Ideal Practice
Ideal Practice
#72. How Office Design Impacts Your Success: An Interview with Interior Designer Carolyn Meyer Boldt.
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Have you ever thought about how the design and aesthetics of your workspace could be impacting your success?
We’re exploring that concept today, talking about the crucial intersection of interior design and holistic health with our guest, Carolyn Boldt.
With over 40 years of experience in interior design, Carolyn co-founded Crossfields Design with a mission to develop restorative environments for businesses in the holistic health industry.
Through personal experience, she learned how important alternative healthcare could be, and wants to do her part to raise the bar, and the respect, for that work. (I love that.)
So today, she works to help create a sense of calm, comfort, and care in spaces through strategic design choices, which ultimately influences the bottom line of a practice.
In fact - she tells us that her firm has learned that simply tuning into better design for your space can increase revenue by as much as 20%! 🤯
Whoa.
So let’s talk about that.
In this episode, you’ll hear:
- How tuning into the psychology of space can boost your profits in 3 ways.
- What to think about when renting an office.
- The impact of color on your clients’ wellbeing.
And more. In fact, I think this is important enough that I want to keep going. So, this is the first in a 3 part series on how to set up your office space for success - for your clients and for yourself.
In the next 2 episodes, I’ll share my own thoughts about things to consider as you set up your physical space, and your virtual office too.
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TODAY’S GUEST: CAROLYN MEYER BOLDT
Carolyn is personally passionate about holistic health and wellness, and an outspoken advocate that the environment of your space impacts your success.
She has over 40 years of experience and a long list of impressive credentials in the commercial interior industry. She and her husband, Scott, co-founded CrossFields Design in Atlanta, GA where they focus entirely on serving those in holistic health.
As you’ll hear her say in the interview, Carolyn really wants to expand the impact of holistic health by elevating the public’s image of alternative medicine through virtually creating outstanding healing environments nationwide.
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FIND HER HERE:
WEBSITE: CrossFields Design
On PINTEREST
On INSTAGRAM
And a FREE GIFT from OUR GUEST:
Carolyn has put together a great little bundle of tips and easy-to-read info on how to evaluate your office space, 5 of the most common mistakes that you’ll want to avoid, and more. Get your copy by clicking on the link below. It looks great!
www.crossfieldsdesign.com/ideal
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Wendy Pitts Reeves, LCSW
Host, Ideal Practice
Private Practice Coach and Mentor
www.WendyPittsReeves.com
Wendy@WendyPittsReeves.com
You're listening to ideal practice, episode number 72. My guest today, carolyn Bolt, is an interior designer whose entire focus is on working with people like you and me. She is passionate about helping holistic health practitioners design their office, their literal physical space in a way that enhances their success, contributes to the well-being of their clients and, for that matter, helps them personally too. In fact, she says y'all that this single aspect of your practice can actually increase your bottom line and your overall success just way more than you think. So today I wanted you to hear from an expert about this, because I do think this is important, and in our next episode I'll share some of my thoughts about it too. So stay tuned. Hi, I'm Wendy Pitts Reeves and, with over two decades of experience in the private practice world, I've built my six-figure business while learning a lot of lessons the hard way. This is the first podcast that shows you how to apply the principles of energy alignment and strategy to build a practice that is profit-centered, but people forward. This is the Ideal Practice Podcast. Hey there, welcome back everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in. This is Wendy. Wendy Pitts Reeves your host here on the Ideal Practice Podcast.
Speaker 1:How you doing, how's life going? Are the kids back in school? Are you feeling kind of like maybe a moment of relief? I hope so. There's been a lot of that going on around here. It's been a really good week for me, I have to tell you.
Speaker 1:So I met with my mastermind group yesterday. Some of you may know I run a mastermind that runs most of the year. It started off as a six-month program, turning into a little bit more than that, where I deliver a certain amount of training each month around the seven pillars of an ideal practice. That's my framework. And then we have a mastermind day as well.
Speaker 1:Well, yesterday our training, our whole conversation, was around the way we think about money, our relationship to money and where some of our limiting beliefs come from. I think it was a bit of an eye-opener for everyone in the group and the conversation was rich and so good Like it wasn't hard as you heard each person share to see where what we learned as kids, what we learned from our profession, what we learned from our society, how all of that influences the way we show up in our practice and the relationship that we have to money in our practice. It was really great. It was such a great conversation that. I think one of the things that my folks would tell you was that it's astonishing how important that stuff is and really how sneaky it is, because the way we think about those kinds of things influences literally every aspect of our practice. Well, today I want to talk about something else, not money, but something that will impact your money because it turns out.
Speaker 1:Mindset, of course, isn't the only thing that impacts your practice. Actually, there are lots of things, including something as simple as the layout or design, the decor of your physical office. So we've never talked about this here on the podcast, but I kind of think it's an interesting topic and I was hoping you might find it interesting as well. So let me tell you about today's guest. So Carolyn Bolt is an interior designer and she is personally really passionate about holistic health and wellness. She is an outspoken advocate for the fact that the environment of your space impacts your success and in the interview you will hear why she has chosen to focus in particular on holistic health. It was kind of cool and I was actually really really happy to hear about it.
Speaker 1:She's got over 40 years of experience and a really long list of impressive credentials in the whole commercial interior design industry. But the cool thing is that she and her husband, scott they co-founded a company called Crossfields Design that is headquartered in Atlanta, georgia. Now. They started that business in 04 with a general focus on working with business right corporate interiors, but in 2011, they made the decision to shift their focus specifically to working on and serving those who are in the holistic health industries, and I love that You're going to hear her say this in the interview. Carolyn really wants to expand the impact of holistic health and one way to do that is to elevate the public's image of what alternative medicine is and in her world. One way to do that is by creating outstanding healing environments, and she works with people nationwide because everything she does is virtual, which is really cool. I did not expect that, actually, but all of her work is virtual, so she can work with your practice no matter where you are in the country. So this was a really interesting interview about a whole brand new topic.
Speaker 1:I learned a few things, so let's get into the interview. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Ideal Practice. I am really excited about introducing our guest to you today. I've already told you a little bit about her in the intro, but let me bring on board and let you say hello to Carolyn Bolt. Say hi, carolyn.
Speaker 2:Hi, it's great to be here, thank you.
Speaker 1:It's really good to have you here as well. I really have never I've never had anyone on this show talking about what we're going to be talking about today, so it is kind of fun. I'm looking forward to diving into it. Tell everybody, like, where you are and I love you Are and I'd love to hear, like, who you help and how you help them. Want to tell us a little bit about what you do?
Speaker 2:Sure, so our offices are physically located. I guess the home office is physically located outside of Atlanta, but all of our staff are virtual. So we're located in Gainesville, georgia. But we I am a commercial interior architectural designer and I work with my husband we founded the company together he is a architectural engineer and a general contractor and we started together in 2004. And in 2000, we were doing design, build work in the Atlanta area commercial, all commercial. And then one of my clients became life university and we started doing the facility work at life university, the campus work. And in 2011, through a series of things which I'll be happy to tell you all those details we reinvented ourselves and we switched over to niche in the holistic healthcare market, just doing design. We focused first on chiropractic, but it quickly grew to more than just chiropractic Anything in that holistic health realm focused on supporting people's wellness, very wellness space very healing base, and we do it all virtually because we knew there wasn't going to be enough clients in the Atlanta area.
Speaker 2:So in 2011, when we started to do this, we said, well, if we're going to do this, we have to do this virtually.
Speaker 1:It's interesting, I did not know that.
Speaker 2:And that was way before zoom, so we were doing that, but now this is like an everyday occurrence to do this right.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is for the rest of the world. Yeah, yeah, but I did not realize that you were only working virtually, so that's super interesting to me. So tell me, like before I chased that rabbit, okay, how did you get into working specifically with holistic health? Because that isn't that's. It isn't an unusual thing for an interior designer. Yeah, it is Sorry.
Speaker 2:So, business wise, it really started by having all that work at life university. And life university is a chiropractic college and at the time we started working for them, they had almost lost their accreditation. So it was really about how to restore the university and our commission from the president was how can we help elevate the university? By helping to elevate all of the facilities, because they had become really, really run down and they would not be someplace you would want to go and spend money for your education. Do you understand?
Speaker 2:So understanding immediately the psychology of space is that people's impression of your environment should be congruent what you're expecting them to think of you and what you're asking or what you're saying you are. So we can get into that when we get into talking more about the psychology of space. But, with that being said, that's what we were doing. We're all over the campus doing all kinds of renovations and through that we learned a lot about physical, the chiropractic office, because we did their clinics, we did their classrooms. But we also begin to really understand the business of holistic wellness and how there is this uphill battle in the farm against the traditional medical model mainstream medicine, mm?
Speaker 1:hmm, okay, exactly.
Speaker 2:And how they can do so many amazing things. I know you have a lot of healers on that can do so many amazing things but don't necessarily have the mainstream respect. So by elevating your environment and not necessarily making it more expensive, just being very intentional about what your space is, that psychology helps you be congruent the message that you're saying.
Speaker 2:So, we saw that as a need in the holistic industry. Specifically, like we said, we started chiropractic At the same time. We're extremely passionate about holistic health and my little story is that I decided to be an interior designer because my father worked at NASA and he was involved in the advanced preliminary design. This was in the 60s and he was working on the space station oh wow. And he started working with an architect that come in to work on the interior design of a zero gravity Earth orbiting space station. Wow.
Speaker 2:Because NASA understood if they were going to send people up in space for a year at a time, they couldn't psychologically go crazy. Okay. So, how were they going to create their environment so that they were healthy mentally in their environment.
Speaker 2:So that's where that psychology of space comes in. But I was fascinated. I was about 14 and would sit and listen to them talking and it was just like this is what I want to do. I want to help people. I loved art anyway, but I wanted to help people have a choice, understand that their choice of how they felt was going to be impacted by their environment. And I was specifically drawn to business and understanding that a business it's not a luxury for a business to have an interior designer. It is part of their branding Right and it's part of their.
Speaker 1:I was thinking about how it ties into your marketing. Absolutely yes, 100%.
Speaker 2:So that's the path that I took for business. Holistically, though, my father got cancer at an early age of 51, and he literally died of the chemotherapy treatment. It wasn't the cancer.
Speaker 2:So I was 23 and that just kind of opened my mind up to other than the, not the traditional medical model. Okay, Okay and I was probably mistakes that happened hospital mistakes but you know, that's the life that I was given and I took that path and so I started to study more about the psychology of an illness. There's a book specifically anatomy of an illness. I read and had my father read, etc. And just started to understand that they're all.
Speaker 1:It's all tied together your mind and your body are all one so you're speaking my language, you know that. I mean that's what that is exactly, who my people? That's what they're all about, and so mind, body, spirit, the connection between all of those, those things, yeah, great yeah out of that pain, open me up to that understanding and took me on that path.
Speaker 2:And then the chiropractic really happened when my daughter was. I really hadn't looked at, understood the psychology and the Emotions and all of those things affecting your body, but I really didn't understand alternative health care.
Speaker 2:Yeah until my daughter had chronic tonsillitis. This was in 91 92 and she had chronic. We had moved to the Atlanta area from Texas at that point and Her pediatrician wanted her tonsils out and at the time I wasn't against having tonsils out, I'd had mine out I just didn't want my two-year-old to go under surgery, hmm. So I just avoided it and I really know it was meant to be, because I ended up meeting three different Chiropractors that focused on pediatric chiropractic.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow and started sharing with me the benefits of pediatric chiropractic. And the third one that we ended up going to was actually a student at life University getting ready to graduate, and my daughter knew her because she was my her babysitter's roommate and with this, before you had done the work With life University.
Speaker 1:that's how you made that connection, got it.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes so I didn't know anything about chiropractic at that point. So, anyway, started going through chiropractic treatments and it was actually at the University and she was healed of tonsillitis. Three months into it she got really, really bad tonsillitis. But I didn't do the the medical route, I did the holistic route and she's 33 today and she's still under chiropractic care, her children, my grandchildren, under chiropractic care, except so I began to believe in Understanding it and that took me to other, you know other things, not just chiropractic, but other things about Healing and alternative healing and the mind by all of that.
Speaker 1:You really developed a respect for that type of health care and that there's so many more ways to be to work towards healing Other than what we all have heard all our lives right. I love that. So, through personal experience, opened your mind to this option and then you had this background with your dad and with this with the role of Interior design, with astronauts, people in space, living in space. I didn't.
Speaker 2:I didn't do that.
Speaker 1:But just you have been influenced by that. Yeah, yeah, I was very influenced by that.
Speaker 2:Yes, so the business of chiropractic and holistic health. The need to be elevated, understanding that that's the natural Understanding of most businesses that the interior design and the interior Architecture of a space will impact its employees and its people and everyone. So, just trying to start it by educating the chiropractors. Start just creating classes. The university asked us to create some classes, and so we did it just purely out of grace, and that was in 2010, and it just continued to grow into.
Speaker 1:Hey, were they classes on how to think about your physical space, the physical environment, and how that impacts your work as a Practitioner? Okay, it was that.
Speaker 2:It was a lot about how your Space in general will impact your success.
Speaker 1:So it impacts it.
Speaker 2:You know you need to make sure you maximize your space and your flow especially in multi-practitioner type of office and your therapists don't have quite the same thing, but in a chiropractic office, you know patients going from place to place a lot of times and just having that flow work for them and Then also just making sure they have the right amount of space. So that's maximizing the space and flow. That's a key. Then the other one was that we still talk about is attracting and retaining patients.
Speaker 2:Which is the big one we'll probably talk about.
Speaker 1:That has more to do with the psychology of the space and that connectivity between what you're selling and and what yeah, so one of the one of the things that you say, if I understand it, is that I love the phrase the psychology of space, like that's. I love to play on words with that too, knowing this background, that you Like psychology in space, psychology of space. Well, just, you say that that, can that, that how the way you set up your office and your, the way you approach your environment can actually literally impact your bottom line. And Then I know that you've got your own framework for how you think about that. Talk me through that a little bit. Like what difference does that make to your level of success? How does that impact your bottom line?
Speaker 2:Well, yes, how does that impact your bottom line I started to allude to. But let me kind of back up and say we say there's three keys that you need to think about in your environment.
Speaker 2:Okay and the first one is maximizing your space and flow, which I alluded to a little bit. The second one is attracting and retaining patients. Okay, and then the third one is saving time and money, meaning that when you wrap it all together, understanding the process that you go through to open an office, understanding the impact, just having that awareness and knowledge and understanding will make you a better Consumer and you'll save time and money. Yeah, that. So yeah, each one of those has its own kind of focus, and and the focus of the maximizing space and flow that we just talked about, I mentioned, has to do with you know, you're renting space most of the time. You need to make sure you have the right amount of space. If you have too much space, you're wasting money. If you don't have enough space, it's impacting your Efficiency and effectiveness.
Speaker 2:You've been in spaces that are too small and you're trying to work around and right and it creates Frustrations and it there's things that are not good there either, so they're very hard to just put a dollar on it right. It's more kind of impacting the people and the environment. It's not efficient. Your staff is frustrated. There's a lot of that type of it's cluttered. If it's messy and it's, you know it's disorganized, not from a visual, but just Things aren't where they need to be. Efficiency that can slow you down and cost you money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah that's the maximizing space and flow, and then they're attracting and retaining patients. That's really probably what your practitioner is going to be the most very much.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that's the part I'm like instantly, I'm like I can totally see how that would make a difference.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you want to talk about that, you, and just let me just go there.
Speaker 1:Well, just, the work that most of my people do is such. It's, I mean, even when it's physical. So if you're working with an acupuncturist or massage therapist, it is also very much emotional, right? And so how a person feels in your space, whether they feel comfortable, safe, at ease, protected, and, depending upon what's going on with that particular person, you might define that differently, like you have. If somebody's really anxious, they might need to be able to sit near a door.
Speaker 1:I just this week I had someone come to see me who had had a Traumatic experience in the past. That was weather related and we had a major storm going on right when she just happened to come and see me and Immediately I had to deal with that because the lightning that was happening outside the window Was impacting how she felt in my space. So, which is new, that that has not ever happened before. I'm like, oh, let's do something about that. Yeah, so there's all kinds of ways that how your physical space is, I think, set up, and Probably a lot of other other factors that you're all, I'm sure, speak to much better than I can.
Speaker 2:Well it's, you can't control that weather, so that was no, you can't. That's an interesting thing to happen. It was crazy pure luck.
Speaker 1:First time I was meeting I was doing an intake, very just pure luck. She had happened to have. She had had to be rescued off a cruise ship in the middle of a 60 feet swells or something like a big deal A long time ago and was fine in a lot of ways, but we just have. We were under a tornado watch so it was like crazy.
Speaker 2:Wow, that brought up some stuff to be healed, I'm sure yeah, super interesting in it, yeah. Well, not really impacting the healing and the health of your patients as much. Well, yes, I mean yeah, if you said it already they need to feel. You know what are the things you want them to feel in your eyes. You just said it, you want them to feel safe.
Speaker 2:You want them to feel Secure. You want them to feel like they're comfortable and in the right place. You know, one of the things we talk about is that. So we think about retail design, hospitality design okay.
Speaker 2:Okay retail design is that buying. So that's that attraction, that's the congruency of first impression, okay, what people see when they walk in. But let me go over to hospitality design, because hospitality design creates the culture, and the culture is what that environment that you're talking about. How does that make you feel when you're in that environment? Yeah, being in it, not first impression, but being in it for a little while.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah so think about we talk about having you want to go to your favorite restaurant or not. Let's not talk about your favorite. Let's say your husband's gonna say let's go to dinner, honey, where do you want to go? Right.
Speaker 2:So you think about it in terms of atmospheres, mm-hmm, and how do you want to feel? Do you want a fun dinner? Do you want a romantic dinner? Do you know, etc. Etc. Yeah think about that as much as you think about the food. That's true, and and the food and the atmosphere. If they're congruent, they have a higher ranking in your mind, okay? So if you go into a really fancy State dinner and it feels like you're in a carnival, it's a little bit. You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like what I have to be in alignment.
Speaker 2:Yes, and there's a lot of play with that. There's a lot of theme restaurants and things. You can do it, but each one of them are trying to evoke an emotion and align with an emotion. So Hospitality can do the most. I mean, think about Disney, it's hospitality. You know what are they doing? They're creating Experiences everywhere you go.
Speaker 2:That's true and very much focused on that experience. So you can, that's an extreme, but just in an office itself. The color, there's psychology of color, there's psychology of light, there's psychology of sound, like the noise within the space or the lack of noise, or there's smell, no smell, in folks, a lot of emotions, right. So what are the smells, the psychology? And people that do real estate a lot of times that they'll have homemade cookies cooking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know that, because that get a candle the smells like cinnamon.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, you've heard that. So, yeah, folks, that memories that you'd want to do. And then there's obviously touch, which you know. What are things feeling like and are they comfortable to the touch? Are they not comfortable to the touch, are they? You know you don't want an environment that's so Stiff that no one wants to sit in it, like your grandmother's living room.
Speaker 2:You know, you're great, something that that's not comfortable, but you don't want something that feels like there's so much to it. It's not just the touch, but it's the all of that Right.
Speaker 1:I really like what I didn't expect to. This is interesting to me. I love the distinction between Retail design and hospitality design, which I know nothing about. This is completely new to me, but that instantly makes sense to me. Retail in terms of I always think that people are forming an impression on you the minute they pull into a parking lot, when they're physically coming to see you, but also when they see your website, when they the first what you know. Your online presence is like your front door. Yes, all of that is beginning to contribute to a feeling that people have about you. So I get their retail. You got to get them in the door, but once you get them in the door, you want them to feel comfortable there. That's the hospitality piece. I've not heard that language before. I'm like I get it. That's great. I love that, and I do think those are two different things and they both important. I love that.
Speaker 2:A super they have to be congruent. Yeah but they are two different Methods to go about it. Because, you're right, the retail is that first impression, it's that brand first impression. But I'm gonna go off in a little tangent here. Branding has become kind of a thing these days, branding, branding. And if you talk about branding five years ago, it only meant a logo, do you?
Speaker 1:know so much more than that.
Speaker 2:I know that, and so now, instead of it just being a logo, what is it? It's who's your who you've heard the word. Who's your avatar? Who's your ideal client? Who's your ideal patient? How do they need to show up? How do you want them to show up what's important to them? And understanding that and Understanding who you are in connection with them is what that whole Branding is all about. It used not to be called branding.
Speaker 2:It was more positioning and some of these in market, but yes now it's called branding, so what we're talking about, we can use that term branding.
Speaker 1:I heard somewhere along the way that branding is what the other people say about you when you're not in the room. I Thought that's great. Yeah, that's great yeah.
Speaker 1:I really. That really captures a lot, if you think about it yes, yes. I want to go to these color, light, sound, smell and touch. I want to talk about that. I want to save that because I want to hear your framework first. You've got four or five key factors that you think about in terms of an office. I don't know if that's the three, including the three keys you just went over. Is that part of that or is this something? This is like the next part of that.
Speaker 2:Well, a couple of things. Let me see if I'm going where I think you think I'm Okay, so I talk in these numbers all the time. So we have these three keys that I just mentioned to you, and those keys are kind of an over Arcing need to be touched on to create success and you need to see where are you lacking In each one of those right.
Speaker 2:So each one of them. The higher you can bring each one of those up, the more It'll add to your bottom line, because what it's doing is it's helping you Save money and it's helping you make money by attracting the patients and yeah so yeah, keep your cost down, keep your cost down, your effectiveness or your efficiency up and keep your clients there you go.
Speaker 2:Yes, so it's doing all of those things, but it's like, how does most people don't think about it when they think about their environment? They think about it when they think about their operations. Yeah. They think about it when they think about their ads just their ad paying off, but your environment, your office space, is your biggest ad spend.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Oh that's interesting.
Speaker 2:It's bigger than your website if you think about the cost of your office.
Speaker 1:Your office, your environment is your biggest ad spend. I love that. That's a whole different way of thinking about it. It is yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's either an asset to you or it's a detriment to you, right, yeah, yeah. So just being real aware of that and understanding, because people are making an impression about you. You make an impression when you go into a store. If that store, if you're looking for something to buy, and that store aligns with what you're looking for, then you're more likely to buy, right, that's true.
Speaker 2:Are you familiar with a new brand? It's a remake of a brand. What is it called Pop-up store? What is it called Pop? It's just came to my mind, so I'm sorry, I'm not really. You mean, as a concept, it's actually little stores and it's I can't remember the name of it. I'll have to look it up. Yeah, but you walk into them. They're very bright, they're white, they're very clean, they're very organized. Everything on the shelves is in some increment of a dollar $2, $3, $4, $5. Okay.
Speaker 2:But they're very organized, it's very easy. Yeah, it is the remake of Dollar General.
Speaker 1:Okay, no, I'm not familiar with this brand. I have not heard about this.
Speaker 2:Okay, if you want to look it up. They've come to they're more Metro or Dollar General is more rural right, and they're just trying to appeal to a whole different market where if you go into a Dollar General you kind of feel like you're in a garage sale a little bit.
Speaker 1:You know what I'm saying? I totally get that Okay.
Speaker 2:And this is like going to, but it's the same products, it's the same buying power. They presented in a very different way, with a different mood, and so they have a whole different market they're appealing to and I'll have to look that up.
Speaker 1:A slightly more upscale market, probably, I'm guessing.
Speaker 2:Well, it's just a more younger market, more millennial markets, more children, you know more.
Speaker 1:Same product, same pricing, same basic business model, but presented in a very different way. The environment is different. Yeah, I don't know if it's exactly the same products Do you know what I'm saying. I mean there's more concept.
Speaker 2:The same concept but the same type of buying. You know they buy in bulk and things of that sort to sell. So but yeah it's. I remember when one popped up in our area and I started obviously that's what I'm into, and I started looking them up and figuring out where they came from. And I've heard this whole story. This was a like a side new direction. It's not like they're not doing dollar generals anymore, it's just they're doing these in addition to them, using that model with a different image. So the point of all of that is they've designed to a demographic that they weren't meeting in their old model. It's all designed to that demographic.
Speaker 1:So that's, that's. How would that apply to a healer or somebody in private practice?
Speaker 2:Well, when you understand who your market is and who you're trying to appeal to, then you make sure that your environment does that it appeals to that environment. So I know that most healers probably have a hard time saying this is my one avatar, right, they?
Speaker 1:do, although I try to push people to do that because you're everything that. Everything about your business just runs so much smoother and easier once you are clear about your who you serve and narrow that in a certain way, I do think. I think this is also a concept that probably folks aren't used to thinking about. When you get clear about who your ideal client is, who your target audience is and y'all those of you who have been listening to me for a long time, you know I'm always saying if you serve everybody, you're not serving anybody. Like you've got certain people that you really love working with or that you are especially skilled at working with or that you have a real passion for in some way. What I'm hearing Carolyn say is that when you get clear about who, that is something to think about is how does your physical space support that work and speak to that person? So I immediately I'll tell you where my brain goes with that.
Speaker 1:So for many, many years I had a group practice that was housed in a three story Victorian house, over a hundred year old house that had been redone. It was a beautiful, beautiful home, high ceilings, you know the whole bit of fireplaces, chandeliers, so it was a very formal building but we were not a very formal practice and we had lots of folks who saw kids in our practice. And in the front room, the waiting area at the house, we had a rug that had a lot of pattern on it and I used to joke that that pattern was helpful for hiding Lego pieces, because there was one or two days a week when there were lots of kids in the building and that room tended to be a mess and it was like kind of a. It was like I used to call it kid day at Cove Mountain. That was the name of my practice kid day at Cove Mountain because there were Legos all over the floor all day long.
Speaker 1:That's an example to me. We had a kid's corner. We had various toys that were okay to play with right. That was specifically meant to speak to that group. At the same time we had seniors, so we had furniture that was comfortable for them to sit in. That was a little classier, a little bit more formal. We had both at the same time in the same space and it worked just fine.
Speaker 2:It can work, very much so, but you had to more purposely create the kid's area in a formal environment yes, Then it just didn't naturally flow with a formal house.
Speaker 1:No we had to, we had to create it, we had extra padding on the floor, you know, for sound. We had like I won't go into it, but there were lots of things.
Speaker 2:Lots of thought went into what we put there, how it would be used during the day, yeah, so I'm going to add, if you don't mind, there was a lot of physical changes to that environment to make it comfortable for the kids.
Speaker 1:right, the drugs, the padding, well, we were renting the building so I did not have the free I could paint, but I couldn't do any major like changes, so we had to work with what we could bring in. So the artwork on the walls, carpeting, pillows, soft surfaces, toys that could be washed, using arranging furniture in a certain way that blocked off a certain spot that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Yes, okay, but you did think through the color, you did think through the materials, you did think through all of those things so that the mothers that came in didn't feel like their children couldn't be comfortable.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely so that was your client.
Speaker 1:That was your client. Yeah, that's right. One of my favorite compliments that I used to get at that practice was people would. We had people who would drive 45 minutes to an hour when they could have seen someone that was in my office closer to home, like I had people who were working out of two different offices. We had people who would drive further than they had to to come to our building because they said they felt so much more comfortable there and it was the kind of place you could take your shoes off. It wasn't unusual to find somebody had knotted off in her chair in the waiting room, which I always took as a compliment.
Speaker 1:That's what I wanted. I wanted it to look nice, I wanted it to be proper and professional and all that, but I mostly wanted people to feel good when they came there, and I don't like formality. I want people to kick your shoes off if you need to curl up on the couch if you need to, and we did that and we got compliments on it all the time. I don't know that it would have met design standards, but it worked.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it didn't work. So can I ask you a question? Sure, because you said something to me. You said you had two offices at the time. You had this one and you also had another one.
Speaker 1:I had this one because I ran this practice, but some of my practitioners had a second date, like they also had an office in a neighboring town. So it wasn't with me with other practices. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So what was that facility like that compared Great question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can only guess, but there were places that I was vaguely familiar with, but I wasn't there, but they tended to be places that were more traditional industrial office buildings. Okay, right, so neutral gray carpet, small windows, everything much more proper. It's kind of like what you would expect in a doctor's office or just in a corporate office. So more formal, not formal like a Victorian house formal, but formal like industrial or corporate formal.
Speaker 2:Right, so you just didn't have that comfortable feeling. Yeah. Yeah. That's fascinating. Now, if you were in a place like that and you wanted to create a comfortable feeling, you could. That's what I'd love to hear because I don't have the beauty of a beautiful architectural home that you're walking into, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So how do you do that Like? What would you advise for people who are renting space in a building that can't change and if it is in a like? There's a building in my town that's like a five story. It's an old office building that's been redone. I know that there are lots of service providers in that area in that building. If you don't have a choice about that, what can you do to make a fairly sterile environment feel comfortable? That's a great question.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that's a great question, so I'm not a hundred percent. Let me kind of imagine what we're starting with. You're telling me that we've got gray, industrially kind of carpet on the floor and you can't change it. Probably.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would think so, probably yeah.
Speaker 2:Can you paint?
Speaker 1:Some places will let you do that, some won't. It just depends on the place. Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 2:So what I tell some people is that you've got to weigh out your compromises on the spaces that you've rent, right If you have a wonderful location and it's a very. Let me throw out some ideas a wonderful location and it's easy to get to and the parking is great. But there's potholes all in the parking lot. Yeah. You know, think again, just because you can't do anything about that, yeah. Or if you walk into the building and the lobby is very, very dated, you can't stop that tunnel that people walk through.
Speaker 2:So you have to weigh out. It's a great corner, it's a great location and I could do something to the room, but I have all this negative before I even get there. So you're working kind of against the tide, where if you could get it better on the front end then you're already ahead of the game. So that would be one advice I'd give people, because I've seen that happen to doctors, where they're great practices but the people drive in and they're going through potholes all the way through the parking lot.
Speaker 1:So be thoughtful when you're looking for office space. That not only about the space you're literally going to see clients in your consult room, your consultation room, but also what's the building like on the outside, what do they have to go through to get to you and what will that feel like? And make sure that it at least somewhat coherent with what you are hoping that they will feel like. Yes, yes, for a good point. I like that.
Speaker 2:So if you have enough parking, some of the person is driving around and around and around. They can't find parking. Think about how you feel. Think about how you feel when you're going to. Not necessarily is it bad if it's harder to find, because especially if you have patients that come back over and over again and you're not really worried about curb visibility.
Speaker 2:Curb appeal is different than curb visibility, but if they're driving, and just what are they experiencing on the way to get to you? So let's say that that's all and it's good. It's average or above average, which is what I'd go for. Just never go below average, because it doesn't matter. There's a reason. The rent's so cheap. Okay, you know what I'm saying Got it Now. If you're all virtual, it doesn't matter. Right.
Speaker 2:But if you're not and people have to come to you but let's just say it's a medium office, it's everything that they're going through, so then you need to obviously look at who is your avatar, who are you looking to appeal to? So you already talked a little bit about if you're serving more of the elderly, they have a style that they are gonna be more comfortable. You know, bigger, fluffier chairs. They tend to like more pleasing colors and when I say pleasing, just more softer colors and kind of mixture of things, they tend to don't like a whole lot of contrast, because contrast creates a lot of energy. So those types of things, what I would say soft, comfortable, cozy. Think about your lighting. So if you go into an office that you've got one big old light overhead, turn it off and get lamps. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:You know that's the easiest way to modify your lighting, and especially in a therapist office, you want that lighting to feel more home like and you never have two by four light fixtures in a home Right you really hopefully you don't. I'm not right.
Speaker 2:I just think about that, the softness of the lighting. Ideally you could paint so you could get some warmth to your color and you don't have like a gray. But you can do things in your art. You can do things and you know big pieces of canvas art that give the cover up a lot of your wall can be.
Speaker 1:Even if you can't paint, think about how to use art to affect that. Okay, that's a good point. Yeah, or could, can you hang like a wall, hanging a carpet, a quilt, something like that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah and especially. And then once again, think about who you're appealing to. So, if you're appealing to Elderly, think about things that they would have in their home. Mm-hmm, that's one of the ways it's like okay, here's my avatar. What did their homes look like? Right so let's just say you're appealing to a really high-end executive crowd. Mm-hmm, do you know? I'm saying yeah. They're gonna not want all the fluff, but they're still gonna want to feel comfortable right part right Right and they're gonna want to feel like this is quality and also think about your price point.
Speaker 2:Do you know I'm saying how are you? How were you marketing? Are you marketing to? You know, there are people that help, people that are just on a what do you call them gift basis, almost right.
Speaker 1:So people are not scale or folks who are working with a lower income, like you want, to make sure that you're doing something that is comfortable there. If it's too fancy or too formal, make sure that it's not gonna be something that people feel out of place in yes. And that goes both ways. And that is a delicate thing. You have to sort of balance. That that's true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is and it's possible. I mean, we have a chiropractor on our website that he literally served. He's in Miami and he literally served people that barely had enough bus fare to get to the office. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know they could. Some of them could walk. He was kind of in a Mixed area, that's all. I say it was in a beautiful building in a mixed area. Right and he had people that he served that would fly in from Europe and be with him for a week.
Speaker 1:Got it. So he had a really wide range socioeconomically and in terms of the type of problems. People were coming to him for hours, so folks who barely had two nickels rubbed together and people who were flying in on jet. I'd love to hear more about that because I think I think you can totally serve both of those ends in one practice If you're smart about things.
Speaker 2:So yeah. So we had to be. Some of it was think about what we talk, go back to retail. It's like where would these people shop and where would they both feel comfortable shopping?
Speaker 2:Okay, you know I'm saying, they both feel comfortable shopping one kind of Environment, and when all else fails, you do always want to go a little bit to the higher end. Because, the people in the lower economic Level can upgrade themselves easily, yeah, and the people that are higher, yeah, feeling like they can come back down. It's just a psychology yeah, as long as it's not too far, that's the kick.
Speaker 1:So I'm interested. Let's talk about the psychology of color. In particular.
Speaker 1:And the reason I'm asking that is because a long, long time ago I worked with a psychologist who had come across some research that showed and hit this was a long time ago that some particular shade of pink Was especially good at soothing a certain type of person, and this was in a psychiatric hospital that I was working at the time and His office was the most horrendous color of pink I've ever seen, but it was some exact shade that he had. You know he knew something about. I know that color influences mood. I know that, and you can use that to your advantage, depending upon what you're wanting to do. So if you're wanting to build energy or you want to soothe energy, I just love to hear any thoughts you have about the impact of color, especially in a small space and Especially when you're dealing with mental health in particular. Let's talk about that, because that's buying, and that's not the only people I speak to, but that's I get a lot of my people.
Speaker 2:So yeah so, as you're dealing with mental health, would you assume that your goal would be to keep it as Calm as possible? Is that what?
Speaker 1:I would assume, a calm or soothing Something that, because folks come with so much going on in their heads, you know, when we all have a full life, when you go see a counselor or a therapist, you're going because there's a lot going on inside, whether it's in your life, whether it's like a serious mental health issue or whether it's just life walking into a space where you can just kind of, you know, just let down and Breathe and breathe. That's what I think of, but that's my particular, but that's where I like to go. Anyway, I want people to feel comfortable and I want them to be able to breathe for the first time, probably that day. Like that's the kind of thing I aim for. What kind of colors would do that?
Speaker 2:Well, if you know the color wheel, yeah, from kindergarten.
Speaker 2:Right, the color wheel and stuff. There's three primary colors, right, there's red, there's yellow and there's blue. You can't mix anything to get those colors, they're there. And then you start to mix them together and you get secondary colors and tertiary and they just keep going and going. So the basic you of the color is that primary color wheel. Okay, so if you start there, you can pretty much divide it down the half half of it, and the reds and the oranges and the yellow side are what we call warm colors and they literally Make you warmer.
Speaker 2:They literally increase Energy. Okay, Red can increase energy the most. Yeah, yeah so.
Speaker 2:And then yellow has energy in it also, especially the primary colors and stuff. So there's psychology basically in the warmth where it raises. Some people say it actually can raise your heart rate. Uh-huh raise your you know your blood temperature, and some of that stuff depend on how much it's used. Then the other side is exactly the opposite. So, starting with the blues, and then you get the greens and then the violets as long as it's not too red of a violet. Those are the cool colors and they literally do the opposite.
Speaker 2:They literally can calm you down. Yeah so, with that, the most common colors you would use in a healing environment you want to keep people calm would be the blues and the cool colors, the cool colors. That calms people down. So that's just a generality. Then on top of that in color, there's what we call value. Okay, so value is where you take a color and you add white to it to get a tint. Okay and you add which is pink? Pink is a tint of red.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, or you add black to it and you get a shade like a burgundy is kind of a shade. It's dark, it's like a dark, dark, dark, red. Mm-hmm. Those create different emotions, okay, so the lighter it's, lighter it's airier it's softer.
Speaker 2:It's younger a lot of that where the dark, it's more feminine, okay okay, the darker, tend to be more masculine, more heavy, more direct more earth-based Right, yeah, yeah, and then when you start to mix, you know warm colors and you get them dark. It starts to do things together where it gets more dramatic. And when you the opposite, with the cool, like the baby blues and the, they're lighter, so it just they're light or they're dark, I mean you really feel that way, right like physically, you would feel it Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Basically, you feel it. You don't really understand. You feel it until you. I know when I teach classes I have visuals where I just basically change the paint color on the walls. You can do that and Sharon Williams and Benjamin were paint. If you've ever tried to paint your room, you put your room in there, it'll trace around it and you change color to see what it would look like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's cool, it will look like, but it just speaking of the value.
Speaker 2:You know you could have a peach colored, which is very soft and feminine, or rust colored, which is very dark and masculine. Those are both shades of orange.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, one's a tint and one's a are both values of orange. Okay, then the other thing is the intensity of the color. So the intensity is how bright it is. So the purest you of the color is really, the brightest it's going to be. But when you start to add the opposite color on the color wheel, you start to mute the color. So anyone that's painted, anyone that's worked with paints, would understand how you mix paints and stuff. You just mute the color. Eventually you end up brown. If you've ever mixed dyed Easter eggs, you end up brown. You know right, all of those colors together. And so the lowest intensity color is like that brown, grayish color. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:So the intensity has energy in it also. So if you think about children's spaces, you typically, for their excitement, give you them some energy. Now I don't give them too much energy, because you want to calm them down, but they'll be bored based. That doesn't have enough energy. Yeah so those are kind of the basic Psychologies of color and then, like I said, each color on the color wheel. There's therapies that talk about using color, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's really interesting. So you do a lot of design work with Holistic health Practitioners. What are some of the biggest mistakes that you see people are most common mistakes that you see them make when you're going in To work with a space. What are some of the things that you find yourself like? Oh yeah, yeah, I know why people think this is a good idea, but it's not, and that you have to. What are some of the more common mistakes that you see? It just occurred to me to ask you that because I'm thinking you do this all the time, so you see people who are doing this. What do you see them doing and what's better?
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm gonna go two different directions on this okay, okay. The one direction is. We created a free resource for this because we said it all the time. But we have these five first things that we see when we first walk into a space, and the first thing is let me just kind of walk through it as best as I can remember it, and it is one of the free resources your listeners can get from us if they're interested. Awesome. First, you need somebody else besides yourself to look at your space.
Speaker 2:Like that you're too close to it. You don't see it anymore, Okay and so the most ideal thing you can get is a trusted advisor that is going to think like your ideal patient. Okay if you have an ideal patient you've worked with for years. You know, that already trust you and you say, hey, I'm gonna remodel my space, you just need them. To be honest. Yeah, yeah but that's the first thing. And then, as you walk through the space, the first thing we want to look at is Is it cluttered?
Speaker 2:Hmm is it cluttered and dirty? You know it's dirty. I mean can't be dirty. If it's dirty, you immediately turn off every mother in the world, right? You? Just you can't be dirty. So, but cluttered. So you think about your patients that are coming in. They have so much going on. I would, especially in your offices, say as minimalistic as possible. Yeah, Okay so when you think minimalistic, it doesn't mean you don't have any accessories. It means like you have one large piece instead of 1700 little pieces, do you?
Speaker 2:follow me yes if you have 1700, they're all on one tray together, so they look like they're one piece.
Speaker 1:Are you follow me totally?
Speaker 2:play in with those ideas. So you think minimal. Minimalistic, because you don't want your patients to feel energized. Absolutely yeah lots of stuff and stimuli and colors are gonna do that. So, unclutter. Make sure that the other thing we look at are things worn out? Okay, because if things are worn out you look like you're a little bit poverty and cheap and don't care looks like you don't have your own self-care.
Speaker 2:You know if you wear clothes that are all tattered. I mean, I know we've got a fun little sweater we wear around there. You know, in the winter, when we want to feel warm and cozy, that's all tattered, but you don't go somewhere in it. You know, show up that way. So you don't want your office to show up like that either.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was thinking. Worn out, like that is sort of like it's hard, like if you're not making a lot of money Y'all, which is why I want you all to make more money, because those of you who follow me all the time so many reasons to make more money. But when your furniture is worn out or you're using you've got really outdated stuff that you haven't changed in forever, that is almost like your outfit. It is almost like it is. It communicates unconsciously a level of value and quality that I don't think you mean to be communicating.
Speaker 2:So that's a really good point. Yeah, that's when you took my third one, which was outdated.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay.
Speaker 2:Because you can have things, you can buy really really high quality things and they just never wear out. Yeah, they did, but they date that's been my tendency. And it's not bad. It's just that they date Okay and color everything. The cycle of things being dated is seven years.
Speaker 2:Okay so think about your clothes in your closet. Some things can last in, maybe even 12, the more. There are classics, right classics, etc. You know the neutrals, some of that. But so the biggest thing we tell our doctors is don't go too trendy on your office Because it's gonna date. Yeah or if you're gonna go trendy, don't put it in something that you can't replace, because you know you're gonna have to change it.
Speaker 2:Yep, you know but try to have. If you're gonna do anything trendy, try to be easily changeable. The easiest thing to change is paint colors. Mm-hmm and the things that date the fastest are colors. Yeah so that's where I would put you know the differences is in paint colors. Yeah that sort. Yeah but just things being dated. Okay, because it does. It looks like you. You're not up to date. It looks like you're not gonna give them the best out there anymore.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm and then the other one we talk a lot about is lighting. Is your lighting Doing what you want it to do for your office? So there is a psychology in lighting. So the lower the light level, the softer and quieter everyone is. Mm-hmm and you know that that's doing stuff in your brain, waves and stuff too. It's not just a.
Speaker 2:Psychology, it's actually right change in stuff, and the brighter and the bluer, the more energy there is in the space. So playing with the light where you need it to be played with is ideal and most Therapists probably are wanting the more lower, softer light and you can probably go too far with that too.
Speaker 1:I'm thinking there's probably a middle ground in there where it's not too bright and not too dark either, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it'd be really weird sitting in an office trying to talk to somebody that she felt like there wasn't enough light in it. Yeah, we would feel a little unsafe. Yeah, you know, or I'm comfortable, you know and so there's that Understanding what you can do with the light, so that those are the some of the very first things we look at what's dated, what's worn out, what's cluttered, that touched them all you said you should have a trusted advisor.
Speaker 1:Cluttered, worn out, outdated and Lighting one, two, three, four, five, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, you know what? I think there's another one, because the trusted advisor is kind of over it all got it, Okay so what was the?
Speaker 1:other one, so cluttered, not too close, oh, clean. Clean, and clear, not cluttered. Fresh, it's like, not worn out, not outdated lighting.
Speaker 2:It may have had something to do with. I'm sorry that I don't know. I want to say that it had something to do with color. They all kind of merged together a little bit at that point.
Speaker 1:But well, I would love to get. I would love to get a link to the resources you've got. You can. What is that resource? Tell me what it is and I'll make sure we put it in the show notes.
Speaker 2:So we created a landing page for your listeners. So, crossfieldsdesigncom, that's our website crossfieldsdesigncom forward slash ideal, okay, awesome, and then they can download. We have actually four resources, oh, great, so they just download them all at one time and use what they want. That's great, so that can help them and stuff.
Speaker 1:But I love that. I was laughing when you were talking about the outdated thing, because I brought in after I had been in this building for like 20 years. I brought in an interior designer to try to who I had already hired. I had taken on some new space. I brought her in to do the new space and it was so much nicer and so much. It fit all the things that you're talking about. It was clean. It was just sort of flowed in a whole different way. The feeling was completely different and I am not a designer so I don't know these things.
Speaker 1:I was so impressed with what she did that I said come help me with the rest of the building. So we did a walkthrough of this building that had been in place for a long time, had lots of practitioners. I always had 10 to 12 people working in my office and everybody had their own style, their own design. It was a little bit like a college dorm where everybody brought stuff. She was walking around and I was thinking you know, it's not too bad, I just want to update it. I knew enough to say that and she said I think there are some things we can do to make it not quite so waverly, I got so tickled. I said, is that what I have? And she said, yeah, there's a little bit of waverly going on here.
Speaker 2:That's great. It was really funny. But you know it's interesting that she said that I don't know if anyone has sold a home recently. But your real estate agents now come in and start telling you all this stuff you've got to unclutter. Do you understand? And then some of them even go as far as say, you need to hire someone to help stage it where they'll take what you've got and do it.
Speaker 2:So there's people that have an interior design. You don't necessarily have to have a degree to do that, because interior design is somewhat artistic and you have some giftings to do that. What I went to school for to become an interior architect has to go into life, safety and codes and all of those things too, but the natural kind of understanding of the principles of design, things being balanced, having a rhythm those things are if something's well designed, it just kind of flows. It meets all of those principles, so it's hard to teach it.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it's a feeling. I think what you're aiming for is a feeling and to think about what's the feeling that you want your clients to have and does the space. And I think what I want to say is like, encourage people to think like, what do you want your clients to feel in that space and what's going to contribute to that? And I love your idea about you need to have someone else come and look at it, because you're right, we are too close to it. We see it all the time and you know, when you move into a new space you're really excited about it. Everything's lovely and new. But if you've been there for a while, you don't even see it anymore. And, just like we do at home, it's really easy for piles of paper to land on the desk, for empty water bottles to collect to. You know you've got like your work is around the edges.
Speaker 1:A lot of healers have a workspace and a space that they also are seeing people. So you may in my work anyway, you may have a love seat or a couple of chairs or whatever that where you're actually seeing clients, but you may also have a desk and a computer and a filing cabinet two completely different energies, those spaces right, and if you're not paying attention, that stuff can really get out of hand. What does it look like to your clients? What do they see when they sit in a chair in your room? What does that feel like to them? Yeah, that's really good.
Speaker 1:That is important, yeah, I also like what you said about I'm sorry about smell, color, sound, light and touch. Basically this five senses. We didn't talk about taste, but we talked about color Do?
Speaker 2:you want to. 95% of what we've been talking about is sight.
Speaker 1:Is sight right? Do you want to speak really quickly? Just to sound and touch or sound and texture. Do you want to just say a little bit about that before we begin to wrap it up?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm just going to say that the biggest thing about sound is it can be extremely distracting if you don't control it. So you know, having I mean you can't control everything, you can't control the thunder outside, if that happens, right. That's just going to happen.
Speaker 2:But if you're in a situation where there's a lot of noise around you and it can be loud and distracting for your patients and stuff, what can you do? Can? You you know, do white noise, can you? I remember a client I'll just share with you. I was having my husband and I went on a cruise years ago and we got a couple's massage. Very nice cruise line got a couple's massage and in the middle of the massage there was all this banging of us.
Speaker 2:And we said what's going on? Oh, that's the kids area upstairs. So it was a design fail design fail and we just total it Now. This therapist were used to it which is why they didn't hear it anymore.
Speaker 2:But us as patrons you know that wanted that, were paying really good money for this massage. So we did get our money back. I wanted it all back. I was that because it happened about, you know, 10 or 15 minutes into an hour massage and it was just you were just taking the whole time. So you know, just being really aware of that and what you can do, and you know, sometimes you can't do anything about it they decided to start construction down the hall. But maybe you can you talk to your landlord and go hey, this is part of can we a limited or can you let me know when there's going to be loud things and I won't book clients or something because it's so distracting and just little things can be noise distracting. You know what I'm saying? Like humming, and that doesn't need to hum. Like the ceiling fan that hums that you don't hear anymore and everybody else knows, you know.
Speaker 1:So true, or the clicking that I've got a client who comments on the ticking of a clock that I hadn't even noticed before. He noticed that because I usually would have had white noise that I didn't have on how to usually have a fan on a little, just a little bitty fan. I didn't have it on that day. He was very aware of the clock.
Speaker 2:So yeah, little things like that, that's right Very very, because it distracts, especially when you're trying to be really, really focused. So, can you have soft music in the background? Like you said, white noise. What can you do to mask? That is important, so that's sound. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And just being intentional about it. And then obviously you want a lot of energy. You create more sound. So you think about a gym that wants people to get up and move. They're going to have louder music going on and things of that sort. So which I don't know that any of your therapists are doing that, but they may. Maybe they have a group class that everybody creates a lot of energy.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Well. I know that I have physical therapists that follow me who do movement related types of therapies, so there's no telling Right, which is my whole point around. The ideal practice concept is that each person's practice needs to work for them, and what's ideal for you is not going to be the same as what's ideal for someone else, but creating an environment that works for your clients and works for you is part of developing an ideal practice, and I think the point here to me about all of this is it's important to be more intentional and aware of that than you might be otherwise. Don't take it for granted. Be thoughtful.
Speaker 2:Well, and I just want to say this I don't think I've said anything earth-shattering here that people haven't, that they're like oh, that's new. I haven't thought of that, Maybe a tiny bit, but more than likely. It's just my goal and my mission is for you to be aware. Yeah and be intentional. Yeah. And I always tell them it does not have to be expensive, it just has to be intentional. Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, and be very much on purpose. How do you work with people and how can people find you who want to learn more about what you do?
Speaker 2:So our website, I told you, was CrossfieldsDesigncom Okay, and we've got a lot of resources on there. It started as a blog teaching before we ever did business. Okay, so I've got lots and lots of resources on there. Free resources and these guest podcasts I've been doing are on there, so you'll be on there when it comes out et cetera.
Speaker 2:And then you can look at our portfolio and you can read the testimonials and we've got all of our portfolio also comes with a case study, which means that you can read about what that client was dealing with and how we solved it. Now we'll say that most of our portfolio has grown to more of the top echelon of our clients.
Speaker 2:I would say the ones that hire us all out for their dream offices and things like that. But we do work with the one-on-ones and we do work with startups and we work with, we do full service interior architecture, construction drawings, permit drawings, all of that. Awesome or someone's looking at a new space and can they fit in it. Or we do ground up builds also because we have that architectural background, but we also do. We call them ID projects or interior decorating projects which would be more like your stager.
Speaker 1:We're not moving walls we're just working with what you got. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:So we have like a one and we have different levels of things we can do, depending on what you need, how far you need to go. So if you're interested, our website. I told you, and the easiest thing to find out is we do a compliment and it's about a 60 minute 45 to 60 minute complimentary consultation Online and it's virtual.
Speaker 2:You work with people virtually, it's all virtual and we'll do you know. You can send in, you fill out a form to tell us what's going on. You schedule a meeting through the computer and you'll meet with, typically, allison she's our business development person and she'll.
Speaker 1:She's an ex designer turn sales person and anyway she'll process through where you are and tell you how we can help and so one of the folks that I'm thinking in my world that could use this in particular are people who are building and designing a group practice, which is there's lots of that going on out there. So if you are I'm thinking if you're in the if your business is beginning to take off and you are adding staff and group practices can be really busy places lots of traffic, both clients, providers, lots of activity and a variety of needs. So having a physical space that can met that's totally in your real house. Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I really think people who are especially at that level should look into what you do for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so. So most people when if I say interior design, most people think of the interior decorating part of it but, interior design is the architecture of the interior so it is the size and the layout and the rooms and the ceiling and the lighting and the, and it starts with we didn't go there, but we start with we. Form follows function. Okay, Form follows function. So the function is the maximizing the space, the form is the attract and retain patients. So it's got to function and flow together yeah, so that's what we focus on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Carolyn, this has been, so. I mean, it's been super interesting. I've learned. I've learned about tent and value and intensity, which I did not.
Speaker 2:You probably did back in elementary school you just forgot.
Speaker 1:It's so funny. I'm like, well, that's a whole new level of thinking and I really and there's been several things today that you've said that I'm like that's a new way of thinking about something that I sort of know, but it's much more specific now. And I really love this. You've given a lot of good tips that I think people can really use, and I'm hoping it makes people go back into their office and kind of go. So how's this working? What do I need to do here? Right, good, that's good for everybody.
Speaker 2:So I'll just I want to show this one thing to you. Our typical client will see a 20% increase after going through this process.
Speaker 1:And their revenue. That's great. Wow, that's a huge number.
Speaker 2:Now, some of that's because they're moving and they're you know, but some of it is just they're really refreshing. And I'll just share one other thing, because it's kind of like staging, do you know? What I'm saying yeah, just like, the value of your house goes up. The value of your practice goes up when you do this kind of staging.
Speaker 1:Well, it's the perceived value of the work.
Speaker 2:Right, it is, and it's also your psychology changes.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So this is worth spending time and money on? Yeah, so you probably. I'm sure they save money in various ways, but also the client attraction and retention goes up and that's where your income's going to be. That's great 20%, that's huge Wow. Yeah. Before we go one, I always like to ask people if there's anything else that you want to share or anything. I haven't asked you anything else that you feel like you just you just feel like you need to say that would make this conversation complete.
Speaker 2:Nothing really comes to mind, but just be an intentional understanding. If I had to repeat one thing, it's yours environment will help, support or hurt your success. Yeah, just be very intentional about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it affects your money, y'all.
Speaker 2:It affects your money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it affects your money, to put it blindly. That's great. I love that. And I would also add, I think it will impact your clinical effectiveness as well, because when you feel better, your clients feel better, the work unfolds more naturally and easier, and, of course, they're going to pay you well for that, because that's what we're all about, right? They get people get better, people get better, and this is part of it. That's really great. Thank you so much, carolyn. This has been a real treat. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Thank you for helping me, Wendy.
Speaker 1:So crossfieldsdesigncom forward slash ideal. We'll make sure that's in the show notes. You guys go check that out. Let's take it off to the next higher level and get rid of all the Waverly. Yeah, there you go, all right. Thank you, this has been awesome.
