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[00:00:00] Dr. Sharp: Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Testing Psychologist podcast, the podcast where we talk all about the business and practice of psychological and neuropsychological assessment. I’m your host, Dr. Jeremy Sharp, licensed psychologist, group practice owner, and private practice coach.

PAR has a number of remote testing tools that will help you stay safe during social distancing times. Measures include the RIST-2, the RAIT, the TOGRA, the IGT-2, and the Wisconsin Card Sort Test. Learn more at parinc.com\remote.

Hey y’all, welcome back to The Testing Psychologist podcast. I am thrilled to have my friend and now three-time guest, Joe Sanok on the podcast today talking about lots of the principles from his recently published book Thursday is the New Friday.

If you know anything about Joe, you know that he is [00:01:00] a productivity expert and fanatic. And this has been a long time coming. He was one of the first people I knew to go down to a 3-day workweek on purpose several years ago. And he’s finally channeled all of that experience and knowledge and a lot of research, frankly, into a new book to help other people learn how to do the same thing.

As usual, we have a great conversation that goes down any number of paths. But the hope is that you find it helpful and interesting, and it’ll give you some things to learn and take away and put into practice in your life.

In case you don’t know, a little bit about Joe. He is a private practice consultant and host of The Practice of the Practice podcast, which is recognized as one of the top 50 podcasts worldwide with over 100,000 downloads each month. He [00:02:00] has best-selling authors, experts, and other business leaders, scholars, innovators on the show. They’re all featured and interviewed in the nearly 600 podcasts he has done over the last six years. 

Joe has been featured on Forbes, Good Magazine, and the Smart Passive Income Podcast among many others. And like I said, he is my original business coach and now friend. So happy to chat with him as always.

Without any further delay, let’s get to my conversation with Joe Sanok about Thursday being the New Friday.

[00:03:00] Joe, welcome back to the podcast.

Joe: Jeremy, I’m so excited to be here.

Dr. Sharp: Glad to have you. I could be wrong, I’ll have to go back and look, but I think you might be the first three-time guest on the podcast. So congratulations my friend. I know you’ve been going for that for years.

Joe: Yes. It started on Saturday Night Live where they have the… is it 7 Times Club or something like that? You’re creating that for your podcast.

Dr. Sharp: Exactly. It’s an elusive illustrious club and you are the first member. Good to have you back. Gosh, I’m trying to think of the last time we talked. It was maybe about a year ago, maybe eight months ago when you were touring around in the RV, but there’s been a lot going on since then. You have a new book out, which is pretty incredible.

I usually start these interviews by asking why is this important? This could be whatever my guest is [00:04:00] an expert on, but it’s a little more of a heavy question with you because whatever this is was important enough to write a book on it and spend the time on it. So two parts, can you define this? When I say this, what is the book about, but also WHY, why spend so much time on this topic enough to write a book?

Joe: Yeah. I would say that this is the 4-day work week to really evaluate why we are overworking. Is that the best we can do? Is 2019 the pinnacle of human success right before the pandemic or is there something else that we can reinvent?

And so, if I really dive into why, for me, when I started the book, I put the whole proposal together and the ideas of it, but I started from scratch with a whiteboard. So what questions would I have if I were just entering into this with new eyes? And the two questions I had were: where did the 7-day week even come from? Where did the 40-hour week come [00:05:00] from? Because if I could understand how constructed is this society that we live in versus is it a little wobbly, that makes it easier to deconstruct it and say, we could do better.

And so, I looked into the research and the science and the history behind it, and 4,000 years ago, the Babylonians just made up the 7-day week. They looked up in the sky and saw the sun, the moon, and they saw the Earth, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. And so they just made up the 7-day week. It doesn’t make any sense. Our months make sense around the moon cycle. Our days make sense. A year makes sense, but the 7-day week, totally arbitrary. The Romans had a 10 day week. Egyptians had an 8-day week.

When I discovered that, I was like, “Well, what else is there out there?” And to see how people were living in the late 1800s, early 1900s, the average person was working 10 to 14 hours a day, 6 to 7 days a week. So, it’s just a farmer’s schedule, but even if you weren’t a farmer, you were working all the time.

When Henry Ford in 1926 started the 40-hour [00:06:00] work week, that was a huge step forward for evolution. That was a huge step forward for business and productivity and creativity. And that industrial mindset that people are machines, they’re assembly lines that we can just plug in really permeated most of the 20th century. But we start to see that really start to fade on Fridays in the 1980s and 1990s. We see the rise of casual Fridays. We see that more and more people just aren’t working much on Fridays even if they are at work. And the pandemic really was that final thing that was the nail in the coffin for the industrious mindset.

So why is this important to me? The society we’ve been handed as the adults of this generation, it feels like this 40-hour workweek is just what we’ve been given, and it’s how it should be, but it’s actually pretty shaky. The 7-day week. That’s something people just made up.

And as the post-pandemic generation, I think it’s important to think through, do we need the most creative minds moving forward for the challenges of the 21st century, or do we need people that are burned out from these 40+hour weeks? And I would argue that this is the most important time [00:07:00] maybe in our lifetime to say we are going to reinvent society post-pandemic because everyone is questioning the way that we work. And we have an opportunity here, a window of time that we can actually move into something different.

Dr. Sharp: Sure. There’s so much to unpack from all of that, but I will comment on one thing right off the bat which is, getting started reading the book, you open with this historical perspective. And that was fascinating to me. I guess there are people out there who probably just know that information, but I didn’t know that information, that the week and our calendar is kind of arbitrary and has shifted over the years over the centuries and millennia depending on the culture. There’s just an interesting example of things that we take as gospel that are actually totally malleable, right? So that’s one super interesting thing right off the bat.

I want to go even further back though in terms of the WHY. I know that slowing down has [00:08:00] been big for you for a long time, and just as the general theme of not overworking. Is there more underneath that? Because I think a lot of us maybe have that feeling or want to slow down or feel burned out or whatever, but don’t really take it to that next level. So I’m curious, were you at a place at some point that you were burned out? Or did you see your parents work too hard? Is there a deeper WHY?

Joe: Yeah. There’s not a traumatic event or a major burnout moment where I was like, oh, I realized it all. I do think that in 2012 when my oldest had heart surgery right before her first birthday, and then that was also the year that I had cancer, one of my best friend’s wives had had breast cancer, and then my grandma died.

That was a year of do I want to keep working at this community college and have this be the rest of my career? It was a great-paying job. It had a [00:09:00] pension. As a therapist’s “job,” it was great. And so, it wasn’t bad enough to want to mic drop and walk away from, but it also was the idea of the potential outside of that.

I think as I’ve examined the 4-day work week and why slowing down is so important to me, it’s that I experienced it throughout all of undergrad and grad school. When I first was at my freshman orientation, they said, “It’s time to make your schedule.” I raised my hand and said, “Do I have to go to school on Friday?” And they’re like, “No, this is college. Do whatever you want.” And so all of my undergrad and grad school, I had a 4-day week except for one semester when I had a class that was mandatory. And then my first job that I took was the same thing, I negotiated a 4-day workweek.

In my early years, I really valued community. The guys that I lived with in college are still some of my best friends. I went to a show with them in Detroit last weekend. And so, it’s seeing that vibrant life outside of my school or outside of my work [00:10:00] has been something that I’ve enjoyed and set money aside for. Even in college, I’d save up money, and then I’d go travel Europe or I’d save up money and then go to Nepal and Thailand.

And so, having those life experiences for me give color to my life in a way that I don’t think other people choose to either spend their money or resources or time doing those things. And so, I think it was more having that outsider perspective and seeing that a lot of people just went and got a regular job. They had a regular family. They never questioned their everyday life. And that slowed down for me. It was something I was living already without realizing that was something other people weren’t doing. 

Dr. Sharp: That’s interesting. I wonder what that might be. Do you think that’s a personality trait of some sort? Is that something that you learned growing up that was modeled? Again, lots of thoughts that people [00:11:00] have, but then taking action on it feels a little different. Like, I don’t know how many people would have the guts to raise their hand in freshman orientation and say, do I have to do this? I wonder where that is… Do you have a sense of where that comes from?

Joe: Yeah, I think it was a series of a lot of things that in my family both built my self-confidence, but then also allowed me to challenge some of the norms. So for me being the Eagle Scout was a huge thing because as a kid, it’s, here’s a goal that I have, it’s broken down into these badges, and then each of those badges has individual steps and you get your Eagle Scout. And for me, whether it was that or raising money to go scuba diving in Florida or different things within the Scouts, that was really big. It helped me have autonomy outside of my parents.

So I think that probably for a really young age, my parents did a great job in just helping me realize that I could really save up and buy anything that I wanted. I would take work. The first skateboard I [00:12:00] wanted, they didn’t just buy it for me and say, oh good, Joe wants to go move his body. A lot of parents would say, good, you want to play outside instead of having an iPad game, I’ll just buy you a skateboard. But they said, if you can raise half the money for the skateboard you want, we’ll pay the other half. 

And I was in 2nd grade, how do I even make money? And so they said… they probably went to the neighbors and gave them the money. …The neighbors are going out of town. Why don’t you go talk with them and maybe they’ll give you some money for some things that you could do while they’re out of town. So the job was that I had to go refill their birdbath with water every day.

Now, as an adult, I’m like, “You don’t need to fill up a birdbath every day. That’s ridiculous. You don’t get $20 or $30 for doing that.” And so, I imagine my parents just gave him the money. But that was a theme throughout my childhood. So I think that there was that idea that I could go after things that was reinforced.

I think also just different steps of leadership, whether that was student council or being in bands and learning marketing. When you’re in a [00:13:00] band in college, you got to get people to come through the door or you don’t get paid, not even realizing that that was business marketing. All those steps play together. You’re diving into places we haven’t gone. I haven’t gone. I don’t have a stock answer for you. That’s good. 

Dr. Sharp: This is dangerous doing podcast interviews with friends, you know.

Joe: Yeah, it’s a live therapy session, like talk about your childhood, Joe. Let’s drill in a little deeper there. What are you holding back on?

Dr. Sharp: I appreciate it. You’re a good sport. This is good. I won’t torture you too much longer. I’m always curious, it’s more around motivation maybe and where we put our energy. You’ve obviously put a lot of energy into this book. I’m always curious about where the motivation comes to do big projects like this that can really change your life.

Joe: I think that initially if I look back on it, getting bullied in 8th grade and not being a football [00:14:00] star at a Friday Night Lights type of Catholic high school and being the snowboarder type that played music. There was rejection there. And so, for a number of years that Enneagram 3 achiever type was the overcompensating to get other people to affirm me and to say good job, Joe. You’re so great. But that only goes so far.

And so, probably the last decade has been me really examining that, working on that, and understanding that it’s fine to achieve things. We need people that want to achieve big things and have big dreams and go after them. But if my ego is personally wrapped up in the success of that or the failure of that, that’s not fair to my insides to try to have that level of pressure on the success of a project. And so I think the ongoing work for me has been to really learn how do I not attach to outcomes, to say, I’m going to do my best work. I’m going to have that approach to it where I’m getting data no matter what if something is “successful or a failure”

And so to be able to enter into a project like this [00:15:00] and to say, yes, I absolutely would love to have a New York Times bestselling book. I would love to sell the 10,000 copies that are needed for that. That would open tons of doors. And there’s so much that’s out of my control. I can look at what New York Times bestselling authors do. They do over 200 media appearances in the two months leading up to their book release. I’ve done 200+ media appearances. I hired a PR company that has done a crazy job and done an amazing job getting me into spots, but at the end of the day, it’s people making that buying decision and that’s completely out of my hands.

And so, you can put out into the world this message of, I think the 4-day workweek is better for society and all these arguments for it, but at the end of the day, people are going to choose whether they’re going to buy the book or not. And so, learning to have the outcome not be wrapped up in my ego has been such an important task in my own personal development.

Dr. Sharp: I think that’s something that a lot of probably resonate with as business owners, practice owners, and that’s a [00:16:00] tricky process. It sounds like you’ve done a lot of work on it. I think about that a lot too. How do we separate the outcome from our efforts, I suppose, and from our ego?

Joe: Yeah.

Dr. Sharp: Of course.

Joe: And the other side of it is, I probably had 3 or 4 friends over the weekend that said, “What are you going to do to celebrate Tuesday?” I’m like, “I don’t know. I have no plans.” And they’re like, “You wrote a book that’s getting launched nationwide.” And so, in an effort to just keep myself from not having too much ego wrapped into it, I also hadn’t planned any sort of celebration. And so, with two of my closest guy friends, we went out to dinner and had that planned out. And so to actually celebrate on that day was fun.

And so I think that the side of the coin for achiever types is, if we start to try to be more healthy, oftentimes we then don’t actually celebrate our successes because we think it’s going to be our ego coming out. And so learning to find that balance between I can celebrate successes, I can be proud of having the articles that are in really big-name publications and my ego doesn’t have to be a part of that, or as much as I have control over and not [00:17:00] be a part of it.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah. It’s funny. This feels in the same ballpark as a conversation I’ve had, maybe it was on Tim Ferriss or one of those kinds of podcasts, but this question of, can you be ambitious and content at the same time? I’ve wrestled with that a lot. I don’t know if that resonates with you at all, or if we’re in the same ballpark, but it’s something that I think about sometimes. 

Joe: I think when you’re an ambitious person, oftentimes that lack of contentment can be the thing that leads it. For me, I feel like it’s really shifted where it’s almost like a game, like what can I do in this life? Like if I was to say, I made out of Stardust, I have this 70, 80 years on the planet to just say, I’m going to do some really interesting things while I’m here. And to recognize that even the really big failures and parts of my life that have blown [00:18:00] up, they’re not things that I would have ever asked for. And I have a fricking interesting life that I never could have experienced had I not been able to go through the really difficult things too.

And so, even there’s a Johnny Cash song, that’s I think actually, Nine Inch Nails song. He says a lyric in it that, “If I could start again a million miles away, I would find myself, I would find a way.” And just that idea of our full life is only ours. That’s the crap of it. And it’s also the success of it. And to realize that you get to experience this, I get to experience mine, and just to know that, to me, it’s more about experiences and awareness of it rather than some affirmation outside of myself at this point.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah. There’s a lot to dig into there that I will not do. I think at this point in our recording, we’ve probably lost half the listeners, and then we’ve got half of the people on the edge of their seats.

Joe: They’re like, we’re inside of Joe’s brain. 

[00:19:00] Dr. Sharp: What’s going on? Yes. Now, I think this stuff is big. Just hearing the internal process is pretty revealing and humanizing too. I think that’s one of the important pieces here. It’s like, how does anybody write a book? Well, you’re just like a normal person who spends a lot of time on something. Dedicated. You’ve done a lot of work.

I am curious though, I want to spend some time talking about the book. So if you could summarize, I know you broke it into a few sections. What is this book about?

Joe: So if we think about the old process of how books were when the industrialists were writing them, and we have the five habits of highly effective people or these Productivity hacks that are broken down, it’s a blueprint or a prescription, just like how they think in every other arena. Or on the other side, we have these Tim Wu books that say, create this vision board, manifest it to the universe. Don’t do any work. And somehow you’re going to get a trip to [00:20:00] Hawaii.

Those two don’t fully capture what life is like. And they also have truths that they point to. And so that’s really merging those two mindsets into this new, what we might call it, an evolutionary model of business, where we’re learning, growing, and adapting. Where it’s not just a prescription we’re buying into, but instead it’s a menu where we say, I’m going to try some of those things from the book and we’re going to then adapt and change and get smarter over time to then apply it differently in my life. That’s moving away from that machine version of what life is supposed to be.

The book is broken up into three distinct parts. The first part is all your internal inclinations. So we start with your insides because too often we have some productivity book and we’re just learning the habits, but we haven’t done the inner work to even know, am I doing the work I should be doing? I’m not going to teach you how to be more effective in your work if inside, maybe you’re just messed up. And so we want to look at the research of your three internal inclinations.

In the next section of the book, [00:21:00] we then look at why slowing down is the key to actually getting to that final stage of absolutely killing it. So often what we do is we’re reacting instead of anticipating. And so we have a workweek that’s crazy busy, we’re going full tilt, we’re burned out and stressed out. And then our weekend is just a reaction to that where we oversleep, we over-drink, or we overcompensate by having our kids in a million sports. And the whole weekend it’s well, we got to get our Instagram pictures of the pumpkins. We’ve got to hurry up over here. We got invited to this barbecue. Next thing you know it’s Monday morning and you feel like your workweek is going to actually be a relief from the weekend that you just had with your family.

And so instead of doing that, we look at slowing down first and say, how do I have some intention going into this weekend? To say, what am I trying to develop with my kids, with myself, with my community? And to create those hard and soft boundaries as we enter into that. If we want to get into the family side of how we make Thursday the New Friday, we can go down that path if we want [00:22:00] to. But really being intentional on how we optimize the brain in ways that the research points to so that when we get back to work, we can actually get a bunch done.

And then we talk through some techniques of what neuroscience is revealing into a number of those menu items that people can try to absolutely kill it when they actually get back to the workweek.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah. I have so many questions. When you talk about those three inclinations, you don’t have to dive deep into them, but I’m curious, what do you mean when you say three inclinations? Are these personality traits? Are they something else? 

Joe: So the research is revealing that there are three major areas the top performers have naturally. So an inclination it’s just naturally occurring. In the book, there’s an assessment. I know you’re going to like that. There’s an assessment where you can go through and see, is this naturally occurring in you or does it need some development?

This isn’t a pass/fail like, Ooh, you don’t have these ones, you shouldn’t be a leader. It’s, let’s just have some awareness around where do you [00:23:00] naturally thrive and where are there other areas that you need to do some development, and then there are some steps to help you develop those traits.

So the three internal inclinations are” The first is curiosity. Top performers maintain that curiosity that a lot of adults tend to lose. Second, they have an outsider perspective and they put themselves in situations where they are the outsider to help them feel differently and see things differently. And then the last one is the ability to move on. Often we have this spectrum about, on one side we have accuracy and on the other side we have speed. Often, high performers, especially those of us that are highly educated, want to be perfect. We want to be accurate. We overthink things. We’re paralyzed by perfection. When in reality, speed is really what we should be doing. We should be getting that information iterating and changing over time.

Dr. Sharp: Nice. I like that. I do like assessment, of course, and I was happy to see that. Let me see. And then you did mention this [00:24:00] family aspect which I want to get into. I’m going to put a pin in that though because I feel like it’s maybe a little bit down the road, but I just want to remind both of us to get to that because I think that’s probably going to land with a lot of folks.

I am really curious to hear you talk more about the slowing down piece. And you mentioned the “neuroscience” around that. Can you say a little bit more about what that means?

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All right, let’s get back to the podcast.

Joe: Yeah. If we look at the big picture, we’re looking at either a three-day weekend or working fewer hours. A few different things that we’re looking at is Parkinson’s law. We’ve heard about that where work expands to the time given. We know that you’ll work on your best work if you give yourself fewer hours. You’re not going to do the worst work. You’re naturally going to go into that best work. Most of us though, spend so much of our time just feeling like we’re being chased and freaking out.

I tell a story in the book about how I was chased by a wild rhinoceros when I [00:26:00] was in Nepal. And I talk about how I didn’t make a good decision in regards to running away instead of listening to what the guide said, of climbing a tree. I just tried to outrun my friend, who I knew I could for about 100 yards because I was a sprinter in high school and he was a long-distance runner.

So I blatantly disregarded what the guide said. Why didn’t I try to climb a tree in the middle of being chased by a wild rhino? Well, because I’m going to go with what I know. I can outrun Todd in this Peace Corps volunteer that’s the human shield way better than trying to climb a tree for the first time in the middle of Nepal.

And so, so much of our lives, we spend being chased by that rhino. We intuitively know what the research is showing us. And that’s that when we slow down then we actually do better work. And so when you’re taking a shower, when you’re out for a run, when we look at the research around flow state, our environment that we create, we can drop into flow state quicker if we create a specific environment for specific tasks.

One of the studies that I really love it’s around vigilance decrement. So how well we pay attention to something vigilance and detriment meaning going down over time. [00:27:00] So the University of Illinois did the study. And so often we think, oh we need this big weekend, but they were actually challenging it to see if there are micro-breaks we could take that actually allowed us to get more done.

So these college students, they had them come in, they gave them a random four-digit number. So it was 4, 3, 1, 2 . So they get that random number. They sit at a computer and other four-digit numbers pop up. And then when their number pops up, they hit a button. They do this for just under an hour. Super boring task. You just sit there for an hour, hit a button when your number comes up. They saw vigilance decrement. People didn’t pay attention as well at the end as they did at the beginning. That’s totally what I would expect.

Then they had a second group come in as obviously you’re doing a research study. With this group, at the one-third mark, the exact same setup. You get the number, hit the button. One-third mark, they interrupted the task and they gave them a one-minute break. They said something like, we put you on the wrong computer. Just hanging out in the lobby. They didn’t have their phones. They didn’t have magazines or any devices. They just hung out for a minute.

They came back in, did the next third of the study, interrupted again, gave them a one-minute break, and [00:28:00] then they completed the study in that last third. What they saw was zero vigilance decrement. Meaning at the end of that time, they actually were paying attention just as well as they had at the beginning.

And so when you think about the brain, what’s going on when you interrupt the task and pull someone out of it? Well, the brain is saying, oh, new environment, something’s happening. I got to stay safe. Got to make sure. And even in an environment like a computer, our brains are super old. They haven’t evolved to the point to realize that’s not a rhino chasing you. That’s just a computer. And so it pays attention differently when it gets interrupted, where it activates and then deactivates. So we can do this in our own lives when we’re between meetings when we can intentionally put in those quick slowdowns to do different things.

Today, I had some space between two podcasts. I think I did eight different media appearances today. During that time, I went and did a plank, and then I went for a walk, and then I got outside and I was listening to music that gets me hyped up and I just love. And so, it was allowing my brain to engage and disengage. So when we use [00:29:00] those micro-breaks, we can use this research even beyond just having a longer weekend.

Dr. Sharp: I love that. It reminds me a lot of… I think there’s a lot of overlap with some of Cal Newport’s work around Deep Work. How do we truly harness our cognitive ability and focus when we need to focus, not be distracted when not supposed to be distracted, all of that, and just stay fresh and do the best we can.

Joe: The book Stealing Fire is also another great resource when you’re looking at the flow state and how the brain talks to different parts of the brain.

Dr. Sharp: Very cool. I will put that in the show notes like everything that we’re talking about. Let’s talk about this family application of some of these ideas. I’m going to leave it to people to read the book to figure out the more individual aspects. But I am curious about the family [00:30:00] piece because I have a family and this is a selfish request. So what do you mean when you say application to families?

Joe: This really comes out of the discussion around boundaries. So often people say, oh, I know I should set more boundaries on my time or my work or different things like that, but then they quickly don’t do that. One thing that we talked about is soft boundaries and hard boundaries.

What’s a hard boundary for me? So for example, I wrote a book about networking on Friday. So if on a Friday there’s someone that wants to do consulting with me every single Friday, I will always say no to that. That’s just not going to happen. Whereas if Practice of the Practice is on fire and Jess is texting me saying, the website is on fire, people hate you online. What is happening? I’m going to help put out that fire. I’m not going to say let it burn until Monday morning. I’m taking my weekend. No, I’m going to put out the fire with my team, but then on Monday, we’re going to look at well, why was Joe the linchpin here? Why was he the only one that could solve this? Why was he the only one with passwords and he had all the information that we all needed as a team? [00:31:00] Joe, you need to tell us these things so that we don’t get in this situation again. We’re going to reverse engineer it so that I’m better able to address it.

So when we look at boundaries and those sorts of ways of hard and soft boundaries, we also want to apply that to our families. But a lot of the actions we take today can be forecast from looking to the future.

One technique that I love doing with my own family is thinking about my two daughters that are 7 and 10, when they leave for adulthood, when childhood is over, what are the three things that I want them to take into adulthood? We’re not going to give them 27 things that they’re going to remember, but what are the three things that they leave childhood knowing for certain?

Well for one, for me and every family is going to have their own thing, but for one, I want them to understand consent. I want them to understand that their body is their body. I want them to feel strong enough to stand up for themselves around their body. That to me is something that’s very important to make sure that they leave when they go into adulthood and understand. So that’s going to then inform my boundaries and my behavior right now.

So even [00:32:00] just this morning, my 7-year old, I was so excited to see her. I wanted to give her a hug. I said, good morning. Can I have a hug? She said, “I don’t feel like a hug.” And I was crushed, but if my actions are going to mirror the later intentions, okay, it’s your body, you get to do that.

Another thing that I want to make sure that they have when they go into adulthood is the ability to carry on conversations with people. To me, when I think about the most successful people, they are people that can engage with anyone. They can have conversations with anyone. They can get along with a lot of people. Forget getting A+ on every single thing. Sure, there’s a basic level of reading and writing and knowledge about the world that all kids need to leave childhood with or should leave childhood with, but to me, one of those core things is being able to have a conversation with people.

So even just the other day, my 10-year-old was sitting with one of our family friends at our island in our kitchen, and she turned to him and said, so how’s your week been? What have you been up to? And I’m like, “What has happened?”

And so, [00:33:00] if we define what we as parents want our kids to experience when they leave childhood and then work backward and say, well, then what actions this weekend do I want to take? That makes it so much easier.

I know I don’t want my kids to go into adulthood thinking they have to be stressed out and maxed out to live a good life. So that means that we’re going to have a certain type of schedule. And if we have a schedule that’s really busy, we talk about we have a really busy time coming up for the next three days. It happens sometimes.

I’ve got my book launch. You’ve got your swim practice. You’ve got your tennis practice. My parents are helping in these ways. We’ve had a lot of transitions. Okay, let’s prepare and talk about the skills that we have. What skills do we need to add that maybe we don’t have right now to get through this period of time? And then when we get to the weekend, what are we going to do to just relax like crazy. And then we’ll have a conversation about that. Like, do we just want to sit around the house? Do we want to go for a hike? Do we want to go for a bike ride? Do we want to invite friends over for a bonfire? And then as a family, we’ll have that discussion based on that idea that I don’t want my kids going into adulthood thinking that [00:34:00] achievement and stress and freaking out is how life needs to be for them to be good enough.

Dr. Sharp: I like that. I like those examples. You used the term reverse engineering twice. And I love that concept kind of figuring out the goal, so to speak, and working backward. I like how you brought it to life and that applies. I’m thinking of all the ways that that could apply in our family as well, and just being deliberate in how you spend your time.

Joe: Yeah, and even just since we got back from the road trip, to just say, do we as a family feel better when our house is pretty tidy or when we have the freedom to just drop our stuff wherever we want? Let’s have a conversation about that. And we’ve all agreed, the three of us, that we really like a tidy house. And so to say, we’ve decided together, and there’s going to be times that you don’t do that with your kids. You just say, this is how it is, but that now defines our behavior. Each day, let’s do a 10-minute Blitz. Turn on some fun music.

We’re going to dance while we put our [00:35:00] stuff away. And then look, doesn’t the house look great. I feel so much more Zen now. I’ll meet you. All right. Awesome. Great. That’s a value now that we have in our family. 

Dr. Sharp: I hear you. I have a question. I don’t know, this may be a tough question. I’m not sure if it has come up before or something you thought about, so I’ll ask and we’ll see where it goes. I think as I read your book and think about these concepts, there’s a voice in my head that says, wow, this takes a lot of privilege and freedom, I’m not sure what the right word is, to be able to put some of this stuff in place. Like, how does this work for folks who may “have to work multiple jobs or don’t have the space in their schedule or the freedom” [00:36:00] any of those other, I guess, advantages that many of us grew up with to learn some of these lessons, do some of these activities? I’m curious if you’ve thought about that or?

Joe: I think this is a really valid pushback/part of the discussion that’s important to walk through, and I’ve actually been asked to in several interviews. I think the important thing to think of is we’ve done this before.

We went from working 10 to 14 hours a day, 6 to 7 days a week to the 40-hour workweek. I imagine that there were people that owned businesses that said, these people are working 60 to 70 hours a week and you want me to cut their time almost in half. How am I supposed to make a profit?

There probably were those discussions in the late 1800s and early 19000s switching over to the 40-hour workweek. So the question I would say is, imagine the typical service worker goes from working 40+ hours a week to 32 hours a week, and they say, how can I make a living on that?

That then forces us to [00:37:00] have conversations around, why do we have service workers that are doing some of the hardest work in the world, that are serving us food, they aren’t able to make a living wage off of this. We have said it based on the 40-hour workweek that basic people can make somewhat of a living wage within that.

If we then as a society start to say, well, let’s move to 32 hours, we need to adjust accordingly in several areas. And so that’s where this is the messy middle. We are post-industrial. We know that we no longer think of people as machines we can plug in. That’s been true for a long time, but the pandemic really revealed the opportunity of what’s shifting and changing here.

But we are in that beginning section of this evolutionary model. And that’s where it’s going to be experiments that people report out publicly. Seeing what Kickstarter does seeing, how Iceland did their 2500 person multi-year study across multiple disciplines. It was 32 hours a week that these people worked and their productivity was better than the 40-hour a [00:38:00] week people. Those last eight hours were actually detrimental to productivity based on that study.

And so we’re going to continue to see these types of studies and applications come out where we address these very unique needs. Yes, how does this look for ambulance drivers? How does this look for cops? How does it look for systems that are all integrated together in specific types of schedules? That’s where it’s going to be a complex change. It’s not going to be one size fits all, but as we continue to say, yes, this is a problem. We’ve done this before throughout humanity. And so I would actually argue that it’s not a matter that we’re going to leave those people behind, but it’s a matter of saying, we do need to be intentional in how we structure things as the people that do have the privilege to say, we can’t forget about these people.

The fact that you’re even asking that question is great because they need to be a part of the conversation to say, what’s this look like in this economy where those lowest bottom of the totem pole type of people are going to be stuck holding the bag of time and energy, and it’s going to be difficult for them.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah, it [00:39:00] does feel messy. I mean, even when you brought up the idea that we’ve structured our minimum wage requirements and poverty levels. And I think all of that is probably based on a 40 hour week, right? There’s some serious policy change that would need to happen to really support this for a lot of folks. But like many things, those with privilege need to lead the way and use that for the greater good, right?

Joe: Yeah. And it’s not happening just in startups or entrepreneurial worlds. Kalamazoo Valley Community Colleges is a case study I talked about in the book. And I think it was a good 4 or 5 years ago, Ted Forrester, who is this HVAC instructor, he’s a blue-collar guy that works at KVCC. He, every single Friday went up onto the roof of KVCC and took pictures of the empty parking lot to [00:40:00] show that there just weren’t any students in the building on Fridays.

And then in the fall, he went to the board and he said, I want to show you these pictures of every Friday from the summer. I want to show how much we pay to cool all of these empty buildings. Here’s how much it cost us to cool all of these empty buildings all summer.

The next summer, they switched over to a four-day work week in the summertime and HR donated the difference. People were allowed to flex their schedules. And so they saw that now they have better staff retention because, in Michigan, it snows fricking 10 months a year. And so, who doesn’t want the two months in summer to actually be fine where we can have three-day weekends. So they had people stay longer and you don’t have that replacement cost of staff. They had better health outcomes. They also saw student outcomes go up because these offices were sometimes open a little bit later or opening earlier, and they’ve saved over $2.5 million in just air conditioning costs.

We sometimes think about these big institutions like a college, like they could never switch to a four-day workweek. [00:41:00] KVCC did. They thought creatively and they ended up making money and having better outcomes because of it. So I think it’s going to be case study after case study like that, that just shows that it’s really thinking creatively in a number of ways and addressing the problems in a systematic way, but then also saying, we need to at least do some experiments to see if our assumptions are even correct. 

Dr. Sharp: Yeah. I think that’s a big takeaway actually from all of this. Challenge everything. Challenge the assumptions that you have to work this much or be in the office this amount of time or these days of the week or whatever it might be?

Joe: Yeah. Well, even within Practice of the Practice, my contracts with my whole team in South Africa aren’t based on 40 hours. I think it’s 34 or 36 hours of the week, and they have pure autonomy to schedule however they want. If they want to work a 45 hour week one week and then take less than next, or if they want to… it’s an annual number of hours that they work. They know what their outcomes are.

And then also the way that we enact that evolutionary model [00:42:00] is, several times a year, I ask each staff:

1) What are some things that you love about your job and you want to keep doing?

2) What are some things that you hate about your job that you want to take off of your plate and give to someone else?

3)Where do you want to get training to level up within your job?

And so, over time, people have been able to move in and out of different positions that they like or that they don’t like, and then the organization changes and gets shaped differently. But it’s each person that is creating the job that they want to have.

Dr. Sharp: Sure. I had my brother-in-law Dan Konigsberg on the podcast maybe a month or two ago. He runs CampMinder, which has been on Outside magazine’s best places to work for the past five years I think in the top, I think the top 20 of that list. And they have, I forget what the policy is called, but it’s basically just like get your work done and you can take as much time off as you want. It’s a completely open PTO policy as long as the job is getting done. And I love that approach. I [00:43:00] wish that we could do more of that in mental health outside, but we have to see clients, right? It’s hard to tweak that. I’m still trying to figure out a way to make that happen in our practices. But I love that mindset that you don’t have to be in the office for a certain amount of time as long as you’re doing what you are supposed to do.

Joe: Yeah.

Dr. Sharp: Let’s see. Gosh, our time flew today as usual. One last question, maybe just about the process and how this worked for you.

As I thought about you writing this book, 4-day workweek, and so forth, I’m curious how you held yourself to that when you were working on such a massive sprint project that I assume you could have worked on seven days a week whatever, 10 months out of a year. How did you set those boundaries for yourself?

Joe: What’s interesting is I only wrote one day a week from April of 2020 until September of 2020 to write this book. And [00:44:00] so, I was using the actual neuroscience and flow state research in the book and actually wrote in the book about writing in the book about that. So the process that I used was to even put in the proposal to a HarperCollins or a traditional publisher, you have to have every chapter sketched out pretty in-depth. And so it’s a 20-page proposal that has really outlined the big sections of the book. What is the flow? So it’s not like once you get a book deal, you’re just starting with a blank canvas.

They have an expectation of here’s the 12 to 14 chapters. Here’s what you cover in each one. So the year before I got the book deal, I met every Thursday with a writing coach kind of walking through my ideas. And there were points where I’m like, Nancy, what are we doing here? We’re just chatting every Thursday.

She’s like, I’m trying to figure out what are your actual things that you teach compared to the things you’re regurgitating and what you’ve learned from all the different books and podcasts you’ve listened to. I’m like, yeah, good, because I don’t want to just regurgitate other people’s stuff.

[00:45:00] And so that process of really revealing what is inside of me allowed me to then have a very clear framework once we signed the book deal. And so then every single chapter, I had a Trello list for it.  It had the main points that I had already said within the HarperCollins proposal. And then in every chapter, I wanted at least two solid pieces of research, at least two solid case studies, and then to know what the major action plan was for people. And more times than not, it was three of each of those.

I needed 60,000 words minimum by the time I wanted to turn it in on September 1st and then just worked backward and said, how many words a week do I need to write? Then I had it up on my whiteboard and I would always try to. And so by September 1st, I was able to have 84,000 words written, and that gave them plenty of room to cut the fat. There’s a big section on the Haymarket bombing that was like a 10-page thing that they condensed to like two. And I was like, “Oh, but I love history.” And they’re like, “But your readers don’t. [00:46:00] They want the snippet. They don’t want the whole encyclopedia.” But to be able to give them, here are the 84,000 words.

So the actual process, each week at the end of my writing, I would sketch out on my whiteboard the next Thursday’s chapter so that I could just let it simmer for a week because I knew if it simmered, I would have new questions and new eyes when I came back to it the next week. So, I would put them in 5 to 7 points, put that up on the whiteboard, let it simmer, and then the next week, I would make sure that I entered in with a clean slate.

So I wouldn’t check email. I wouldn’t check the news. I wouldn’t check anything on my phone. I had my green tea and green smoothie and my coffee all ready to go. I changed my environment, moved my chair to a different spot in the room, changed the lighting, put on my Bose noise-canceling headphones that I only wore when I was writing during that period of time, and had one particular playlist that I always listened to.

All of these environmental changes tell my brain, okay, you’re safe, you’re back in writing mode, take a breath. All right, [00:47:00] let’s get into this. And then I look at the whiteboard and it’s like, oh, I have all these other things. So I had to allow myself to go down some of those rabbit holes where it’s like, where did that come from? What happened here? And then the chapter would really just emerge. So a good third of that Thursday was really just letting myself dive into all the questions I had and then sketching it out on the whiteboard. And then the other two-thirds was just writing it almost a chapter a week.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah. That was a tiny little masterclass, I think, on habit formation. I hope people were paying attention there. You’re doing all the tricks. When I hear you describe that, it’s like, yes, that’s what you do to establish a routine and a consistent habit and focus deeply. So kudos to you.

Joe: Thank you.

Dr. Sharp: Putting it in place. That’s awesome.

Let me see. We’re here. We’re already done. I know you have this mastermind thing coming up for folks who are wanting the book or reading the book or want to be a part of this. Tell me about that.

Joe: I’m [00:48:00] so excited about Thursday is the New Friday mastermind that’s starting the first Thursday in November 2021. We’re going to be starting at 12:00 PM, Eastern. What we’re going to be doing in this mastermind is we’re going to go beyond the book. So we’re going to walk through it. I just actually today got the handbook that sample put together. It’s a 30-page handbook that helps you really put Thursday is the New Friday into action.

So we’re going to walk through that in the first third of that hour together. The next third, we’re going to do two hot seats of people that want to practically implement Thursday is the New Friday. And we have a ton of different people that have signed up. We have podcasters, influencers, therapists, some typical business owners that are joining them.

And then the last third, which might actually be the most important third, is a= lot of networking. So you’re going to go into small groups to meet other people. My goal is that you have 6 to 10 new networking connections that you can collaborate with outside of Joe Sanok, that you can just be friends with new people that are trying to think in a new way because it’s amazing when you get the [00:49:00] right people together.

I, as a facilitator, really don’t have to do much. Jeremy, you experienced that at Slowdown school. You’re around a bunch of cool people that think big. I could’ve just sat there and we would have had our money’s worth, but I didn’t just sit there, but to allow that community to unfold and to connect.

So we’re going to do that starting that first Thursday in November. We’re going to meet six times, so seven weeks because we’re skipping Thanksgiving. So we’re going to meet during that time. All you have to do is buy 10 copies of Thursday is the New Friday, then just submit your receipt over at thursdayisthenewfriday.com. And then also you can listen to the Thursday is the New Friday podcast, which just dropped 22 episodes last week. 

Dr. Sharp: Nice sweet. I’m sure a lot of folks are thinking, Ooh, that might be cool.  And 10 books really for a mastermind. How long has the mastermind?

Joe: Six weeks.

Dr. Sharp: Six weeks. Yeah. Six hours for $100 or something. That’s pretty good.

Joe: Yeah. Come on.  It’s for six weeks.

Dr. Sharp: I’m going to ask the obvious question for people who are [00:50:00] like, that sounds great, but what do I do with 10 books? What are you telling people?

Joe: No, I think that if we really start to think about a societal shift, it’s interesting to see this book initially

I thought it’s for small entrepreneurs like you and me, but Nissan Infiniti, Canada just bought 200 books for all of their staff. So big corporations are doing this. So it may be, if you know the CEO of your local hospital or some local business and say, hey, here you go. I gifted one to our local community college president.

It’s finding those people that are business leaders that want to think differently. There are plenty of YPO Young Presidents Organizations in town. There are chambers of commerce. You never know how handing a book like this to someone else that’s a business leader in town will help you personally expand your network or have someone say, oh my gosh, I love that book. Can we have coffee to talk about how you’re doing it? This could be something that becomes your own book club that connects you with people that are doing interesting things in your community.

Dr. Sharp: Sweet. [00:51:00] Well, this is fine as always. It’s exciting to see what you’re up to. Congratulations on this latest, big thing. It’s pretty amazing.

Joe: Thank you so much, Jeremy. This has been awesome.

Dr. Sharp: Okay, y’all thank you so much as always for tuning in. I really appreciate it. I hope you enjoyed the conversation. I know that we meander sometimes but hopefully get into things that are interesting and actionable for you. So all the links we discussed are in the show notes. Definitely check those out. If you’re interested in that, mastermind sounds really cool. Check that out as well.

If you are a testing practice owner and you would love some group accountability and support in building your practice at any stage of development, I’ve got you. We’ve got a beginner practice group, an intermediate practice group, and an advanced practice group to meet you wherever you’re at in the journey. You can get more [00:52:00] information at thetestingpsychologist.com/consulting and schedule a pre-group call to check it out and see if any of those groups may be a good fit.

All right, y’all. Until next time, take care.

The information contained in this podcast and on The Testing Psychologists website is intended for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast or on the website is intended to be a substitute for professional, psychological, psychiatric, or medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Please note that no doctor-patient relationship is formed here. And similarly, no supervisory or consultative relationship is [00:53:00] formed between the host or guests of this podcast and listeners of this podcast. If you need the qualified advice of any mental health practitioner or medical provider, please seek one in your area. Similarly, if you need supervision on clinical matters, please find a supervisor with expertise that fits your needs.

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[00:00:00] Dr. Sharp: Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Testing Psychologist podcast, the podcast where we talk all about the business and practice of psychological and neuropsychological assessment. I’m your host, Dr. Jeremy Sharp, licensed psychologist, group practice owner, and private practice coach.

The TSCC and TSCYC screening forms allow you to quickly screen children for symptoms of trauma. Both forms are now available through PARiConnect-PAR’s online assessment platform. Learn more at parinc.com.

All right, everyone. Hey, welcome back. Glad to have you as always. Today’s episode is the first in a two-part series on parent perspectives on the assessment process.

My guest today and next time, Dr. Caroline Buzanko is an expert in this area. She has spent many years looking into the parent perspective, and she [00:01:00] talks with us about a number of ways to conceptualize the parent role in the assessment process, as well as some ways to empower parents and just generally make the assessment process more enjoyable, more fulfilling, and more engaging for parents.

These next two episodes are full of concrete ideas and things that you can actually change if you would like to. I took a ton of notes during our interview, and we’ll be putting some of these things into play in our own practice. And I hope that you do the same.

So let me tell you a little more about Caroline and then we’ll get to the conversation.

Caroline is made up of many things. Psychologist. Mother. Actress. Public Speaker. Changer of Lives. ADHD Superhero. She has over 20 years of experience working with children, teens, and their families to help them build better lives by maximizing confidence and forging their resilience. She also works with professionals and educators looking for training and approaches to work effectively with their clients and students. Caroline is also starting a new podcast called Deep Dive Into Practice that you can be on the lookout for.

So as you can tell, during the interview, we touch on so many topics. You’ll definitely want to have a notepad ready for this one. As with many of these multi-part episodes, the audio will cut off a little bit abruptly in our conversation as we kind of attempt to break the episode into two parts. A little preemptive apology and warning for that, but I don’t think it will interfere with the listening experience at all.

All right. The last thing, before we get to our conversation, as always know that The Testing Psychologist had advanced and [00:03:00] beginner and intermediate practice mastermind groups are accepting members on a rolling basis. We’re just filling cohorts as members jump in.

So, if you are looking for a group accountability experience, some group coaching, this could be the thing for you. You can find out more at thetestingpsychologist.com/consulting and click on the group’s option and learn a little bit more and schedule a call to figure out if it’s a good fit for you.

Okay. Without further ado, let’s get to my conversation with Dr. Caroline.

Hey, Caroline. Welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Caroline: Hey, thanks for having me.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah, I’m glad to have you. I’m [00:04:00] excited to talk about the parenting journey and evaluations from a parent’s perspective. This is something that you’ve been doing a lot of work on for a long time.

Dr. Caroline: Oh, definitely. It started with my research in my doctoral program and it has been something that’s been so important, just as important as the work that we do in the assessment with our kiddos. So yeah, it’s definitely an important topic, especially, we are often the first point of contact for a lot of parents. They’ll go and see their doctors for example, but oftentimes, maybe they haven’t talked to a psychologist before and there’s a lot of stigma around that and I think it can be really stressful. So this is really a very important topic for sure.

Dr. Sharp: Yes. Tell me a little bit more about why this is important to you out of all the things. This is always the way I frame the question, out of all the things you could do in this world and spend your time on in the field of psychology, why dedicate time to this [00:05:00] idea of parenting and the parents’ journey?

Dr. Caroline: Well, I always looked at the family context in all of the work that I did. Even in my master’s program, my master’s research was looking at siblings, the effects of having a sibling with a disability, for example. And this time around, just because I was moving more into the assessment piece, it was about the parents’ journey through all of this.

And seeing, just in some of the talks that I had with parents who had seen other psychologists, for example, and telling me these nightmare stories. And so, I really wanted to start getting interested a little bit more about what could I be doing? Are parents going and talking about their experience with me with other psychologists?

And I started doing a little bit of digging into their experiences through this assessment process. That greatly influences how they perceive their child’s diagnosis and their child’s needs and their ability to cope.

So, we look at a major difference between the parents who [00:06:00] can cope with the child’s diagnosis, for example, it’s highly related to their experience of the assessment process in the first place and their experience of hearing their child’s diagnosis. And that has huge implications because if they don’t perceive it as being accurate if they had terrible experiences, they might not agree with the diagnosis, which could be problematic. If you’ve got a kiddo with, for example, ADHD, they’re like, “No, it’s not.” And they’re not engaging in treatment and things like that. So, there are implications as well for the children and just parents’ ability to cope. Their ability to regulate themselves is going to be important to co-regulate with their children.

So it’s our job, not just to do the assessment, it’s our job to have confidence in the information that we’re sharing, but that they have competence in the information we’re sharing and that they can take up what we have to say because if they’re not taking it up, it was a waste of all of our time. And that child’s not going to get any support in the first place.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah. Well said. My gosh, there’s a lot to [00:07:00] unpack from all of that, but, but you’re so right. I just think back to my experience in graduate school, I’m guessing some other people would identify with this, but I didn’t get a lot or any training honestly, that I can think of about being mindful of the parent experience or taking the parent into account during the assessment process, other than, here’s how you deliver feedback, but even that was more, how do we present the data versus how do we maybe take care of, or nurture or connect with the parents in that process. Is that something that you found too?

Dr. Caroline: Yeah, I didn’t get any training. And even in the research, there was very, very little research on this topic. There was a lot around the disclosure of a diagnosis and especially a disclosure of autism, for example, but no one ever looked at the entire assessment process and beyond the [00:08:00] autism piece.

And so, a lot of what I started digging into was, the minute they pick up that phone, what is their journey like from making that decision to call? And I’ve kind of equated it, and I’ll talk about this, to the hero’s journey that the parents go on.

They have an ordeal. Maybe the ordeal is a huge explosive behavior out in the community or in the classroom or teachers continuously calling home, come get your kid, there’s another fight today. There’s usually some ordeal where parents are like, enough is enough. We need to get this assessment. It’s not the first time they think about an assessment they’re calling us for an assessment, right? There’s a buildup to that.

So there’s that whole sort of backstory too, which we’ll talk about, but it’s a journey from that ordeals with duration, from the moment they decide to call our office and little things that we might not even think about.

Dr. Sharp: Yes.

Dr. Caroline: So, I [00:09:00] can jump, yeah.

Dr. Sharp: I’m excited to frame this. I know you take this perspective of sort of the hero’s journey and use that framework. I wonder if we could set the stage a little bit before we totally dive into that. And this is not an area of research I’m super familiar with. I’m guessing listeners may not be super familiar either. So this is, on the other hand, your area. So I’m curious what the state of the research is at this point on parents’ experience of the assessment process. I mean, what is out there?

Dr. Caroline: A lot of it, again is mostly autism or medical fields. In the field of psychology, there’s not a lot. One of the biggest studies and I can send you links for all of the research studies and just trying to think off the top of my head, one of the biggest ones that were done, I think 8% were psychologists. And again, it was [00:10:00] just looking at the autism diagnosis, and 8% were psychologists. The rest were pretty much pediatricians or family doctors or things like that. And so, there’s really not a lot.

ADHD, there are two, I can’t remember their names, Cannon and I can’t even pronounce the other guy’s name. I’ll send you the links, but with ADHD, they did kind of look at the process, but not really in-depth. So I’ll send you what I’ve got if people are interested because there is a little bit out there. But unfortunately, it’s not been greatly researched.

In the research I did, I did look specifically at ADHD, so we do need to be careful with the generalizations. But generally speaking, when we look at, and I looked at even the medical field, there’s so much out there for medical diagnoses, cancer for example. So there’s a lot out there. And there is a lot of similarities. So what I’m going to be talking about [00:11:00] today are the similarities that I could draw from elsewhere but specifically for the assessments that psychologists are doing are what I’m drawing from.

I think there’s still so much more that needs to be done. And parent advocacy groups, and a lot of the parents that I’ve talked to about their experiences, they’ve got some really great insights. So I’ll be talking about their complaints. That’s where I’m going to start. That’s usually the easiest place to kind of go, but then also going into the recommendations that they have for us. And they also have things for parents. Don’t be scared. This is a great process. Even if it’s a bad process, you get a bad psychologist at the end of the day, you’re learning about your kiddo.

So, there is some hope of light at the end of the tunnel, because a lot of the research, unfortunately, that’s out there is parents are not satisfied. And I think if we look at the broader literature, even just in our own competencies, they say, [00:12:00] psychologists often think that they’re doing better. This is more kind of in counseling, but they think that they’re doing better than they actually are.

And so that’s why we’ve got people like Scott Miller, for example, who’s like, you have to do outcome rating scales every single session because we can’t guarantee that we’re actually doing good work even if we think we are.

Dr. Sharp: Right. Can you say a little bit more about that? That was something we chatted about before we started recording. And this gap between the work that we think we’re doing and the impact that it’s actually having, is there more to say about the gap there and how bad we are?

Dr. Caroline: Yeah, we can go. It’s funny. I was actually just teaching an ethics class this wording, and we were talking about some of this historical research that could never, ever be approved nowadays, but it’s not that they were awful people. I could get into a whole other discussion about our executive functions and how it sets us up to lie and [00:13:00] cheat and justify our behavior. That’s a whole other issue, but it really is.

When we look at some of the ethical issues, and I was going through some of the things that there are some psychologists who are under investigation right now. And for me to tell you what had happened, you’re like, obviously, that’s an ethical no, no, but the psychologists who are in it are justifying why they made the choices that they did, for example.

So, I think there’s a whole-brain piece there. I think there’s a whole piece just around, we don’t know what we don’t know. As we’ll get into the parents’ experiences, you’re going to realize parents try to put on a really brave face. And so we don’t necessarily know they’re really vulnerable in this process. And so they’re just trying to put on that brave face for us, but really having no idea and then going home [00:14:00] and having a huge breakdown.

Dr. Sharp: Sure. Yeah. All this stuff, maybe it’s just timely. I’m listening to season 3 of Dr. Death. Have you listened to any of those podcasts?

Dr. Caroline: I haven’t. No.

Dr. Sharp: Oh gosh. So just as a quick aside, so this is all about these physicians, surgeons, primarily who go through their careers and somehow put on this charade of appropriate medical care, but then come to find out over time, they’re like making these gross negligent mistakes and maiming or killing people.

But the links that the human mind will go to reduce cognitive dissonance and justify behavior are completely enormous. And it seems like we fall into that as well, of course, being human as we are.

Dr. Caroline: Yeah.

Dr. Sharp: Let’s see. [00:15:00] I’m curious to dive into this. And I’m unsure where to start. I might turn to you to say, when we’re talking about the parent experience, where do we start?

Dr. Caroline: Well, I guess I just wanted to also say, another reason why this is important too. If it doesn’t fit, if they don’t understand the results of all of those kinds of things, if they’re not feeling supported, and I’ll go into all of these different complaints that they have, they’re not going to be able to… they kind of get lost in this journey and it’s a never-ending journey and they kind of go through that. So it’s really about being family-centered.

Now, like I said, it’s easy to talk about the complaints because I find that when we know what not to do, that’s a good diving board into what it is that we do need to do. One thing, I don’t know if you’d be interested, I do think it would be helpful to talk first maybe about different assessment paradigms because I think that that can help give us a framework for how we think of the assessments that we [00:16:00] do.

So, if we’re good at that, and we can start thinking too, I mean, there’s going to be a lot of information that I tell you and for the listeners too, but it’s about thinking, what’s one thing that I could change in my practice today, right? And so, all of these pieces will come together.

We’re already making the shift, but the traditional paradigm is still pretty prevalent. And this is where a lot of the parent complaints come from is this traditional sort of approach to assessment. It could be called diagnostic psychology testing.

It’s an information-gathering model. It’s really based on objectivity where test reliability and validity are paramount, standardized assessment instruments, they’re valued. They’re kind of the end all be all. So that, of course, we can compare kiddos on different dimensions of traits that we’re looking at, but we focus most of our attention on the test protocols and on the scores, and we try to make sense of those [00:17:00] scores. So it’s really a test-focused approach to assessment. And then that is used to diagnose and to guide treatment.

And one big piece is we are the experts, the all-knowing expert where we hold on, we gather all of this information, we hold it up until the very end where we reveal the big secret. And it’s funny. I just had an intern with me last week who was just, she kept going like this as I was talking with the client behind the client.

So my hands, she was putting her hands on her head and she’s like, I’ve never seen assessment done like this before. And I’ve told her about the traditional. She’s like, “We do, we just gather all this information and then I go through it at the end. We unpack it at the end where Caroline, you were saying right there on the spot, how they’re doing, and this is how your brains working. And this is really hard for you, bla bla bla.”

I’ll get into that a little bit more and. All of this to say reliability and [00:18:00] validity is still important. We still need to use our standardized assessments. That’s still really important, but we got to know it’s not just about the scores, right? We were not just simply drawing conclusions about kiddos. We really want to be helpful.

So it was in the 70s actually. It’s been quite a long time. We started seeing the shift away from those traditional assessments, and one of course was the bio-psycho-social model, right? So we’re looking at the broader biological, socio-cultural psychological, the context of their functioning.

But we started also seeing the smart humanistic orientation to assessment where it really is more client-centered versus test-centered, and more collaborative. And so now we start going into this collaborative approach to assessment. In the late 90s, one of the big collaborative assessments that came out was the therapeutic assessment, which I know that you guys have talked about on your podcast. And that’s one of the big collaborative approaches.

So just in case, people don’t know, a really [00:19:00] simplified version of what a therapeutic assessment is, it’s about working collaboratively with the families throughout that entire assessment process.

Of course, we’re getting their stories at the beginning. They’re helping us develop our questions for assessments, all of those kinds of things. They’re also helping us though come up with recommendations. It doesn’t have to be us. They are co-assessing and they’re helping us come up with some of those recommendations. We’re doing intervention strategies embedded right within our assessments that help inform some of that.

I think that that gives us a bit of a framework that I really am shifting from that traditional model, because that’s where all of the complaints are for most parents, to more of this collaborative piece.

When we start thinking about that, we’re looking at the family-centered focus and looking at their journey. I already talked about their call to assessment. So that’s the ordeal. Then they come into the assessment. My kid has been [00:20:00] struggling with learning or with attention or with getting along with peers or explosive behaviors or whatever else it is. I’m worried about my kiddo.

Someone is usually a Harold. It could be a friend that they’re talking to. It could be the teacher, it could be someone who’s really helping them. Okay, I’m not the only one who’s concerned here. I really should go and make this approach. So there’s usually a Harold in the story, but there’s a lot of shadows and allies.

And unfortunately, as a psychologist, we can be an ally, but a lot of times we’re shadows, where we put fear or doubt into parents’ minds. And we don’t want to be the shadow. That’s the impetus for doing all of this. They crossed the threshold when we’re looking at the hero’s journey where they’re crossing the threshold, that’s when they make the first call to us to get the ball rolling.

And then we go into the process and that’s where we’re going to [00:21:00] go. I won’t get too much into the roles. That could be a whole other interesting, but maybe there’s more important information to be talking about in terms of all the different roles that people can play because I think that there’s a lot to think about, but I refer to movies quite a bit.

And so when I was doing my research and thinking of their journey, I thought of the never-ending story. I’m probably dating myself a little bit here. Did you ever watch that?

Dr. Sharp: I’m with you. I’ve seen that movie so many times.

Dr. Caroline: I Love it. In one of the scenes, I think there are sphinxes where the kiddos watching all of these warriors approach these sphinxes and he sees them all get obliterated, but he starts coming tentatively right up to these sphinxes. He knows he’s got to go through this process, but he’s really hesitant, really scared of what’s going to happen.

And that’s kind of what I was thinking of parents in this journey is their approaching these things [00:22:00] very hesitantly because some parents have, and especially with the parents that I’ve talked to with kiddos with ADHD, for example, they’ve had concerns and people are like, “No, no, no, he’s just a boy. No, no, no, no, he’s too young” whatever it is. They weren’t feel listened to.

So for a lot of parents, they’re already having these hesitancies, but even with learning, I had a kid the other day and I’m like, “What brought you now to the assessment? But thinking like, why didn’t you come five years ago?” Because this kiddo can’t read and the self-esteem issues that have emerged now and the defeatism, I mean, that’s where we lose kids. When they’re feeling so defeated, they don’t even want to learn anymore and they’re not engaged in their learning.

And she’s like, “I tried, but nobody listened to me and then COVID hit. And so everybody seemed to be struggling.” Anyway, all this to say, they’re hesitant coming into that journey.

And then at the end, there’s the blue Oracle. I think that’s what they call it. I should have looked it [00:23:00] up before I popped on here. But the blue Oracle who is going to give us all this wise advice and he’s like, that’s it, that’s all you’ve got. And that’s kind of where a lot of parents end up feeling.

Let’s dive into this a little bit. I think it’ll just help bring all of those metaphors down into play.

Dr. Sharp: Can I jump in and ask you a question real quick?

Dr. Caroline: Yeah.

Dr. Sharp: I really liked this approach. This is a nice, creative approach to this whole process. And I’m just curious for you, how did you land on this? Can you think back to whenever this originated in your mind? How did you choose to frame it through the hero’s journey lens?

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All right, let’s get back to the podcast.

Dr. Caroline: Everything I do. I do a lot of work with ADHD and anxiety. I always refer it back to movies. [00:25:00] I do have a background. I mean, I thought I was going to be an actress, to be honest. So I did a lot of acting. So I think that that is a huge piece of it too. Before I was a psychologist, I was just going to go to LA and be a famous actress.

So I already know the artist’s journey and the hero’s journey and that progression when we do character development. And so, I think I’m just really in tune with all of that in the first place. I’ve got pretty severe ADHD myself, so I think in pictures and so everything I relate to, I’m like, have you seen the crudes? And remember in that scene. And then kids can relate to that. And I think that’s just always how I. Kind of worked and thought about things and put things into perspective. And I think it helps everyone understand things at different levels to a new sort of level.

Dr. Sharp: I love that. I think it’s great to have an anchor for these things that we’re talking about and to bring it to life.

Dr. Caroline: Because you’ve got that visual and if you haven’t seen that neverending [00:26:00] story, you got to go watch it. But if you’ve seen the never-ending story, you know how tentative, he’s coming in, he’s really hesitant. What is this all about? I mean, parents aren’t going to worry that they’re going to get zapped by these sphinxed, but if there is that sort of trepidation coming into this, it’s, there’s a lot at stake here and those feelings, that anxiety, I think that that’s really important and it is huge for us to be acknowledging all of that.

So like I said, we can start kind of jumping right in. The minute they call your office, that’s where the journey comes. Already, picking up that phone can be a huge barrier to get over in terms of their anxiety. For some, this isn’t huge, but some parents have talked about talking to a secretary or someone other than a psychologist can be really uncomfortable for parents.

They don’t know how much to share for example. And I think it’s really normalized for sure, to be able to call in and talk to a [00:27:00] secretary because that’s what you do at any sort of doctor’s office or anything like that. But we want to make sure we do have someone there answering the phones who’s personable and knowledgeable and putting parents at ease.

And I think that that’s huge. And I’ve heard that even just sort of second hand from other clinics and things like that. Or at least saying, Hey, you know what, I don’t know how to answer that, but let me get you in touch with someone who can. I’m going to book you in with a psychologist who can answer that question and go through some of your concerns. I think that that’s really important. We want to be making sure that we’re putting parents at ease right from the start.

Wait times, once I’ve made that call, it’s been really stressful to make that call in the first place. Now, how long do I have to wait? And there’s still not great research around how long is too long. It’s not really well defined, unfortunately. So we do definitely need a little bit more research on that, but if they’re waiting six months, that’s a problem, especially if you’ve got… I mean, early intervention is important for anything.

If we’re looking at reading [00:28:00] intervention, autism, anything, six months is a really long time, but even 2 to 3 months, it’s doable, but that’s just making parents feel stalled and stressed all of those things anyway. So just looking at what that wait time is.

Once they get in, so those are two right at the beginning.

Dr. Sharp: Can I jump in again?

Dr. Caroline: Yeah, for sure.

Dr. Sharp: Sorry, I’m interrupting a lot this time, but these are great. So I just have questions around that because I know that so many of us are so busy right now and you just hear stories of wait times that are increasingly longer and longer and longer, and nothing to say about the children’s hospitals that are like 18 to 24 months out.

So, do you have ideas for those of us because I know there are some panic listeners right now? Like my waitlist is nine months long. Are there any ways to ameliorate that a little [00:29:00] bit or soften that and maintain a connection with the client or help them along this journey in spite of long wait times, is there anything we can do to help that?

Dr. Caroline: I’ve got a couple of ideas, but oh, I know I do some work in the Northern provinces of a different province here in Canada and one kid, it took him 6 years to get an assessment. I’m like, how is that? He’s already a teen now. Like I can’t even believe it.

I know over the summertime, that’s a huge one. Like what do I need to do to help my kiddo over the summer or over this break or whatever it is? We’re getting into the school year. We don’t want it to slip by or at the beginning of the school. We’ve got these IPS.

There’s a couple of things. One is, do you have resources? Is there a resource library? Oftentimes, they talk about parents putting them at ease, especially with our elementary [00:30:00] kiddos. If you’re doing good, they’re going to do good. I’m most concerned about their social, emotional wellbeing. So how can we promote that? How can we promote their love for learning? So for example, if they can’t read, my goal right now isn’t about what program or do they have dyslexia?

Your goal right now, even if it’s a few months, instill that love for reading, instill that love for writing. If it’s an attention piece, I talk about, we know by the time they’re 12, kiddos with ADHD have 20,000 more pieces of negative feedback than kids without ADHD. So what can we do to soften the nagging?

So I look at that social, emotional piece of what you can do right now. At my clinic, we do offer screenings. Come in, let’s do a 15- 20 minute screening just to see to get an idea. It’s not a full thing. You’re still going to have to go through that whole process to really understand what’s going on., but maybe this can give us a bit of an idea of [00:31:00] where we can start at least. And then here are some programs that might be helpful.

Dr. Sharp: I like that. Thanks for going into that. Yeah, I think we’re all invested in doing the best we can.

Dr. Caroline:  I know. But at the end of the day, we have high rates of compassion, burnout, and sometimes we got to be careful too because I get into that trap where I’m bending backward. I feel so bad. We can’t see this kiddo right away. Our hearts bleed too, but we’re going to burn ourselves out. So, do the best you can. At the end of the day, that’s all we can do, but it is, unfortunately, if there are other resources that we can give parents.

One thing though, as they’re coming into this process, it’s really daunting for them. They don’t know what they need to do just like Trejo in the never-ending story. He really has no idea. He knows the first obstacle he needs to get through. He doesn’t know what lays behind those sphinxes, what else he needs to do. And so for [00:32:00] parents, they’ve come over that one hump, but what else is in this process?

There’s a lot of uncertainty and we know uncertainty comes with a lot of anxiety. So not knowing what to expect for the assessment, what the assessment entails, how long it’ll take, maybe there are some technical things, they’re going to be here for two hours, three times, or six hours. Everybody does everything differently, but what does this all amount to? What does it all mean? Even the initial intake, what’s the purpose of it. We say we’re going to get some background information, but they really have no idea. What kind of questions are they going to ask?

And then when we get in, even though, I used to say, these are the kinds of questions I ask, we get in there and knowing you would have asked that I would have gone and done this. And I’ll have some examples of what we can do to help them through that process. Right now, it’s just, I’ll go through all the complaints and then some of the recommendations that we can do afterward. But all of that creates a lot of anxiety and when they’re [00:33:00] feeling anxious, they’re going to feel pretty negative about the whole experience and the whole assessment process.

And then a lack of collaboration right from the beginning. It’s like, thanks, got your kids, see you later. And then I’ll see you in two weeks when I get to give you the report and parents really aren’t that involved. So that’s just thinking about the very beginning. We haven’t even gotten to see the kiddo yet, right? So just bringing in those parents and orienting them to the assessment process.

So the next bit, and I’m following this from a traditional standpoint, the three phases of assessment first, just the intake, then we’ve got the middle testing phase and then the feedback phase.

So this next middle phase, one of the problems that right, again, from the beginning of the day, if parents are concerned, if we’re not asking, Hey kiddo, how did you sleep last night? Hey kiddo, have you eaten breakfast? Have you got your glasses? Have you taken your meds? And oftentimes parents [00:34:00] will give us information, but sometimes we just scoop up the kiddo and we take them in and we’re not looking at all of those kinds of things, or are they anxious? How are they feeling about coming in? What did you tell them? How did you prepare them? This is how we can start being collaborative with them.

Filling out rating scales. We say, here’s a bunch of forms, then we collect it all back, and then it’s ODD. His scales, but parents, oftentimes they’re like, I need clarification. What is this actually asking? Or I really wanted to qualify that. Yeah, he is sometimes, but not all the time. I wanted to be able to do give you some of that qualitative information. So parents are really often concerned that I wasn’t able to give you that information. And there’s a lot of things left unsaid.

Intensity. And I think that we are mindful of this, but when we’re giving them way too much [00:35:00] paperwork and same thing with teachers, for sure. I think we’re all mindful of teachers, but parents too, they find it’s just so much, you know, all the intakes things. And then however many rating scales that they have to do or whatever else, it’s a lot for them.

And then, of course, just not knowing what’s going on in the assessment. We say they’re going to be playing with blocks and they’re going to be looking at pagers. We’re going to ask them questions that they really have no idea. And then parents are going to ask their kids, “Well, what did you do?” And kids are going to be like, “I don’t know.” They can’t articulate it. I looked at pictures. I played. You’ve got kids trying to get any information. What’d you do today? What’d you learn? I don’t know. It’s like pulling teeth, so they really don’t understand what is being done.

And some of the stories are the lack of transparency that the parents have had, where they don’t even know what their kid was being assessed for. [00:36:00] They brought their kiddo in because there was anxiety and some, maybe some reading difficulties, and then all of a sudden, they’re told their kid is autistic.

That actually happens sometimes where it’s like, how did that even happen? It was really shocking. And some of the stories, I think it depends if it was a school assessment versus, done in-house in the school versus a private assessment, but that happens sometimes.

So, there’s that lack of collaboration where parents just really have no idea what’s going on. They’re feeling like they’re being asked all these questions, but no opportunity to ask questions themselves. So, that’s that information gathering. We are just collecting all this data without really giving parents that opportunity to follow along with us.

Another piece too is, and again, I don’t know if this happens so much in private practice, but certainly, in [00:37:00] schools, this happens quite a bit where parents aren’t even finding out the results from psychologists. They might get, oh, here’s the report from the teacher, for example.

One person was talking about how they had to call the office and they ended up getting it from their family doctor. I’m like, how is that even? I don’t even understand how that happens, but just thinking about that, how are parents even getting that feedback and who else is involved or different things that can be problematic?

Dr. Sharp: You know, you’re just describing all these things and I’m thinking to myself, oh my gosh, I cannot wait to hear how to combat some of these things because I know we’re guilty of some of these mess-ups that you’re talking about or disconnections and that’s nice to call attention to this and be aware of what could be done differently. Yeah.

Dr. Caroline: I do find that in schools, [00:38:00] for example, where parents are like, I didn’t even realize that that assessment was done. Like, why are you talking to me? Why are we being here?

Dr. Sharp: Oh my Gosh, yes.

Dr. Caroline: They signed a consent form, but they had no idea what that actually meant. And now they’re bringing this contractor or another school psychologist, and there’s a lot of that, that happens. And I had thought about, don’t do this, do this, but I think that this framework and saying all of the parent complaints, it really gets you reflecting on, okay, this is something that we could work on, and then maybe even you can start brainstorming because I’m just one person and a little bit of research, but I think we’re all limited by our own creativity so we can start thinking, but I will get to what do we do instead.

The biggest thing that parents really talk a lot about a lot of their complaints is just about the psychologists didn’t really understand me. The psychologist didn’t really understand the child [00:39:00] or the family context. You only saw a tiny little snapshot of my kiddo within a really structured, really clinical setting. And then they start doubting any conclusions that we have. And if they feel that we didn’t support them or understand them, they are going to outright reject everything that we have to say, because you don’t understand.

So, that lack of understanding about their kiddos. And sometimes, on the flip side, I think we can’t always please everybody. So, I think that that’s something to remember because then sometimes parents are complaining, it is taking too long. When are we going to be done? This was way too long.

So, I think it’s finding that balance, but part of it’s knowing what the parents’ expectations are and what they think the process is in the first place. And that’s one of the things if we’re giving them information but just getting from them, what do you think isn’t [00:40:00] involved in this process? So we can start understanding what their expectations are. Oh, I thought you were going to be doing this, and I thought you were going to go to the school and do classroom observations.

I actually have a parent forum. I’ll send you an example of what that is, where we can start getting some of their input about what they think this whole process is as well. And I’ll be talking about that too.

Dr. Sharp: That’s great.

Dr. Caroline: And you guys in your clinic, it’s just a one-day assessment, right?

Dr. Sharp: Yeah. Well, I take that back. We split probably a third to a half of our cases into two days. So, we’re about half and half. We’ll either do 1 day or 2 days.

Dr. Caroline: Yeah, I usually split it up, but we gotta be careful if the wait times between appointments, that’s a huge problem. Parents get upset with that and then between the testing sessions, but then the wait time between the final [00:41:00] testing session and the feedback meeting, that’s a critical period that we really need to consider because parents express a lot of negativity with the entire assessment process.

It doesn’t matter how wonderful the process was if they reported that that period is too long because we got to remember that wait time, it’s really hard for parents because they’re feeling well, first of all, overwhelmed with worry, but then they’re also feeling stalled because they don’t know what to do. We’ve done this whole process. I don’t know what you know, they’re just kind of in this holding pattern, and that can create a lot of anxiety for them as well.

Dr. Sharp: Caroline, do you have a sense from the research of how long is too long between the testing and feedback?

Dr. Caroline: Again, it’s not really well-defined, unfortunately, that’s just not an area people… I just think that there have always been bigger issues to research that these little fine-tuning pieces aren’t great. I think parents [00:42:00] mostly expect about a month’s wait. I try to have a two-week turnaround personally. I told the parent that the other day, I’ll meet within two weeks. They’re like, “Oh my gosh, I thought it was going to be six weeks.”

I think, again, what’s important is getting their expectations from the beginning. How long do you think this process takes? How long do you think? So we can then tell them in our informed consent once we go through the process, but we can already start seeing what do they know? What do they think about it? What do they expect about it? Because that’s usually where the disconnect is. They have an idea in their head, but they don’t necessarily know they’ve got that idea in their head until we explicitly ask them. And then once it’s out there, we can educate them about the process if that makes sense.

Dr. Sharp: It does. That is such a good idea. I’ve never really considered that, but in my mind, anyway, I’m operationalizing it. Like we get [00:43:00] into the intake maybe and just start with that question, like before we even dive into any detail, what are you thinking about this process? What expectations do you have? How do you think this is going to go?

Dr. Caroline: What have you heard? Because oftentimes they’ll talk with other people about the process. Oftentimes they don’t even know, but we can ask, well, what do you think about wait times? How long do you think the process is going to be? All of those things, because it’s kind of like, I’m going to throw my husband under the bus here, but it’s kind of like, I go to the store and go get cheese, and then he comes and he gets the total wrong cheese and it’s like, “Dude, what were you thinking?” He’s like, “Well, you didn’t tell me.” We just expect. But I didn’t know that I wanted a kind of cheese until he brought the wrong kind of cheese home.

Dr. Sharp: You’re describing a scene out of my own life. That happens a lot.

Dr. Caroline: Yeah. [00:44:00] I used to do couples therapy and that was always the thing. I didn’t even know I had that expectation until you broke it. And so, that’s why it’s really important to have those conversations right from the beginning.

Dr. Sharp: So true.

Dr. Caroline: So then that brings me to the moment those parents receive the diagnosis. That’s one of those life-changing critical events for them. It really is. It’s a moment that they’ll probably always remember. And it might seem really obvious to us, but being unsympathetic, lacking sensitivity, lacking empathy, lacking warmth, or friendliness, that’s a problem. That’s going to be a huge problem for parents.

Also failing to understand where they’re coming from. They are now at this blue Oracle. They don’t know if she’s going to open her eyes and zap them. They have no idea. They approach this final phase of the assessment.

Finally, we’re here. It’s been this huge emotional climax. If we think of waves, this is the [00:45:00] epicenter of that wave. We are at the climax here. There is so much emotional whatever coming into this meeting.  And so, failing to understand that and acknowledging that is a problem as well.

So, if we just jump into the results completely unaware or not even acknowledging parents’ anxiety, that’s going to be a problem. So we need to have a little bit of icebreaker just to help bring some of those nerves down because, if they’re coming in… well, one parent actually called the assessment an oh my God process, because it’s so stressful. And we know when we’re anxious, our thinking brain is totally offline, right? So parents aren’t going to be able to follow along because they might be caught up in this emotional turmoil.

One parent that I talked to shared this really vivid example in which she was so focused and trying to maintain [00:46:00] that brave face that I talked about earlier. She didn’t want to stop the psychologist to get any clarification. She was kind of confused. And at the end of the day, the psychologist told her that her kiddo was gifted, but had severe ADHD and talked about the executive functioning deficits. But she left and I apologize, I know we don’t use this word, but this is mum’s word. She left the meeting and turned to her husband. She’s like, “So is our kid retarded?” And she was just so emotional.

I still get shivers thinking of that story. Her kiddo was gifted. It was just, he had problems with getting started on things and remembering to do things that were boring like those regular executive functions, she’s just thought, “Oh my God. He’s going to be in special needs classes and he’s not going to be going to University and he’s going to need long-term care for the rest of his life.” She was so focused on not crying that she missed everything that [00:47:00] the psychologist had to say.

Dr. Sharp: It’s heartbreaking.

Dr. Caroline: It is. Yeah. So we really need to… actually, I do a lot of training and a lot of supervision and I have my doctoral counseling students and oftentimes I’m like, “Counseling students are so much more work because they don’t know the standard scores and standard deviations.”

And I have so much more training than master school psychologists who come in, who’ve got all of that, but the counseling students have that way of being, which I’ll be talking about in a little bit, they get that the parents’ anxiety and they can really acknowledge it. That’s not something I ever have to train them because they’re just there with the parents first and foremost.

So, I think that that’s something that would be really valuable for people who maybe don’t have the counseling background if they’re just doing school psychology and they don’t have any Working Alliance classes or anything, just to get some work on just [00:48:00] being.

I used to teach Working Alliance classes and actually, I’ve used a lot of my acting stuff. I hated it. One of the things they’d have is to just sit for five minutes and stare at the other person in silence and not say a word, so uncomfortable. We just want to jump in and fill the space but parents are really vulnerable. And we can’t just jump in and fill the space. We need to be where they’re at. So that’s really important.

Now, just because they are vulnerable though, we can’t beat around the bush. We can’t avoid giving honest and direct information. And so that’s another complaint the parents had. We might say your kiddo has a mild intellectual disability, but then we feel really uncomfortable talking about what that means so parents don’t really know what that means. And so they hear Milds and they don’t understand, but then they’re shocked later when all of a sudden their kiddo has to go into a life skills class and they’re not doing the general curriculum.

So, [00:49:00] it’s finding that balance between where they’re at their vulnerability, but being very direct and clear so that they firmly understand what it is that we’re trying to tell them and what we found in our results.

Holding again, counseling students. I actually did my master’s in counseling and my PhD in school psychology. So I kind of have an idea and I know every training program is different, but in counseling psychology, we do a lot like 2 or 3 years of looking at our own biases and how we think about things. I never did any of that in school psychology program, but that’s really important too. Where our own biases.

If we do have a kiddo, and I find, especially if we’ve got a kid who’s, I don’t know, just to say it bluntly really annoying and they are doing things that are just like, do you just sit still? Let’s just get this. Please stop licking everything. [00:50:00] Actually I had a kiddo with really bad Tourettes and he’s just licking and touching everything. And it was the beginning of COVID. I’m like, “Oh, we can’t do this, we gotta be careful too.”

So there’s a lot of complaints from parents. It seems really obvious, but sometimes they’re judging what comes out. And I think parents often feel, especially if they have those rambunctious kiddos who are all over the place, they’ve probably already heard stories that their parenting is bad, even if it’s from their own relatives, right? Like you gotta get your parenting in order here. So they’re already feeling a lot of shame.

But one of the moms talked about a psychologist who had strong Christian values and was really judgy about the parents who were separated. And so when it came to the assessment results, she’s like, “You two aren’t parenting consistently. And there are different expectations between you and you guys are causing a lot of this emotional turmoil and everything else that’s going on.” And that was really problematic. Yes. It might be true, but parents [00:51:00] aren’t going to take that up if they’re feeling like they were judged.

Dr. Sharp: Of course, not.

Dr. Caroline: Yeah. So that’s a whole problem. Getting too focused on test scores really is a problem, too. That’s meaningless saying they’re in the average range below average range, parents don’t care. They don’t know what that means. We really have to acknowledge and understand the child in the broader context. At the end of the day, that’s going to be really important.

So if parents are feeling uncertain about the child’s needs, almost all the parents in the research that I looked at, and even in my own research, almost all of them left feeling uncertain. They didn’t feel like they had much more information than they already had going in. I knew he had problems with attention. I knew he had problems with reading.

They didn’t really get much more information than what they already knew, or the information’s too vague or it’s irrelevant. Okay, great. He’s got [00:52:00] ADHD or he’s got dyslexia. What does that mean for my child? What are my child’s difficulties and how is what I’m seeing at home or in the classroom, how is that a part of the diagnosis?

And oftentimes they’re like, and I get those questions all the time. Is this ADHD? Is this just him, his personality, is it just laziness? You get all those kinds of questions. They’re still really uncertain about what is, what? And if they’re just getting a label or a diagnosis rather than a descriptive understanding of what’s going on for the child, they really feel like the assessment wasn’t helpful at all. I didn’t get a better understanding because I want to know how that relates to my day-to-day functioning.

I actually had a great conversation with a man. I do a lot of adults assessments for autism. And he’s like, “Okay, well, let’s break this down.” And I’ve had three follow-up sessions with him. So he’s like, “Okay, this is one thing [00:53:00] you noticed. So how is that going to affect me when I go into work tomorrow in this kind of setting?”

And so we really break it down and that’s kind of the information that parents want is when he is in a group situation, this is where things fall apart, for example. So being able to talk about that. So that’s how we can be proactive in addressing when we know he’s going into that situation, it could be a problem for him.

And then focusing too much on the disabilities and the symptoms, not looking at the strengths. We all know strengths space is going to be really important, but when we’re all, I find our reports and our feedback meetings can be really deficit-based. 

Dr. Sharp: Can I jump in and ask a question there.

Dr. Caroline: Yeah.

Dr. Sharp: Now I’d be curious about your experience with this because I have found that in a lot of cases, I would say maybe even the majority of cases, we try to be pretty heavily strengths-based and I almost [00:54:00] perceive parents to be not bored necessarily with the strengths, but there’s definitely a sense of, when are you going to get to the good stuff?

This is great and all, and we need to hear the other stuff that we actually care about. Have you had any experiences like that? And if so, well, we’re getting to what to do about it, but maybe, do you have that experience?

Dr. Caroline: Oh yeah, for sure. And oftentimes, we will go strength, strength, strength, great, great, great. But they’re so anxious. They’re not hearing it anyway. They just want to hear the bad stuff, right?

Dr. Sharp: Anxiety, yeah.

Dr. Caroline: And so, so that’s pretty normal. I often just lay it outright from the beginning. And I’ll get into how we can set things up for the feedback meeting, but I’ll ask them usually, what are you worried about hearing? What don’t you want to hear? [00:55:00] So addressing some of those anxieties and then I have them answering the assessment questions and then that kind of jumps into, you’ve got really great intuition about your kiddo. You’re bright. Congratulations. He does have ADHD.

I say, congratulations, because they usually almost immediately start crying. I say, well, I do want to talk about congratulations because here are all the great things about ADHD, but then acknowledging. And that’s where I go into the strength. So, it’s kind of balancing it out so that they’re not totally defeated when we leave here but acknowledging, but I know it’s hard.

And there’s this thing called school. That’s the only problem with ADHD. And unfortunately, Johnny’s still got 10 more years of this thing called school left. And so, there are things that we’re going to need to do to help support him, to keep his self-esteem intact, and all of those kinds of things.

So, [00:56:00] I think the anxiety mounts when we just focus on the strengths and lay the bombshell at the end of what’s going on, but when we never talk about strengths, then they leave feeling like my child is totally disabled.

Dr. Sharp: Right. There’s a theme here I think in our conversation so far, which is balance, and this is complicated, which is exactly why we’re talking about it. And hope that we’ll be able to talk about ways to help.

Dr. Caroline: 100% Yeah, I’ve got tons and tons of ideas.

Dr. Sharp: That’s fantastic.

Dr. Caroline: Other things too. I mean, these ones are pretty straightforward, but I think it’s still worth mentioning just because we might make these little mistakes. Being too technical, being too clinical, whether it’s in our feedback meetings but also in our reports, giving too much information at once. I always say you’re only going to be able to remember about five minutes’ worth of the information that I’m going to [00:57:00] share. So this is the most important five minutes that I’m going to share.

And I usually break it down within five minutes because they do get so overwhelmed, but oftentimes, there’s just too much and they’re like, I don’t even know where to start. And again, they just get overwhelmed both physically and emotionally, right? And then they’re not listening to anything.

Also just when we have these truths about their kids without giving them the opportunity to reflect on them. So what do you think, like I see this ADHD, what do you think about it? Giving them that chance, because oftentimes, we’re like your child has ADHD and dyslexia and then they’re not given any moment to reflect and be like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Or ODD, that’s another one. No, no, no, my kiddo doesn’t hurt animals. What are you talking about? Things were taken out of context. So they’re like, no, the kid you’re describing to me does not fit with the kid that I know in my mind. That’s a huge problem.

Sometimes [00:58:00] they have the wrong kid’s name in the report. Or things like, he wore glasses when they didn’t. Just clear, cut and paste errors that are just really, really bad. So we want to avoid those kinds of things. And I see that unfortunately all the time.

Dr. Sharp: Could I back up to something you said a bit ago that I actually, want to highlight and maybe spend a little bit of time on?

Dr. Caroline: Yeah.

Dr. Sharp: So you said that parents don’t really care about the ranges, like average below average, above average, and so forth.

I have been saying that for a long time, but mainly in the context of having that information written in the report. So I’m curious, is that something that you have seen born out in your research that parents really don’t know how to make sense of those ranges and test scores and things like that? Or is that more of an off-the-cuff anecdotal scope?

Dr. Caroline: No, it’s [00:59:00] truly, part of the research that they just don’t and I will be getting into, I mean, we will have to educate them about what normative sort of beans, but here in this moment of learning about the diagnosis, so in the reports, it’s very distracting. You’re correct. I never put averages or ranges or percentiles or anything because it just distracts away from the narrative of what’s going on for the kiddo. But the same thing within that feedback meeting, they don’t care. They don’t want to hear it.

Dr. Sharp: Good to know.

Dr. Caroline: Later on, it’s just too much to try to get their head wrapped around. They just want to know right now, in my context with what I’m struggling with, what’s going on, and what do I do about it? I will be getting into that a little bit more too about how we can kind of educate, but really it’s bringing it back to their kids.

I don’t care about the other 95% of the kids that’s part of that [01:00:00] sample. I just care about my kid. And oftentimes, they’re basing their child’s difficulties based on what they know from maybe other friends’ kids or other siblings or things like that. That’s more comparative for them.

Dr. Sharp: Sure. the closest that we will get to saying things like that is, the first name is really good at blank or they’re right on target, or this is kind of hard, or this is really hard. We try to keep our language more informal, I guess is the right word.

Dr. Caroline: Yeah. I used to use things like, it was adequate, their skills are adequate or developed as expected, and parents like, “Well, what does that mean? I’m not worried about any brain development. They can learn. So trying to explain that, but I think they’re just so [01:01:00] overwhelmed at the moment that everything just seems like a foreign language to them.

Not knowing how diagnoses were made is another one too. Well, how do you know that they have ADHD? I keep going back to ADHD, but any of the diagnoses that we give them, how do you know? And then if they’re really questioning, like what basis did you put that on? If they’re having those questions, they’re questioning our title results at the end of the day.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah, great point.

Dr. Caroline: Yeah. And then, once we go through all of that, the next really big piece of this is not knowing what they have to do next after the assessment. And that’s another major problem. Every parent comes to an assessment to figure out how to help their kiddos. So it’s bad when they do the assessment and then we give them all this information and they’re like, “That’s it? Just like with the blue Oracle? That’s it? What now?

So we might be done with the assessment, parents aren’t [01:02:00] done. And then they feel abandoned because this was just the beginning. They wanted help. They didn’t care about the label or the diagnosis. They want to know what they need to do. And so knowing where…

Now they’re on a whole new journey, right? Where do we even start this whole new journey? Where do they have to go? So they’re feeling like, okay, we’re getting somewhere. And I think they do start getting a little bit of hopefulness and relief by the end of the assessment, but we’re just throwing them back into this huge gigantic world.

That can be a real problem because now they’re going to turn to Dr. Google or they’re going to go doctor shopping, or they’re just going to retreat back to the status quo and that’s part of their journey where they might be left wondering, for example, or just feeling completely helpless and hopeless and defeated, unfortunately.

For all of our parents, there should be one clear path knowing, okay, I know exactly what’s going on with my kiddo. And I know exactly what I need to do next. That’s where all of our parents [01:03:00] should be feeling. But unfortunately, very few do. I mean, they just feel dumped. And those are words that they’ll say. I was dumped by my psychologist. Some feel lucky enough that they were supported, but unfortunately, they weren’t.

So this is where our recommendations play a big role. And I know that there’s always a lot of talk about the recommendations, but unfortunately, as much work we do around our recommendations, parents don’t find them really that helpful. They’re like, great. I have a page or pages full of recommendations, but what do I do with all of this? Where do I go with all of this? And they’re just not feeling like they’re feasible or even applicable, they don’t feel equipped.

One parent was talking about, this is my own independent study. I need to have a master’s. This is a master’s course where I have to do the full school study where the burden is on me to teach my child or fix my child or whatever else is going on.

So, that’s a huge burden on them. And I think it’s [01:04:00] just adds to the stress.

And that’s really looking at the entire assessment experience. There’s this huge overarching stress throughout the entire thing from the minute they pick up the phone. It’s not just one aspect of the process. It’s really that wave pattern that I was talking about. There’s stress leading up to get the help. And then really once they make the call, but now there’s stressed, now I have to wait for my appointment where there’s a little bit of release, but then that huge anticipation for the end.

And so, all parents are stressed, but we’ve got one group of parents who are stressed, but feeling blamed or they had a bad experience or they’re feeling like they don’t know where to go. They’re not feeling very empowered. So that’s one group of parents. The other group, they were feeling just as much stress, but they were feeling supported and things make sense for them now. I’m empowered. I know what’s going on and I know how to help.

That’s a key point to remember. Which [01:05:00] parent do you want leaving your office at the end of the day? You want that parent who’s yes, stressed, but feeling supported? So we have to build and maintain the relationship and build those positive experiences. That’s going to be really important. And that’s the bulk. I mean, there are so many more little complaints, but that’s kind of the big themes that have come out of the research.

The next piece is where do we go with all of this?

Dr. Sharp: Yes. I am excited to transition to the, where do we go part of this? And I think now is probably a good time to do that, but right before we do that, I wanted to ask one nuanced question that you may or may not be aware of. And that is related to recommendations.

So, do you have any data to gauge, I guess it’s the quality versus quantity question with recommendations because I’ve heard [01:06:00] and experienced both models where some clinicians will give, let’s say 5 to 10 very clear directive recommendations? And that’s a pretty brief model. And then I’ve seen those who do more of a comprehensive model where there are pages of recommendations that are meant to be a lot more detailed. Does the research provide any guidance in terms of what parents prefer?

Dr. Caroline: In terms of preferences, well, we do know that the research says the parents do feel like there’s way too many and they’re just not applicable, not feasible. You’ve got parents and this is more just inexperience and from my own research and just experience because there’s not a lot out there about that. Things like that are not well-defined, unfortunately. We don’t have [01:07:00] a perfect between 10 to 15 is the right way to go, but you’ll have parents on both sides. If you give too little, it’s like, “That’s it? But then other ones it’s like, “Where do I start?”

So, bringing everything that I found together based on the research that’s out there and then my own research as well through everything that I’ve done, I have two sections.

One is your key recommendations. These are your next three to five steps. One. You’re going to go see your doctor. Whether you’re going to go on medications or not. And I’ll talk them through that whole process. It’s good because you might have a doctor who needs to do a referral to a pediatrician, and that could take six months and it’s just good to have those doors open and have that conversation.

Two, you’re going to take this to the school. You’re going to have a meeting. If you don’t already have an IPP, I’m probably going to talk about an IPP. And then I also [01:08:00] tell them how I can be a part of that. I can review it or give some very specific goals around that.

So I do give very clear, these are the next three to five things you need to do. That’s a key recommendation. But then I just can’t give up and I know it’s so bad, but I know schools do you value sometimes as well the pages, I do have pages of recommendations, but I do break it up into whole class because teachers feel overwhelmed.

And so, I do a lot of whole-class interventions. This will be great for all of your students, but if I’ve got a kiddo with dyslexia, here are some individualized things that you could be doing and more of the small group support things. So I do break it up whole-class interventions, individualized interventions, interventions for home versus interventions versus school.

So it’s still might be pages, but it’s broken down and parents know, okay, these are the two key sections that I can look at. And [01:09:00] here are the things that the classroom teacher can look at. Here are the things that the early literacy intervention specialists can look at or whatever else it is.

Dr. Sharp: That’s great. Well, that’s very validating. That’s the exact approach that we have been taking over the last 6 to 12 months. So, I appreciate that perspective and really identify with that. I figured, why pick one or the other, just do both and cover all that.

Dr. Caroline: Well, let’s just it. Again, we can’t make everybody happy. And if we go too far one way, somebody is going to get upset, but that could be another piece. What would be most helpful for you? I’ll be talking about this as we go through. And I think it’ll help really clarify even more specifically when we get to some of those recommendations.

Dr. Sharp: Hey, thanks for listening, y’all. Thank you as always. I really appreciate it. This was a fun one. And this was just part one. As you [01:10:00] can tell, we were really on a roll, and part two will pick up next time as we transition to talking about more concrete ways that we can really help parents and empower them. So, I hope you enjoyed this, and stay tuned for the next one.

All right, take care.

The information contained in this podcast and on The Testing Psychologist website is intended for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast or on the website is intended to be a substitute for professional, psychological, psychiatric, or medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Please note that no doctor-patient relationship is [01:11:00] formed here. and similarly, no supervisory or consultative relationship is formed between the host or guests of this podcast and listeners of this podcast. If you need the qualified advice of any mental health practitioner or medical provider, please seek one in your area. Similarly, if you need supervision on clinical matters, please find a supervisor with expertise that fits your needs.

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[00:00:00] Dr. Sharp: Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Testing Psychologist podcast, the podcast where we talk all about the business and practice of psychological and neuropsychological assessment. I’m your host, Dr. Jeremy Sharp, licensed psychologist, group practice owner, and private practice coach.

This episode is brought to you by PAR. The Feifer Assessment of Writing examines why students may struggle with writing. The FAW and the FAW screening form are available on PARiConnect- PAR’s online assessment platform. Learn more at parinc.com\faw.

Welcome back, everybody. I’ve got a business episode for you today as is typical on Thursdays. I loved business episodes. Today was a good one, too. I really engaged quite well with my guest.

Aaron Carpenter is a dynamic individual. He is the founder of [00:01:00] Legendary Lion Creative Agency and the private practice growth system. Legendary lion is an agency that specializes in digital marketing and creative pursuits for mental health practices. The agency can help bootstrap your private practice or grow your practice into a more thriving group situation.

Aaron is here to talk all about search engine optimization or SEO. This is something that we have touched on in past episodes, but I’ve never really done a true deep dive into SEO. So, Aaron and I do cover some basics of search engine optimization just for anyone who might need a refresher or need to learn a little bit. And then we dive in and just talk all about search engine optimization.

We focus a lot on the decision to do it yourself versus bring someone else on to help you. And I think Aaron does a really nice [00:02:00] job of talking through ways that we can do SEO ourselves, and when we need to look elsewhere and recognize our limitations. And then we also talk about how to work with a digital creative agency, what you should ask them, what you should look for, and their services, and so forth.

So, this is a good one for any of you who are interested in a DIY approach to search engine optimization to get your website to rank higher on Google so clients can find you. And also, it gives plenty of information about how to move forward with a creative agency if you’d like to go that route.

As we talk about during the podcast, you can get more information and learn more about Aaron and his services at mentalhealth.legendarylion.com.

I think you’ll find quite a bit to take away from this interview. I know even as a long time [00:03:00] SEO, now, almost at a […] that’s completely the wrong word because I am not an expert, but I have been looking at SEO for a long, long time. And Aaron brought some new information for me to consider that was very helpful. So, I hope you take a lot away from this one.

All right. Without further ado, let’s get to my conversation with Aaron Carpenter from Legendary Lion.

Aaron. Hey, welcome to the podcast.

Aaron: Hey, how are you doing Jeremy?

Dr. Sharp: I am doing well. It’s good to see you again. A lot of people probably don’t know or don’t remember that we worked together about five years ago now on The Testing Psychologist logo, which has clearly been a smash hit, so good to [00:04:00] see you back and in a different context so we can be talking about SEO. I appreciate it.

Aaron: Yeah, man, it’s good to be here.

Dr. Sharp: Usually, with my clinical guests, I’ll start with this question, why is this work important to you? Well, let’s give that a shot here as well. So how do you, not necessarily, how’d you get into this, I recognize that’s a long story, but why this? Why websites, why search engines, my mental health folks? Why is this important?

Aaron: I got into this line of work as the classic tale of a passion turned into a career, turned into a business, just kept growing. And particularly mental health was some of our first projects. We did some work with Joe Sanok of Practice of the Practice. We did his logo and everything, and a website. And then, we just kept getting, like business does sometimes, we just kept getting word of mouth referrals. And the more we got to know mental [00:05:00] health clinicians, the more we got to understand their problems and everything, it became really important to me.

One of my favorite phrases is, we like to help people who help people. And the other thing that I found, whoever’s listening, please forgive me, but I’ve found generally that people that are in the mental health space have a lot of challenges around websites, digital marketing, SEO, that sort of a thing. It’s a highly technical field and it’s an entirely different field than what you’ve gone to school for. So, there’s a lot of need there. And my clients are just so cool. They’re very understanding. Do you know what I mean? That just makes sense. So, that’s why.

Dr. Sharp: I love that. I forget sometimes that psychologists and folks in mental health don’t necessarily gravitate toward this tech arena because I love it. I might be kind of an outlier and I joke that I could have been an engineer maybe [00:06:00] in another life or something, but it’s something we don’t wrap our minds around a lot and it can be really challenging. So, I’m excited to demystify some of this for folks today.

Aaron: I’m happy to bring some answers, some clarity to some of this stuff because it can be really challenging and annoying unless you know what you’re doing. And it’s kind of just more about knowing what you’re doing, and if you don’t, know where to get the answer.

Dr. Sharp: For sure. Well, I think this is one of those things. So, SEO- search engine optimization, this is one of the things that gets thrown around a lot especially as folks are maybe starting a practice, building a website, and a lot of people probably have a general idea of what it is, but not no in-depth understanding. So, that’s the hope. I hope we can do a deep dive and really give folks a good idea of what this is and how to help themselves.

Maybe we could start just super basics. [00:07:00] So tell me, what’s your definition of SEO?

Aaron: SEO, the most basic definition you’ll find and it’s probably the most accurate one is something along the lines of, how easy are you to find through a search engine? And that can mean a lot of different things. It could mean work that you do on your own website. It could mean getting a Google My Business listing. It could mean having a profile in Psychology Today. It really depends on what it is that you want to be found for when someone searches and what those searches are. But those are what we would refer to as key phrases are that people are typing in and hitting enter. What do they get back? And is it you? Optimizing what comes back for you is the whole name of the game for us to go.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah, and it might be a no-brainer, but just to make it super clear for folks, why is that important? Why do we need to be found?

Aaron: There’s a couple of primary reasons I would say it’s most important. One is most obvious. Everybody’s thinking right now.[00:08:00] So that you can get clients, right? If you’re growing your practice or growing your business, that you can recruit other talents. They come to you and find you and know that you’re there.

The other reason is a little bit more along the lines of, are you attracting the right people, sort of pre-qualifying, and sales and business terms. So, if you’re lacking SEO around certain key phrases that say for, psychologists, ADHD testing, or autism testing, and if you’re lacking those but those are some of your primary service offerings and you’re drawn to other types of evaluations or something, that can slow up your business growth. So, I would say that’s a secondary, but also very important reason why you should be considering SEO for your business.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah. In your perspective, when do we need to be concerned about SEO? Is this something that you do in [00:09:00] the beginning when you’re building your website? Is it something you could do after the fact like, if you’re established but recognize you maybe never did it? Is there a good time or the best time or is it just whenever?

Aaron: It should be your top priority, right? No, it really isn’t. The best answer I can give there to give clarity on that would be when you’re starting a practice, when you’re first building your website and stuff, if you know a lot about this or are willing to invest with a professional to apply it, that’s great, but you really need foundations first.

First, you need a site. You need a profile on Psychology Today. You need those types of basics to be able to then start to tool it up and add more content to it, which we’ll talk about I’m sure later, to be able to get yourself to rank for certain things. So, is it the very first thing you should be focused on? No.

But once you’ve got [00:10:00] some of those basics pulled together, then you can start to pay a specialist, which is entirely different from logo design, or web design. This is a whole different specialty to come in and take a look at your foundational online presence, website profiles. If you’re doing videos on YouTube or in this case, Dr. Jeremy if you’re doing a podcast, how is this podcast found? What might people be searching for to find it? And are you showing up? And if not, how can we get that to happen?

Dr. Sharp: Yeah, that’s so important. It’s good to know. I think people get concerned about like, oh, I missed the boat or it’s too late or whatever. It’s good to hear that there’s a little bit of time. It doesn’t have to be the main priority right in the beginning. There’s no missing the boat necessarily.

Aaron: No. And I think that’s totally fair to say. If you’re just getting started, you got a lot of things that are a high priority that you’re trying to get done. SEO can wait, but once you are wanting to [00:11:00] increase the flow, let’s say of leads and attention that you need to grow your business, then SEO is a core component of any marketing campaign for a business.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah. When you bring that up, that makes me think of a question that I get asked a lot. I’m going out of order here, but I’m just kind of rolling with it. So, people ask, do I really need to focus on this if I’m full? My practice is full. I seem to have enough referrals. Is this something I should be concerned about? Everybody says I should worry about it, but is that true? Do you have thoughts on that?

Aaron: I really do. So, my background in formal education is that I’m a business major with a focus on small business and entrepreneurship. When I was going through school, one of the things that it makes sense when you hear it, but it’s not something you necessarily think of straight away as any business owner, [00:12:00] the time to market and spend on marketing is when you’re busy, because when you’re not, then you don’t have the funds to do that as much. And also, it’s the time that you can start to gather market share, like start to really establish your presence. But more than that, the inverse is even more true.

Right now, client and caseloads and stuff are really easy for people because just look at the past four years, right? We don’t have to explain it. But there will probably come a time where that will not be as fruitful and where other outfits or practices will be struggling. If you have positioned yourself and continue to position yourself even when it’s more difficult, that’s when you can really scoop up market share.

So, it’s always important, but I think, while you have the resources, that’s the time to experiment and learn and make mistakes. But when the market gets difficult, that’s when you really should be [00:13:00] prepared and have something stocked away to start to spend because other people won’t. That same sort of feeling you have of not spending on marketing money and pulling back, everyone else is going to feel. And if you break through that, then you can really start to grow your business and prepare yourself for when the market shifts again.

I want to elaborate on that too. We do a lot of work with therapists and group practices, and the interesting dynamic that I’ve learned in working with hundreds of clients in that realm is that there seems to be this sort of teeter-totter effect of hiring and bringing on therapists to be able to expand caseload capability, but then starting to need to reshift their marketing efforts and focus on drawing clients in, but then back and forth. And they just sort of like bypass step through growth that way.

There’s a tertiary component to it of office space. COVID and everything, but since everything’s going virtual now, I’ll leave that one [00:14:00] off to the side because it’s not as much of a problem. In those efforts, basically with all those clients, we have two primary components to our campaigns. One is therapist and talent recruitment for human resources essentially. And then the other side is drawing and clients for case loader, in this case, evals and that sort of thing.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a whole other thing I didn’t even really think about is recruitment and HR reasons. That’s not something that we focused on our website, but probably should be. Hiring has been really tough lately, as I’m sure you have heard in our field.

Aaron: Yeah. What I’m hearing is there are deals on the table and they’re getting snatched up right away. Some of the concerns I hear on the “darker side” of that if you want to call it, that is that there are a lot of new outfits that are springing up that are [00:15:00] making a lot of promises. And I’m talking to older outfits that have been around that are like, I just don’t know how they can realistically commit to that. Do you know what I mean? They’ve been in business longer, so they know what they’re saying.

My word of caution out there to people who are in the field who are looking to get hired and stuff too is just, think critically and cross-check some of those offers and stuff because basically everybody wants you right now. You’re hot if you’re in the mental health field and you have experience and everything and you’re licensed. So, you got to be careful, I think out there right now, but so many opportunities and it is difficult if you’re a growing business to get the right person because it’s becoming like a hot commodity, I guess.

Dr. Sharp: Absolutely. Well, hopefully, some of the things we’ll talk about, we can apply to our hiring and job opportunity pages too, not just our client service pages.

Aaron: Yeah, for sure.

Dr. Sharp: Well, let’s see. Let’s roll it back just a [00:16:00] little bit and talk about, so we got some basics about what is SEO, but can you talk about the factors that go into it, specifically with search engines, Google, I guess is the main one. Is there any competition for Google at this point that you even pay attention to from a website design perspective?

Aaron: A one-word answer. No. There really just is Google at this point, but there are other considerations we can talk about.

Dr. Sharp: Thinking about search engines, there are tons of factors. I think you said before we started recording, there are something like 200 factors that Google is looking at when they’re looking for websites. What are some of the main ones that we need to be aware of?

Aaron: If we’re thinking in terms of DIY, you want to dip your toe in the water and see what you can do to your own site, I got to tell you, there’s [00:17:00] nothing more thrilling than doing something like this and then searching for it a week later and seeing that you do rank number one on something, and you’re not even an SEO specialist, right? That’s super cool. And I’m here to tell you that even though it’s one of the main service offerings we provide as specialists, it is totally doable.

I’ll give you some tools in this podcast that you can use to take a swing at this, and then I’ll start to point out some yellow flag and red flag territory, where like you might be getting in deep water there and that’s maybe time to bring on a specialist. So, let’s just cover the basic tools you need.

First, if you want to rank on something, you should have a page dedicated to that thing. So for instance, if you do ADHD testing, say, if you right now have a page that just services and you’ve listed all out there, my suggestion would be to split that page up into pages for each service and make [00:18:00] that for something that you want to rank on. So ADHD testing, autism testing, and so on.

Two other rules of thumb. You’ll want approximately 750 words of content. There is no magic number, but the more content you have, Google recognizes, it’s more difficult to create unique content than larger than it is. And so, 750 words is a sweet spot of spending enough energy into it to get a lot of value, but not going overboard and getting diminishing returns.

You’re going to want to repeat that phrase in several key places. So, I’ll use ADHD testing as an example. It should be the name of the page. So if you’re on a WordPress site, it doesn’t matter what platform you’re in, but most people probably have a WordPress site, you’re just calling the page that thing. WordPress will automatically make it the link. And that’s the second thing. You want it to be in the link. You want to have a header tag or a title tag on the page that reads ADHD testing. And then you want to repeat it two to three times in your [00:19:00] content. You want to repeat it a few different times. And you can write whatever you want, but there are some other things that you can do to help yourself out more.

If you search in your area for ADHD testing in Google and you just look at the search results, you’ll see a whole bunch of different descriptions. You’ll see in the auto-complete when you’re typing into that a text field, a bunch of suggestions, and you’ll also see at the bottom of the page related search results, you can look at the related search results, what comes up in the auto-complete and what comes up on that first page and other website content, and assume that Google finds all of those phrases and little snippets of text, very, very relevant to the thing you just searched for. So if you can include any of that also in your content when you’re writing out your service page, you’re doing really good. You’re banging on all cylinders.

If you just do those things, odds are, you’re probably going to outrank your competition in your [00:20:00] local area unless your competition has hired an SEO specialist who did all of that and so much more. We talked about five and there are over 200 that we know of. And it can get to be a pretty deep pool of things.

Those are basics. Yellow flag territory is one of the things that matter is Google cares how quickly your website loads because they don’t want to have someone click on their search result and then just have it spin and spin and spin. That makes Google look bad. So, that’s a ranking factor and that usually needs a developer or a technician or an SEO specialist to solve. And there are many more that are even getting into code semantics and stuff, which I am not going to bore you guys with, but you can keep squeezing value even out of a single page or a whole website by going further and further down that rabbit hole.

And usually, a good SEO campaign is all about continuing to work yourself into a more difficult territory to [00:21:00] achieve the result you’re looking for, and then cutting your losses and focusing on other keyword phrases when it just no longer makes sense. So, it’s a bit of that kind of a game.

Dr. Sharp: I hear you. I was going to ask, going back a little bit, I get this question a lot from my consulting clients and they always ask, “If I’m doing my website myself, which service should I use?” And so, I’m curious just from a DIY SEO standpoint, you mentioned WordPress, of course, there’s Squarespace, there’s Wix, there’s any number of others. From a DIY SEO standpoint, do you have favorites among the group?

Aaron: I definitely do. WordPress is the way to go. With your own hosting and you can get, we should probably talk about hosting just a little, but you can get a WordPress site spun up with any hosting company and that would be sufficient for you to start with.

Why WordPress over other [00:22:00] things? Is WordPress paying me to be on his podcast right now, right? No, they’re not. The big reason is that Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, GoDaddy’s website builder, all of these things have something in common, and that is that they have built these software suites to provide a website building service to you, the non-technician, to be able to build your own website. And that’s awesome.

But because they’ve done that to somebody who’s untrained in website design and development, they’ve had to close a lot of doors to you and things that you could normally do that once you get into those spaces, you can easily break a website and it can be very confusing and frustrating to that type of a market.

A big trade-off to that are the types of things where I just mentioned past that like the first five that we talked about into the 200 plus ranking factors and stuff, and SEO specialists really can’t do many of those things. So, we’re handcuffed in what we [00:23:00] can do when you’re using a website builder like that.

The other thing and this does tie back to SEO, but the other big thing with it is that you really can’t migrate your site or take it or do anything with it. You don’t own the whole site. It’s built-in their system. It’s a proprietary system. I can’t copy a Wix website and move it into Weebly. I’d have to rebuild the whole darn thing.

WordPress, you own the whole thing. Anybody who’s an experienced technician in my field can do anything with it. They can get all the way down into the code. They can move it to different places. They can do whatever they want. So because you have complete and total ownership over your project, you set yourself up for success for the next steps to be able to invest in that same project that represents your business online.

Dr. Sharp: Those are great points. I was not aware of some of that. And so if I hear you right, I just want to clarify, you’re saying even for those of us who might want to bring on an SEO technician, [00:24:00] that is even more challenging in some of the prebuilt software suites compared to WordPress. It’s harder for a technician to do some of the detailed work. It’s not just harder for us to do the DIY work and some of those other options.

Aaron: Correct. And all things being equal if your website is in WordPress and a colleague’s website is in Wix and you both do the same things that I just described in terms of creating those pages, you’re probably going to outrank your competitor with your WordPress site because you would in that case, and I’m painting with a broad brush here, there are caveats, but you would have a project that probably loads faster and is optimized better than something that would be built in a website builder.

For instance, WordPress by default resizes all of its images and serves them in the latest and greatest way. That’s non-geek speak [00:25:00] and some website builders don’t. And so what you can have is like, you put this really pretty picture that you love on the homepage of your site, but it’s actually like a 5MP. In terms of data size, it’s large. And it reminds you of the dial-up days where you had to wait for the image to load.

Sometimes you’ll even see that in images now, even with a cable connection, because the image is just so huge because cameras can snap such big resolution pictures. And now we’re getting back to the whole page loading thing that I talked about with Google, right? WordPress just takes care of that for you. And yes, some website builders do that too, but they leave room for opportunity for mistakes like that to happen.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah, I hear you. Thanks for going down that little detour. I was curious. That’s something that comes up a lot and I’m sure people are wondering, can’t I just do this myself on this easy platform?

So a little bit more of a learning curve with WordPress. That’s what I’ve always used and I love it. It [00:26:00] seems pretty customizable and easy to work with once you get to know it.

Aaron: Yeah, for sure.

Dr. Sharp: You didn’t talk about blogging. I’m curious about blogging and this whole DIY approach. This is another thing we hear a lot. You need to be blogging regularly. That’s going to help you with search engine ranking. So, can you talk through that a little bit?

Aaron: Yeah. I think most of my colleagues would smile and give me a tip of the hat by saying blogging is a waste of time. Let me explain why, because it doesn’t have to be. We all have email accounts and Facebook and different social media and everything, and we all recognize what sounds like noise and which is what is interrupting our experience in browsing our inbox or a social channel or whatever.

You recognize that but then as a business, you feel compelled to just put stuff out there and it’s just [00:27:00] noise too. And my concern is the amount of effort or the opportunity cost of your time in putting in the time, energy, and effort to create those things but you’re getting like no traction. If anything, you’re being found as a bit annoying. You really need to strategy.

So, if you have a strategy, a strategy can look like you’ve identified your target market, your audience, you know the main questions that they have and every post that you create is centered around solving one of those questions and it’s really value forward, then you’re in pretty good shape just in terms of content creation.

So back to the question. I hear that a lot too. People will ask me, I’m reading online that blogging is good for SEO. Well, like I said before, if you don’t have a page on something, you’re not going to rank on it. So, let’s say that to draw it back to ADHD testing. When you’re doing some [00:28:00] searches around that yourself for your business and trying to see what people are searching for and what kind of content is there, you might find that there are more articles about questions. Top 10 questions about ADHD testing. Maybe what parents are searching for is, is ADHD testing safe, whatever that is.

And so, when you find that, that’s probably a good candidate for a blog article, and if you make it, you might rank on that and that could be really useful to you. But generally speaking, just blogging isn’t good for SEO. You have to be putting some thought under it like I just did in getting a blog post out there for something that your target audience would be searching for. Just kind of sharing your thoughts is nice, but ultimately it doesn’t do anything for you to rank or do anything for your site at all. And so it could be a lot of wasted effort.

That’s where I like to say this gets into that yellow flag territory again, where maybe that’s something where if you want to do it yourself, that’s cool. Like you would with an accountant or an attorney, pay for [00:29:00] a consult with an SEO specialist, have them explain to you what they see and what would be a good set of content to create and terms to kind of try to stay around and then take that and run with it so that you know you’re at least getting more bang for your buck out of your own time.

Dr. Sharp: Got you. That makes sense. So, with blogging, did the same principles apply? Like if we do our research and find, let’s say these keywords or these questions people might be searching for, do the same principles apply where if we have those terms in the blog post and in the content and the page title and link and everything, is that going to be helpful?

Aaron: Yeah, it certainly would allow you to rank on those things. The one thing that I would add to that too, is like with those service pages that we talked about, or like a blog post, it’s great if you rank on it and people search for it and find you and find your site, but don’t forget, this is like a digital marketing thing. You guys don’t [00:30:00] forget to add a call to action at the end of it.

Invite them to call you or invite them to fill out a contact form or something. Because without that, they may just move on to the next thing. And then they might start looking at another page or whatever, and you’ve lost them.

When I was getting keynotes, I used to belong to a BNI group- Business Networking International, but a lot of people in your sphere probably are very aware of them. I gave some keynotes while I was in a group there. And I remember describing the attention span of internet users as being like squirrels on crack. They are literally just flitting from place to place to place. And if the site doesn’t load within a second, I close again, and I’m moving on.

And if you treat all of your internet traffic like that, I know it’s obnoxious, but if you treat it like that and you explicitly tell them, you search for this, here’s what it is, here are your next steps, you’re going to get so much more value out of your site and out of those pages than if you just leave it up to [00:31:00] them to make those decisions.

Dr. Sharp: Sure. It’s funny you say that. I’ve said that a number of times to my clients or my consulting folks that we have to assume people don’t know what to do on our websites. You have to make it very explicit what you want them to do and what you want them to read next and where you want them to click, and how you want them to contact you. It’s got to be super clear. People have very little patience.

Aaron: For sure. We also use the term Murphy proofing things. We want to Murphy proof it. So, anything that could go wrong, we’re already thinking about all of that and then trying to make it where that doesn’t happen. And another common phrase that we’ll use in SEO and design, kind of gets into design and stuff, but I often use the phrase taking away the reasons to say no.

I talked about defining your audience and knowing that… we have some tools and materials that we [00:32:00] can share and I can talk about at the end of the podcast, but basically, some different ways, referred to as a buyer persona, we call them action avatars, but really it’s just defining like that type of person and then coming up with all their common objections and fears and those types of things, and also goals and aspirations around your service, and then using that information to guide when you’re creating content for answering those questions.

If you have a sales page or a service page or something, look at that and address all of those common objections and things that they have truthfully of course, but actually give them that information because if you do, odds are they’d be more likely to be calling you or filling out a form for an evaluation versus your competition where they’re unsure. And so they’d rather start with you and call you and start the process than have the call and ask all the questions and try to figure it out.

Dr. Sharp: Right. Such a good point. I wanted to ask you as well [00:33:00] about the integration with other Google stuff. I’m thinking particularly about Google My Business or Google Maps, and how those are related. Is there anything we need to do or be aware of on that side of things as far as getting found?

Aaron: Yeah. I’ll keep it short and sweet there, but, but it’s super important. So, on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of what you’re doing, this is something you can do yourself. And it’s like a solid 9.5 out of 10. Get yourself a Google My Business listing. If you’re unsure how to do that, Google Murphy proved it. You just search for Google My Business listing, make one.

A common question I’m sure that would come up for everyone right now would be, well, I don’t necessarily either see people in person or I’m operating out of a home office and I have a satellite office or something like that. What about the location?

You don’t have to display that information to have a [00:34:00] Google My Business listing. You don’t have to be a brick and mortar. You just have to include your home address. In that case, you will need to include an address, but nobody else will see it. It’s just for Google’s benefit primarily because it’s like a form of authentication. They want to make sure that you are a valid business listing. So by using an address, even if it’s a home address, one of the methods that they’ll authenticate your account is to send you a postcard in the mail with a pin on it. And then you’ll put that pin back in to authorize your Google, my business listing, essentially.

And then you can just say like in a 50-mile radius from Asheville, North Carolina, I provide psychology-based services or something like that and add some categories to that. So, you should absolutely do it. The whole process can be very fast. You can have your thing up into like a week and that’s another way that people can find you.

From there, then you’re getting back into yellow flight territory. It’s time to bring in a specialist who can actually [00:35:00] look at that, look at your practice and your services, and set to the tool that up to make it much better.

Dr. Sharp: Got you. What role do reviews play in SEO? Do you have thoughts on that?

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All right, let’s get back to the podcast.

Aaron: Yeah, they’re big. Social credibility, in general, is big. Let’s just talk about that for a second. Almost everybody listening here probably bought something on Amazon and everybody has gone on a buyer’s journey of figuring out what of two, three, or five products they wanted to purchase, which one they wanted. And often what you’ll do is you’ll look at the reviews and you’re looking for more than just 5stars. Aren’t you?

You’re looking for, like, does this review even look legit? Is this a fake review? Did they buy it or do they put it in themselves and create, because you don’t know. And especially, if there are only 2 or 3, you’re less likely to sign up for that than seeing one 4.

For instance, I was looking the other day for one of those protein shakes with a [00:37:00] cap on it and it’s got the little steel ball and you can check the protein drink and everything. The first one I searched for has like 77,000 reviews and it’s got five stars and it’s people posting pictures clearly authentically of all the thing. And I was like, okay, well, no brainer. I’m totally going with that one.

Well, when people are searching for your services, it’s still the same story. The interesting thing in the medical field and mental health field is that there are some ethical concerns around soliciting reviews, but as long as you have that in place and people are willing to post on their own accord and everything, that can be great. And it’s really amazing for your business.

On the other side of that conversation, my clients will ask me, well, what happens when we get negative reviews because you can’t just delete them, otherwise, what would be the point of the whole thing? What you can do is respond in a professional way to reviews that are less than favorable and also just show, in that social credibility [00:38:00] that you didn’t just drop the ball with someone.

And often, those negative reviews, people are willing to be a bit judicious about letting a lot of that slide especially if you’ve responded in kind and it seemed completely even keel as I’m well-mannered. Do you know what I mean? You tried to resolve the situation or something. So, those negative reviews can actually be valuable. You just have to actually respond to them and call the ball for what it is essentially.

Dr. Sharp: I know this is an area that a lot of us really struggle with because I think there is maybe conflicting advice about how to deal with negative reviews. There are definitely thoughts out there like we can’t respond at all because that breaks our client’s confidentiality. There are some who say, respond generically without acknowledging that this person was actually a client. There are some that say ignore.

[00:39:00] I don’t expect you to solve that problem for us. It’s more of an ethical thing, but it’s complicated maybe it’s the right word for it. And I think we would love to be able to unequivocally respond to all negative reviews in a kind and compassionate way, or maybe not so much sometimes, but it’s tough.

There’s definitely some advice out there to not do that. I think people get stuck and they’re like, oh, what do I do about all these reviews that may or may not be true?

Aaron: It’s totally valid, and I’ll take a stab at solving that for you. Probably the best safe play to do with a negative review on any platform would be to respond without acknowledging that they are clients or breaking any client privilege, and just respond and apologize that that was their experience or something to that effect, and to invite them to call back to continue the conversation or communication back to the business.

In other words, if you can just [00:40:00] come up with a way that you’re comfortable in acknowledging the negative review, but inviting that person to resolve the problem, you’ve essentially solved it for everyone else that’s reading those reviews, like, okay, if I have a bad experience, at least what I can expect is that this person is going to try to make it right with me. And that’s all that I can ask, right?

So that would be my recommendation. If you can do that ethically without breaking a client privilege, that’s what I’d recommend.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah, that’s reasonable. That’s a good perspective.

I know we’ve talked about a lot. I have some random questions though that hopefully, we can address.

Aaron: Well, Pizza is my favorite food, Jeremy.

Dr. Sharp: Thank you. You read my mind. So here’s what I am wondering about search engine ranking and so forth. You’ve talked about ways that we can do it ourselves. And you’ve given some like [00:41:00] yellow flag areas. What are some other places where you maybe have seen people try to do themselves or places where people mess up or just like kind of clear boundaries where you would say like, okay, if you’re getting into this territory, you should probably call someone to help with this?

Aaron: Sure. I apologize. I’m going to do a little bit of geek-speak here, but it’s mainly just like for recognizable phrases so that you’re getting into red flag type of territory, you can break your site or be detrimental to your SEO and you really need a specialist in here now because we’re getting into website surgery, so to speak. We’re really getting into deeper territory. So don’t do this on your own, bring in someone.

But things would be like if you see a phrase called cache or your website caching. Website caching effectively is just kind of pre-building the website to serve to a user. And the [00:42:00] reason gets back to the speed component that I talked about. It just makes it load right away because it doesn’t have to build it on the fly, which is how a lot of websites work these days. It just kind of grabs all these different pieces and builds the page on the fly for the person visiting it. 

And the reason why it works that way is because there is a lot going on with websites that require it to work in a modular form that way and be built just on the fly and served. So caching builds a carbon copy and puts it in front of that process so that you can just get the prefabbed version, but that can if done poorly, actually hurt you. It could hurt you in ways where your content is not getting updated, the way that cache is being built could be built wrong. So caching, that’s one.

Another one would be anything around DNS- it stands for Domain Name Servers or Domain Name Service. And this has to do with your domain name. Anytime you get [00:43:00] into territory where you’re doing stuff with your domain name, that’s where you should definitely be talking to the specialist.

And then hosting, that would be the other big one. So hosting, I use an analogy to explain. Website hosting, first of all, what is that? I get that question a lot. Website hosting is pretty simple. Any website that you visit actually is just a bunch of files that sit on a computer that’s connected to the internet 24/7, not all that dissimilar to files that you have on your computer. It’s just that a bunch of technical magic has happened to make it so that anybody in the world can access it through that domain name, but not all hosting is equal. Just like your computer is not equal to a colleague’s or a previous computer that you had.

So what do you need to know about hosting? Well, the analogy goes like this. There are really three tiers of hosting with a lot of nuances in between. The first is called shared hosting. This is what you get for a [00:44:00] few bucks a month. So Godaddy, Bluehost, a whole bunch of ones like that, where if you see a price like $5 a month, you’re talking shared hosting.

That is a lot like a youth hostel. Basically, they just cram as many projects as they can onto a very low-grade machine in order to facilitate the basic service of serving it up. But it comes with nothing else. And you’re sharing your bunk beds with who knows what other website essentially. You do get your own little space as you would expect at any youth hostel, but it’s the bare minimum.

And it’s usually quite slow on load times because it has to work to serve up all of these sites all of the time. And you don’t know if the site next to you is a really heavy website that requires a lot of resources to load. So, tier 1 shared hosting.

Tier 2 is shared hosting with an agency like mine or a hosting specialist. And how that differs is they [00:45:00] have a machine that only they are in. So, they would give you your own space and it’s a little bit more like a condo where you have your whole space. It is just your space. There are certain rules around it and it’s much more elevated and there are certain services and things that come along with it that are really great.

Things like SSL certificate, which gives you a little padlock and is also good for SEO on your site. Things like backups, you typically get from a service like this automatically, and several others.

Then the top tier would be dedicated hosting. This is only appropriate for huge websites, e-commerce websites, and that sort of thing. So, it doesn’t totally apply here. It’s good to know. A dedicated hosting usually will run you somewhere in the ballpark of $500 to $700 a month. And it is you on your own computer. You get your own whole computer. You can call that hosting company and say, I would like some more storage in there and they go sure. And they go and plug that hardware into your computer. And that can be awesome if you are running an app [00:46:00] or one of the other e-commerce stores. So you guys don’t need that.

But shared hosting is probably, unless you’re just getting started, probably a little too low. You probably want to talk with a creative agency or something like that and get some higher-level service so that you get those faster load times. You get a technician who’s very familiar with the equipment and it’s only those people in and out of it. So there are no mystery people coming through and doing all kinds of crazy things in hosting, that sort of thing.

Dr. Sharp: That makes sense. Great. Gosh, any other places or things that we need to look out for in terms of messing things up?

Aaron: I don’t think so. If I got more into the technical side of things, I would introduce those, but you probably are not going to find those. As long as you’re not getting into files like FTP and messing with anything called SSL, doing cache, changing hosting without [00:47:00] talking with someone first, or making sure it’s something like I described, I think you’ll be okay.

The main rule of thumb is just one page per key phrase you want to rank on. Get some content in there, like 750 words. Repeat the phrase two to three times. And then, Google will have to crawl your site again before it recognizes it. We didn’t touch on that, but I should say that is like a little caveat. It won’t happen right away. Organic SEO, that’s the proper phrase for it. Organic SEO is different than paid SEO. Organic is the type of activity we talked about and not paying for ads to get traffic to your site. And in organic SEO, it’s a lot like growing a garden. You water it. You do the proper things and everything you give it time to grow.

And so a good rule of thumb is, wait a week, a week and a half. I mentioned that I think at the top of the podcast, wait about a week, and then you see that. And if you get your own page to rank, number one, you see that in a week. That’s awesome. But it won’t happen right away. You don’t make the change and Google immediately knows. You have to give them some time [00:48:00] to recrawl your site.

Dr. Sharp: Fair enough. I’m glad you brought that up. I was going to ask about that. People sometimes get, they’re like I created my website yesterday and I can’t find it. It takes a little while.

Aaron: Yeah, that’s why.

Dr. Sharp: Related to that, there’s a, at least a belief that I have in my mind, I don’t know if it’s backed up by research or not, but do you know anything about how often people go past the first page on Google? How important is it to be on the first page?

Aaron: Yeah. So I’ll do you one better. There’s a great website if you’re interested in digging deeper on that stuff called Kissmetrics. They do a whole bunch of research on search engine optimization, website optimization, user experience, and that sort of thing. They can jump into the science of it, but they deliver it in layman’s terms.

But generally speaking, it’s like 90 to 95. It depends on the industry and the user intent, but basically, 90 to 95% of users never jumped pages anymore. [00:49:00] You’re looking at it like the top three results. So, basically, you want to own a key phrase.

And if you want to get more into this strategy or at least speak intelligently with an SEO specialist, one thing to consider is this idea of the long tail and short tail keyword phrases. So, it’s hard on a podcast to draw a visual, but I’ll try to correlate it.

We’re all familiar with the idea of diminishing returns or exponential decline. So starting on the left of the graph, if you were looking at the height of it, that would be difficulty to rank. And so that would be, say, psychologists. Just sort of show up number one on psychologist. It’s a very short, generic keyword phrase. And so it’s very difficult. A lot of people have spent a lot of time, energy, and effort over many years to own that. [00:50:00] I don’t want to get into caveats that of, but basically, that’s difficult. There’s a sweet spot in between short tail and long tail. That’s where you want to be. We’ll come back to that.

And then, on the far right of the graph where the line has declined all the way to the X-axis, there is a long tail. The long tail would be like, ADHD testing psychologist specialist in Asheville, North Carolina. Like that is your whole keyword phrase. Someone would search that to find you. It is so long and specific. It’s actually quite easy to rank on, but in terms of that graph, and we’re considering that both with difficulty but also in search volume, 10 people a year searching for that whereas we’re looking at like millions of people a year searching for psychologists. So, that’s something to consider.

So, let’s go back to the middle. There’s a sweet spot there where it’s not too competitive, but you also get a lot of search volumes. And so, you don’t want to get stuck on trying to own something too short or necessarily too [00:51:00] long. And a good rule of thumb is this is what I typically suggest to DIY people, pair your service page that we talked about with a Geo local, especially if you’re not getting it to rank just with the service.

So ADHD testing, Asheville, North Carolina. Autism testing, Asheville, North Carolina. You can literally write that out on your page. And yeah, it looks a little goofy, but who cares if you actually rank on the thing and people are getting the answer they’re looking for it, right? That’s the difference between short tail and a long tail.

And I just wanted to bring that up because it’s important to understand that concept and not get too hung up on trying to rank on something you’re doing yourself for too much of a short tail phrase and then being disappointed because you’re not seeing anything. If you want a quick win, you can go super long tail and make like a super obscure page and you will see it ranked number one when you search in a week. But then the question becomes, how many people are actually searching for that to find you?

[00:52:00] Dr. Sharp: Right. Well, and my understanding is that there are some tools out there to help us know what people are searching for and search volume versus uniqueness of phrase and that sort of thing. Is that right? Like a keyword research tool or something like that?

Aaron: Yeah, we’ll include that in our SEO 101 toolkit that we’ll have on our website. But there are a few that I can mention now that you can check out. There’s Ahrefs, there’s SEMrush, there’s moz.com. And then my favorite is google.com because you’re going right to the source, but those other tools are really, really great. You can go there and some of them have free trials or free versions, and you can type in a keyword phrase and you can start to infer a lot of information on how this stuff works. And what’s relevant to relate to it.

Moz is pretty great in terms of teaching. [00:53:00] It’s a tool for marketers and for digital SEO specialists, but a layman can use it and get a lot of information or even read their blog on what SEO means. What is good SEO? Where is your time best spent? I use Google when I’m feeling a client, like when I’m doing a discovery call, I’ll jump in Google and just use that as a broad tool to see what Google is telling me for certain search results because I know how to read it, but you do too.

You can read the auto-complete like I said, when you start to type out a phrase. You can look at the related searches when you actually press enter and you can see what is coming up there. And that gives you a lot of information that you know Google is telling you just straight up from that search, as of today, as of this moment, this is what’s really relevant to what you just looked for. So that gives you a lot of information on what you should add to that page and figuring out how to work that in. That’s the art side of this half art half science field.

[00:54:00] Dr. Sharp: Right. This is great.

I wonder if we might start to close a little bit with just a combo thing. I mean, this is the work that y’all do, obviously. If people want to go the more pro route, what should people be looking for in an SEO service? What does that process even look like if somebody wanted to work with a helper?

Aaron: So, like I just said, this is half art, half science. I can tell you what you’ll see. You’ll see a wide range of pricing, and it will not be correlated with experience necessarily. You’ll see a wide range of services of different ways that they provision SEO and what they feel is important for SEO.

So what do you need to know? I would say, look at their services and ask specifically what they would be doing. And when they start to speak jargon, ask them to stop and talk to you in [00:55:00] plain terms, because it’s really easy for that industry to just start leaning into jargon and be like, well, we’re going to do internal links and external links. And we’ll use ones with high domain authority, and I’ve already lost you, your eyes glazed over, right?

So just ask them, what does that mean and how will that translate? Make sure whoever you’re working with is going to give you a clear report of what phrases did you optimize this month and where are we ranking on those now? Ideally, not all SEO outfits do this, but ideally, that firm also shows you for sure how many leads you got that came off of those search engine listings? Because it’s great to be number one, but how many evals did you book off that? What was the investment worth?

And then, I would definitely just shop around service. If you get reports or examples from an SEO agency, feel free to share that with another one. Don’t try to play the cards too close to your chest where you’re trying to just see what they all [00:56:00] tell you and judge for yourself who’s going to be the best fit. Let them judge themselves and then infer off of that information. Because if a client came to me and said, Hey, I’m looking at three different SEO agencies. Here’s what they gave me over there. What do you think? I would tell them what I thought. Do you know what I mean?

Dr. Sharp: Yeah.

Aaron: Again, depending on the person. I just do that. I’d be like, these guys are awesome. They’re totally in your niche. They do restaurants. We don’t do restaurants. You should totally go with them. You’re probably not going to get that same kind of candid answer from every outfit you talk to you, especially if you’re talking to a sales guy, but it can’t hurt to just see what they say as well.

So, I would say, just look for those things, though. Make sure that you’ve got clear reporting, make sure they’re telling you in plain terms what it is they’re going to be doing, and make sure that they have experience in your field because that goes a long way with SEO to just know the search terms and what to look for.

Dr. Sharp: Cool. Are we talking about a long-term relationship with SEO specialists? People ask that a lot. Is this like a one-time fee or [00:57:00] a year or what?

Aaron: I never really liked this analogy, but it is appropriate. If you think of your website as a car, it’s going to need maintenance over time. And that’s like fixing stuff. Things will break that just comes with having a website. The internet changes, it’s influx things with updates and stuff, change how code works. And so sometimes you get errors and bugs and stuff, and it’s not your developer’s fault. That just happens. So maintenance is part of it.

Using that analogy, SEO is like tuning up your car for a race. And so, is it an ongoing relationship? Well, after someone has modded up your car and made it go faster and do all the things you needed to do to get from point A to point B in the right amount of time, it could be a temporary relationship. But the deal is over time, things change with SEO, rules change, Google changes its algorithms to better serve their audience. [00:58:00] And that changes potentially what you should be doing with your site. They offer new services like they offered Google plus for a while and Google My business was new and all of that. And if you’re not currently working with someone, you miss out on all of that stuff, because they do all of those things.

So, an ongoing relationship is typically most fruitful, especially if it’s paired with some sort of content generation. So we talked about blogging, maybe your SEO outfit also does content generation for you. And they build one article or one page per month to continue that going for you. It’s stuff that you approve and you have worked with them to previously identify what types of content they’ll be making or what the subject matter will be. But then it’s on autopilot, just like you paying an accountant to take care of your taxes or a CPA to file your taxes, or any other professionals.

So yeah, it works best in an ongoing relationship. It doesn’t necessarily have to be if you’re still in those beginning stages of your business trying to invest a little bit, get some of that [00:59:00] business back, and then reevaluate it in a year or two.

Dr. Sharp: Sure. That’s awesome. I feel like you’ve shared a lot of info today. I have done a fair amount of research into this stuff over the years and was definitely taking notes. I’ve learned a lot myself, which is always nice. It’s a nice bonus from these interviews. And I think other folks are probably taken away a lot and as well.

I know you had mentioned, what did you call it, an SEO tool kit or something like that? Is that something you have that folks can check out if they want to?

Aaron: Yeah. So by the time this goes live, it’ll be up. We have mentalhealth.legendarylion.com. And there we’re posting, different toolkits. Things that help with like brand design or logo design, if you’re doing it on your own and you’re trying to get the most out of that process, SEO crash course- the ultimate mental health website and what you should be including. So it’s exactly what you’d expect. I am going to ask for your email just so that I can stay in touch. I’m not going to sell you anything.

[01:00:00] One of the main reasons I asked for an email on those is so that when we do update those things, because we do that, then we can shoot you an email and say, Hey, if you’re still interested in this SEO 101 crash course, we just changed it. You might want to download it again and take a look. But yeah, we have a whole bunch of different tools that you can check out there and hopefully add value to your practice.

Dr. Sharp: Awesome. Well, it’s definitely in the show notes, so folks can check that out if they would like. Thanks again for being here. This is great. It was good to chat with you, Aaron.

Aaron: Yeah, man. Invite me back anytime. We can talk about the meaning of life or SEO or whatever, man.

Dr. Sharp: Whatever. It’s all fair game here.

Aaron: Yeah.

Dr. Sharp: All right. Appreciate it.

Aaron: Thank you so much.

Dr. Sharp: Okay, y’all, thanks as always for checking out The Testing Psychologist podcast. If you have not subscribed or followed the podcast, I would love to have you do so. We do business episodes every Thursday, clinical episodes, every Monday. So there’s something for everybody.

If you’re [01:01:00] a practice owner or soon to be practice owner, and you’d like some support and accountability in building your practice, you might be a good fit for The Testing Psychologist mastermind groups. These are group coaching experiences facilitated by me and I have 6 other psychologists or 5 other psychologists who are all in your same state of practice.

The groups provide support and accountability to keep you on track while you’re building or growing your practice. And if that sounds interesting to you, you can check out more information and schedule a pre-group call at thetestingpsychologist.com/consulting.

All right, y’all take care. I will catch you next time.

[01:02:00] The information contained in this podcast and on The Testing Psychologist website is intended for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast or on the website is intended to be a substitute for professional, psychological, psychiatric, or medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Please note that no doctor-patient relationship is formed here, and similarly, no supervisory or consultative relationship is formed between the host or guests of this podcast and listeners of this podcast. If you need the qualified advice of any mental health practitioner or medical provider, please seek one in your area. Similarly, if you need supervision on clinical matters, please find a supervisor with expertise that fits your needs.

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[00:00:00] Dr. Sharp: Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Testing Psychologist podcast, the podcast where we talk all about the business and practice of psychological and neuropsychological assessment. I’m your host, Dr. Jeremy Sharp, licensed psychologist, group practice owner, and private practice coach.

This episode is brought to you by PAR. The Feifer Assessment of Writing examines why students may struggle with writing. The FAW and the FAW screening form are available on PARiConnect- PAR’s online assessment platform. Learn more at parinc.com\faw.

All right, y’all welcome back. Thanks for being here. I’ve got two amazing guests on the podcast today. I’ve got Dr. Cady Block and Anny Reyes here to talk about KnowNeuropsychology. If you are not aware of KnowNeuropsychology, it is a series of free didactic webinars on various [00:01:00] topics in neuropsychology. The webinars cover the four competence areas in neuropsychology: clinical practice, research, professional development, and clinical disorders. The webinars are amazing. If you haven’t been to the KnowNeuropsychology website, definitely go check that out.

Our interview today focuses on everything related to KnowNeuropsychology: their origin story, what they’re about, where they’re headed, their efforts around diversity, equity, and inclusion which are remarkable, and the work that they’re doing to further visibility of neuropsychology, not only in the US but around the world.

So if nothing else, I hope that you take away a lot of information about a fantastic Continuing Ed resource. And beyond that, just get to connect with the story [00:02:00] that they have created and continue to create as they do this amazing work.

Let me tell you a little bit about the guests and then we will get to the conversation.

Dr. Cady Block is a neuropsychologist and assistant professor within the Department of Neurology at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia. She has a particular passion for working with neuropsychology students and trainees at all levels. She is the editor of The Neuropsychologists Roadmap: A Training and Career Guide (APA Press), and sits on the committee of the KnowNeuropsychology education initiative. She is also highly involved in professional governance, having served in multiple national and international neuropsychology organizations. In recognition of Cady’s efforts, she has been named a recipient of awards from the Society for Clinical Neuropsychology, National Academy of Neuropsychology, and the American Psychological Association.

Anny Reyes is a NINDS/NRSA F31 Diversity Fellow and a doctoral candidate in the SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology. She is also a doctoral intern at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Her research and clinical interests include cognitive phenotypes in persons with epilepsy, and provision of neuropsychological services to bilingual Spanish-English and Spanish speaking patients. She is highly active in neuropsychology governance, including sitting on the committee of the KnowNeuropsychology education initiative.

All right, y’all, this was a fantastic conversation. We covered a lot of ground. I do jump around a bit. I joked with them after the interview that I felt scattered today and had a hard time with my words, to be honest. So, just know that and forgive me. I’m a little more clumsy than usual here [00:04:00] with the interview, but I think the content is great. There’s some fantastic information and a lot of resources for you to check out.

So without further ado, here’s my conversation with Dr. Cady Block and Anny Reyes all about KnowNeuropsychology.

Hey, Cady, Anny, welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Cady: Thanks, it’s good to be here.

Anny: Thanks for having us.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah, for sure. I am excited to talk with y’all. I am guessing that there are a lot of folks out there that have heard of KnowNeuropsychology, but I’m guessing there might be some folks who haven’t. So, I really hope that this will be a fruitful conversation for the audience. And I’m just personally [00:05:00] curious to learn as much as I can about what y’all have going on over there because it seems so cool from all the research that I’ve done and things I’ve seen.

But I thought maybe we’d start just to help people know since there are two of you. Could you jump in and just tell us a little bit about your role and what each of you is doing at KnowNeuropsychology? We can start there and take it from there. Anny, you want to go first?

Anny: Yeah, sure. I’m one of the student representatives in the committee. So, we’ll talk a little bit more about this, but our committee itself doesn’t have any particular hierarchal structure. We’re all part of the planning committee and we have different roles. My role specifically is, I do the recordings of the webinars and I also do editing of the videos if needed and as well as the flyers. And sometimes, I do get involved with moderating and reaching out to potential speakers.

[00:06:00] Dr. Sharp: Nice. So, you’re a student right now?

Anny: Yes, I am a 6th-year student at the SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program, but also I’m doing my clinical internship at Emory University with Dr. Block.

Dr. Sharp: Oh, that’s fantastic. That’s super. So you’re on internship right now?

Anny: Yes, I am.

Dr. Sharp: Congratulations.

Anny: Thank you.

Dr. Sharp: You’re almost there. Cady, how about you?

Dr. Cady: Well, I’m a neuropsychologist here at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia. And on the KnowNeuropsychology committee, Anny mentioned she’s a student representative on the committee, but I think as you’ll see as we go through the talk today that the way we structure our leadership and our committee, everybody has an equal voice and equal seat at the table. And so, really she’s a representative on the committee, I would say.

I also sit on the committee and help out a lot with the behind-the-scenes work of KnowNeuropsychology. I run the zoom account and the zoom invites and I help liaise with the different speakers that we invite to make [00:07:00] sure they get the information they need to set up for their own talk on the day of the lecture.

Dr. Sharp: Fantastic. Nice. I’m just jumping into it. At least from the website, it seems like y’all have a fairly large team that’s involved over there. Can you maybe just say a little bit about how this came about and what the team looks like? Let’s just start with that. Where’s it going? Where did this come from? And what does it look like?

Dr. Cady: Well, I think as we all have experienced, a lot of our people in the last year with the COVID pandemic, it’s affected our home lives but also our work lives. And for some of us, that training and education and continued professional development that we’re going through as trainees and early-career psychologists.

The story of  KnowNeuropsychology, I think Springs out of the COVID pandemic. Thinking back to the first part of 2020, everything came to a screeching [00:08:00] halt in terms of the practice that we’re doing, but also educational activities for trainees and early career people. A lot of scientific meetings were put on hold at that time or institutional meetings. Anny and I had done some talking originally early on recognizing how that was interfering with the knowledge gains, the skill gains for trainees, but also networking and professional development for early-career individuals.

And really these are happening, I think at a really critical phase for a lot of us. And then it sort of sprang into a discussion on Twitter where Anny and I are both fairly active, and she raised this question one day, what are we doing for our trainees? And I threw the question back, well, why don’t we do a webinar series? And that was where the idea of KnowNeuropsychology originally took shape.

We started to have a series of discussions, and then, Anny and I pulled in different trainees and early career neuropsychologists that we knew across the field that had student and ECP leadership experience, as well as [00:09:00] people that just represented a diverse array culturally of people within neuropsychology.

Now we have people on the committee that represent the Asian Neuropsychological Association, the Hispanic Neuropsychological Society, The Society for Black Neuropsychology. And as we all came together, it just sort of took shape from there.

And Anny, I think you mentioned something as you and I were talking earlier about how we populated those initial talks, if you have a thought to add

Anny: Yeah, because this idea just came pretty quickly and we knew that this gap, a lot of the clinics closed, and a lot of the seminars came to a stop, so what we did is we we’re aware of some presentations and some presenters who have presentations ready to go. So, we wanted to really address this gap as soon as possible. So, we reached out to presenters who had amazing presentations ready to go, but also some of our committee members, especially the [00:10:00] early career neuropsychologists already have presentations that they use within their training clinics.

So we figured that why not, at least for the first 12 series of lectures, get the ball rolling, and really get those presentations going. And then after those 12 series of lectures, then after that, we had a little bit more time for a second volume to really reach out outside of our committee and outside of our network to get more diversity in presenters.

Dr. Sharp: I love that. We talked about diversity and inclusion a couple of times already and referenced. It seems like that was part of your, I don’t know if you’d say mission, but whatever you might want to call it, that was part of your goal, your aim from the beginning. This is maybe a silly question, but I know that’s not always the case. There are plenty of organizations out there that do not have that right from the [00:11:00] get-go. I’m curious how you came to land on that as such an important piece to follow.

Anny: For us, it was from the get-go I think. Given that, not only are we a group of trainees and early career neuropsychologists who are very well aware about these disparities when it comes to neuropsychology and the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion, we also make sure that our committee members were also members of other organizations where diversity, equity, and inclusion are at the front of those organizations.

So like that, we have some accountability in terms of the speakers. We are selecting the topics we’re covering. And in addition to that, our mission is also to increase education when it comes to diversity-related issues. We know that it’s [00:12:00] not the same across the board for all trainees. Some programs may have that as a strength while other programs may not. And given that we were aware of this gap in the training, we decided that every aspect of the organization structure was going to have a DEI at the forefront. That is one of the things we’re very proud that we continue to work on, for sure.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah, it is striking. I think we were talking before we started to record that, when I was talking to Courtney Ray two months ago, it’ll probably be two months by the time this releases, there seems like there’s a lot of overlap with the Society for Black Neuropsychology and different, like you said, the Asian Neuropsychologist Group and the Hispanic Neuropsychological Group, which is fantastic. I was surprised at how much overlap there was. It’s a small world. It’s very cool.

[00:13:00] So let’s talk about the actual format and what people can even expect from KnowNeuropsychology. So for anybody who may not know what it is and what we’re looking at here, what is this? What are y’all doing?

Anny: I could quickly just give what viewers should expect and maybe Dr. Block could talk a little bit about the logistics because we were intentional in terms of the format of the lectures.

So, for those who haven’t tuned in to KnowNeuropsychology, what you expect is that we have 12 weeks series. So there’s a volume of a 12-week series lecture that happens every Monday. We decided to keep in Monday so people could look forward to Mondays and tune into KnowNeuropsychology. And every [00:14:00] Monday for those 12 weeks, we have topics covering four different areas of competencies in neuropsychology, including clinical practice, clinical disorders, professional development, and research.

And usually, these talks last about an hour: Around 45 minutes of lecture from the speaker, and afterward it’s a 15 minutes, 10 minutes, Q&A session. Although we have a webinar format which means that viewers are seeing the webinar almost from the outside, they’re able to provide questions in our Q&A box. And one thing about us is we actually keep track of our questions and we save them for a later time because that tends to inform our lectures moving forward. So, that’s usually what viewers would expect from each volume.

Dr. Sharp: I love that. Is it a broadcast? Where’s it broadcast? YouTube or just on the web or do they have to sign up or register or what?

Anny: Yes, viewers do have to register. We have [00:15:00] a very active Twitter account with thousands of followers, and then we have a website. The lectures are actually live on Mondays, but then the recording is posted on our YouTube channel, but also on our webpage. So we have three different formats of actually viewing the lectures. And one of the important components is that this is global initiative. So we knew that the timing may not actually work for everyone around the world. So, it’s really nice to have the video also available on our website, but also on YouTube as well.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah, I love that. I think that’s super important. What about the…I mean, how did you choose this format? How did you choose the webinar format over podcast obviously is an option or even live events? How did you go with a webinar?

Dr. Cady: Well, that was the result of a lot of group discussion. I think we just weighed all our options. And from what I know, there is actually an emerging [00:16:00] literature on virtual education and things like podcasts and webinars as pedagogical tools. It’s actually an interesting deep dive. If people are interested, I encourage them to look this up.

And there’s actually one theory that has been applied to webinars called Social Presence theory, and that relates to the degree of perceived intimacy or immediacy and that the speaker participant relationship. My understanding is that webinars would be classified as something we call a high social presence medium because of just the nature of a webinar. You can see the speaker. You can hear the speaker. It really fosters a sense of connectedness and engagement with the audience. And also on top of that, webinars, obviously if it’s a PowerPoint format like in zoom, you can include visual graphics to supplement the points the speakers are making.

And keeping in mind the target audience that we have are people who are early in their graduate training or interns or fellows, and maybe some early career neuropsychologists, that’s really the goal here is to foster that missing connection that we’re all experiencing and in this time of the [00:17:00] pandemic, but also how can we help consolidate learning? 

I happen to think personally that webinars are just a little more disability-friendly in some ways for trainees and colleagues who might be visually impaired or have a hearing impairment. Anny mentioned YouTube, and on YouTube, you can do the closed caption option.

So all things considered, I think we just felt like webinars seem like the way to go. Neuropsychology, I think historically they’ve been offered sporadically, but not necessarily systematically as part of a structure of the medical program. There have been some attempts. NAN- the National Academy of Neuropsychology runs a really great distance learning program, but that wasn’t, I think necessarily developed for trainees in mind. It’s more for the broader professional organization as a whole.

I think in addition to Webinars having some ideal features that lend themselves to learning and networking, I think there was a recognized area of need in the field that we felt like it just met better [00:18:00] than some of the other mediums that we considered.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah, that makes sense. I’m curious when you were pulling all this together, what led you to… Hmm, I’m trying to think how to ask, …what led you to know or believe in the idea that the students needed something or even licensed folks. I know a lot of licensed folks that watch the webinars.

We needed something outside of typical training programs, right? In theory, a lot of those training should be happening in graduate programs or internships or postdocs or whatever it might be. What were y’all seeing out in the field or hearing that made you think, “I think there’s room for a little bit more here?”

Dr. Cady: I think Anny mentioned earlier, not all programs are created equally. And there are a lot of roads that lead to neuropsychology, which I happen to think makes it feel really interesting and enriched is having a lot of diversity of individuals that come into our field from different paths. But I think [00:19:00] especially in a time of stress and hardship and training, really making that resource available to all people, I think we felt like that was really important. Anny, I’d be curious to know what you think?

Anny: Just adding to that. I come from a program that has a free structure neuropsychology concentration that follows the Houston Conference Guidelines, but being in leadership after several years and meeting students from every walk of life, my understanding is me recognizing that there is a need that goes beyond of what my program needs are, right?

And I think when you talk to students from different programs who are perhaps non-traditional neuropsychology students, then that’s how you really understand the needs of the training in the field. I think sometimes we tend to look towards [00:20:00] students or trainees who come from already very established programs, but we’re not addressing the gap. We need to address the gap when it comes to students who find out neuropsychology was really what they wanted to do maybe at 3rd year into their clinical psychology program, or trainees who are coming from non-traditional programs.

And I think when we first created that Google Form to really get some interest, and we saw those numbers climbing and going over a thousand people who signed up, I think that’s when we really realized, hey, there is a need and this could potentially address it. And then we’re here going into our 4th volume and the numbers haven’t changed, which really makes everything so fascinating.

Dr. Sharp: It sounds like y’all have this experience too, but I’m continually amazed at how many people want to listen to a podcast about testing [00:21:00] and assessment and neuropsychology. When I started, I was like, there is no way that this is going to be a thing, but there’s a lot of interest. It’s really cool to see that.

Dr. Cady: We cover, like Anny mentioned earlier, different topics within the KnowNeuropsychology lectures. And I think it’s one thing if you’re receiving some of the training and clinical disorders in your program, but we’re also covering topics, I think that are less often covered at the doctoral level, like professional development, networking, and those kinds of other issues. For example, we had a talk on the business of neuropsychology. I have this talk with my own trainees about what things like our views are and productivity and the stuff that nobody ever teaches you in graduate school. So making some of these topics more accessible to people at that level, they find it a lot of value in.

Dr. Sharp: Oh, for sure. I hear that all the time. We get no business education in graduate school at all. That was a big motivation for me as well to spread the word.

Since we’re on the topic of [00:22:00] topics, could you share more about what these modules look like or not modules, sorry, the 12 part series. What other topics are you covering and what might people expect to hear about in these webinars?

Anny: One thing that we, in terms of planning ahead, the good thing about having a committee who has a very extended network is that we know a lot of potential presenters and from all different stages of career. So, our goal, and we’ll talk a little bit more about this is to really create a platform and elevate trainees and early career on neuropsychologists, but also on neuropsychologists from historically underrepresented backgrounds.

So with that, we try to balance the topics. We make sure that we’re [00:23:00] covering all four competencies as I mentioned earlier, which is clinical disorders, clinical practice, professional development, and research. And then with that, we keep in mind pediatrics lifespan and adults and older adults. So we want to make sure that we’re not just covering everything that has to do with dementia, that we’re covering all the different topics. And then these speakers are incorporating diversity elements. So we use, the American Academy for Clinical Neuropsychology relevance, 2015 guidelines in terms of incorporating diversity issues into a presentation.

And then in terms of just the topic would range, anything from using social media to network all the way to when it comes to Parkinson’s disease, networks. So, it’s a very wide range of topics all within competencies for neuro-psychology.

And so far, I think, [00:24:00] all of our topics have been very well attended. So on topics, we see late on neuropsychologists, we’ll see seasones neuropsychologists come in and just kind of get a refresher, which is really nice.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah, sure. I mean, just looking through the list of topics, they’re super interesting. I’m like, “I want to watch all of these. These are fantastic.” It’s really cool. I know I’ll say this many times, but it’s a fantastic resource for people and that’s nice to see all this excitement and energy around it. I’m very grateful for everything that y’all are doing.

I know people are probably wondering, how do I get access to this? Is there a membership fee? Is there not a fee? Yeah, let’s dive into the finances. People always want to know how much this stuff is going to cost.

Let’s take a quick break to hear from our feature [00:25:00] partner.

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All right, let’s get back to the podcast.

Dr. Cady: I think it’s everybody’s favorite four-letter word when I say it’s free. So free is a good thing. [00:26:00] We just felt like that was really important, especially when we’re targeting trainees. I think they’re already in a financially vulnerable position. One thing, I think that limits trainees are things like conferences, it costs money to get a hotel or to register for the conference. Again, as Anny mentioned earlier, some programs are created equally and some programs may not have access to things like travel awards. And so, I think making it free and accessible was really important for us in the KnowNeuropsychology committee. Absolutely.

If they want to access it, we have a website knowneuropsych.org.If you go on the website, we have indexed the talks by topics. We have them indexed by volumes. We just wrapped our 3rd volume and we are about to launch our 4th. Each one is 12 talks, as Anny mentioned earlier.

Dr. Sharp: That’s fantastic. Volume was the word I was looking for earlier, not module. That’s super cool. The free aspect is really nice. I know y’all are so focused [00:27:00] and you just mentioned this, on inclusion and really making these accessible, not only in the US but internationally as well. Can you speak to how that’s happening? I’m just curious. From a strategic standpoint, how do you reach neuropsychologists in other countries and draw their attention to something like this?

Anny: I think that the simple answer is Twitter. In the beginning, when we started the lecture series, we were promoting on our typical listservs: the training listeners, the different listservs that we have here in the US, but having that reach on Twitter, from my understanding, I think it would be a little bit difficult to figure out, and this is something that we could do in the future, we’ve really had that [00:28:00] global reach by really promoting and doing marketing on Twitter.

Many of us already had a pretty big Twitter following and had trainees in neuropsychology and neuropsychologist, educators around the world. And I think it just pretty much trickled down from there. People started reposting, re-tweeting our posts and started following our Twitter page. And one of the things too is that with that, I think now our website has pretty much a global reach.

So, we’re able to see what parts of the world are people accessing what page. And it’s pretty much every continent. Some countries that I’ve personally never heard of, which is really amazing. And to me, when saying I’m from the Dominican Republic and seeing that there are people from my island actually, listening to these lectures, and from pretty much all over the world.

[00:29:00] Dr. Cady: I think that the last count we were over 100 countries.

Anny: Yes.

Dr. Cady: Yeah.

Dr. Sharp: It’s incredible.

Dr. Cady: And one of our committee members excellently stumbled onto us being mentioned on Reddit. You know you’ve made it when you’re on Reddit, right?

Dr. Sharp: If you’re on Reddit, you’re right on. You’re in pop culture. That’s fantastic. 

Where do you see this headed? What’s on the radar? What are the big initiatives or projects or hopes?

Dr. Cady: I think we can see it expanding into a couple different arms. Right now we’re focusing on continuing to put out quality content with our next volume. We just wrapped our first ever summer series dedicated to neuroanatomy, called KnowNeuroanatomy. This was a 7-session lecture series that focused on everything from learning and memory to language, to executive function, our final topic was on Cerebrovasculature [00:30:00] following the same KnowNeuropsychology model. And actually, those lectures are also on the website and for free. So if anybody would like to access those, they are up now.

We also last year launched our first virtual poster session. And this was, I believe in December, right Anny?

Anny: Uh-hum.

Dr. Cady: We had 40 to 50 different submissions with students and early career presenters. And we separated those into actual poster sessions and it was quite a success I thought for the first go-round. So we’re looking at repeating that again later this year.

Dr. Sharp: I love that. So, KnowNeuroanatomy, that’s kind of a new branch. I’m thinking ahead again. Are there any major initiatives as far as global outreach or anything as far as recruitment or finding folks or getting [00:31:00] folks involved or anything like that?

Dr. Cady: Yes, I’m glad that you brought that up. Anny, did you want to speak to the recruitment of our new committee members?

Anny: Yeah. So, we actually, in recruiting new committee members, the applications closed about two weeks ago. And we were actually very excited because we received, I believe, close to 60 applications. Basically, our goal for this call to new members is to provide opportunities for trainees, early career, mid-career, early career neuropsychologists, who haven’t had experience in leadership. And we typically know that in order to get a leadership position within professional service, you may have to need prior experience. So it’s one of those things that, how can I apply for positions if I don’t have prior experience, especially when you’re not a trainee, when you’re already in your later stages of your career?

So we decided that we [00:32:00] wanted to do a different model. All of us in the committee have pretty extensive leadership experience. So we were hoping to build a mentorship program. So we are recruiting, we don’t know the number of members yet. I think we’re all very excited reading these applications. But basically, we’re going to have new members come in and learn the different roles, the different responsibilities that different members have, and help in that way.

So, whether it’s reaching out to speakers and sending emails, whether is moderating one of the webinars, or doing some of the logistics cycles behind the scene. But at the same time, these new members will actually have direct mentorship from our committee members as well as group mentorship, join our meetings to really foster that professional development in leadership.

And with that in mind, our goal is to make sure that our new members [00:33:00] are diverse and that they come from different ethnic backgrounds as well as other dimentions that diversity. In addition to, we’re also hoping if things work out that we have some international members as well to make sure that we’re holding ourselves accountable when it comes to that global outreach. So, we’re very excited and hopefully, during this upcoming volume 4, we’ll be introducing our new members or viewers.

Dr. Sharp: That’s amazing. I had no idea that you were recruiting new committee members. That sounds like you’ve got a nice pool. That’s fantastic.

Dr. Cady: Our applicants range from the United States to, we had somebody, I think from Russia and others from East Asian Countries, really just global applications from the US  and abroad, which was really exciting to see.

Dr. Sharp: Absolutely. Is this something where the… I mean, is the committee sort of a revolving membership? Does it update or refresh every year or two years or? How does that work?

[00:34:00] Anny: So our plan is to actually, for these new members coming in who are going to be a part of this mentorship program, is that it’s going to be about a year and a half to pilot the program and see, not just if it works, but also some outcome data to make sure that we’re doing this correctly.

So what the goal is a year and a half of these members being part of a committee, offering them mentorship and in leadership, and then doing a new call to make sure that we are opening up these opportunities to other members, especially because we got so many applications, we know that people are very excited and interested in being part of KnowNeuropsychology. So we’re just hoping it to be revolving every two volumes, I believe. So moving forward, that’s the plan.

Dr. Sharp: That’s great to hear it. I imagine, there are a lot of interested folks out there and they’re like, [00:35:00] oh, disappointed, the applications are closed. Good to know there’s an opportunity in the future. Where do you all see? I mean, I know this is not a talk that’s supposed to focus specifically on diversity and equity and inclusion, but that’s such a big part of y’all’s mission and goals. So do you have thoughts on, I mean, this is a huge issue in neuropsychology I think. And I’m curious where you see the field headed from here as far as working on under-representation and bringing more diverse groups into the field.

Anny: So thinking about one of the barriers to the student pipeline when it comes to neuropsychology is actually exposure to the field. For example, I, myself didn’t find out about neuropsychology while I [00:36:00] was two years after graduating undergrad. And after that, I had to do a master’s program because I had no experience and things like that. So I think one of the ways that KnowNeuropsychology is really addressing this pipeline issue is by exposing students to the field and exposing students to maybe neuropsychologists who look like them and to different topics.

We cover professional development topics in terms of applying to graduate school, internship, and postdoc, and just really getting to know what the field looks like by viewing these lectures and seeing neuropsychologists present. And I think having that accessible. As Dr. block mentioned, going to a neuropsychology conference is very expensive, even for students who are currently in grad programs.

Imagining an undergraduate or postdoc [00:37:00] to be able to attend these conferences or even be aware that these conferences exist. So I really do think that having this free lecture series accessible to all is going to address part of the problem with the pipeline.

Dr. Cady: I really agree. And I think taking gap years after undergraduate before grad school is becoming more common practice. I also did a terminal masters before going on to my doctorate, like Anny, but I know plenty of postdocs that are working as psychometrist technicians, working in research labs, other kinds of experiences. They’re no longer undergraduates, but they’re not yet in grad school. And I think there is a real dearth of resources for that group in particular. I think having something like this that’s visible and very accessible, as Anny mentioned, can really help create that pipeline.

Dr. Sharp: I love that. It seems like y’all are just doing so much work to sort of break out of the silo. I feel like neuropsychology is just been hidden [00:38:00] away in hospitals or universities, definitely not on social media. So all these things that y’all are doing are amazing efforts. Visibility is huge.

Dr. Cady: I agree.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah, it’s very cool. This is a random question. I realize we’re just kind of bouncing around. I’m having a lot of random thoughts this interview. The way that y’all have set this up and some of the things that you have said made me think, do you have any, I don’t know if aspirations is the right word or hopes or even thoughts about some of these volumes or some of the material you’re presenting being counted as like formal education that may help in the Houston guidelines, with that whole process for some folks?

Dr. Cady: We’ve definitely discussed it as a committee. I think the original goal last year was to get [00:39:00] information out and respond quickly to a need that we saw. But now, as we’re sort of establishing ourselves for the long term, the committee discussion is turning to well, where do we see ourselves going? And I think one thing that we’ve recognized through some of the outcome surveys that we’ve done is just how many early career and even as Anny mentioned, people who are well into their careers, the interest that they’ve taken, and the attendance numbers that we’re getting from these individuals and what they feel like they’re getting out of it. And so the CE issue has come up a few times and that is an ongoing discussion. So no decision has been made just yet, but I personally would love to see that as an option at some point in the future, perhaps.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah, I think there are a lot of folks out there who would be interested in that. I know that, myself included, there are a lot of us who sort of missed the window maybe on formal neuropsychology training but now recognize the value of that. And there aren’t a whole lot of options to get [00:40:00] accredited or formal training at this point after you’ve already done postdoc and so forth. There might be…

Dr. Cady: It’s always going to remain free, which is the good news I think for now. We aim to make that free and accessible. We have talked about monetization at some point. Through YouTube, you can do that. And we have some startup funds that were provided to us very generously by a couple of the neuropsychological organizations, including the International Neuropsychological Society and APA, their early career office which we’re very grateful for because there are startup costs involved in something like this. The listserv, the website, running those things does take funds.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah, absolutely. I was going to ask you, this is one of those things we talked about. I’m curious about everything on the business side of all of this, Of course, that’s where I like to live, but why do something like this independent [00:41:00] of APA or INS or any of the other governing bodies in neuropsychology. Was that a conscious choice in the beginning? Did they approach you? Did you approach them? I’m curious about how all these develops.

Dr. Cady: I think again, the rapid response that we were really hoping for, I think the concern was that that might be hindered in some way by working through organizations more formally. I, for one, appreciate, and I’m sure the committee would agree with me, I appreciate that organizations have to develop content in line with their own values and goals. And they use the process of consensus to ensure that this is quality content that they’re putting out, but I also think that that, that runs the risk of making organizations less nimble when it comes to responding quickly to the changing needs and stresses that trainees were having during this period of time.

So, starting this from scratch, and [00:42:00] doing this the way that we did, allowed us a level of autonomy when we were developing the program in things like, how did we seek funding? What topics did we pick that we thought were relevant? What speakers were we soliciting than we would have had otherwise.

Dr. Sharp: Sure. I like that word nimble. And you’re so right. You’re being very diplomatic, which is great. You’re being very kind, but yeah, if you want to do things quickly, it typically helps to just do it on your own. Just make it happen. Kind of wait till,

Dr. Cady: And depending on which organization you’re working within too, it could potentially put something behind a paywall or create other limitations as organizations do take money to run. So that’s certainly understandable, but by maybe removing some of those barriers, we can reach a greater number of trainees, especially people around the globe.

Dr. Sharp: Right. Well, it seems like it’s working at least from the outside and it seems clear. You mentioned outcome surveys a couple of times. [00:43:00] I did want to touch on that. Being in the field that we are, having data is always nice. And so, I’m curious how you’re using outcome surveys and what role those play.

Anny: So in terms of the outcome surveys, one, we actually keep track of our speakers. As I mentioned, we want to hold ourselves accountable, especially when it comes to creating that platform for training or early career and diverse presenters. So we keep track of those numbers as well.

And then in terms of outcome survey, a few things we want to make sure that we’re reaching our goals and the mission of the lecture series by asking our viewers which lectures do they attend? Was the content appropriate for the level of training? And I think the important part here is that it’s really meant for trainees. So though we have individuals from other stages of a career, [00:44:00] we want to make sure that the content is understandable enough for trainees.bWe don’t want for it to be too advanced because then we’re missing the overall mission of the organization.

So, we made sure that we part of that survey is that we asked the viewers their thoughts on the content and whether it was appropriate for the level of training. And in terms of our goals with this outcome data, is that in the near future, we’re hoping to write up a manuscript really going over the creation and development of KnowNeuropsychology, all the logistic components, everything that came into play, but also how to use a virtual format.

We presented at APA this past summer on how to use a virtual format when it comes to training in neuropsychology, which will actually be implemented in other [00:45:00] areas of psychology in general, especially, thinking about psychology and neuropsychology globally, I think, we could really create programs or training programs with a very similar format to what we’re doing with KnowNeuropsychology.

Our goal is to use this outcome data to see: is of format working? Is the structure of the lectures working? I`s this meeting the needs of trainees? And if it’s not, where’s the gap? And with every volume, we look at the surveys that we sent out at the end of the volume in order for us to prepare for the next one. So, we’re actively using the information to really inform us on future volumes.

Dr. Sharp: I love that. I just think about.. I mean, there’s so much potential with something like this. I’m sure you all have thought about this as well, but to reach graduate programs that [00:46:00] may not have the capacity to bring on enough faculty to have a neuropsychology concentration, it’s really amazing. And there’s a lot that could be done with this format. It’s very cool.

Dr. Cady: I know somebody who assigns her lectures as homework for their neuropsych class. Even just doing supplements for trainees that way. I think, however you want to use it. I think it’s useful in a number of ways.

Dr. Sharp: Right. There’s a lot of value there.

Well, I know that we have bounced around. We’ve covered a lot of ground and really just skim the surface on a lot of the pieces that you all have put together here. Before we wrap up, are there any areas, anything that you would like to highlight or touch on that I didn’t ask about, or that we kind of glossed over that you want to spend a little bit more time on at all?

Anny: I think I [00:47:00] quickly will say this and I think in our field and we have talks and debates about the field of neuropsychology when it comes to technology. And I think we learned during the pandemic of how rapidly we actually had to take our old ways of doing things and really trying to use technology to address the need of our communities. And I think this could be used as well when it comes to the education and training in neuropsychology. I think we could use technology to become more creative and to reach more students at different stages of our training. That’s one part. So the technology aspect of what we do.

But I think the field could learn a lot from how we function as a committee, as an organization. I think as a trainee, I am very [00:48:00] grateful that I’m in a committee where pretty much my voice has equal value as the other neuropsychologists who are board-certified. And I think, we as trainees, all of us come with lived experiences and different expertise and things that have nothing to do in neuropsychology.

And I think feeling very valued and heard in a committee like this one is something that our field, in general, could learn from. And I think we could really start incorporating and integrating and creating opportunities for trainees from different stages of their career and training to be part of the future of neuropsychology. And I think this is what we’re seeing when KnowNeuropsychology and other organizations as well that have a very similar model.

Dr. Cady: I agree with that, Anny. And I’d like to add maybe that even if you look at our speaker list, we do include maybe a [00:49:00] few big names, like one or two per volume within our series. And these big history names often draw attendance numbers, but we also really want to give time and space to early career voices as well. When you think about going to neuropsychology conferences, you may see the same, 5 to 10 people speaking on topics. And they have recognized expertise, but I think really creating that space and opportunity and visibility for early-career people is really important as well.

In addition to what Anny is saying, and I think, ultimately what KnowNeuropsychology is trying to show is that we can do things a different way and it can be successful in a number of ways. And so hopefully if nothing else, that’s what folks can take away from the initiative and what we’re trying to do.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, it seems like, in all regards, y’all are really trying to push things forward and breakthrough some of the old ways of doing things. [00:50:00] Which is very valuable and needed, I think.

Well, I really appreciate your time. Gosh, we could dive into so many of these topics in more detail, but I want to be respectful of your time and not give people too much to digest. I think this is a great overview and hopefully, will get folks interested enough to come check out these volumes and learn a little bit at the same time. So, thank you both. This was great. I’m very grateful for your time.

Dr. Cady: We enjoyed it. Thank you so much for having us.

Anny: Thank you so much for the invite.

Dr. Sharp: All right, y’all. Thank you so much for tuning into my conversation with these fabulous clinicians. As you can tell, they are putting a lot of time and energy, and deliberate effort into increasing visibility and access to neuropsychology for folks who need it.

If you’re a private practice owner or [00:51:00] thinking of being a private practice owner, and you’d like some support in your journey, I would love to talk with you about joining one of The Testing Psychologists Mastermind groups. I have three levels of mastermind groups. There is a beginner group for those just launching, there’s an advanced group for those looking to hire or hire more clinicians and grow your practice, and then there’s an intermediate group for solo practitioners, really just looking to dial in their systems without necessarily hiring or expanding.

I am always taking applications for each of these groups and simply start a new cohort as soon as the group is full. So you don’t have to wait for the next cohort necessarily. You can get more information at thetestingpsychologist.com/beginner or thetestingpsychologist.com/advanced or thetestingpsychologist.com/intermediate, and you can apply for a pre-group call or rather schedule a pre-group call, and we’ll decide if it’s a good fit for you.

[00:52:00] I hope you are doing well. I will catch you next time with a business episode.

The information contained in this podcast and on The Testing Psychologist website is intended for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast or on the website is intended to be a substitute for professional, psychological, psychiatric, or medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please note that no doctor-patient relationship is formed here, and similarly, no supervisory or consultative relationship is formed between the host or guests of this podcast and listeners of this podcast. If you need the [00:53:00] qualified advice of any mental health practitioner or medical provider, please seek one in your area. Similarly, if you need supervision on clinical matters, please find a supervisor with expertise that fits your needs.

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[00:00:00] Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Testing Psychologist podcast, the podcast where we talk all about the business and practice of psychological and neuropsychological assessment. I’m your host, Dr. Jeremy Sharp, licensed psychologist, group practice owner, and private practice coach.

The TSCC and TSCYC screening forms allow you to quickly screen children for symptoms of trauma. Both forms are now available through PARiConnect- PAR’s online assessment platform. Learn more at parinc.com.

All right, y’all, welcome back to the podcast. I am glad to have you here. Very glad to have my guest here. Not only because he is an incredible businessman who has over 20 years of experience in the software business, he’s learned many lessons over those years that he’s going to share with us today, but also because he’s a family member. Dan Konigsberg [00:01:00] is my brother-in-law. He and I have had a number of conversations over the last 10 or 12 years about business and running successful businesses, and have finally brought some of those ideas here to the podcast.

Let me tell you a little bit about Dan.

He is the Founder and CEO of CampMinder, the premier software-as-a-service provider in the summer camp industry. Dan founded CampMinder at age 21, while still in college, and has grown the company to over 60 full-time staff, serving over 950 of the finest operators in the summer camp industry. Among his proudest accomplishments is that CampMinder has been recognized as one of America’s Best Places to work each of the past four years by Outside Magazine, topping out at #11 in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic

Dan clearly operates outside [00:02:00] the realm of mental health, but the ideas that we talk about can apply to any business and are ideas that I have continually been working to implement in my own practice.

So today, we’re talking all about the importance of values in your business and how having solid values, being able to articulate those values, and being able to describe how those values come to life in your business are going to drive everything else within your business. It will drive operations. It will drive hiring. It will drive growth. So if you are looking for a perspective from outside mental health that will help take your business to the next level, I think this is a good one for you.

Before we get to our conversation, I want to invite any practice owners who might be looking for some [00:03:00] accountability and coaching and support as you build your practice to think about one of The Testing Psychologists Mastermind Groups. There’s a beginner group, an advanced group, and an intermediate group. You can get more information at thetestingpsychologist.com/beginner, thetestingpsychologist.com/advanced, or thetestingpsychologist.com/intermediate, depending on which one you’re interested in. Either way, whether you pick the right one or not, we can jump on a complimentary call and talk about what you’re looking for and try to figure out which group might be the best fit for you. So, as long as you get a call scheduled, we can figure it out.

Without further ado, let’s get to my conversation with Dan Konigsberg.

[00:04:00] Hey Dan, welcome to The Testing Psychologist Podcast.

Dan: Hello, Dr. Sharp.

Dr. Sharp: Thanks. It’s good to be here with you. I am really excited to formalize some of these conversations that we’ve been having for the past, I don’t know, 10+ years about business stuff and how we do what we do, and share some of these with my audience because I know you’ve got a lot of knowledge in this space. So, thanks for being here. I really appreciate it.

Dan: I appreciate that. And yes, we have had a fair number of very informal conversations about business and entrepreneurship over many years now. So,  if it’s good to share that with your audience, I’m excited to be here with you.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah, it’s about time. And we’ll try to keep it clean. That’s going to be the challenge. Informal is code for sometimes obscene and inappropriate, but…

[00:05:00] Dan: it has happened.

Dr. Sharp: But that’s all right. We’ll try to keep it clean.

Dan: Yeah. 

Dr. Sharp: All right. So we’re talking about values, we’re talking about leadership, we are talking about having the right people in the right places in your practice or in your business. I always like to lead with this question of, why this particular topic or area is important to you. When I asked you what you’d like to talk about, this came to mind right away. I’m curious for you, why is it so important to you?

Dan: That’s a great question. I’ve been an entrepreneur for 20 years. This is actually the only thing I’ve ever done. I started my business out of college and I muddled along for a long way. And I feel as though at a certain point in my career, there were certain things that I learned, partly through the help of a leadership coach and partly just through life experience. And [00:06:00] at a certain juncture, it felt like I cracked the code or a code and something kicked into place for me that totally changed the trajectory of my business and my leadership. And it was understanding the value of authentic core values leadership.

I know very little about running a practice like yours outside of the informal and sometimes obscene conversations that we have, rarely obscene but sometimes obscene, but I do know a lot about entrepreneurship and I do know a lot about leadership and business. And if one thing is common across the board for anybody leading an organization of any type it’s that, as long as you’re not the only person in that organization and there are other people helping you to try to do what you’re trying to do, it is essential to get everybody rowing in the same direction in the same way. And it is essential to [00:07:00] build a trusting environment with clear expectations. And that is fundamental to literally everything else that we’re trying to do.

And I believe from my experience that getting clear on core values and managing our businesses to our core values is an essential ingredient. And I think this can be really helpful to anyone who’s listening as it has been for me.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah, there’s so much to say about this already. So many questions. I’m curious. Can you think back to, I mean, you said you kind of stumbled into it and somehow cracked a code. I’m guessing that before that happened, you had tried other things to improve your leadership or your business or taken other paths. I’m guessing some of those didn’t work so well. If that’s true, I am curious, how did you know this was the thing? Does that make sense?

Dan: Yeah.

Dr. Sharp: How did you know this was the [00:08:00] thing that was going to make the difference?

Dan: Well, I didn’t know that it was going to be that thing, but I knew that it was a thing. And then, years later I can look back on it and say, oh, it was that thing. What I always say to people is that I started my business out of college. I have a software business effectively and I know how to make software. And for a while, my business was making software. And then, I’d hire people who I thought could help me do this or support clients or whatever. And it was small enough where you could manage the thing informally.

But I think the experience that at this critical juncture I had was that it had grown beyond the ability to fly by the seat of my pants. And in retrospect, it had grown beyond that before I made these changes. It was really starting to show cracks in the surface. And I feel like the business was [00:09:00] subject to implode in some way if I didn’t make changes and we sure weren’t performing the way that I wanted us to perform, and in the way that I had been accustomed to us performing.

I wasn’t sure why, but I was sure that there were conversations that needed to be had with certain people that I was counting on that I wasn’t having or that I didn’t know how to have. There were expectations that I thought were clear with people that that obviously weren’t as clear as I thought they were. It was clear that I had fallen into a trap of blaming other people for challenges that I was seeing in the business when really I should have been looking in the mirror and blaming myself because I was the one who hired that person and who was allowing the thing to continue the way it was [00:10:00] and not making the change that needed to be made.

So there were a lot of factors that came together to this moment where I wanted to become more intentional about articulating and identifying what my core values were. And then, the process of figuring out what it looks like to then manage the business to those values.

Dr. Sharp: Right. I want to put a pin in that and separate those. It’s a two-part thing, right? You identify the values, but then there’s the implementation and how to actually put it into practice. I think a lot of us probably do the first one or at least make a decent attempt at the first one and then the values go away, or we don’t know exactly how they come alive in the practice, right? Because that’s the thing you’re supposed to do. I think we all, if we get to a certain stage of business [00:11:00] ownership, you do your values and you identify these words and these ideas, but then it’s hard to put it into place. So, I’m excited to talk with you about how to actually implement some of these values, but that might be a little bit down the road.

Dan: Yeah, it’s definitely two-sided. One side is identifying them. I have identified them poorly and then re-identified them. So, I think there was a particular approach that was really interesting in the way that we learn to identify them and articulate them. And then, the implementation, there’s a science to it and there’s also an art to it.

Dr. Sharp: Very cool. Well, I hope that we’ll have the opportunity to dig into all of that. First of all, I just want to highlight what you’ve said so far, this whole dynamic of getting to a point in our businesses where the information that’s in our heads is not being [00:12:00] communicated well to our staff. I think that that piece that you said about realizing that there were ideas or values that weren’t being communicated clearly is a process that a lot of us have gone through. And I feel like I continue to go through this monthly if not weekly, as I’m stumbling into things that it’s like, “Oh, I’m the only one who knows this in my practice. Why don’t other people know this? I feel like I’m being clear, but I’m not.”

Dan: Because you never told anybody.

Dr. Sharp: Because I never told anybody, right. So, there’s so much to be said there. And I’ve heard that from so many people that I work with coaching-wise or in my community. So, let’s just back up. I would love to start with a definition of sorts. When you say core values, what does that actually mean?

Dan: I think that core values are the principles [00:13:00] that sit underneath everything that we do. I’m actually glad you asked the question that way. The way that I would describe that to people who are either interviewing with us at CampMinder or are on our team is that it’s actually our HOW.

What I mean by that is, we have our purpose. We articulate our purpose at CampMinder as we want to create a world where work is fulfilling and life fun. That’s true for our employees and it’s true for our clients. That’s our WHY?  Our WHAT is the way that we do that. We do that through… not the way that we do it, but it’s actually what we create. We do it through providing service and software and technology to our clients. That’s our WHAT. And our HOW is the day in, day out. How we go about doing the things that we do. How we go about fulfilling our WHY, our purpose, and how we go about manifesting our WHAT, in creating the product and the service that we create. The [00:14:00] principles that sit underneath all of that.

Dr. Sharp: Right. And are these just ideas? I want to make this very concrete for people. Are these words? Are these ideas? Are they listed somewhere?

Dan: Yeah, they’re words and ideas. Maybe the best way for me to explain this is to actually go about how we at CampMinder went about articulating them because I think it might make it clear.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah, let’s dig into them.

Dan: And I think it’s really important that… A lot of businesses hear that it’s important to have core values. And that might end up in a whiteboarding session about like, “Hey everybody, like what sounds like a good set of core values for our practice or our business?”

I like the way that we went about doing it because it forced us to be really authentic and honest about this. What we did was we brought in a facilitator. There were a number of us sitting around a table, [00:15:00] and the facilitator said to us, “All right, guys, we’re going on a mission to Mars. Who’s coming with you?” And for a minute, it’s like, “Well, wait, what do you mean? Why are we going to Mars?”

Don’t worry about it. But look, it’s going to be hard. Getting to Mars is going to be hard to do and you need to have a team of people who are going to help you get there. And then by the way, once you’re on Mars, you’re going to form a new colony of your business. And you want to have your best people there to be the ones who spawn off the future of your business, your practice. Basically, the question is, who are your best people, right?

Dr. Sharp: Sure.

Dan: So, I made a list of who I wanted to take to Mars with me. And then the other people in the room made their lists. And it was like, “Who are they?” So you put them on the whiteboard. These are the people that I want with me on this [00:16:00] journey.

And the next question was for each of those people, “Why?” Why do you want to bring Frank? Why do you want to bring Lauren? Why do you want to bring Katie? And then, you’d answer that in long-form. Okay, well, this is the type of person who no matter what it is that needs to get done, they’re going to roll up their sleeves and get it done. Maybe they share that characteristic. They’re an accountable person who gets things done, but they make it really fun. Working with this person is fun. And if I’m going to do hard stuff, I want to do with people who are fun, and who make me feel good about myself while I’m doing it. This person is really curious. [00:17:00] They’re always asking questions and checking the solutions that we’re coming up with.

Again, all of these things, point to HOW each of these individuals go about doing their work. And what ended up happening which was really interesting, was we might’ve had a whiteboard full of WHYs. All the reasons why each of these people are great people for taking to Mars. But then when you really looked, or when we really looked deeper, we were able to categorize these ideas into six groups. So, you might’ve had things like accountability and does what needs to be done, really has an ownership mentality, gets it done no matter what it is, all of those went into one group.

And then there were ones around maybe like humility and being a team player and always having other people’s backs or always looking out for the team’s results, doesn’t have an ego, and that turned for us [00:18:00] into put the team first was that particular value.

So at the end of all of it, they were in six categories. And then it was a matter of wordsmithing. It’s like, okay, well what’s the right articulation of each of those ideas, both in terms of a snappy phrase like, own it or put team first or be admirable, but then with some subtext around, what do we mean by that? Wonder, for example, as a core value. So wonder is the core value. And then, I can’t remember the exact articulation, but it’s like, with openness and vulnerability, we seek to understand, and maybe that is it verbatim.

To put a bow tie in this whole idea, it was a process of uncovering or [00:19:00] discovering what already was instead of creating something new, and then articulating these ideas in really clear, understandable phrases and subtext.

Dr. Sharp: Sure, I love that exercise. That sounds like a lot of fun.

Dan: It was very interesting and maybe the most powerful exercise I’ve ever done in my business in terms of what happened as a result of it.

Dr. Sharp: Wow. Right. So you come out of that with these core values. One interesting thing to me is that these are qualities that were already there. These were qualities that your people already possessed. It was just a matter of saying, “Okay, what’s the best of the best? What are the best qualities of the best people and then making that bigger and using that to [00:20:00] guide?”

Dan: That’s right. With an important caveat. Not all of our people were there. And this is why it was such a transformative moment. If things were going swimmingly at CampMinder at that time, I probably never would have bothered to do this exercise, but there was this nagging sense that something’s not right. And through the leadership coaching I had been doing, I started to become really curious about what are the core values that drive me. What is my purpose and what really matters to me? And this all stemmed from that in wanting to apply those principles into the business and how I lead.

But what started to become really clear at that moment was some of the people that I had been struggling with in the business and had been unable to figure out why it wasn’t working, because we all, as entrepreneurs or business people have this experience like, this isn’t working and maybe it’s hard to express why, [00:21:00] at that point, for the people where it wasn’t working.

I had this subtle feeling or even an extreme feeling of it’s not working, I was suddenly able to express why. And it was always because of a violation, maybe like a subtle violation of multiple core values or an extreme violation of one core value. But I could point directly back to the value and suddenly it was like, “Oh yeah, it’s a wrong person.” And then that changed the trajectory of the business because it turned into a commitment to make sure that all of our people were core values aligned.

Dr. Sharp: Ooh, I like that. I like that it changed the trajectory of the business into a commitment to make sure everyone was core values aligned.

Dan: Yeah.

Dr. Sharp: I just want to repeat that to emphasize. That’s really good. That’s powerful.

Dan: Yeah. And that’s exactly what happened.

Dr. Sharp: So you mentioned this at the beginning when we started talking about [00:22:00] this, and I think this might be a nice segue to get into, how do you apply these core values? So you identify them. That’s awesome. I think a lot of us maybe “identify core values,” but then they die, right? They stay on the whiteboard or they go in an employee manual and they don’t come alive. So, I’m curious how y’all have embraced and really implemented them.

Dan: Well, one thought that I think will segue nicely into that is, one hint as to whether or not we have our core values right, is to take inventory of ourselves in the kinds of stuff that happen that drive us nuts. We all have them. What have you had an employee do, or what experience have you had in your operation that someone did that drove you crazy because that’s the opposite of your core value?

Dr. Sharp: That’s so true. That’s a good gauge.

Dan: Right. So, when those sorts of guttural [00:23:00] experiences happen and we feel it in our body and it’s negative, the opposite of that is probably the core value. So, tie that into how do you implement this. I can speak to how we implemented it effectively.

The next step was then to come up with examples of what embodying the core value looks like and examples of what not embodying the core value look like. So, the things that drive me nuts. I can always look to those as examples of things that drive me nuts. One example I always use for our core value of ownership is, and I’m in the summer camp industry. So imagine, a summer camp, beautiful open space, a field, sports fields, whatever, an own it type of person if they’re walking through the campus and sees like a candy wrapper on the ground, an own it person picks up the candy wrapper and throws it in the trash and then not own it person just leaves the candy wrapper there and says that someone else will [00:24:00] take care of that.

I share that example with people who are interviewing in that process maybe because I want people to understand. So talking about implementation, there’s the hiring process and then there’s the process of letting somebody go. The first step is to get really clear with examples of what embodying the core value looks like and what embodying each core value doesn’t look like.

Doing this for the first time was interesting because like, you have a practice or a business that’s not managing the core values, and then the next day is like, Hey everybody, we’ve decided that this is a thing that’s important. And we’re going to actually really start intentionally managing to core values. And that was a scary [00:25:00] moment for people.

Some of what I’m going to talk about here is coming from EOS, which is a tool called Entrepreneurial Operating System, and there’s a great book called Traction that I wish I had read 10 years prior to the time I read it, but it has a very simple concept in there that Gino Wickman, who wrote the book pulled from Jim Collins, who’s an organizational genius, and it’s called Right Person Right Seat. I’ll put Right Seat aside for a moment, although I think that it’s probably useful to talk about as well at some point. The right person is somebody who is core values aligned. And the idea is you have to have the right people on the bus.

What does it mean to be the right person? The way that we define it, and I think that we actually took it a little more extreme than it’s written in the book [00:26:00] is, we want people embodying each of our core values 80% of the time where we’re called to embody that core value or more. So the 80% is plus, 50 to 80% is a plus-minus, and less than 50% or most of the time we’re not embodying that core value, that’s a minus.

And the analogy that I use is I think about it as a board game. We’ve all played a board game where you roll the dice and you move your token forward a number of spaces, and then you pick a card or whatever. The way I think about it is that in this game, the space that we’re landing on on the board is a real-world situation that happens in our business.

And I have 6 stacks of cards where each stack of cards is a card tied to a core value. And the question is in this real-life moment, [00:27:00] what core value or core values, which cards are card am I compelled to play at that moment to know that I’m living the, HOW correctly? And if I’m in a moment where I need to be admirable, which means treat other people with kindness and respect, be whole with our word, and the hardest part for people at CampMinder is to be candid, like to actually say the thing that needs to be said that maybe might feel like you’re going to hurt someone’s feelings if you say it, but it still needs to be said, do I play the Be Admirable card in moments where I’m called to be admirable or not?

Dr. Sharp: I like that.

Dan: So, a big part of implementing it is helping people to understand that maybe there’s a new set of expectations coming into town here. And this is new. We don’t expect everybody to pick this up immediately. [00:28:00] We’re going to be patient with everybody and we’re going to use real-world examples of things that happen to point out, like, here was an opportunity where we could have put team first, but maybe we didn’t. And then we turn that into a quarterly process where each person has an opportunity to look at the list of core values. And for each one say, am I living this one in plus, plus-minus, or minus?

Dr. Sharp: What does that quarterly process look like?

Dan: First of all, it’s a formal process. We have a software product called Lattice that we use to help us manage it. It’s not necessary to use the software. You can do it on paper. And effectively, we ask each person to evaluate themselves. So that includes a core values evaluation. It also includes, what were you working on, what were your obstacles, and how do you think he did? And then, the supervisor of [00:29:00] that person does the same exercise and really thinks, how is this person performing? We can almost define performance at CampMinder as how well do you live the core values.

Dr. Sharp: Sure.

Dan: So, then, when this goes well, it goes well here frequently, you have a team member saying, I did this assessment on myself and here’s what I thought and then you have a supervisor saying, I did this assessment on you and here’s what I thought. And to the extent that there’s any discrepancy, it can lead to a really nice open conversation with wonder, which is our core value that openness and vulnerability, where people can learn and grow and not be defensive.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah, I like that. I want to go back a little bit and ask about the day after scenario because I’m guessing some people might [00:30:00] be listening to this and they’re like, this all sounds fantastic. I want to do some values. But then, what was that first two weeks like, or month or six months even, if you can remember back? How do you roll this out to a team out of the blue?

Dan: I think it’s a great question. And it wasn’t a cakewalk. I think that’s what you’re getting to, right? You have your share of skeptics. And again, I mentioned EOS, there was this phrase that some people were talking about, I heard like, “Oh, we’re getting EOSed.”

Dr. Sharp: Sure.

Dan: And what was interesting is that when I heard that and I talked to people who would say things like that one-on-one, I could really uncover like, what are you concerned about? What do you think is changing here?  Because I would say from my perspective, nothing’s really changing. I’m not changing the way I’m leading this company. I’m [00:31:00] just putting a bookmark on these ideas and highlighting them because they feel really important. And we’re just going to be more aware and intentional around these concepts.

So, I think it’s probably harder the larger the scale of an organization. And I don’t know what the average size of the practices people run. With a smaller practice, I think what I would do is sit down one-on-one with each individual person and explore with them. Like, if it’s making somebody feel anxious, that might be code for them where like in their intuition they’re like, I might not live one of these core values very well.

Dr. Sharp: Sure. That’s a good point.

Dan: And I think the message needs to be like, hey, you’re a loyal employee of this company. What I’m telling you here is true. I’m grounded as a leader that [00:32:00] these are the core values I see us living by here and I am going to have an expectation that everyone here lives these core values.

And by the way, there is a bar.  No one is perfect. And if someone has a plus-minus on one core value, but a plus in all the other core values, that’s fine. But if we start venturing into two plus-minus territory or one minus one minus is really a problem, I set that clear expectation with people about what’s expected. So, if I had a smaller practice, I would meet individually with each person and share what this means to me. I’m grounded in this.

The first time I see a violation of a core value, it’s not like I’m going to blow up at you and throw the desk over and say, you’re fired. That’s not how this works. I’m here to help coach you and help you understand it, but you’re an adult. This is the kind of culture I’m trying to create here. [00:33:00] And you can decide for yourself if you want to be a part of a culture like this. And if you don’t, that doesn’t make you a bad person. It just might mean that this isn’t a good fit for you and there’s another organization where you’ll be a great fit. This is just the type of organization. These are the values of this particular organization, and I’m going to hold people accountable to them.

Dr. Sharp: Right. I think that’s a good point to maybe apply this to the hiring and firing process. Are you a good fit or are you not a good fit? So I’m curious, how does this come into the hiring process?

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All right, let’s get back to the podcast.

Dan: Yeah, it’s absolutely central to the hiring process. And I think we’re pretty well known at CampMinder for having a pretty rigorous hiring process. It’s a big commitment to have somebody join your company. And it’s a big commitment for [00:35:00] that person. We want it to be a win for them. We have some needs in our business that we’re trying to fill by hiring them and we know that it’s only going to work when we have the right people.

We’ve had enough experiences where it hasn’t worked. We have proven it to ourselves. So the stakes are kind of high and we want people in that hiring process to understand. I mean, effectively look me in the eyes and I’m going to tell you what these core values mean to me and what they look like and what they don’t look like. And you can, and need to ask yourself, is this you? You could do a great job of pretending to be something you’re not in this interview. We’ll hire you, but the real person shows up eventually and it can save you and us heartache if we’re honest about it.

That’s more of the executive interview that I might do at the end of the process. Leading up to that part of the process, we have a whole interview that’s scheduled that [00:36:00] the purpose of which is only to try to identify whether this person is a core values fit. And it’s not done by saying like, Hey, do you have integrity? And do you treat people with kindness? Because you’d be hard-pressed to find somebody who’s like, no, I’m a liar and

Dr. Sharp: I love being mean to people.

Dan: Yeah, I love being mean to people, and cruel is a real specialty of mine. And I hope that that’s a core value of yours.

The question should be geared towards getting a candidate to expound on some experience in their life where they were faced with some challenge and understanding like, how did they go about doing it? How did they go about dealing with that situation? And those can provide hints and clues to whether or not they might naturally align themselves with the values that we want.

Dr. Sharp: Sure, sir. Since you mentioned [00:37:00] it, I’m very intrigued by this comprehensive hiring process. Can you just maybe briefly outline what that looks like for someone who’s trying to come on with y’all?

Dan: We should phone your friend and bring him on. He’s VP of talents and culture. But at a high level, it’s about getting intentional about each stage of the process. At the highest level, it’s about two things: Making sure that the candidate we’re hiring is the right person- meaning they are likely to embody our core values naturally and authentically and be willing to openly receive feedback and want to grow into the core values if there’s ever a gap. So that’s the right person. And then there’s the right seat. So at the highest level, I want the right person in the right seat.

The right seat is, in EOS, we would call it the accountability chair. And the idea is, where am I trying to take my business over the next 12 to 18 months? [00:38:00] What are the things that need to be accounted for in order for us to be successful in taking the business there over the next 12 to 18 months? And then, forgetting about who I currently have in my practice or my business right now, what would the structure be to enable us to accomplish that?

So the idea is like every organization, there are three components that definitely exist. There’s always sales and marketing, there’s always operations and there’s always finance. These are the three components that must always necessarily exist. And if any of those three are not strong, then we know that we’re going to fail because if we get great operations and finance, but if I can’t get anybody in the door, I have made no money and it’s going to fail.

If I bring people in the door and I can’t [00:39:00] serve them properly, and I miss schedule everybody and they don’t get their reports, I’m talking at a high level about what your practice might look like, we’re going to fail. And if I do my reports well, and I get my people scheduled well and I bring them in the door but then I spend more than the money that I have to work with, I’m going out of business.

Dr. Sharp: Right.

Dan: And then, for larger practices, you could have one person sitting in multiple seats but you can’t have multiple people sitting in one seat because then you have an accountability crisis and it’s not clear which of the people sitting in that seat as accountable for doing what. And if you’re in that situation, you want to start breaking it up.

So now tying this all together, starting with structure and then thinking through, what are the right seats that I need to have in my organization when I’m interviewing [00:40:00] somebody? Part of our interviewing process is to have a hiring manager be really crisp and clear about what are the accountabilities for this particular seat and what will we be counting on you to do when you’re in that role.

And the three questions are: Do you get it? Are you the type of person who, in thinking about the type of organization that we run here and thinking about the role that we’re hiring for, do you really get it? Do you really understand how this fits into the big picture and why this is a role that matters in our organization?

Number two is, do you want it? Are you going to wake up in the morning dreading like, oh, I have to be XYZ at this company, or are you doing something that’s actually fulfilling and the kind of work that you actually want to do? That’s question number two.

And question [00:41:00] number three is, do you have the capacity to do it? Do you have the skills? Do you have the experience? Do you have the knowledge? Do you have the time? Do you have the ability?

And from a right-seat perspective, the answer to all three of those questions better be YES.

Dr. Sharp: Right.

Dan: How do you have somebody who doesn’t want it? You are going to be dealing with all kinds of symptomatic. The root cause is they don’t want to be here and it’s going to manifest itself. And by the way, that manifests itself as misalignment with core values, because people start behaving in all kinds of ways when they’re doing a job they don’t want to do.

Dr. Sharp: That’s a good point. Let me ask you a hard question. I don’t know, maybe it’s an easy question, but if you don’t know the answer, that’s totally okay.

I’ve had some situations in our practice [00:42:00] where folks think that they want to do the job that we’re asking them to do and then lo and behold, 6 to 12 months down the road, they come back and it’s during a review or a meeting or something and they say, “I don’t like this. I made a mistake.” Have y’all figured out a way to get around that or is that just part of the process? Because making these choices as sort of incumbent on the person to know themselves, and that can be hard sometimes. So I’m curious how you handle something like that.

Dan: In 20 years,  I’ve experienced everything I think, maybe not everything, but I’ve experienced a lot of things. And certainly, there have been times where I’ve had the conversation with somebody saying like, this is what you should expect in [00:43:00] this role and we’re really kind of counting on you. We’re going to be training you. And I really want you to be thinking about this as a two-year commitment because it’s going to take you six months to become productive. And then lo and behold four months, and they’re like, “This wasn’t it.”

Now, I think we’ve gotten better at that. And I think a big part of it is being really clear about the good, bad and ugly about the job. For us, a lot of people are attracted to us because we’ve got these best places to work awards, and they’ve seen good reviews about us on Glassdoor or whatever and they think that this is going to be a walk, every day is going to be fairies and rainbows and unicorns and wonder and excitement.

But I think that really trying to level with candidates early on, and again, I don’t know the nature of a typical practice, in our business I think about our client support [00:44:00] role where you’re the frontline of support for people and sometimes that you’re going to hear a lot of the same questions over and over again, sometimes you’re going to deal with someone who’s frustrated because you’re not going to have the answer they want to hear, and we try to have other members of that team talk to each of our candidates to give them the good, bad, and ugly and say, this is really what it’s going to be like. And really asking that person to be introspective.

And I think it’s also incumbent on the interviewer to be a really good listener and listening with more than just our ears, but listening with our eyes and listening with our body and our intuition to see, is what I’m hearing from this candidate really adding up? Am I getting a whole body yes on this? Or is there something here that feels a little bit off? But this is never going to be perfect, Jeremy.

[00:45:00] Human beings, a lot of times we don’t know what we want. We can try the best that we can. And there are going to be situations where it doesn’t work out the way that we hope that we do. I would say identifying those as early as possible and dealing with it right away is always better than sweeping it under the rug, which I know I have been guilty of doing many times and always wish that I hadn’t.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah. Well, I don’t know about you, but for me in these situations, I will often default to… I’ll take that back. My major reaction if somebody is not working out in a particular way is to blame them. That I think thankfully has gotten to be a small portion of the reaction. And I move pretty quickly then to how have I let this person down? And then that’s where I get stuck is [00:46:00] what can I do more for them? How could I help them better? How can I support them better? What have I not done to help them be successful in this role?

Dan: Have you read Leadership and Self-Deception, by the way? Are you familiar with that book?

Dr. Sharp: No.

Dan: Well, I will submit that to all of your listeners, Leadership and Self-Deception. You’re kind of explaining a core concept of it right there. I think is a really important element of leadership. But I think where you’re going with this is like, yeah, we can take it upon ourselves and like, what am I not doing? And I think that that is…

And by the way, totally normal to start with blaming. There’s so much to talk about. We can talk about the drama triangle and there are so many things, but it’s very normal to start with blaming, but I think we want to try to shift quickly into how have I misled this person? What am I not doing that needs to be done? [00:47:00] And that’s a really great starting point of really getting real with the situation. That doesn’t mean we have to be hard on ourselves and take all the blame.

Let’s assume that I’m doing a bad job leading this person and I haven’t set clear expectations. Now, it’s incumbent upon me to set clear expectations and even document that. There are so many things we talked about, nonviolent communication and the right way to communicate with somebody in a way that doesn’t trigger them, but actually is likely to connect, but talking to somebody in a way where they get the facts, the feelings and your needs and requests that’s likely to be heard and not defended against, and then reiterating that with documentation and saying, Hey, we had this conversation and I need to be really clear with you. [00:48:00] This is something that I’m expecting and I need it to be this way. And if it’s not, this isn’t going to work.

Dr. Sharp: I like that. You mentioned something just a bit ago that I wanted to follow up on and I think it dovetails well with what we’re talking about in this bigger picture of hiring and firing. I’m curious if you’ve had situations where people got into a certain seat and they were not a good fit. And if so, what do you do with that? How do you have that conversation? Do you try to move them into something different?

Dan: Yeah.

Dr. Sharp: Because I think what happens, just to provide a little more context, in our practices, what often happens is, the owners do it all for a long time, [00:49:00] then we maybe find that we have a clinician or two who is really good clinician and a good person and ambitious or whatever it may be and we try to promote them into some kind of leadership or management or supervisory role. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I’m curious. What do you do when you have a great person but it’s maybe just the wrong seat or vice versa. I’m very curious.

Dan: It’s, it’s a wonderful question. Before we started actually taping the interview, I said, I’ve seen all four permutations, right person right seat, wrong person wrong seat, and everything in between. What you’re expressing is very common in all types of businesses. Obviously, the hardest one to deal with is the right person wrong seat.

Dr. Sharp: Okay. You said obviously, [00:50:00] why is that obvious?

Dan: Why is that obvious?

Dr. Sharp: Yeah.

Dan: Well, because if you have the right person in the wrong seat, you have a great person, you have someone who lives your core values. You love this person, but they’re not doing their job well. And now you have to do something about it and that’s not always fun. In fact, most of the time it’s not fun and it can be painful.

So a few things come to mind. The clinician who we want to promote into this role because they’re a great clinician and now we need a more managerial sort of person. That’s very similar to what happens in engineering. You have a great software engineer and they write the best code, the cleanest code, but the skill set that’s required to be an engineering manager is actually fundamentally a different skill set of what’s required of somebody to be a good engineer.

And it is very typical for organizations in software to try to promote the software engineer to be a manager. I want everyone to write code like you. [00:51:00] Well, it turns out the person’s really good at writing the code but not good at helping other people write that kind of code because it’s different skills.

So, the first thing I would say to that is going back to this topic of the accountability chart that we talked about. Everything in my opinion needs to be driven by the organization’s needs. And it is incumbent on the owner or the leader, if there’s a leadership team, to be really clear eyed about where we’re taking this thing and what the needs are going to be, like I said before over the next 12 to 18 months, documenting what we’re expecting this person to be accountable for, and then almost creating a persona of the person who’s the right fit for this role is going to have these kinds of characteristics and have these kinds of skills.

[00:52:00] And then we ask ourselves, is the person I’m about to promote into this role likely to be successful in this knowing the different type. I think that there’s an element of adulting or like maturity that’s required in this. And we always want to try to find as entrepreneurs and business people the easiest path because it’s so hard to grow an organization. And a lot of times the easiest path is, I already have somebody here, but we’re not really real with ourselves about what their strengths and weaknesses are.

So, I would actually always recommend in that situation to make three phone calls to people in similar organizations who have had successful hires. Just asking people, what is good, and I don’t know what this role is, what’s the role that you would promote the clinician into?

Dr. Sharp: Let’s just say a site supervisor.

Dan: Okay. So, talking to [00:53:00] peers and other organizations and say, “Hey, you have a really great site supervisor. Tell me about your site supervisor. What is it that makes your site supervisor so great for that role?” And if we learn that from two or three different people, we’re likely to find some commonalities and then applying that. Okay, well, is my clinician, are they like this or not?

Dr. Sharp: I like that. So some accountability for ourselves, honestly, just expanding the system a little bit, not just trusting ourselves.

Dan: Yeah, and you being real with the situation, being real with the person, or even opening up a process where it’s like, so maybe somebody wants that role and in the back of your mind, I don’t know if that’s a good fit for you, opening up the process and say like, I’m open to considering you for this role, but I’m actually going to post a job too and see because I want to make sure we’re hiring the best person for this organization. I need to do this to be [00:54:00] able to bet that this is the right fit.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah, that’s a good idea. I think a lot of us are very hesitant to hire from outside the practice for some of these positions. For whatever reason, we think that only clinicians get it, or any number of things.

Dan: And that may be true. Sometimes that strategy can work. It’s really getting clear on what you’re expecting of someone who is in that role on whether or not this particular clinician possesses those qualities.

Dr. Sharp: Exactly. So just to pull it all together, I’m going to try to summarize all of this and you jump in and tell me where I miss it.

So the values are where we start. We start with these core values. When we get clear on the core values, that really helps us understand what our business is about and helps us pick the right people to be in the [00:55:00] business.

Dan: It’s a north star that guides how we do what we do. It’s the qualities that we bring into our day-to-day operations of how we go about our business.

Dr. Sharp: Yes. And when you’re clear on that, it helps give you a clear idea of what kind of people you want to bring into the business. Help me make the connection between values and like you said, the accountability chart or the direction of your business. Is there a link there as well?

Dan: Yeah, this is all tied together. First of all, there’s, I mentioned earlier, the purpose. There’s an element of why we do what we do. And it’s important, in my experience, to make sure we’re surrounding ourselves who are bought into our purpose, because I think we’re only likely [00:56:00] to be successful if our employees are engaged employees where there’s a high level of employee engagement. And that’s only going to happen if one, your employees are bought into the purpose of your business, and two, are core values aligned, like we do things in similar ways around here.

And then there’s the WHAT we do. In your case, you have a practice and you do the testing, right? So tying that together, because there a lot of concepts we’re trying to bring together here.

So, at the end of the day, if we can project a purpose that inspires our people and that it’s clearly understood and shared, we have clarity on what our niche is and what we’re doing in our business, the services that we’re providing, [00:57:00] and we articulate clearly our HOW, our core values, what that does for you as a leader and an owner of your practice is it actually gives you tremendous freedom. And it’s tremendously empowering to your team because you are now not micro-managing people and saying, this is how you should do each and everything you do in your day. The proverb is like you’re teaching someone to fish instead of catching fish for them, right?

Dr. Sharp: Yes.

Dan: In my organization, this is our why our what, and our how. Hopefully, you’re here because all of this is meaningful to you. This is our vision. This is where we’re going. This is what we’re trying to accomplish. Now you be you. Be a creative problem solver and embody this how with everything that you’re trying to do, knowing what our, what is and where we’re going, and I’m going [00:58:00] to take a step back and let you do your thing.

To me, that’s like the pinnacle of leadership where we’re not having to tell people on a micro basis, do this task, that task, the other task. It’s like, I’m going to give you the context and now you help us get where we’re going. And by having core values alignment, we’re likely to not find a lot of conflict with our people because the same qualities and characteristics are important to us.

And sometimes there’s feedback along the way. There’s often feedback. And by the way, I want feedback to me too. I’m not a perfect human being and sometimes I lack wonder, or sometimes I handle the situation in a clumsy way and I expect people to give the feedback right back to me.

Dr. Sharp: Absolutely. I love this. And I’m going to start to wrap us up just by coming back to that initial point that you made, I think near the very beginning, about once you [00:59:00] are clear on these things, making sure that you are communicating it to your people so that everyone has the same vision. Everyone knows what your values are, what the purpose is, where we’re headed. These are all the things. It’s very personal. This is very selfish because these are the things that I have a hard time with, and I’m coaching myself to remind myself, we got to communicate these things very clearly because people don’t know what’s going on in your mind. And this is a very deliberate leadership activity that I don’t think a lot of us as clinicians naturally assume.

Dan: I think that’s a great point. I would add one thing to it. People do not hear the message the first time. In fact, I think it’s been shown, and I think that there’s data to back this up. It takes 7 or 8 times for somebody to hear a message for it to be heard the first time.

And I [01:00:00] think that that’s a really important thing for listeners to keep in the back of their minds. Yes, nobody can get inside your brain. Nobody knows the thoughts that are recurring in your mind and the things that matter to you, or when you’re disappointed and when you’re happy.

So, how do we build the habit of getting it out of our brain and out into the open and two, for the messages that really matter like, where we’re taking our practice, what we’re expecting of people, what are our values? How do we make sure that we’re repeating them frequently all the time so that it gets absorbed by people?

Dr. Sharp: How do y’all do that? How do you repeat the values without it getting kitschy or weird?

Dan: Yeah, it may get kitschy. And that’s okay. Being okay with being kitschy. But if it’s done really well, in my experience, it’s woven into all kinds of praise and all kinds of [01:01:00] feedback. I like to aim for a 7:1 positive to negative feedback ratio. I think it’s probably a good target.

So when I see somebody doing the right thing, I want to try to tie it back to a core value and say, Hey, so-and-so I really saw you own it in that situation. That’s really good. Or even publicly on Slack or whatever communication tools we use sharing with the whole team, this is how we get rewarded. At CampMinder, we do something called love leaves. It’s Valentine’s day in 2nd grade where you give somebody a heart.

And the last Thursday of every month, we have the whole team meeting and we have this ceremony where I give people love leaves. Like here’s an example of so-and-so putting team first. Here’s an example of so-and-so. And then, we turned it into a game where you put these leaves up on a tree, a mural we have in our office, and then at the end of the year, [01:02:00] randomly, somebody gets a prize for having embodied our core values. You can gamify in that way.

Certainly, we have quarterly meetings. So every quarter we do a planning meeting where we try to work on the business instead of in the business and say, this is where we’re trying to go. And then we have a town hall where we share with the company, the past present, and future. And we try to remind people in those meetings, like, again, like I’m giving you context of where we’re going, and I’m counting on you to live our values along the way. And we might reiterate it there. The quarterly review process, it’s natural, and always comes up there.

So we just try to find natural touchpoints. We try not to have policies, and as much as we talk about our values. Managed by values rather than policies.

Dr. Sharp: Hmm, I like that.

Dan: We have an unlimited PTO policy. We call it trust-based [01:03:00] PTO. But they’re all grounded in our core values. It’s like, well, if you’re going to take time out for a period of time, what does it look like to be admirable about that? What does it look like to own it? Are you going to communicate with other people about what work is on your plate while you’re gone to make sure that it gets handled while you’re gone?

There are so many like offshoots of this topic, but I think that that by weaving it into your policies and I don’t really mean don’t have policies, but make sure your policies are grounded in your values, people start to understand what they mean and they come up many times.

Dr. Sharp: That’s great. I love how you have given so many concrete examples of how these principles come into play. I like the idea. The farthest that we’ve gotten, and this hopefully will resonate and be applicable for some practice owners is, in our group [01:04:00] chat, we have several little, it’s not Slack but it’s kind of the same thing. It’s different little rooms or channels, but we have a kudos channel. And anytime you give someone a kudos, we hashtag it with one of our values. So, you say what somebody did and then #havefun or #Beinclusive or whatever it is. So that’s like a simple, easy way.

Dan: Yeah, that’s a great example of it. That’s exactly it.

Dr. Sharp: I really appreciate it. This has been great.

Dan: I had fun.

Dr. Sharp: I love a dive into these things. Maybe we could close just with any other, I mean, we mentioned some resources, but any other resources or leadership exploration that people might want to do? Anything that’s been really helpful for you?

Dan: Yeah, there’s certain thing. Certainly, Leadership and Self-Deception is a great book. Traction for EOS,  [01:05:00] for us has been an incredibly powerful tool to make sure that we’re all rowing in the same direction. There was definitely at least one other book that popped into my brain during this conversation that’s not coming up for me now. But I’m also happy to be a resource for people. LinkedIn is probably the best way to get me. And as long as you mentioned that you found me through this podcast, I will accept your request. And then also you can’t try to sell me anything on your first request and then we’ll be connected.

Dr. Sharp: Awesome. Well, I’ll put all those resources in the show notes so people can check it out. I just appreciate you.

Dan: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is another book. Sorry to cut you off, but that was one thing.

Dr. Sharp: No, no. Let’s get it in there. That’s great. Most of these, I have not read myself, so this is great.

Dan: Cool.

Dr. Sharp: I love it. [01:06:00] This is awesome. Thanks for jumping on and chatting with me a little bit. I think people will learn a lot from this.

Dan: Well, thank you for having me on the show. And I look forward to seeing you at our next family get together

Dr. Sharp: That’s right. All right. Take care, bro.

Dan: All right. See you.

Dr. Sharp: All right, y’all, thank you so much for tuning into this episode. I hope that you took away some valuable info, especially those of you really looking to grow your organization or take your practice to the next level. I think these are concepts that are often missed in the world of mental health practice ownership, and yet have a lot of value in the real “business world”. So, certainly, some ideas that we put into place in our practice and continue to try and evolve. I hope it’s useful for you.

[01:07:00] Like I said at the beginning, if you’re a practice owner or soon to be practice owner and you’re looking for some group coaching or accountability to grow your practice, I would love to chat with you and figure out if The Testing Psychologist Mastermind Groups might be a good fit. You can go to thetestingpsychologist.com/consulting and get general information and apply, or rather schedule a pre-group phone call. You can also go to the group-specific pages, thetestingpsychologist.com/beginner, thetestingpsychologist.com/intermediate, or thetestingpsychologist.com/advanced, and get more info. Either way, we can jump on a phone call and figure out which group might be appropriate for you.

All right, take care. Talk to you next time.

[01:08:00] The information contained in this podcast and on The Testing Psychologist website are intended for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast or on the website is intended to be a substitute for professional, psychological, psychiatric, or medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please note that no doctor-patient relationship is formed here, and similarly, no supervisory or consultative relationship is formed between the host or guests of this podcast and listeners of this podcast. If you need the qualified advice of any mental health practitioner or medical provider, please seek one in your area. Similarly, if you need supervision on clinical matters, please find a supervisor with expertise that fits your needs.

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