Radio Front Desk
Radio Front Desk is a podcast that talks to real people in real clinics about what it takes to build a health and wellness business.
Host Denzil Ford, Editor-in-Chief of Front Desk magazine, digs into the inspiring stories of folks building their practices from the ground up — including what works, what hasn’t, and everything in between.
Created by the team at Jane App, this podcast is your source for discovering fresh ideas and proven strategies for clinic life. Join us on this journey of building a practice you love.
Radio Front Desk
“Wait a minute, I think I’m a therapist”: One practitioner’s unlikely path to group practice | Matt Lundquist of Tribeca Therapy
Matt Lundquist didn’t always want to be a psychotherapist. Initially, he saw himself as more of a philosopher and social justice advocate — someone working to make change in his community.
But, in doing that, he found a passion for clinical work, appreciating the one-on-one connections he made with people and the direct impact he could have on their lives. That’s when he realized: “Wait a minute, I think I’m a therapist.” Today, Matt is the founder and clinical director of Tribeca Therapy in New York City.
In this episode, Denzil learns how Matt’s early leadership trials helped build a thriving, people-first therapy practice.
Read more stories like Matt’s over at frontdesk.jane.app.
Matt is the Founder and Clinical Director of Tribeca Therapy, a 15-year-old group psychotherapy practice in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Matt is the lead supervisor for the practice and views his primary task as supporting talented therapists to become thriving clinicians and supervisors.
Matt trained in both psychodynamic and postmodern therapies and has extensive experience working with systems including couples, families and groups. Matt has provided organizational consulting to Fortune-500 companies and nonprofits and has served as an adjunct clinical instructor at the Hunter College School of Social Work. In addition to managing and providing clinical leadership for the practice, Matt maintains an active practice with individuals and couples.
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This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional medical, legal, or financial advice. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Jane or Front Desk magazine.
Um, but about six months in um, I was really lonely and I think it was sort of this, this, this second moment in my life where I realized how much kind of connection and people and sociality was important to me. You know the, the way I often frame it is I, I. I found myself realizing that I would go many, many days where the only people I would have a conversation with from you know, eight in the morning to seven at night were the doormen in my building and people who were paying me to have a conversation with them.
Speaker 2:Matt Lundquist didn't always want to be a psychotherapist. Initially he saw himself as more of a philosopher and social justice advocate, someone working to make change in his community. But in doing that he found a passion for clinical work. That's when he realized wait a minute, I think I'm a therapist. Matt was offered a position of clinical director at a therapy organization, a role he admits was too fast, too soon. Despite the challenges and mistakes he made along the way, matt gained invaluable experience that shaped how he approached his solo practice. He was relieved of the burdens of leadership, but soon found himself feeling lonely. When others expressed an interest in joining him, matt saw an opportunity to build a community again, this time from the ground up. Today, matt is the founder and clinical director of Tribeca Therapy in New York City. In this episode we explore how his early leadership trials helped build a thriving, people-first practice.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Radio Front Desk, a show that surfaces what real people in real clinics are doing to open, run and grow successful health and wellness businesses. I'm your host, denzel Ford, editor-in-chief of Front Desk Magazine by JNAP. Here we have powerful conversations with health and wellness professionals on the business side of clinic life. We hear their stories and discover what works and how to do it, and we also talk about what doesn't work. If you want to check out more stories like this, head to frontdeskjaneapp. I feel like I love what you said about you're with people all day, but you're also kind of not with anyone. Can you talk to me about how you built your community out of that experience and feeling like alone, but then like I need people that have like a two way relationship with A lot of the answer to that in terms of how we've built community as a group practice.
Speaker 1:I think there's some there's sort of different levels of answer to that. I think the most important thing I might say is that I would give a lot of credit to the couple of people who were my first hires in a group practice, you know, one of whom actually only recently left the practice after almost 12 years, another whom is still with us and has worked with me for 12 and a half years now, who, I think, like me, had a real hunger and appetite for community, and so we sort of took on this sort of fundamental problem. There's a sort of the therapy has a kind of people problem in its business model, which is you know, how do we deal with the fact that we are, in order to be successful, we need to kind of sell our time, sell our hours and yet find ways of connecting, and so that has meant prioritizing group supervision and recognizing that group supervision is both a good model for supervision but also like a model for connection and community. I think it took us a while, but ultimately we figured out that we needed to all be on the hour and have similar overlaps in our breaks, for example, so that there were just lots of natural, organic opportunities to connect. I think again, supervision and group supervision're always thinking about in the back of your mind. If you're doing something that isn't something that you're billing for, it's hard not to kind of back of a napkin that and think about, oh, I'm losing this amount of money.
Speaker 1:And so there's been lots of times over and over again as we've looked at prioritizing sort of non-clinical hours to connect and work on growing and developing in our work, to tolerate the fact that that means that, yeah, we're going to make less money in that hour, but to trust that you know, in the quality of life and in certainly our development as therapists, that that's likely going to be good for us.
Speaker 1:And I think that's been good for us as a practice. And even if it wasn't sort of measurable, even if I can't assign a positive cash value to that, it's recognizing also that that's important and I want to be able to not just have a successful business but to go to work and enjoy that and have people who enjoy that. We also we shut the practice down for a full day every three months or so. We have a staff day coming up next Thursday where we're spending a day we all kind of dress down and, you know, do some work and do some learning, and also do some playing and share a meal and kind of have fraternity and connection in those ways. So making it important is a big part of that and also, by the way, I think, hiring people for whom that's important and so they're going to advocate for that and facilitate that and they're going to leave their door open between sessions and and make plans to hang out outside of work with friends and friends who they've made through work, et cetera.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that was going to be sort of my question, I think, leading into let's talk about hiring, but how do you let's start with, how do you get people on board with that kind of culture? I guess I'll say and culture, and is that related to how you hire people? That's my question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, I think those things are very related. I think that question is sort of right on. I think probably the most important answer to that is that this is who we are, and we try to be very out and transparent about the fact that this is who we are, and so we try to find ways of conveying that in our recruiting materials and in our website and certainly in the conversations we have in our hiring process to try to make that obvious. And you know, part of that is not just in the content of what we say to people, but also in the, you know, in the form. You know the medium is the message.
Speaker 1:You know, we have, as kind of the central part of our hiring process, a group interview, and so people can really see that, and that interview happens in our group room and we call it our group room, and people have an experience of like, oh, there's a group room here and there's a familiarity that these people who are leading this and a warmth that these two people have, these people clearly have built some community with one another.
Speaker 1:And so I think that what we try to do in a lot of ways, and other aspects of our values as well, is to really kind of wear those values on our sleeves and certainly community is one of them so that there can be some self-selecting. And I think for people who want to be more reserved or want to just kind of come to work and see patients and go, and where that's not a priority, I think they're going to see that that's a big priority for us and that maybe this isn't the right fit. And to let you know, to let kind of being transparent about who we are do some work for us in terms of filtering in both directions, kind of in and out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Right, yeah, hiring is something that I take very seriously personally, my team is very tight knit. We need to do things such as what you're talking about. We're spent some really specific time together. That is a little, a little tilted in a special way, um, and so I was interested when you were talking about the group interview. Is there? Is there some sort of like structure to how you structure that? I don't think you need to like. Let us know what your questions are, that you ask people, but what's the structure of that interview? How are you really trying to get at who's in front of you and deciding if they are truly their characters, truly who?
Speaker 2:they're coming across in that interview is truly who they're coming across in that interview.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we do a group interview and it's not what I think. What I imagine a traditional group interview is it's not. Hey, everybody go around and tell us you know why you want to become a therapist and what your three core values are. It's really kind of an exercise, and we invite people to have two very different kinds of conversations. There's sort of a part one and a part two that are meant to kind of invite people to think differently and more deeply about some things that they've maybe grappled with in graduate school or in their career to date. And our objective in that is not to correct people at all, and it's really not even necessarily to say, oh, do these people have the right way of thinking about this or the right values, because I think what we're really interested in is people who have opportunities to learn and grow, and so people can really grow with us. And so for us, what we're looking for is like are you a grower? And recognizing that.
Speaker 1:You know, I think this is true in any meaningful work, but I think particularly for therapy.
Speaker 1:You know, I often say we're not building widgets, we're not canning soup, we're doing something that's really personal and where we're bringing ourselves. And so when you're learning that, when you're being supervised in that work like a good amount of the kind of tough feedback that you might get the things that a supervisor or a colleague might observe is personal and uncomfortable. And so we try to create I think, well within the bounds of what's appropriate to an interview process a space where we can invite people to think differently about things and to be uncomfortable, not to reveal that they have the right way of thinking about it or know how to do it. And we're also interested in what do people's defenses look like? How do people handle it when somebody challenges them, maybe somebody else in the group says something that's challenging or disruptive of how they're thinking? Do they have the ability to kind of struggle but hang in there and does that feel like something that we can work with? That's our goal in that structure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I love that. A question that I ask, uh. I started doing this years ago and I kind of did it. I didn't know why, but I ask uh, at the end I say, if you could say that you're like any animal, what animal would you say that you're most like, and why? And I one? I just love hearing that the answer that people come up with. But really what I'm testing for is one, how do they respond to such a wonky question? And then two, I I want to know what happens when they try to find the answer and you get to watch that in real time. You get to watch them try to come up with a creative answer. Um, it's one of the most revealing things, I think, in the entire interview that I take people through.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, and what's great and what I do think is similar to how we think about this is the particular answer they come up with is interesting, but it doesn't really matter, right.
Speaker 2:No, it doesn't matter, you could say a penguin or a coyote.
Speaker 1:It's interesting. As therapists, we're always interested in those things. But the critical part is, yeah, kind of how is their thinking and are they able to kind of be vulnerable in that? Or if they're struggling with that, like, do they struggle in a way that feels like something, oh, you're struggling with that, but you're kind of talking about that and working through that with us. That's great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally. So I want to back up. You said that you happen to be really good at marketing, so let's dive into that a little bit. What did you do to start marketing? And then what did you notice that makes you think you have some sort of success at it?
Speaker 1:skill. This is a bit of a boring answer, denzel, but you know, I think the most fundamental thing that I had working for me is that I'm, like, really good at following directions, and so, early on, you know I thought this is great and fun, but but what if?
Speaker 1:what if I don't have enough people who want to work with me to kind of pay the rent here and take care of myself and saying, you know, I like this, I want to be able to do this, and so I guess I need to be able to market. And also, you know, by the way, like um, I want to also be able to do this with integrity and I want to not make decisions that are compromised clinically just to hold onto somebody. I want to be able to make decisions that are, you know, based on what I think is is kind of right and good for the work. And so if I get to where I'm kind of desperate and worried about keeping my roster full, then I worry I'm going to, you know, begin to make some more compromised decisions clinically, and I don't want to do that. And so I think, you know, I just sort of talked to a lot of people early on kind of anybody that I could and I listened to podcasts and I'm sure if this podcast existed it would have been on my list and, you know, felt like, you know, a useful website was an important thing to have and something that was more than just a shingle and talk to people about, like, okay, well, you know I've got this website, but I I'd like people to find my website and read my website.
Speaker 1:And somebody said to me listen, don't go down the rabbit hole of all that SEO stuff and paying for clicks and figuring out how to hack things and write a lot of really good content that real people want to read and will read. That is an honest reflection of you and I and I took that so seriously and I I, you know spent nights and weekends. There was a coffee shop in the neighborhood that I just would would camp out Saturday morning in the basement and write and write, and write, and write. I sort of basically thought of every topic I could think of about therapy and thought, well, what do I have to say about that? And put that on my website. And it turns out that that was so much more successful than I bargained for and I'm really proud of that. And I still will meet people who say, gosh, you must be an expert on SEO and I know almost nothing about SEO. I just have continued to follow that piece of advice that I got, you know, 14, 15 years ago and I think it's, I think it's it's worked out for me, and so that's one thing, I think. The other thing that I've, that I've learned later, I think, as we started to have some success, is to not be afraid to spend money on stuff like that. And so we still don't pay for clicks. I've never paid for clicks. We've got one advertisement in a local blog that's in the neighborhood where our practice is here in Tribeca, but otherwise have never paid for advertisements.
Speaker 1:But I have recognized again the value of writing and so one of the things I did, I was lucky to find, oh, seven years ago, a woman who's become my writing partner. She was a copywriter and was somebody who had done a lot of work with artists on helping them write about their work and kind of really wonderful partnership, which is, you know, she does a lot of things for our practice now. But the core is, you know, I'm sort of moving through the world, I have an idea for something I want to write and I email her some garbled snippet and usually within a couple of hours she'll respond and she'll say, oh, here's what's interesting about that and here's three questions and I'll respond to those questions and she'll ask more questions and then we'll have a piece and she'll do some editing and that's, you know, that's a big investment. I pay her. Well. I've wanted to hold onto that relationship.
Speaker 1:I think it's work that she also really enjoys, which is great, and has encouraged her to stick around. We've got, you know, developed a nice close friendship as well, encourage to stick around. We've got, you know, developed a nice close friendship as well. But kind of a willingness to invest the time and the money in that and in those kinds of things you know to. We're doing an upgrade of our website and that's really expensive and I want to do that well, and I, you know, we, that's. That's a tool that our practice really depends on, and so you know, to do that right and it's a lot of money. But I think that's another part of it is kind of knowing the value of spending money in the right ways, but also knowing the value of not substituting money for elbow grease, and putting in the time has been a big thing in that regard.
Speaker 2:I think that's a really helpful tip for people, because there's so much noise out there about what marketing you should be doing, but there's also what really works in what context, and your example of just sitting down and writing is an excellent one. It's also a classic example from content marketing of something that really really works, and there's a I think it's called river pools and spas, but they're like the quintessential example of how what you just said works so well. You just sit down and start answering real questions that real people have, and people will come and you don't need to do too much more. Yeah, it's a great strategy.
Speaker 1:And we don't have filler. I don't think you could find a page on our website where we say, like depression is hard and you should go to therapy for it. We talk about. We have some basic kind of standing pages where we say some more general things, but it has a point of view and you know, I had this moment early on, I think, this kind of crisis in maybe my first year in solo private practice, where I was thinking, gosh, I'm a little weird in these ways and I have some ideas that maybe aren't kind of the mainstream and in the field, and should I like hold those back and having this moment of like?
Speaker 1:No, I think I got it. There's a, there's a ton of therapists out there. I want people who find me not just to find me but to say like, oh, this guy, this guy's got something to say that resonates with me and you know, know, I'm in New York City Like there's options, like if somebody's going to pick me, and that also, I think, makes the work more meaningful, as you find people who really want to work with you. But I think, have a point of view, even if that point of view feels, you know, maybe risky or controversial, and I try to take a position and I've got now.
Speaker 1:Now we've got other people on our team who, who are are are writing. Some of them are new to writing for us and they, you know, send a thesis and I say okay, sure, but like a lot of people could write this, I want to see a version of this that only you can write. What's, what do you think about this? Where? What's what? What do you have to say? That's, that's, that's unique and different here, uh, and I think that matters. And so people reach out and say I read this thing you wrote and it really kind of made me think and that's great. And I think that, you know, I guess people seem to seem to want, to want to work with me and work with us, which is really nice yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2:do you give people any kind of a like structure for how you want what they write to be created, or is it just more free form and you know people have enough writing skill from their background? How do you, how do you handle that?
Speaker 1:It's so different. You know we, you know I, I, I I used to think that all good therapists were good writers, and and I've worked with some phenomenal therapists who weren't such good writers I've known some good writers who weren't such good therapists, and and so, you know, I think there's a real mix, and and also I've I've known a lot of people who are good writers, and so, you know, I think there's a real mix, and also I've known a lot of people who are good writers but they don't know they're good writers, and that's been something we try to help with too. And so my writing partner, emily, is a huge part of that, which is that she's got this real ability and she spent this time working with artists, and I don't think a lot of visual artists think of themselves and are so confident in the domain of writing of themselves and are so confident in the domain of writing They've chosen, you know, painting and those kinds of media as their way of expressing themselves.
Speaker 1:And so she's got this ability to kind of connect with people who are maybe really nervous or not so confident and say, you know, don't worry about the syntax, like we'll sort that part out. Well, you know, that's easy, like talk to me and she gets people to kind of blabber. You know that's easy, like talk to me and she gets people to kind of blabber. You know she'll say write it badly, write it messy, just write it really fast. And they build a trust with her when they're doing this with me, that like we're going to help them find a kernel. And there's a real leap of faith in doing that and inviting somebody. And you know, people know know we're going to put this on the internet and this is in a professional location.
Speaker 1:This isn't just, you know, an update on instagram. This is something that that you know people are going to read, their patients are going to read, um, and so encouraging people to not worry about structure so much. But I ask people to, you know, be always thinking about writing. We try to create a culture where you know we're having a conversation or a supervisory conversation Obviously we don't write directly about, you know, the content of our therapy work but where we say, ooh, that's interesting, you should write about that. Oh, I wouldn't think about that. That's interesting. To help people realize that that a lot of what they maybe take for granted has some value and other people would want to read that.
Speaker 2:Right, right. So you've got this engine that's going to bring some attention to your clinic. How did you grow more on the nuts and bolts side of the business? Things Were there, things that you were doing. I mean, you hired and you got into this group practice situation. But are there other things, other like really important mechanisms to your growth, that you can think of?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, I mean, so much of it was things I did without knowing what I was doing and there were plenty of mistakes along the way, but also some things that like just really worked out. One of the things that is you know, I don't know if it's unique, but I've heard of very few practices who do this. We pay our therapists a full time salary with paid time off and benefits, full-time salary with paid time off and benefits. And I can't tell you how many you know therapists and group practice owners and just smart business people who aren't even in healthcare who've said you got to not do that. You got to pay people fee for service.
Speaker 1:And the argument is there you know you have a business slowdown or somebody maybe is less successful at the work. It's less of an impact in terms of having to kind of cover somebody's salary. But ultimately, I think what we decided is we wanted to be able to say to people listen, we're going to pay you a salary, we're going to pay you a competitive salary, we're going to pay you kind of on the high end of what somebody at your level might get elsewhere and, you know, give you the things that you need to feel safe and secure in a job and we're going to let you build a practice not as so rapidly that you need to hurry, hurry to do that in order to be able to pay rent and pay your bills and also like we're going to acknowledge that you're going to stumble along the way and you're going to lose patience and not land some intakes, and that's okay. We're going to kind of make an investment in that and that has been, I think, like central.
Speaker 1:I think there's been different times where, for lots of reasons, I've been tempted to listen to the advice not to do that and have held in there and done that and I think that's been really kind of right for us in the aggregate. And there's all kinds of things, I think culture building and retaining employees, doing good supervision and growing supervision, supporting building. Part of what I've done was to kind of promote and empower people who've been with me since early on to take on more of a leadership role and manage some of the administrative parts of our practice but also, you know, do more and more of the supervision and support their growth as supervisors. You know, delegating and inviting people who aren't me to have some authority and say, in things I don't know I'm happy to talk more about those things, but those are a couple of things that come to mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. I wonder what you feel about digging into leadership a little bit. That's such a big topic and I think it's also something that can be really pivotal inside of a clinic and what type of leadership means something to you and how do you grow that in yourself and then instill it in the people in your business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you know I've been thinking about that question a lot in anticipation of this, and I think you know the word humility, which is so overused in this space.
Speaker 1:The word humility, which is so overused in this space, really comes to mind and I do think is the best word and something that I really strive for and hope I've achieved in some ways. But I think, in the spirit of humility, I think to really acknowledge we talk about people being natural leaders, but I would imagine that even natural leaders early on, when they're really leading in a professional capacity, stumble a lot. I think it just is the kind of thing that I think it's not possible to learn without some mistakes and some struggle. And so, you know, I think that there's these two things that I work really hard to keep in balance, which is, on the one hand, inviting buy-in, on the one hand, being transparent, I think, encouraging people to challenge decisions and to offer a counterpoint to that by way of getting shared input and helping people feel they have a say in what we're doing, but in balance with recognizing that, at the end of the day, I'm responsible for what we're doing.
Speaker 1:We're running a healthcare practice and the decisions we make can have real consequences for people's lives, including sometimes quite severe consequences, and also can have consequences for the quality of work we do and have consequences for our business and, at the end of the day, if our business isn't successful, it impacts potentially our ability to pay people a salary or to meet raises and promotions, or to even keep people employed and keep the practice open and pay for marketing, which keeps the practice open, and, as business owners, all of those things that we deal with which, which are really real, and we're never far, you know, we never take those for granted, because there's a lot of responsibility on us and particularly when you're employing people and you know you, you've got, you know employees and they're covering health insurance for their partners and kids and and you know the the, the kind of knock-on effect of keeping things running.
Speaker 1:And so, again, in balance with that value of kind of transparency and buy-in and humility, is also to recognize like, at the end of the day, like I need to be prepared to just simply make a decision and to be in charge and to be able to say, gosh, it sounds like some folks are disappointed with this decision, but this is what we need to do.
Speaker 1:So I mean, it's just that we do it, whether that's a clinical decision or a business decision. And so I think, early on, I think I need it to kind of take a firmer stance, and that blew up in my face.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've had the same experience and there's a confidence that you need underneath it to be able to really work with people and to do what you're saying, have humility and really listen to ideas, but then also have an instinct for when to play the I need to make this decision card. I think that's an interesting skill to learn, a combination of skills to learn, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and people will be mad at you and sometimes you'll do that and that will be the wrong decision and and that comes with its own uh, problematic. But I think if you're living in avoidance of people being mad at you or in avoidance of having your name on a decision that goes wrong, ultimately I think you're you're going to be too passive as a leader and and that's going to have just probably a different kind of consequence, maybe a bit further down the line.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think what I try to achieve there is a trust. So the more we have an exchange where I'm actually not making decisions and I'm actually hiring people who have incredible talent to do it on their own, the more, when I have to play the card of I need to make this decision, there's a trust there where, if I'm reading the situation right and my whole team is going to be listening to this so we'll see what they think but yeah, like if I'm reading the situation right, they can tolerate it and they can pick themselves back up and keep going.
Speaker 1:I couldn't agree more. I think that's absolutely right. I think part of it is in the interplay between these two things, which is when I can defer to the team or to somebody that has a strong position on something, to the team or to somebody that that has a strong position on something. I do when I, you know, I try to take the space when I make a decision that I think is going to be tough, to slow down and take people along with my reasoning when I can.
Speaker 1:You can't always for a lot, for lots of reasons, but I think in doing that, I think it builds that trust so that when the other kind of decision is made where I say, actually this is what I'm doing and I actually can't necessarily take everybody through that or win everybody over to that, I think there's sort of a benefit of doubt that's built, hopefully, there and I think that's been more and more true for us in practice where people are able to say, okay, I don't like this one, but you've, you've, you've been a straight shooter so far and kind of included us and allowed us to buy in on on so many other things. All right, I'm going to go along with that. I trust that you're probably doing that for the right reason. That's a big deal. It's nice to have that yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, okay. So how do you measure success for your clinic?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I think it's in a lot of ways, you know, there's certain aspects of success that we've decided not to chase. I think one of the biggest ones is we, you know, for most of our history and we're so lucky to be in this position we've had like a lot more demand than supply, to put it in business terms, which is, we have had, you know, plenty of months in the last 12 and a half years, since we've been a group practice, where we've turned away business, turned away a lot of business, while also having, you know, people in our hiring inbox or who we've interviewed, who are, you know, eager to work for us and but who aren't the right fit. And so we've consistently, you know, really said what we're not interested in doing is hiring enough people to fill the spots that we need based on our demand, but rather hiring people who are good, who want to learn and grow, who share our values and tolerating, you know, kind of leaving money on the table, as people say, and you know that was a struggle for a while, but I've made peace with that for quite some time now. And so you know financial success it's not to say that isn't important, and you know the bottom line. It's not to say that isn't important and you know the bottom line.
Speaker 1:I think the fact that we've been able to sustain ourselves as a practice is important and this is a business that's been, that's been good for me and profitable for me and for some, some more senior therapists who share in the profits. And also we've we've consistently been a place and this is one of the key parts of an answer to your question in terms of measuring it is we're consistently able to give people raises that are very competitive and then ultimately, at a certain point, for a lot of our therapists we're competing with them leaving and going into private practice and so have been in a position to pay people you know as well or better as they would likely make in private practice and also have you know community and all of the other kinds of benefits that they get from us, and that's a big part of how we measure success. And I think probably the most important thing is are the people who are doing the work as therapists like are they growing in their work? And you can see that you know quantitatively, like does it seem like the people who've come to work with them and receive therapy from them are sticking around and qualitatively does it seem like they're growing and getting better, and you know. So we see things.
Speaker 1:There's all of these different, you know kind of metrics that we see things. There's all of these different kind of metrics that we synthesize kind of formal, measurable and informal. That, to me, is, I think, the most important thing. I think to do therapy really well is pretty rare and I think it takes many, many, many years of really hard work and hard self-work many, many, many years of really hard work and hard self-work. And so you know, when I can kind of see somebody grow and look at somebody who, a few years into this, is really developing some mastery, that's pretty fantastic. So you know, that's probably at the core of that, even more than some of the kind of quantitative stuff which we've been lucky to have a lot of success around.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. I love how you're thinking about this in such a people-centered way. I think, from my understanding, it's definitely part of what's making your business sustainable across many, many aspects of what you're doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's definitely lots of ways in which we you know, quote leave money on the table in the short term.
Speaker 2:I love it. Well, I think we've covered so much today, so I want to thank you for being so open and honest with your strategy, your approach, your feelings. I really appreciate it. This has been so great getting to know you. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:This has been so great getting to know you. Yeah Well, this is, this was such a delightful conversation and I I was so looking forward to it and I think this was kind of even more fun than I thought I I I is something really really special about kind of you asking these questions and obviously you know it's, it's it's clear you can relate to so much of what we're talking about, cause I think you're asking the things that I think about that question an awful lot and grapple with and struggle with it. So just really thrilled to have been here. Thanks for the opportunity.