265: Transitioning From Conventional Business Model in Private Practice in 2021 And Beyond with Brant Thomsen, LICSW

Many of us are wondering what our careers are going to look like in 2021 and beyond. We know the therapy model of 2019 as we knew it is not coming back. How do we pivot and move forward? We are answering this question in today’s show.

Our Featured Guest

Brant Thomsen

Brant Thomsen is a therapist in private practice in the twin cities area of MN. He has an interesting life and career because he became a social worker after training at a music school in high-level piano performance. He is now making the move into less therapy and more coaching. Through interesting and unexpected circumstances, Brant was forced to make a quick transition to telehealth during the early days of the 2020 pandemic. He’s here to share what he considered and what he encountered, along with three lessons learned during the transition.

Connect with Brant: Online Practice Builder  

You’ll Learn:

●     How 2020 played out for Brant when he was abruptly quarantined because of a client’s positive exposure

●     How Brant transitioned smoothly to telehealth in 48 hours’ time

●     What it was like to quarantine in his room for two weeks, and why Brant calls it a focused, peaceful, almost monastic experience that brought increased connection with clients and colleagues

●     How Brant’s diverse range of careers helped prepare him mentally for his transition

●     How Brant navigated the struggle to be authentic in his online presence and realize what he can give to others

●     Three life lessons learned in Brant’s transition to online therapy:

●   “I realized how much passion, focus, and readiness I have in supporting other therapists in a coaching role.”

●   “I realized the importance of staying connected to the natural environment around me.”

●    “I realized the lack of permanence in our lives and that what we give each other is temporary.”

●     How Brant is handling the day-to-day stress of the pandemic

PODCAST SPONSOR

Hushmail: Hushmail is a secure, HIPAA-compliant way to communicate with clients via email and to fill out clinical forms like intake packets securely.

Please visit sellingthecouch.com/hushmail and let them know that Mel sent you =).

Transcript:

Melvin:

Hello, welcome to

session 265 of Selling the Couch, I hope that you are having a wonderful day

I'm actually recording this at the very tail end of December; December 30. I

know how difficult Well, I don't know, the individual stories, but on the collective

whole, I know how hard of a year 2020 has been for so many of us. And I know

that many of us are ready to make this transition into 2021. So I hope that

when this session airs that you are doing well, that you are making this

transition and we have more clarity with regard to vaccines and all of those

different things.

Today’s conversation

is with Brant Thomsen from onlinepracticebuilder.com. Brant is actually a

therapist in private practice in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. And Brant has a

pretty interesting life career. So he's a social worker, but his original major

in college was high level like piano performance, and so he actually went to a

music school and was going to become a professional musician and then decided

to make this transition into social work and has done some pretty amazing stuff

throughout his career.

But I wanted to

have Brant on the podcast, we've been friends for a number of years and Brant

decided as for many of us who have made this transition this past year to Telehealth,

Brant had a pretty crazy situation, which you'll hear on the podcast about just

how real this became. In short, he had to make a really quick transition into

telehealth.

And here in

today's session where we're planning on just talking about that, what are some

of the things that he had to consider? What are the struggles that he had? And

then wrapping up with what are three of the business or life lessons that Brant

learned during this transition?

I wanted to have

Brant on because many of us are in this season, where we might be thinking,

what is our career going to look like in 2021 and beyond? And I mentioned this

on the podcast interview. But it's therapy and private practice. As we know it,

the 2019 version of this is not coming back. There's just too many changes too

many things now to factor.

And so what does

this look like and how do we honour that part of ourselves that desires to make

that transition and not listen to fears and all of those different things.

Before we get to today's podcast session, just wanted to take a moment to thank

the team over at Hushmail for supporting this month's podcast sessions. I know

that you guys know a lot about Hushmail, but if you don't know about Hushmail,

Hushmail basically allows you to send and receive private encrypted email and then

also allows you to get your forms completed and signed faster.

So for example,

your initial documentation for clients and things, it allows you to do that in

an encrypted way and you can actually put forms and things like that on your

website. So clients can fill that out through the website instead of kind of

going back and forth and just generally not being efficient.

You can learn more

about Hushmail over at sellingthecouch.com/hushmail. So we'll get right to

today's podcast session. Here is my conversation with Brant Thompson, from

onlinepracticebuilder.com.

Hey Brant, welcome

to Selling the Couch.

Brant:

Thank you, Melvin.

It is great to be here.

Melvin:

It's been really

nice. I think we've known each other a couple of years now.

Brant:

I think so we

first made contact a couple of years ago, although I first became familiar with

your podcast, as it was beginning around four years ago for myself.

Melvin:

Wow, I didn't

realize that it had been that long. One, I'm sorry that it took so long to

reach out. But I really am grateful for this conversation because I know this

is something that many of us have done in the field, which is make this

transition to telehealth and more specifically even thinking through what this

means for our businesses going forward. So I really am just grateful for this

time.

Brant:

Great! Myself as

well.

Melvin:

I was trying to

think about where to even start this conversation. And I think that question

that I wanted to ask you was, tell us a little bit about what was happening for

you as you transition to talk therapy, especially in the start of 2020 as this

pandemic as we were learning more, and all of those different things.

Brant:

For me, things

changed quite abruptly. My last in person client here, I am actually in my

office, although I do telehealth entirely, had an exposure and he informed me

the next day. And we just did not know enough about COVID its features etc. There

were not even masks for health care providers and putting that out there as a

context, and it meant for me quarantining immediately. We have a day-care in

our home and to keep those kiddos and families safe, and because we knew so

little about COVID, I ended up quarantined in my own bedroom for two or three

weeks.

Melvin:

Oh, my Gosh, you

know what I didn't even realize that had happened. Talk about like, something

that is abstract and happening somewhere else, and then becoming very real in

just the course one session.

Brant:

So within a matter

of 48 hours, I had everything set up and ready to go my computer, my laptop, my

bed, my bedside table, a chair, and brought a table in, and I was figuratively

and literally in business and quite smoothly, virtually missed no sessions with

my clients.

Melvin:

How did you I

guess, communicate with the remainder of your clients about this transition and

potential exposure? Like how much I guess disclosure did you have with that?

Brant:

Yeah, thank you.

Good question. I tend to do long term work with my clients. So about 80% of my

clients have been with me for more than two years approach being psychodynamic

primarily, and in those cases, it was fairly easy, we have a fairly close

relationship and of course, with boundaries. What I found was, it was nice was

there really was a lot of parallel process happening with my clients, many of

them are professional, and supporting them in the transition from being at work

to needing to be at home, while the same thing was happening to me. Self-disclosure

was actually a wonderful thing that we could do that, because I already had

such strong relationships with those clients.

Melvin:

And I think

there's something just so unique about this pandemic. We were all in this and

dealing with it. So it's not like some abstract thing. For example, if you were

to tell a client, significant person in your life passed away, and I need to do

something or I need it; we were all dealing with it. So you made this

transition set up the office. Even take us into that moment, were you scared,

like uncertain or it was more like, you know what, this is what we have to do,

it kind of just went into like, okay, this is the next logical step.

Brant:

So a five second

narrative, and then how it felt, I went in the back door, I was required to buy

my family, took off any potential laundry, shoes, etc, showered, and was

basically forced by my family with a smile, to go up into my room and stay

there. And I did not come out for about two weeks. But for me, setting up there

was a level of focus. It was almost a monastic experience. It was very

peaceful.

Although there was

isolation, on a deeper spiritual level and emotional level, there was increased

connection with the people who I could not see in person, family, clients,

professional colleagues, networks, long term relationships I've had with people

were no longer in person. And what I would add to that is there also was some

fun. I had times where I literally would go out my window onto my porch roof

with a pizza and social distance, 100 yards from people walking by and have my

pizza and wave of people walking by playing Yahtzee with a friend in Maryland,

while I'm here in Minnesota. So we made some good, positive experience out of

what really was a true quarantine.

Melvin:

Yeah, it is

amazing that you took something that's so startling and sudden and just being

able to see things like almost a spiritual experience and then to even like reframe

that, and not just in your mind, but actually that it translates into tangible

action. These are opportunities where I can now connect with different people

where I can see the world differently and all of those things.

I'm really curious

because I know a little bit more about your past history, careers and all of

these different things that then listeners might know. But so I wanted to ask

you that you've had a diverse range of careers and I know like you were even a

high level performer in music, right. I was just really curious, how do you

think that if, if you think it did, how do you think that affected just sort of

your mentality in that moment?

Brant:

If you were to ask

people who know me the best they would say I'm creative, I have a quiet

emotional intensity and I think that carries across areas of who a person is,

as well as what they do with it professionally. So I went to New England

Conservatory piano performance major, realized that was not what I wanted

professionally, became a social worker realized that frontline, straight social

work was not just what I wanted, I became a clinical social worker, worked in

the schools for almost 15 years. As the role of clinical social work and

therapy, school base changed, I no longer felt like I was a good fit in the

school setting and I opened my own practice.

It literally was a

leap, I left, let everything go and jumped right into my practice. And as a

therapist, in practice, it was very scary, discerning, what is my niche? Where

do I want to work? Who am I, as a therapist? What do I feel like? What clinical

skills and information do I bring to the table? It has now moved forward even

further to Who am I as a creative, as someone with clinical knowledge and

skills in front of a computer screen? Who am I? What do I do? How do I engage

with people over the computer screen? Whether it's personally or

professionally?

Melvin:

I love how you're

saying this because truthfully, this is a struggle that I have. I consider I'm

a psychologist, I'm a licensed psychologist, but I'm also I think that title of

creator is sort of how I would think of myself in this space. I love building

things, creating things, creating videos, doing podcasts, all of these things.

And truthfully,

it's something that I've struggled with even very recently, which is, I feel

like intuitively, and creatively, I want to do all of these things. But I do in

some ways, feel that tension of needing to confine myself, I guess, maybe to

traditional talk therapy. I don't know if that makes sense. But I wonder if

you've ever struggled with that because I think a lot of folks listening have

that tension and do you sort of navigate that?

Brant:

That's a nice way

to think about who we are as therapists, but also who we are in person compared

to online because ultimately, that is the question that is the reality that

we're living in. So discovering who I am, and going through processes

internally, spiritually, with people who know me well, of self-exploration has

been very important and it has changed since the quarantine I had in March.

I was again

quarantined with my daughter who's a young adult who works at the hospital, she

was at bedside of two people who died from COVID on the same day, and she

needed her dad. So when she got home that night, I gave her a hug and I knew it

would mean a couple more weeks of quarantine. But I was okay with that. It

wasn't necessarily a problem. So I brought my family, my daughter and I closer

and it made me realize that I have much to give other people in addition to

therapy.

So during that

time, I have literally taken more than 150 hours of courses on becoming a

professional coach on what does different aspects of therapy look like online?

On what does it mean to be a business person online? And I had not thought

about that in such clarity until this time.

Melvin:

I think that thing

that I often struggle with is, especially in this online space, especially in

like a lot of these professional communities of therapists, we see this one

side. This is the niche that I work with. This is my training. But yeah, we're

all hold people and how do we sort of integrate all those parts of ourselves?

Because I don't know, at least for me, that's such a big part of small business

ownership is that we get to create something that I guess honours that creative

spark, you know?

Brant:

Yes.

Melvin:

I also just wanted

to say I resonate as a fellow girl dad. So yeah it’s wonderful. I wanted to

just transition and kind of dive a little bit deeper into a couple of things.

So I think I'd asked you Brant, would you mind just thinking about like, three

life or business realizations that you've had as a result of transitioning to

teletherapy and making this transition now to 100% online, what would those

three be and maybe what we can do is just kind of take one at a time and dive

deep in?

Brant:

Sure. The first

one would be that I realized how much passion and focus and readiness I have to

be supporting other therapists in a coaching role. I had not realized that

before I began noticing and realizing that I was increasing my contact with

other therapists. They were having anxieties like I was. So we were having a

common experience.

But I found myself

wanting to reach to provide information to support and challenge accountability

to my colleagues who are also therapists. So for me, that has meant a real

business change, I'm intentionally allowing my own therapy practice, to

gradually decrease in numbers just on its own, not accepting new clients making

referrals out, and I'm increasing the number of professionals to whom I provide

business coaching, including therapists, and I could not have seen this coming

10 months ago.

Melvin:

It's amazing, what

is it like to slowly let go of the therapy practice?

Brant:

Letting go of the

therapy practice slowly on two levels has a level of sadness to it. Because it

means knowing that I'm letting go of my clients who I have supported for long

periods of time, it's nice that I have the option of doing that gradually.

That's very, very nice. But it also means a change in identity. I'm a very

visual person, a very physical person and experiencing an environment when I

walk into a room, into a space, feeling the energy of that space, I will have

to give up my office, I will have to transition into a new space, which is my home,

and create that new space and there's some sadness in that.

Melvin:

Yeah, which is

completely understandable; how do you make space, I guess, for that new

identity, and emotionally and all of those things?

Brant:

Relationship, so

influence of other people asking others, what do you think? Or how does it feel

if the wall is this color, or some funk tray, and actually getting the input of

other people, and then I'm not so alone in making the change, and I...