this is just a, it’s scary. It’s scary to deal with the monsters you have been faced with in life and to very few people I would say want to do the work. [00:07:00] It’s hard, it sucks. It, yeah. You face, it’s emotional hard things that have happened and it causes a whole lot of emotional discomfort at first.
Yes. But left, left unchecked, it can create somatic, you know, psychosomatic conditions. I think probably lar in large part, a lot of our illnesses, you know, could be traced back to at least part, partly contributed to unresolved stress trauma in our past.
justin: Right. I know when I went through a divorce, it was, I figured I’m gonna get remarried at some point and I could point fingers, but there’s probably a few fingers pointing back at me.
Yeah. And you know, I did some counseling and I did that for a while, and then you kind of get into a rhythm and then it kind of feels good just to like, ah, here’s my dump for the month or the week, or whatever. Right. And then kind of checking in when you start new relationships and doing all that.
I, I mean, I thought that was good and man plowing through books, you know, it’s kind of good if someone says, man, I just can’t even afford, , I don’t know what you charge, but. We have a general idea and some people are like, yeah, that’s just not in the budget, so what do I do? And I’m like, man, there’s some really good, especially for like for family and marriage, you know, if your marriage is kind of on the rocks, but you’re both [00:08:00] willing to try to do something.
I mean there’s, you know, the what, five Love languages. They got the John Gottman and there’s some really good books out there that to get started. And yeah, if you get, I think to me, if you get to the point where you’re like, Hey, we’re in a road. And this is obviously the issue because we can’t get past this in our escalate, we can talk about this, but when we talk about this one issue, it gets to zero to 100 so quick.
And I’m thinking, Hey, maybe that’s the one you write down. And that’s when you say, okay, let’s bring this to a counselor. Let’s really dive in and like be in a safe place and have some extra ears that are like, . Yeah. See, it’s not just me. It’s not just you. Mm-hmm. , there’s, there’s parts to blame on both people, and now what do we do with it and need some professional advice?
What do you think about that?
marc: Yeah. Yeah, it it, when folks get to the, into to, to a place where they don’t know what to do anymore and they, and they don’t know how to get out of a really tar, tough spot. You know, that’s when they typically will. Cause when they’re kind of over their head with how to deal with, you know, with marital issues, infidelity children’s issues, behavioral problems with kids, all that stuff.
When we just get [00:09:00] beyond our, our ability to, to tread water anymore, you know,, we’ll suffer for a long time. Treading water, barely getting by and then you know about to drown. That’s, , that’s typically what people will call. These days I do find a lot more clients, you know, people wanting to get ahead of it, there’s less stigma today.
justin: That was gonna be my question. How do you know when your need to, before it gets to like mission critical? We’re pretty much going to a divorce and this is our last attempt to like pretend we cared to try. Like, is there like some signs that hey, you should break in some counseling now before it gets worse?
Yeah,
marc: yeah., it just depends. You have, people have a kind of growth mindset. People who are, who in life or proactive in general, they’re gonna call before it gets too bad. People who avoid conflict . , they’re gonna wait. And some people they’ll just let things die.
And not even, you know there are people who just give up and mm-hmm. and try to start over, you know, and, not face the hard, hard stuff, you know? So it just depends on the personality. Temperament probably has something to do with it. Mm-hmm. . But the culture is more open today to counseling.
Than the, in the past there was a [00:10:00] big stigma in the past. Anybody go and see a counselor, , they were crazy, ? And that’s, and that’s for two reason. So historically weak. Yep. That’s a great one. Historically though, , people would get sent to, in insane asylums if they had problems in the military, , you might lose rank or, gets shunned by others if you had some kind of mental issue.
So our culture is way more embracing. And celebrities are coming out and talking about mental health and , mental health issues on more regular basis nowadays. So I think the stigma is, , significantly over, we named our company The Kitchen Table Counseling and Life Coaching Services back in 2005 to de-stigmatize counseling thinking, pairing it with life coaching.
Although, you know, at the time people really didn’t know what that was. Might. Reduce stigma with us and how, who we were. Yeah.
justin: And if somebody wants to do a deeper dive, we, we definitely have some past episodes with different kind of counselors for like, moms with burnout. There was a guy that did a suicide podcast because he leaned towards, Realm of stuff and how he got [00:11:00] counseling , and different things.
So there’s a lot of resources leaving on this podcast to kind of dive deeper than what we can do on this show. So we’re gonna switch gears just a little bit because it’s also business. Yeah. How do you even get clients. You Googling
marc: it or? Yeah. So how do we get clients today? I would say primarily through my wife’s efforts with social media.
She has a pretty active presence on Facebook. She does almost a daily post. . She does she wasn’t for a while, but she does about a once a week blog on, on a given given topic or a subject. So that’s a big part of how we continue to generate new referrals with people who have not heard of us before.
Mm-hmm. . So, but prior to that I did a lot of Google AdWords for about 11 years. I utilized when Google Edwards first came out 11 years. I spent quite a lot of money. You know, less in the beginning it did, cuz not, not everybody was doing it. So I happened to get in on it early with a friend of mine who had been using it to do his, his business.
And that helped me move up the top of the, , back in the day when it was a book, a phone [00:12:00] book, if anybody remembers what that was, you know, people would name their, their companies like a, a, a mechanics shop, you know, cuz if you had a, a, in the beginning of your company name, you were at the top of the list of your category.
, and then eventually you’d buy ad space and all that stuff. So, you know, back then it was just word of mouth and advertising and, and the phone book and, and but we got our first beginnings being involved in a church in a church setting where we had kind of instant access to a large group of people.
Hmm. By being , affiliated for a while. That body of believers. So there was that, that gave us a significant boost in terms of a visibility and people knowing who we are. But you gotta do what you do long enough that people associate you with the thing that you do.
And if you keep doing the thing that you do well long enough, then you create a, an identity in your community and you’re known for. You know, you’re an 11 year
justin: overnight success .
marc: Exactly As they say. When I hire staff here, I’ll, you know, they’re coming outta school and they’re maybe a year under their belt or [00:13:00] whatever, and they, you know, they’re sort of, sometimes they’re like kind of impatient about how, how long it takes to get, let’s get their own book of business up.
And I’ll say, well, okay, I graduated 1998 with my degree and I was on independent of any other income other than my own company by around 2000. Nine .
justin: So you’re saying
marc: there’s Hope so there, you know, so Mary smartness on in like within an 18 months, you know? I’ve got providers that I’ll have like 18 appointments a week or 20.
I mean, I remember the goal was 20 appointments a week was sort of like where I could feel like I’d gotten there. You know, it was like sustainable. It was enough coming in, enough going out and stuff. And so, you know, I got people coming outta school that I got their full, they got a full practice with our, company.
before they graduate from their degree. It’s
justin: scary though because you think you did it and then you’re like, I don’t need this marked guy anymore. I’m gonna go out on my own. And then you’re like, yeah. You know that paper you signed the, I guess it’s a little different with you guys, like how do you stop somebody from seeing their, you know, Heather cuz it’s, you know, their healthcare.
But [00:14:00] yeah, it’s no joke to go back out on your own and start from nothing and you’re like, Hey, my rent’s only $500 in this little office. And you’re like, whew. That was still hard to meet when you start from nothing you like. That’s five hours of counseling, you know?
marc: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. So I did, I did, you know, I did full-time work at other places.
Then I did contract work and I negotiated time with my, my, you know, other company other companies I worked for to go to contract. And I just started to piece together parts of my schedule where I could take, take some of that time back from my company for myself and, Over a long enough time doing it, doing good work and getting good results, and helping people get where they, you know, where they wanted to be, and settling some really big issues for lots of folks over time.
Just, yeah, I, I think I have the most Google reviews out of any counselor in Lafayette as well, so we have the, you know, social media presence with Facebook. That my wife handles. And then I’m pretty active with asking our, our staff to ask our clients if they wouldn’t mind giving us a Google review. So we have that can’t be easy, although that may not be a lot for like some other kind of [00:15:00] bus business, you know, 508.
No,
justin: 108. Oh, that’s still a lot. I mean, yeah.
marc: Yeah, like the nearest count. Just each industry has its own kind of averages with the Google reviews. So most of our competitors have, you know, maybe 10. Yeah. So we have, you know, we have a hundred plus and that was one of our goals last year was just to kind of do a, an effort to ask our clients, Hey, would you.
Give us a Google review and you know, we have a five, we have a 4.9 or a 5.0 rating.
justin: That’s more real. Somebody’s gotta hate you some point. Yeah. There’s one they didn’t answer the phone. Four
marc: stars. Two, there’s two that we have that were, you know, that were pretty rotten, but you know, if you’ve investigated it further Yeah.
Find out that they were kind of,
justin: we’re in a pickle. We can’t just say, Hey, you know, , you were a jerk and you the one who spilled the ketchup on yourself. Why are you blaming us? We gave That’s right. You 20 napkins. You’re like, that’s right. Well actually, you know, back based on your past history, like, oh, can’t say that stuff.
Nope. Can’t even confirm that you did or didn’t even show up [00:16:00] here. I, but I’m happy to have your review So much harder for professionals
marc: like rebuttal to one. One of the last reviews I got, basically this person lied about having, that the person gave us a review, was never actually a client of. and
justin: you, you can’t get Google to take that off.
That’s
marc: what’s so crazy. I’m not sure there’s options to report it. And we had a bunch of people that went out and reported that it was that it, you know, forget the categories that you get to pick from if you have a problem with a review, but you know, oh, I, I’ll have to go check and see if it’s still there or not.
But it was somebody actually completely was never a client. And had said that our client wasn’t L G B Q friendly and had kicked her out of her office because of it, that hard to say. And she was, and she was never actually a client. Yeah. They picked the wrong
justin: Oh, it was, it was a similar name.
Oh, wrong place. Yeah. .
marc: Oh. So, yeah. But you know, I, it doesn’t, that might have scared me if it happened a long, long time ago when I was just starting out. But, you know, yeah. We, we know who we are and we have, , transformed lots of lives through the help of God and our, and our community.
Our providers are really great, [00:17:00] great people. Great. And our hearts are in the right place for what we do. And our clients who we serve well and know who we are. And that’s all that really matters.
justin: Okay. Last, maybe the last question. Maybe not. We’ll see. It’s always important to follow with your clients.
It’s like, what? 10 times cheaper to keep a client and to get a new one. Uhhuh, and, okay. Any tips or tricks that you guys use to, I’m not saying to keep people coming every week for the, for eternity, but you know, they’re finished with their care, but you’re checking in and they’re trying to base top of mind.
What do y’all do?
marc: That’s a, that’s a good question. We you know what I’ll do with our staff and sometimes it’s a challenge cuz clinicians don’t get trained in school to be business people, you know? Mm-hmm. , they, they, and so, and I’m not a big sales guy. I don’t, I don’t like to be sold to, I don’t wanna be selling anything to anybody.
wanna just deliver what we do well, and so what I would encourage our folks to do is to make ourselves available at times more personally. Mm-hmm. , sometimes we’ll offer our cell phones to our clients who are in need, who, you know, can’t make it a week without some kind of check-in [00:18:00] stuff. So I leave that up to our staff to decide, how free they want to be with their personal cell phone.
That’s one way just to check in on. . And when we haven’t seen somebody for a while, we wanna do like a, a wellness check and just check in and see, Hey, how are you? Just what was, you know, was thinking about you just wondering how you guys are doing and not it, not say, would you like to make an appointment?
It’s genuinely just, you know, How are you? And then celebrate if they’re great. Great. Appreciate, you know, just glad to hear that you, you’re good. I don’t think we really need to ask for business at, you know, at that point you just, it’s just a, a, I care about where you’re at and, and, and I’m just checking in on you.
It does. Put that you on their minds. And sometimes that day, that person will be out and about in their community and somebody across their path who has an issue, they’ll talk at a coffee shop about something going on in their family that’s not going well. And they’ll say, oh, I just, , my counselor actually reached out to me just to see how I was doing, so maybe you wanna give him a call.
So, you know, that was sort of a organic way [00:19:00] to be personable. Keep your name out in the community on people’s mind. , you know, and so it’s not too sales slicky. I think it’s more of an organic, genuine engine in where people are, and it keeps you on their minds.
justin: I agree with you. That’s, I hate nothing. As a chiropractor, we have to do the same thing, you know?
Yeah. We’re not trying to say to come in, it’s been six weeks, but we’re like, Hey, have you’re hurt. come in, or like you said, Hey, yeah, Bob in the office could, you know, nudge him to come on in and right top of mind.
marc: Right, right, right.
justin: Do you happen to have any resources, whether it’s books or podcasts that deal with what you deal with that’s helpful and you wanna recommend.
You might have like 20 books. Well, gimme the condition. I can give you five books. Like, let’s,
marc: I guess I can tell you who was most inspiring to me around certain topics that I work with. So I do a little bit of mind body stuff as well.
So I’m a fan of Gary Craig, who invented a concept or technique called EF T and [00:20:00] he, he’s a, he’s in the psychosomatic. . And so I use, it’s a, it’s a psychological form of AC acupuncture. Hmm. And so Gary Craig was an engineer by training, not a healthcare professional. He’s an old school guy. . He started out back in the late seventies and eighties and stuff.
And anyway, from that it, there became this sort of movement of the energy psychology world. So there’s, you know, now you can get credentials to do energy psychology work. And a Gary is, has a simple formula to do basic some basic psychological psychosomatic work to help deal with, like you actually mentioned some body pain.
Like just last night I had a client coming. In our coaching school, actually a student and she’s having some shoulder pain that she just can’t get rid of, and asked her when it had, when an injury had occurred, and she’d actually been in a fun jump and her husband had been fussing at her for not, she didn’t, he didn’t want her to do it.
He said she’d hurt herself. Well, she hurt herself, but the pain wouldn’t go away. and so we sorted out the mental and emotional [00:21:00] conflict behind what I think it could be. And just a little bit of Gary Craig tapping. And it’s just basically this, you know, tapping on certain points, Meridian Meridians on the body with some basic talk.
Technique and, and her pain went away like in five minutes. So it was pretty, pretty cool stuff. So Gary Craig is a good resource. If you’re having like, body pain, you might be interested in this or know about it already, but that’s one thing I, I’ve you’re super interested in. And the and then also in the mind body world Gabo Ma who is.
medical doctor, he’s actually featured on, on, on one of Joe Rogan’s podcasts. Mm-hmm. And he talks about he talks about addiction and he talks about A D H D. He talks about things of that nature that have to do with unresolved trauma. And then in the trauma world, I would suggest somebody look up EMDR and just research what EMDR is.
It stands for eye movement desensitization and Reprocessing. And it was accidentally discovered back 30 something years ago by a [00:22:00] therapist in, in an New York area, and she noticed that her clients. When they talked about their trauma stories, when they moved their eyes back and forth as they were talking about their stories, they got some form of relief that clients who had more of a fixed gaze when they talked about their stories, didn’t get.
And so she she worked on this discovery over the next 20, 30 years. That’s where EMDR came from. And and so now emdr is sort of a, kind of a household name in a sense to the mental health world, but I used to think it was just not possible. How are, how is somebody gonna resolve trauma by me moving my finger like this?
and them looking at my finger with their eyesight, that just didn’t seem, we’re getting, getting woo woo around here. All of a sudden it, it felt so woo woo. And so I ignored that training for a long time till, till that it, you know, kind of caught my attention again. And then, no. So emr, looking up, emdr, anybody who’s got unresolved trauma, childhood trauma war related trauma, any types of trauma, car accident, trauma, witnessing somebody [00:23:00] do die, all that stuff, you know, get stuck in the brain, in the fight or flight part of the brain and.
EMDR is a very elegant and often quick way to resolve it within a few sessions. Honestly. It’s crazy how, how effective it can be at times. That’s awesome. Yeah. Yeah. And then from the marriage side something I love, that’s probably the, one of the best resources I’ve ever looked at was a, a video, a video series called Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage.
Laugh your way to a Be Better Marriage. And this guy named Mark Gunk has a kind of standup comedy, routine educational seminar about marriage, the differences between men and women. And it’s, it’s the funniest educational because a lot of times marriage seminars are kind of serious and they’re, you know, heady.
They’re kind of gooey. Yeah. You know, gooey for the guy. Heady for the girl and you know,
Engaging and educational. And , it’s a resource I continue to go back to and refresh my memory [00:24:00] on. And it’s, it, to me, I think humor and emotion helps me remember those tips more than reading in a book. I like books, but the book, when I read a book, it’s hard for that information to stick with me.
I think because it, because for me, remember, , it is easier for me when I feel emotionally tied to what I’m learning, and so that humor helps me remember h how to be better at being a husband and and, and to, and to laugh. Through it instead of cry through it so much, you know, cuz it’s so painful. Yeah.
justin: Mm-hmm. . And how can people reach out to you? Where, where do we go to?
marc: Well, thanks so the kitchen table counseling.com is our, is our website, kitchen, the kitchen table, counseling.com. That’s our website. And and if you Google counselors near me in aca, you’ll, you can see us on our Google, you know, Google has us on a list there as well.
And we have a young Youngsville office. We have a Lafayette office, we have a Lake Charles office, and we have a, a, a small office in the middle part of Lafayette. We’re kind of spread out to try to make [00:25:00] ourselves available and re you know, so it’s a more of a convenience. Our main office is right between Turtle Links High School and St.
Genevieve Middle School on the north side of Lafayette.
justin: My goodness, I must have passed your place. hundreds of times growing up. It just never even, yeah. You know what I mean? Now that I, once I see it, I’ll be like, that’s what this place is. I’ve seen this so many times.
marc: I never thought about it.
We don’t, yeah, we don’t have a big sign. So you wouldn’t see it as a commercial space. Looks like a house. We actually, our, our business is in a house. It’s part of our kitchen table look and feel and cultures that we, we don’t have a commercial typical commercial looking space. It’s a house we use. Converted a rental property into our counseling center.
justin: That’s perfect. I love it. Yeah. Thank you. Well, thank you so much for being on the show and we’ll definitely have the show notes and links to the things you talked about and everything else for people to, to
marc: peruse. Thank you man. I appreciate Justin.