Ideal Practice
Ideal Practice
#73. How to Create Healing Energy with Office Design and Decor: My Thoughts.
Question or comment? 🙋♀️ Send me a text message!
How does office decor influence your client's healing journey?
With decades of experience, I’ve got a few thoughts about that. So in today’s episode, we’ll explore best practices that impact your clinical work AND your standing as a practice owner.
Because there’s actually more to this than you might think!
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How your client’s experience is impacted way before they get to your door.
- What to consider in terms of signage, parking, and accessibility.
- An important thing about lighting that it’s easy to forget.
- How to offer comfort without sacrificing professionalism.
Plus I’ll tell you when I knew we’d gotten it ‘right’ at my group practice set up, even without the help of a designer. :)
Give this a listen and let me know: What tip was most helpful for you?
~Wendy
xoxo
P.S. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a minute to share your 5 star review and a few words over on Apple Podcasts or even Spotify. If you’ve been meaning to do that, but keep putting it off, how about heading over there now? (And thank you!)
THIS WEEK’S JOURNAL PROMPT:
What three steps could you take to make your office an even better environment for your clients’ work?
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MENTIONED:
American Psychological Association Article: Healing By Design
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COACHING: Want some help?
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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 73. And in keeping with the topic we started last week, I want to dive a little deeper into the physical design, setup, decor, whatever you want to say of your office when you see clients in person. I got some thoughts about that myself, based on lots of experience, and I want to share some of those ideas with you today. I guarantee you that's going to be at least a couple here you haven't thought of before, 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 guys, and welcome back. This is your host, Wendy Pitts Reeves, and I'm so happy to be hanging out with you here on the podcast.
Speaker 1:It's a small miracle that I'm here right now, because it has been an incredibly crazy couple of weeks. How about you? I don't know about you, but last week I was going around saying I swear, is it a full moon week? Because it sure feels like it. It wasn't, but I found out this week that Mercury Retrograde was beginning, which explains last week. If you're at all into that kind of thing and if you're not, you can ignore everything I'm saying right now. But let me just say you know, when the battery in your car dies and the dog gets sick and the roofers decide to come right as you've got all kinds of really important online meetings happening, like it's just been a little nuts. But what's important to me that I find myself trying to think about when it feels like everything's a little crazy, I also pay attention to the fact that, even though it's like that, things also work out. Like yesterday, a really good example I had an appointment with a new coaching client yesterday afternoon and who was in New York, was really looking forward to a good call with her, had lots of exciting things to talk about and about an hour and a half before that, realized that my sweet girl, ava, who you guys may or may not know Ava is my 65-pound 10-year-old Kali, who is beautiful and kind and adorable and has 10-year-old Kali issues from time to time. She really needed a trip to the vet just to kind of check on some tummy troubles she was having and I realized I had like an hour to make this happen and I was like, oh my gosh, I don't have time for this. On top of, did I mention that the roofers were here Crazy week? But here's the thing when I called the vet, they were like, yeah, you probably should bring her in, let's just go ahead and double check this.
Speaker 1:And my particular vet the person I enjoy working with the most at this particular practice just happened to be there, just happened to be having an admin day, meaning she wasn't actually seeing patients that day or clients that day. She was in the back of the building doing admin work. I know what that's like. I've been trying to do it too. But she was willing to see me and Eva, which meant I didn't have to wait. So I jumped in the car, flew over there, got things taken care of and, yes, she's fine. She just needed a little little medicine, but she's fine.
Speaker 1:But that's an example of as insane as that felt at the time, because, lord knows, I didn't feel like I had time. I was back to my home office, back online, literally like five minutes before I was supposed to be on camera. What a day. But in the end it turned out just fine and my puppy's fine, and that meeting with that client went great. It was like, in fact, she was delightful. It was our first meeting and I, the minute I met her, I was like, oh my gosh, I'm going to love this person. So it was really great, really, really great.
Speaker 1:And it's important to remember that kind of stuff when it feels like things are kind of nuts. So I just want to mention that to you as a way of saying, if it feels to you like a full moon week, just pay attention to what is working, because it's really easy to start noticing only what isn't working. So that's what I got to say about that. Let's let's move into this week. One thing about Mercury retrograde if you follow that and if you don't, you can ignore this. But one thing about this kind of time, from what I understand from those who know such things, is that it is a really good time to slow down and to do anything that starts with re, like, reconnect, reconsider, revisit, re, inspire. So it seems like what a perfect opportunity to go back and revisit or reconsider your physical office space.
Speaker 1:Now I want to follow up on the episode last week when I interviewed Carolyn Bolt, did you hear that she is an interior decorator who has a design firm that mostly works with alternative healthcare medical practices, which I love. It was a really interesting conversation and as I went through that with her and kind of had that conversation, I found myself thinking about all the things I want to say about this topic because, having been in practice for a very long time, having coached a lot of folks, having served in a lot of different ways, I've seen a lot of examples and have experienced ideas that I think work and things that don't work, and I've got something to share here that I think is going to be helpful to you. So we're going to turn this into a little series we had. Last week we had Carolyn giving us a really good overview about why this kind of stuff matters. Today I'm going to talk with you in particular with some very specific tips about your physical office setup for those of you who see people in person, and next week we're going to dive into a virtual office setup for those of you who work online, and a lot of you do both. I think by the time we get through with all this, you're going to actually find this really helpful. That's my hope anyway.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about this, and let me let me say this first of all so I'm not An interior designer, I'm not a decorator, I'm not an artist. In fact I'm pretty, I'm pretty uninspiring in those ways. I know what I like, I know it feels good to me, but I am in no way a professional here. That said, I am a therapist, I am a mama. I do have sort of an intuitive sense of what feels good and what works for people. Plus, I just have a boatload of experience and I have read enough to know that there are certain principles that are worth considering when you're designing your physical office space.
Speaker 1:My last not the office I have right now, but many of you know that for for over 20 years I grew, managed and ran a fairly large and fairly successful group counseling practice, and our practice was housed in a three story Victorian home in the small town that I live in, in an office district near the courthouse in town typical small town and that particular building was built somewhere around 1917, 1918. It was over a hundred years old, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful house that had been restored, and I want to tell you that from the very beginning we purposefully set out to make sure that our clients and visitors felt as comfortable as they could there, and there were some challenges to that building which I'll talk about as I go through this. There were a lot of things that felt right. There were. There were a few things were like kind of tricky that we had to get past. Now I'm definitely going to be using that as a teaching space as I go through this, but you'll know when you're getting it right when you have things like this happen.
Speaker 1:One time I came not one time, actually, this happened more than once I came out into our waiting room, which was essentially the living room of the building. It was a pretty good size room with a bay window out front, a chandelier, a fireplace. No, it wasn't a working fireplace because we weren't allowed to have that, but it was the original fireplace. It was a very comfortable room and we had we actually had wingback chairs, which I normally don't like, but in this particular setting those chairs ended up being a place where clients would like kind of curl up and where parents would wait for their kids if they were in session, whatever, and it more than once. I went out to the waiting room to find a client asleep, curled up in one of those chairs, leaning up against the corner, sound asleep. I took that as the highest compliment I said. When people take their shoes off, curl up in a chair and go to sleep, I know that we have created a space that works. It means they feel comfortable, it means they feel safe, it means that they are at home here and that was important to me personally.
Speaker 1:One of my client, one of my therapists, had a second office in Knoxville which is about 30, 30 minutes to 45 minutes drive away from where we were. So she had two offices. Her office in Knoxville was in a more traditional corporate kind of setup. It was an office building that had multiple floors. There was limits to what you could do to the space. It was a perfectly fine, well set up, professional setting, but it was quite corporate in the feeling of you know, not a lot of people. Well, she had clients who lived on the other side of that, like 30 minutes to an hour on the other side of that, who would drive the extra 30 minutes to see her at our office space in the, in the, in the home that I'm describing to you, even though they could have seen her in Knoxville, which was probably a good half an hour closer to where a lot of them lived. Many times people chose to drove to our space and she would tell me about that. She said my clients tell me that just like it here, better just feels better to them. They're willing to make the drive because it's just homier Homie being the key word there.
Speaker 1:I will not say it was like designed to the max. It didn't look like something out of a magazine by any chance, trust me. In fact, when we first moved into that space, we had wicker furniture in the front room that was off of somebody's patio. It was a more like, um, like your first apartment after college, when I was bringing furniture from home to make it work. That's kind of how it started. It was definitely not polished, but it was functional and comfortable and I learned from that and one of my favorite things about that space. There were lots of things which I'm going to talk about, but one of my favorite things about that space was those of you who know me or have ever worked with me um, you already know that I can be a little bit time challenged.
Speaker 1:I won't say that being on time is my number one strength, so it was not unusual that I would get to the office in the morning and I'm like racing to beat my clients as they're getting to the you know, getting to the parking lot and get into the front door and I actually at one point bought a little bistro table and a couple of chairs and put them out on the front porch. This, this building, had wrap around front porches, um, so that they had a place to sit, literally. If they had to wait for me for a few minutes, like that was like I don't know, I don't know. That was literally what I did, why I did that. It was kind of funny, but what ended up happening was that little corner bistro table on the front porch. So, by the by the road, out front was a place where people kind of like to hang out. It wasn't unusual that we would have teenagers out there doing homework while they were waiting for their session. More than once I had a kid or two practicing their instruments after school out there. We would have parents sit out there and read a book while they were waiting for their, their kids, whatever. It ended up being a really comfortable space, especially, I think, for the introverts who didn't want to hang out in the waiting room and gave them an outside option, which was really cozy. I loved that, even though I really just put it there, so people had a place to sit while they waited on me. So that's just just a little taste of kind of the way I think about this, um, and I'm going to.
Speaker 1:I'm going to dive into this and in some specifics here. So let's let me tell you why I feel like this is kind of important. I don't know about you, but I heard a lot in graduate school. We've talked a lot about how environment affects our clients. Impacts there, the development of children, the way families work together, how couples get along. It impacts the level of depression or anxiety that folks deal with. For those of you who work in physical things like massage therapy or movement therapies, like Feldenkrais or physical therapy, I know that you're super aware of how people's homes, their furniture, their steps they have to go up to get into their house, all kinds of ways that that impacts people, the literal cultural environment that you live in, whether you are in an inner city, urban environment or you are out in the country, whatever all of that impacts the way people feel, think, grow, heal, but I don't remember anybody ever talking about the office itself or the clinic or the hospital, how you set up spaces to help people with healing in a way that works for them and works for you.
Speaker 1:Now I was really lucky. Early in my career I worked with a few psychiatrists and psychologists who had studied this. I know that there's actually quite a bit of research out there that talks about how important it is. There are there are measurable studies that show that a well designed space for how you see and work with clients definitely measurably impacts their sense of safety, their ability to relax and do the work they've come there to do. But it also measurable measurably, I can say that impacts their perception of you and your competence and y'all. It doesn't take much to see that the more competent they see, they think you are, the safer they feel in your hands, right. So I'm no design expert by any means, but I have certainly seen enough and experienced enough over time that I think I picked up a few tips that could be helpful to you and I want to invite you to be fairly deliberate about this as you evaluate your own space.
Speaker 1:So let's talk through some of those ideas. I'm going to start out big and zoom in small, all right, so let's start out with the literal the building that you're in, the location of your office. I know good and well a lot of times you don't have much choice about this y'all. You find what you can afford if you're renting. You find what you can afford if you're buying. You find an office that works with where you have to drive, where your kids go to school, with what's in your community. I know that and and and I have, I've had my share of offices that I would not necessarily had chosen if I'd had more of an opportunity. But sometimes you don't have a choice.
Speaker 1:But when you do, I want you to start by thinking about this traffic. How hard is it for your clients to get to your office? How far will most of them have to drive? Or is there any kind of mass transit available? Is there a bus system, subway? There's not. Where I live, we don't have that. Where I live, can they walk to your office? Is there? You know, if that's, if you're in a community where that would make more sense if they're driving, how complicated is it? How challenging is it? How easy is it? And when they get there, what kind of parking is available? Is it easy to park? Is it hard? Do they have to pay to park? How close can they park to where you actually are?
Speaker 1:So when I was looking for office space when I was first setting up my practice, um and I I when I was in a couple of different places in town before I finally landed on the one that I stayed at, I will tell you at my group practice were that in the, the Victorian house, parking actually was a real problem there. That was not a good thing. There we had lots of other things that worked great, but the parking lot was quite tiny. It was essentially the backyard, or what used to be the backyard of that house, and you had to walk up a fairly steep driveway, kind of a hill, to get to the front porch. I used to joke with clients that the hardest part about therapy was just getting to the front door, because it kind of was. So we turned that negative into a positive.
Speaker 1:But that's something you want to think about. How the parking is and if you have a choice between two different spaces and one is easier to get to or easier to park at, that's that's a factor to consider. Another thing that I think it's really easy to miss is what is the lighting like there at night? It's really important when you're thinking about renting a space or or or buying, to go see what it looks like at night, because in the winter you may very well have clients leaving after dark. You may be leaving after dark. Is it safe to walk to your car? Is it safe for your clients to leave you, to leave your space at night? Look into that and make sure that that's okay.
Speaker 1:You also want to think about ease of access, not just for handicapped or folks who are differently able to walk. You are differently abled, but others is like all kinds of different folks. So, for example, I mentioned that you had we had a bit of a hill to climb at our office. One of the challenges that we had was I had a couple I have one provider in particular that mostly worked with elders. They had a real trouble, a real problem with that, that space, and so we were constantly trying to come up with solutions to help people get in and out of the building Once they got to the front door. It was great, but we did have anybody who had mobility issues, it was a little bit more of a challenge and when we had a really, you know, with 10 or 12 providers, by the time everybody drove, or if you saw couples and each person drove, that parking lot filled up fast. So we did come up with solutions for all of that. But thinking about ease of access for folks who may be in a wheelchair, who may be visually impaired or just mobility impaired, those are certainly things you want to take into account.
Speaker 1:I also think it's important to think about your signage. Is it easy to spot, easy to read, easy to follow? And because I've seen cases where this is not the case, actually, where it's a little confusing If you're in a building that has a gazillion businesses in it and everybody kind of does their own thing and there's nothing clear about it. One of the things you're going to like I was thinking about a building that I know of that is sort of a multi-use five, six, seven stories high office building that has everything from therapist to attorneys to I don't know, you name it all different kinds of businesses and there's no real uniformity to the way the signs work or the way the directions work. If you're in a place like that where everybody's kind of doing their own thing. You do want to think about what can you do to make sure your clients know exactly where to park, what door to go in, how to find you and what to do when they get there. That's important.
Speaker 1:Another thing that I also don't think people think about very often, that I found myself being really aware of early on, is not just the visibility of your building but also the privacy of where you are. Who do they walk by? Who sees them as they come and go? Now it depends on what kind of business you have as to whether this matters or not. If you're a massage therapist or a physical therapist or you've got a yoga studio, that may not matter so much. If you're a counselor, a psychotherapist or you're working with people who you know trauma survivors or folks coping with addictions and you're kind of known for that, this does matter. I will tell you when my let me think about this I've had three, four total over the course of my business career.
Speaker 1:I have had four different physical office settings. The second one in particular was a tiny office suite on the top floor of a two-story historical building right on the main drag in my small town. It was better than nothing. It was being rented by a psychologist who offered to sublet the second office in that suite to me and it kind of gave me a way to get started. So I was happy about that. When I look back on it now I can see problems, but at the time it was a decent enough space. There was a nice waiting room. The office itself was fine. It had a nice window, which is really important to me, but it was.
Speaker 1:It was upstairs and you know what was downstairs in that building? On the ground floor, the build, the part you had to walk through to get up to us, a beauty shop, a hair salon. Now, that hair salon was in its own section, but you had to walk in a door off the parking lot and through a short hallway, like you know, eight feet past the door that went into the salon and up a short flight of stairs to our waiting space. Well, the stairs were a problem all by itself. I could not have seen someone who was disabled in that space. But also we were had a counseling practice and people are walking next to a hair salon.
Speaker 1:What do you think happens in a hair salon? People are talking to each other, and I live in a small town. Y'all, everybody knows everybody in this town or, if not, they know your grandpa or your ex or one of your kids, right? That's just the nature of the beast where I live. That was a real problem that I had not anticipated. Just seeing people walk by, everybody knew why they were there.
Speaker 1:So when I moved to what became my group practice, which was a much nicer space, the one that was in that old house I'm talking about the beauty of that was that that building number one was on a side street, less than like a couple of blocks from our courthouse, so it was in a business area. But, as is often the case in small towns, there's usually a sort of an older area right around the middle of town that often has properties like this. It was on a side street, so there was not hardly there was not much traffic out front at all actually, and because the parking lot was in the back, it actually was quite handy because people could not see who was parking back there. The other benefit of it is actually this is kind of crazy, but there was actually a hair salon in that one too, believe it or not. Like twice in a row pure coincidence, twice in a row in a row.
Speaker 1:I had offices that were like this, but in this second situation, the way that setup was there were no windows. Nobody that was in there getting their hair done could see anybody who was coming and going. Or there were windows, but they were facing a different direction. So our people had total privacy walking up the hill. And the way I came to think about it is that when you parked there, no one knew, as they saw you getting in and out of your car. If you're going to get your hair done, you're going to have a counseling session, it didn't matter. So there actually was a fair amount of privacy there that we had not had before. If you're in an office building in the middle of town that has all kinds of businesses, you've got plenty of privacy because nobody knows why they're walking into that building. But if you are in a building that is specifically set aside for your practice, this is just something to think about.
Speaker 1:The last thing I want to say about this y'all is, no matter what kind of setup you've got, your client's impression of you, their sense of your credibility and competence, their appreciation for the value of what you bring to the table begins really before they ever get there. It begins with their first interaction with you online, their first visit to your psychology today website or wherever you are, anything like that, like that impression, that first impression has already happened. But when they come to your physical office, even the parking lot, the front door, all of that matters. You may not like this a lot, but one of the things I learned I had to just get over and do. I had to pick up trash in the parking lot If somebody dropped a Kleenex, dropped a cup. You know I found things. Sometimes it's not my job to pick that stuff up, but I did it anyway because that's part of the impression people have coming into your space.
Speaker 1:And something as simple as a pot of geraniums on the front porch or some kind of greenery, some kind of flower, something, and it doesn't even have to be real y'all. There is research that shows that our brains respond to the perception of nature the same way it does as if we are really in nature. So something as simple as artificial plants that are nice, quality or imagery of some kind can help as well. But think about as people walk, they park and walk into your building. What do they see? Is it pretty clean, professional, clear, well lit, easy to get in and out of or not? And if there's something you can do to change that, if you need to do, all right, that's enough about the outside, but I wanted to say that because people don't think about that kind of stuff, that does impact all of it.
Speaker 1:Now let's talk about the first place people come. Once they get to you, many of you will have some kind of a waiting area. You may not if you are simply like literally one office in a building, but a lot of you will have some kind of a waiting space for people to gather. First of all, I want you to make sure it's really clear that people know where to go, like I talked about earlier. Make sure the signage is obvious. Make sure people know what to do when they get there. Tell them what to expect. For example, is there a receptionist? If so, fine, that receptionist will help. But if you don't have that and most of us, a lot of us don't then you have to tell your clients what to do instead. For example, I at one point I knew about a therapist that was in a teen actually, there's a part of town, not in my town, but in Knoxville. There was a part of town that's kind of an older, really sweet kind of little part of town that has a lot of therapists, energy healers that's what I'm talking about. You name it massage therapists um, all kinds of different times of folks who tend to be there and a lot.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of people who are in a little teeny, tiny little houses like little bitty two bedroom, three bedroom houses that you can barely turn around in. I went to visit with a psychologist in one of those one time and there was when you walked in the door. The space you were in was so tiny that you, you, I had to worry about my knees bumping somebody's if I had to hang out in there. But you punched, there was a buzzer that you could touch the buzzer and that would go off in the person, the room of the person you were meeting with. That's how they knew to come out and get you. At my office we had we put a little chime on the front door so we could hear when people came and went from the door. Because that's all that's. We didn't have anything else but one of the things that I had to tell my tell new clients at that house. It was called the Lillian house. It was the name of the building. It actually had a name and I would tell people we are housed in the Lillian house. It was named for a Lillian prophet who who I actually got to I didn't get to meet somebody else in my practice got to meet one day. She was still alive when we first got the practice going. She the building had been built as a boarding house and named after her when she was a little girl. That's, that's uh, that's so cool. I love that history.
Speaker 1:But I would tell clients, when you come here the first time and when you walk in the door, it's going to feel weird to you. It feels a little bit like you're walking into somebody's house. But you're not. It's going to be fine and I would. I I would leave a little paperwork out for them on a table in the hall and I would say just have a seat out in the front room and I will come out to greet you as soon as I'm free. Don't worry about it, I will come find you. But I had to warn them because it did feel a little bit like you were walking into somebody's house and there wasn't anyone there to greet you, to say, yes, you're in the right place. So that was part of how I would handle that.
Speaker 1:What do you need to tell people? Do you need to explain to them where the elevator is, where the bathrooms are, what it's going to look like if it's a bit of a twisty tourney kind of place to find? What do you need to say Once they get there? Your waiting area serves many purposes. The first thing is it's a safe, private, comfortable place to wait. The second thing is that it prepares them for the work in some way. The third thing is it needs to be a place that protects everybody else around you.
Speaker 1:So, for example, yes, you want comfortable, professional, nice furniture. It has to be strong enough to stand up to a lot of traffic. It has to be something you can clean if somebody spills a coke or a cup of coffee. Right, it needs to be firm enough and suitable to suit your audience or your client. So if you've got children coming, you're going to want to have a corner somewhere where children can lay on a bean bag or play or something like that and have it sound protected in some way. Maybe you have extra rugs or space padding underneath to protect if there's a floor below you.
Speaker 1:That's something to think about. If you are working with elder folks, you may need to have furniture that has good arms that they can use to push up and down off of when they're getting up and down from their seat. You need to make sure the furniture is not too low to the ground. You may need furniture that's a little bit wider if you're working for the folks who may be a little bit heavier. These are all different factors to think about in different ways, right? Does the furniture fit the folks who are going to be coming there and will it hold up over time?
Speaker 1:I also think it's nice. You want it to be clean, you want it to be organized, you want it to be welcoming. So something like a throw pillow in the corner is fine. A trash can that's easy for everybody to see how to get to. I used to have a coffee pot and some cups in the corner. Some people are putting a curing out, something like that. Maybe just a glass pitcher with fresh water and some paper cups. That's fine.
Speaker 1:But basically, that waiting space is a welcoming place for people. When they get there, they are coming with needs, right. If you're a counselor, if you're a psychotherapist, they're coming because they're coming. If you're a counselor, if you're a psychotherapist, they're coming because something in their life is very difficult right now. If you are doing something like massage therapy or Reiki, they're coming there because their body needs extra attention, whatever. So you want this space to be a place where they can go I'm glad I'm here or where, if they're a little anxious or a little stressed, they instantly can kind of feel like, okay, it's going to be all right. So that's what your waiting space should be like Clean, professional, well-organized, functional, attractive and feels good. I really go, I'm big on that.
Speaker 1:All right, now what about your consulting room, the room where you actually do the work? Well, obviously, the same thing I just said about the waiting space it needs to have comfortable furniture that suits your client population and that works for the kind of work that you do. That's obvious. But I also want you to pay attention to a couple of other things. Like, I like to have seating that can be used in different ways. So I am personally not one who has quote my chair unquote.
Speaker 1:I've seen a lot of setups where the practitioner will have a specific chair. That's where they sit all day long, and then they may have a love seat or a couch or a couple of chairs where their client sit. There's nothing wrong with that. But I, when I have had the space to do it, I like to have two chairs and a love seat, and I tell people that I sit everywhere during the day Because I actually want them to choose the seat that is most comfortable for them. And it's really funny how this is. It's kind of like going to church. Wherever people land the first day they visit a church, that's where they tend to stay.
Speaker 1:I think I found that people would choose seating when they first walked into the space and that would be where they stayed. I had a chair that had its back to the door and face the window. I had a chair that's back to the window and face the door. I had a love seat where they could spread out. They chose where they wanted to sit and then I just sat opposite them wherever they were. I found that to be really helpful and it's oftentimes actually therapeutic in a way. How, how you do it is up to you, but you do want to have seating that works for your clients, no matter what.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about little things that make them more comfortable. Something as simple as a box of tissues they can reach, a bottle of water. You might hand them A trash can that. I just this week went and bought a teeny, tiny little trash can to put right by my client's seat so that they don't have to get up and cross the room and go to the one that's under my desk. Maybe a little table. Maybe you don't have like a coffee table, you just have a little table right next to them where they can set a drink, a bottle of water, a cup of coffee, whatever, something like that. Those are little touches that are nice.
Speaker 1:The other thing that's really important are artwork or what they have to look at number one and windows or lighting number two. Those two things are also important. So let me talk about the windows, the lighting. So if you're in an interior room in a corporate structure, you may not have an external window. If not, you have to find artificial ways to get this same feeling. But having warm, down facing lighting is better than overhead lighting. You definitely don't want fluorescent lighting. I imagine most of you know that. You don't want it to be like cozy in my mind, can sometimes feel dark. You don't want it dark, you want it light, bright, easy to see, all the corners right, but also soft, and you want lighting that you can adjust depending upon the time of day and what's going on outside.
Speaker 1:At my group practice I had an office that was. It was really beautiful. It was a big, big room with, again with chandeliers and a fireplace and a really big floor to floor to ceiling double windows that looked out on grass and greenery, so a lot of my clients like to sit where they could look out that window. That was lovely. Where I'm at today, I do not have a window that people can look out, so I have had to come up with other ways to do that. So what I've done is I've put Ansel Adams photographs on the wall that bring nature in. That's what I've had to do.
Speaker 1:Where I'm at now, what can you do with lighting that makes it feel cozy without being dark? And what can you do with artwork that provides a sense of security, safety and, honestly, nature really always works. Now I'm going to tell you one little caveat about this. When you're thinking about artwork, I am. I told you I'm no artist, but I have seen people who really like relying on, like abstract art or edgy art and, you know, depending upon who you work with, that could be really appropriate. But I think it's helpful to have photographs that are familiar to people, of subjects that are familiar to them and comfortable with them. Even that, though, sometimes you can get some really funny reactions. So I have to tell you my very first office that I set up that I was so excited about, I found this big print of a photograph to hang over the couch that I was able to see, to hang over the couch that I was instantly, as soon as I saw it, I was like, oh, I've got to have that.
Speaker 1:So where I live, you all know I live near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. There is a place in the park that's called Cades Cove, which is this really really popular space. It's a low lying, flat Cove area surrounded by the Smokies. That is a beautiful space to meet, but it's, like you know, meadow, surrounded by forests and mountains. Well, I found a picture of the edge of a meadow with a forest and an old kind of rusty tractor in the foreground kind of an antique looking tractor, and in the forest it was obviously like the picture was taken like around here it would be March, when spring is just beginning to come back, so the forest is still brown or gray, but there were red bud trees beginning to bloom in that forest. That's what's in that picture. I love that picture because when I looked at it I saw what I see in the spring, which is new life coming back after winter. Oh, look at the red buds in the woods. Oh, I love that Like. That picture just instantly brought me joy. I can't tell you how many clients would look at that picture and say why do you have a picture of dead trees on your wall? Oh, my gosh, that was funny. I had no idea that that photograph would end up becoming a projective technique, but it did so.
Speaker 1:Those are some of the kind of things to think about in your physical space, all right, your actual meeting space. And one point I will say about this y'all if the room where you see clients is also the room where you do your work, where you do your billing, where you make your phone calls, where you do paperwork, find some way to separate those two if you can, and I think it's helpful to try to minimize the visual impact of your workspace. We could talk about different ways to do that, but whether it's how you have your chairs arranged, whether it's that you've got a screen up of some sort, or whether you're just really careful to make sure that your desk is clear and there's very little on it, do whatever you can to minimize the fact that your desk is there. I have seen offices where someone had a beautiful setup with, you know, a really nice little cozy arrangement of seating for client work, and then three feet away had a desk that was a foot and a half high with papers and just total chaos and confusion. So you want to. You want to kind of make sure that you're minimizing that space or minimizing the impact of your workspace on your space with your clients. You want to kind of keep that to a minimum. So we talked about the outside of your building itself. We talked about your waiting area, which is kind of like the front door essentially, and then we talked about your actual physical space, your consulting space.
Speaker 1:As I begin to wrap this up, let me just go over a couple of final points. I've got four things I want to cover here real quick. The first one is ultimately, this is a professional space and you want it to look professional, warm, welcoming, comfortable, comfortable. But professional. That means, like I just said, no cluttered desks, no broken furniture, no piles of recycling weighing to be taken out, and I, and even when you're trying to do things that you just know are meant to inspire your clients, less is more. I once went to a massage therapist who was renting space from someone else, so I do not know who actually owned the space, but whoever it was had put signs with quotes that were meant to be inspirational, literally everywhere in that space. I know what they were trying to do, but it didn't work. It was just like overwhelming and gave your brain way too much to think about. So just remember, less is more.
Speaker 1:Your, your clients, come to you with a full. Their minds are so full, there's so much going on in their hearts and in their spirits. They need simple, they need an environment that is instantly soothing. So think about that. The second point so professional is one thing. The second thing is, even though I want to be professional, I do want it to be personal, like, don't be afraid to have a few things that are unique to you, a few items from your travel. A picture, actually, of your family somewhere, or some version of that, a picture of your dog, right, don't be afraid, because clients do want to know you as a human being and in whatever way feels appropriate and feels good to you. Having small personal touches that reflect your personality, your interest, your energy is important and will make your clients feel better. They'll feel more connected to you. So, professional, personalized, certainly want to think about those two things.
Speaker 1:And then and then kind of an overall way to approach this is to think about the five senses. What can you do in terms of sight? What's going to make this place visually pleasing to everybody? The colors on the walls need to be soothing, light, right, the use of sunlight, the access of windows, lighting we talked about all that sound. I didn't talk about sound. Actually, let's talk about sound for just a second.
Speaker 1:So at the bare minimum, you want to have sound proofing. So at the, at the Lillian house, one of the problems that we had that was an unexpected challenge is that a beautiful old Victorian house also has beautiful wood floors which carry sound remarkably well, so you could whisper in one end of that building and hear it in the other. So we had sound machines, white noise, sound machines everywhere outside of everybody's door. We also had lots of rugs. We had throw pillows. We did anything we could to sort of soften the hard surfaces to keep the sound down, and we also were. It was a three story building so it was very easy to hear who was above you, so anyone who had a space above someone else. We added extra padding under the rugs. We did whatever we could to kind of keep the sound under control. That's, that's one piece of sound management.
Speaker 1:Another piece, which is the opposite, is music. Do you want to have some kind of music in your waiting space, in your waiting area? I used to have a radio playing. I tried to put it on classical music. That didn't work very well, because classical music goes from really loud to really soft, really loud to really soft. What I eventually did was I installed some wireless speakers that were hung on the wall up high enough that kids couldn't get to them, that I could run through an app. They were really really good quality. They weren't Bose but they were as good as Bose, where I could play soft kind of generic music in the background, what I what I call yoga music, but that automatically provides a sense of soothing in the space as well.
Speaker 1:So how can you use sound? So what think about the senses? What do they see? What do they hear? What do they smell? Just honestly, a sense of a clean space that smells good is fine, but you can have fresh flowers out if you want. When I first started my practice, I used to have simmering potpourri. I learned not to do that because some people are sensitive to scents, so I had to stop doing that. But you do want to smell clean and fresh. You might want to open some windows every now and then to get some fresh air in. There's not much you can do about taste, unless you want to offer coffee or tea or some some kind of safe snacks. Most people aren't going to do that, but that is something to think about. The last sense is touch. I do think this matters. So having fabrics that feel good, having a pillow that feels good to hold, having having this textures that feel good to touch I think that's important. All of those are also ways that you can think about this. My goodness, who thought there was so much to say about your physical setup. The last thing I want to say is you also want to.
Speaker 1:If you are, especially if you work in the kind of work that I've done, it is good to think about emergency management. If you need to get out quickly, can you do so, and how? If you have a client that needs to get out quickly, what can you do in terms of like something like when it's icy or snowy, how easy is it to get into the building and what can you do about it? But also, if you're working with explosive teenagers or couples where domestic violence has been part of their history or where there's any risk of violence for sure, or just a little drama, you just never know what you're gonna get. Think about that too. How safe are you and what can you do to stay safe or to set it up where it's safe? There's lots of things that could probably be a topic all by itself, but that's also something to think about. So we had all kinds of things put in place in our building to manage safety issues in different ways.
Speaker 1:If you all wanna hear a thought, an episode about that, tell me. I could put some thought into that. I don't wanna go into it now, but I'm happy to talk about that. That would be helpful to you. So I didn't realize how much I had to say about this. But I kinda feel like this all is important and to me I thought it was sort of intuitive and people would just know this. But based on some of the spaces I've seen, I know it is not. People don't always just know this and notice I didn't say a thing about this. Looking like a designer set it up. I'm not talking about whether it all your colors work together and it fits in a magazine. I'm talking about something much more basic than that but that still influences how your clients feel, how they perceive the work and the value and how well they'll do working with you. So that's why I'm going into so much about this and just to give you an idea about like this doesn't have to be complicated or expensive at all. It does not have to be fancy. So you've heard me all the way through this I've been talking about this one building.
Speaker 1:That sounds great, doesn't it? And it was. It was every bit as awesome as you think. It is Three stories, wrap around porches, beautiful spaces, hardwood floors, fireplaces just gorgeous in all kinds of ways. Well, I am no longer at that practice.
Speaker 1:I sold that practice back when the pandemic came along and I went home. I was virtual for a long time after that, just like so many of you. Last summer I realized that I was missing seeing people in person and I went ahead and I by golly went and found myself a little office space that is in a fairly corporate space run by a nonprofit here in my town. Here's the thing. What I had before was I don't even know how big that office was. It was a really good size, with high ceilings. I mean, it was really great.
Speaker 1:What I have now, what I had before, I had two swivel rockers, a love seat, a bookshelf in one part of the room and another part of the room. I had a nice desk that was kind of L shaped. I had a really nice lateral two drawer filing cabinet that was really heavy duty that no one could even see because I had it tucked away in a certain way where people didn't even really notice all that. All of that was in one room. So I had kind of like a workspace and a consulting space, tons of room. Well, where I'm at now is literally eight by 10, y'all it's about the size of a walk-in closet. I couldn't even put a love seat in there. I've got two chairs and a tiny antique desk that is just big enough for my laptop and one very small bookshelf. Like I can barely fit anything in there.
Speaker 1:It has one window that is up high and actually looks out on a construction site or a yard, kind of a concrete area meant to store construction materials. There's nothing pretty about that, but I have been able to set it up in such a way to disguise the weird window looking out into the weird space, while highlighting the fact that there is sunlight coming in. And you know what people are telling me. They're saying, oh, this is so cozy, oh, I really like this, and trust me, it ain't fancy. But it's funny how little it takes to make people feel good. It does take intentionality, though, so I think that's the main thing I wanna share with you guys. I'm gonna post in the show notes below an article that I found that was in. Where was it? I think it was the American Psychological Association. That was actually really good. That kind of went over lots of things to think about with this. That's not what. I wasn't really using that today. I'm using my own experience with you, but it's a good article. I had some good stuff in it, so I'm gonna link that below so you can find that.
Speaker 1:If you want something in writing and I'll just say to you if you need some help with this you wanna think this through or, for that matter, if there's any other specific area about your practice that you can use a little help with, I do offer kind of a one-off coaching consult. It's called a Quick Start Consult and it's a 90 minute work session. I just did one yesterday. I think people are always amazed at how much we can get done in one of these sessions. You are welcome to sign up for one of those at any time. You can go to my website. It's windypitsreevescom forward slash consult. Or if you go to my website windypitsreevescom, there's a button at the top that says start here. That'll take you right to the page that talks about that. So check that out for sure.
Speaker 1:If you'd like a little help, I would love to work with you in any way that I can. Anything I can do to support you and I'd love to hear from you is what did you hear today that was kind of new, any new ideas? I'd love if you did, if I shared something that got you thinking. Reach out to me and tell me, because I love hearing from you. All right, everybody. I apologize for being a little bit long-winded today, but you know what there's a lot to think about. Who knew that's what I got for you. Have a great week, everybody. I hope things are going smooth where you are and that life is good, and I will see you next time right here on the Ideal Practice Pockets. Bye now. Southeast story.
