Data, Dollars, and the Future of Therapy: The Therapist Resource Institute with Sharon Harper, LCSW

In this episode of Therapists Unchained, Sivie Suckerman interviews Sharon Harper, a licensed clinical social worker and the founder of the Therapist Resource Institute (TRI). The conversation explores and emphasizes the necessity of reclaiming professional autonomy and building sustainable careers through authentic human connection and systemic advocacy while also delving into the Therapist Resource Institute as a national platform designed to unify mental health professionals across all licenses and career stages. Harper explains that she created the organization to combat the fragmentation of the field and the growing influence of venture-backed tech platforms that often exploit clinician labor and client data. The sources describe TRI as a supportive professional community that offers practical tools, such as referral networks and business vetting, while aiming to provide a collective political voice through future lobbying efforts. 

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Sharon Harper, LCSW, is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, private practice owner, and the founder of the Therapist Resource Institute (TRI), a national platform created to connect therapists across all states, licenses, and career stages. TRI focuses on strengthening referral networks, providing practical resources, and building collective voice in a field that is often fragmented.

Sharon is also the owner of Sharper Counseling and Sharper Practice Consulting, where she provides therapy, supervision, and consulting to clinicians looking to grow sustainable practices and better navigate the business realities of mental health care. Her background includes work in an acute psychiatric setting, child and family services, and intensive in-home care, giving her a broad view of the system from multiple angles.

Known for her direct and practical approach, Sharon speaks openly about the challenges therapists face—from burnout to business confusion to industry shifts and is focused on building solutions that are grounded, collaborative, and actually useful.

Please check out the Therapist Resource Institute's website! https://therapistresourceinstitute.com/

This episode was produced and edited by Sivie Suckerman, MA, LMHC, ACS

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Hey everybody, my name is Civi Sucreman, and this is Therapists Unchained, a podcast hoping to empower, inspire, and educate mental health clinicians across the country facing this unique systems that we're facing and the ever-evolving mental health landscape. Today I have a very special guest. Oh, I think all my guests are special, but uh I feel like I have recently met someone who is like a sister from a different Mr. as they say. Uh today, joining us, we have Sharon Harper, who is a licensed clinical social worker. She's a private practice owner, and she's the founder of a really, really cool new organization called the Therapist Resource Institute, which is a national platform created to connect therapists across all states, licenses and career stages. It focuses on strengthening referral networks, providing practical resources, and building collective voice in a field that is often fragmented. If that sounds kind of familiar, it's because I feel like Sharon and I were separated at birth. And I don't know how we've gone this long without meeting.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Exactly. Exactly. I feel exactly not only without meeting, but without like aligning and joining the force. You know, I feel like here we are. We're doing it now.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Finally. We're doing it now. So I think Sharon and I were talking about this right before we started recording. Um, as I say in a lot of my podcasts, like I kind of stalk people on social media. And when I see somebody that I'm like, ooh, who's that? What are they doing? I always raise my hand and try to get folks' attention. And I'm always impressed with folks that actually like are interested in, like, wait, who is this person waving their hand at me? And that's what happened with Sharon. Sharon, you had a reel, I think, on probably Facebook, um, where you were talking about the therapist uh research institute or resource institute, and it just really struck me where I was like, How have I not heard about you? Because, and I want you to talk about your work with TRI and building that. Um, but it just it felt so aligned. And I know that you felt the same way. I think you then messaged me on LinkedIn and was like, I just checked you out, and I listened to your first episode of Therapist Unchained, and I think you wrote, and I almost fell over. Yes, literally, I almost fell out my chair. So um I'm always curious. First of all, if you could just give us sort of a little background on like your trajectory in the field, and then kind of give us an introduction to what TRI is and what your vision for it is, and what led you to build this organization.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Sure. So I, you know, there are some therapists that and and professional mental health people who get into this field right out of college or know they want to do it. I did not do that. I actually, my early degrees were in early childhood education and human development, and I thought I was gonna be like a daycare director. Uh, and then I did not go in that direction. Once you'd been fun. You would have been a fun daycare director, I think. I totally. Uh, but I realized um, I just every part of my career, and I and I say this for the people out there who think they need to know everything. I'm an old lady, you don't need to know everything, and things change, and sometimes you just gotta follow the winds and you just gotta see where everything leads you. So, believe it or not, after my bachelor's degree, I went and I was working in fundraising for nonprofits, and then I ended up um becoming a radio broadcaster. And so I spent uh 14 years traveling up and down the East Coast doing radio shows, doing, I mean, all types talk radio, uh, adult contemporary, triple A, rock, country. I mean, I don't think there's a format I haven't done, to tell you the truth. But radio changed a lot while I was in it. And I tell this story because this is going to lead also into why I created TRI. Because radio changed a lot. When I first started in it, it was buildings and there would be like five stations there, and every station would have people in it live. And it was fun and it was exciting. By the time I left radio, you'd be lucky if there was one person on the air live in five stations because of syndication or because of um recordings, because of technology and consolidation, right? We opened up the consolidation laws. So one company could, you know, it used to be, I don't know if people know this, but back in the day, one company could not have, you know, the the monoliths that they have now, right? They couldn't. That was against the law. And then they changed that law. And then all of a sudden, you could have one company that could literally have own half of the South. Like, so you're you think you're getting your information from different companies and you're not. You're getting it from one company, and that one company, and I and I sat in rooms where they were like, don't say this in news, do that, like, because they own everything, they control everything. So by the time I left radio, um, I I really always had the passion again for early childhood education. And when I went back and looked at my stuff in psychology, and when I looked at my stuff, I was like, oh, all my A's were always in psychology, all my A's were in sociology, all my so that was it. I decided to go back to school, and my husband said, if you're gonna do it, do it full time, like go all in. And that's what I did. I went back for my master's degree, I was much older than most of the people I was in school with. I was 40. Um, and so I I loved it. Like I became a licensed clinical social worker. I decided to do social work because I like the micro, meso, and macro field. I like the idea of thinking how the environment and cultures and things that happen to us as a people collective affects us. And so uh I've been doing that. And I went from and in my early career, of course, I did what most of us used to do intensive in home. And I worked at a hospital, and then I became an acute care hospital manager, and then I went back and I did outpatient. And uh at some point I I knew I wanted to be my own boss, and so I went into private practice. So that is how I that was my um path to get to private practice. And private practice came very easy for me. I really did well very quickly. I had given the the agency that I was working with at the time, I had given them two years. I said, Hey, do you mind if I work for you part-time and I'm gonna build this practice? And I didn't have to, I could have left them in a year, but I had I had committed. And so I had done that and I had stayed working with them. And then people started coming to me when I did really well in private practice. Friends and people I used to go to school with would call me and be like, Hey, Sharon, I'm gonna be in the area, you know, going, can we go out to lunch? And we go out to lunch and they were like, So tell me about private practice. Like, how'd you do so well? Uh, and so then I started consulting on the side and working with people on their psychology today profiles or working on their referral sources. And that was my first inkling that things were changing. When I was consulting, because what I had gone through and how easy it was for me. Now, granted, I'm I'm comfortable talking to people. So I think, well, of course, that helps in a first meeting, or that helps, you know, when you're building business. But the referral sources and the online systems were all changing tremendously. And that was one of my first inklings, as I said. Then I started working with another therapist, and she was in the Richmond area, and she had had a group practice, she had done space solutions, but she had moved over into credentialing, and she started telling me how much was changing. That it used to be getting credentialed would take a couple of months, and now it was months with it, you know, capital M underlined, highlighted, and that all these systems were being invaded by a lot of companies that were changing both our referral sources, our directories, our credentialing. And that's when I started looking into that. And once I found out the connection to insurance companies in this, well, that had me spitten mad, I'm not gonna lie. Like I was like, oh my gosh, how do people not know that these systems, like that insurance companies are now investing in them? And so when they're holding up certain people, or or I shouldn't say holding up purposely, but when when there's a delay in individual, you know, therapists in private practice or small practices, when there's a delay for them getting business and there's not a delay for a platform that an insurance company has invested in. Well, now we have now I went from spit and man to now having a real issue.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

Oh, absolutely. And I think we talked about this in our pre-interview. They're how blatant they are about it now, too. Like I keep seeing this headway reel on Facebook, I think, where there's the woman and she's like, she says, they make it so that I can get higher reimbursement rates than I could on my own. And I was like, You're saying the quiet part out loud. Like, how are they having these special relationships? So, and and then there is the the rapid credentialing as well, which is rapid credentialing, but but and here's another problem.

SPEAKER_00 8:53

And so my thing is therapists can work anywhere they want, but I want you to have the information because I'm not against therapists trying to make a living. I'm not against therapists trying to get their business up and going. I'm against when they don't tell you or when there's a lot of information that are is missing. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about what you just said about higher rates. Hold on. Do me a favor, guys, before you go and sign up with a company, check and see if there's an insurance company that is invested in it. Because if there's an investment in it, then they might be in profit sharing, which means you think you're getting more per accession, but you're paying a fee to a platform and the platform may be giving it back to the insurance company in profit sharing. You did not make more money. You're not making more, that's not making more money. In fact, you might be making less because you're giving away fees that if you were on your own, you wouldn't be paying. I don't pay any fees, right, to get my to get my um reimbursement. I don't, I don't pay a platform a fee to get my reimbursement, and you are. So are you really making more? I'm not so sure about that. And then we have the second layer, which I know that you've talked about. Companies that tell you they're gonna give you free things and they're taking client data. Yep. Even if it's aggregated, and by the way, aggregated means they're just taking names off things, but if they are giving information to insurance companies, I need everyone who is listening today to think about why. Why, first of all, why is an insurance paying you more? Well, yeah, why why would that ever start? Right, because they're they're nickel and diming everyone else, and they have the right to come back and ask for money back. We can spend a whole nother episode talking about the ridiculosity of clawbacks, right? Because I think that I don't understand how that's even remotely legal.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

Well, uh, and then I mean, again, not to go on a tangent with that, but and the fact that you have these ERISA plans, which are these the employer employer funded plans where they don't even have to follow clawback rules. They can do whatever they want. And there's no I was told to call the Department of Labor because and then the Department of Labor was like, we can't do anything. So I mean, that's a whole nother that's a whole other thing.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Right. No, but that's exactly it, that powerlessness, right? Exactly. So so if if people are telling you you're making more money, but nobody's actually sitting down with you and doing the math, I think that's questionable. If things are moving quicker in a system when you're in a system where the insurance company gets something out of it, whether they get the data from clients or they get money from a profit sharing or they get like, I think that's questionable. And I think therapists have the right to know about that. I think that if there's systems where they're telling you something is free or quick, and then they're taking information and they're using it to decide in the future, maybe what DX's, you know, uh cost them a lot of money. So maybe we don't approve those anymore at all. Or maybe we know that those are the ones that are easy to call back on, or like so, so again, it's all about these systems. And now we have to go to the next, sorry, I'm just gonna launch. I'm happy to you guys. Oh, I love it. I love it. Okay. Do it. Let's let's go to the next part of the system because this is where I have a significant complaint that I don't understand why our associations aren't being louder and bolder and braver about this. I don't understand why our conferences are promoting companies that may be hurting our not just our therapists, but our clients. Like, if there's lawsuits or complaints with the Better Business Bureau and these things are hurting therapists and clients, why are they front and center at our biggest conventions or on our industry magazines? That is very troublesome to me. Where is the checks and balances? Like, I do so these are the things. I'm just the type of person that was like, hey, this is kind of part of my French, but this is bullshit. Why isn't anyone doing anything about this?

SPEAKER_01 12:43

Well, and it's so and it's so perfect that you're saying that because, first of all, I did have um the executive director of our local chapter of the American Mental Health Counselors Association, the Washington Mental Health Counselors Association, and we talked a little bit about this. What's really resonating was the the where this podcast actually was birthed was from a um the American Counseling Association has a magazine called Counseling Today or something like that. And I saw an article where they were basically applauding these tech platforms, these VC-backed platforms, and they were naming them and they were like, this is great for the field. And I was fucking furious. And I wrote a letter and started get trying to get people to sign off on the letter. So I a hundred percent agree with you. And I don't know what the end game is. I it I think they they put it under this guise of client access, that it opens up client access. But I think the single biggest issue with our professional associations, and I'm not sure how you feel about NESW because we have different licenses, but I can speak to the ACA in the messaging that I've gotten, which is that professional association isn't actually for the professional.

unknown 13:54

Right.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

It's not for the professional. They don't advocate, they advocate for the profession, they advocate for client access, but I never hear them advocating for the clinician.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Right. Well, and is it client access? Or again, are they is is data going to places that our association should also be sticking up for? So let's pretend like they they they backed into this, they didn't realize it, they have these agreements. Okay, now there's been like a huge lawsuit, right? With headway. And they're not alone. Like there's complaints, there's all these things. We know about the zombie profiles, which you know, I'm sure you and I are gonna get into. But um, so we know all these things are hurting not just the clinicians, but the clients. And and if and if associations can't stick up for us, and you go to Capitol Hill because of immigration, why are you not going for data protection for our clients? Why are you not going for data protection for the therapists? This is our this is our therapeutic stuff. I wrote in one of my newsletters, if you had a list of the things, the complaints that these companies have, and it was a local like clinic, right? And you were like, oh, they data share, they spread names, they're looking for how not they're giving you short-term access, but with the long-term goal of not paying so much for them to get this care, or maybe to figure out which ones are too costly, would you ever send your clients there? Like would you ever in a million, if you there was this local place that had these data breaches and all these things, you would never in a million years think of sending your clients to it. You would that would not be on your referral source. So why are the biggest names in the business that have the most money, by the way, why are you partnering with these places and promoting them when you don't have to? Money. But they have enough. And and by the way, are they shooting themselves in the foot? Are you making a lot of money right now? But are you thinking, what happens in three? You know, because we already start are starting to see what I say is the second wave, which is super scary, guys, by the way, which is when they st when they start combining, when these companies are like, okay, there's 37 of us, there's a new one every day. There's literally, and you know, I'm at a place now where a lot of the TRI members and even the people who just read our newsletter, write me and say, Hey, Sharon, I got this email. Who's this company? Who owns it? And I do the research, and I'm like, okay, this was their seed round, this is their funding stream, this is who's in it. And they're like, holy cow.

SPEAKER_03 16:11

Right?

SPEAKER_01 16:11

They're like, because but I'll do the research. Didn't now I'm gonna get it wrong. Alma just merged with one, and now I can't spring out. Was it spring? Yeah, so we're already seeing it.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

We're already seeing it. Right. And what happens when they keep going? And who who owns your notes? Who owns your stuff? What happens when these by the way, forget when these companies are doing well. What happens when these companies fold? Because there's 37 of them. Where does where does all your client stuff go? Are you just gonna wake up one morning and not be able to get into your system and you don't have your clients' numbers, you don't have anything? I mean, there's so many things that I wish the organizations that are supposed to be helping us had looked into, thought about, questioned. But now that other people are, my real problem is that they're not working with, like I have multiple people, because I can see their emails, who are with companies that should be reaching out to me saying, How do we, how do we fix this? How do we make this better? And instead they're not. They're not. They're not they're not looking for a way. As you said, maybe maybe it's the check, maybe it's other things, but they're not looking for a way to go back to protect us. And that is why TRI is very strict. I mean, I have a whole forum that you want to advertise with us, I have a whole forum that you have to fill out that says, Where's your money from? Are you are you licensed in the United States? Where's your money from? What do you what's your what's your exit plan? By the way, when I was building TRI, what I learned is if you're getting funding streams, you have to, in most cases, have an exit plan.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Does anyone know that?

SPEAKER_01 17:38

Can you quickly go into like talk more about what TRI actually is so people can put this into a context? That would be great.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Oh, yes, absolutely. So um I thought the first thing that I would do would was form a union. Hello, everybody, all the unionizers, because I see this all the time on social media. All the unionizers, high five with you. But we can't do that. We can't. We can't.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

And that's I have to say, this is funny because I when you said that the first thing you thought of was to form a union. I just had a I just had like this flashback to my first job out of my master's degree in Chicago. I was working for community mental health, being paid like nothing, like 28 grand a year. It really, really bad. And in that job, I contacted the SEIU to try to start a union. So it's just funny, and I'd forgotten about that. But when you just said that, I was like, that's interesting. That was my first thought, too, when I got into the field was we need a union. We need a union. We need a union. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to interrupt, but like continue with your path here.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

Well, it just shows how many of us have thought there's something missing here. There's not an organized group that protects us. And the reason, for those who don't know the end of this story, that Civia and I do know, the reason we can't do that is because we don't work for one company. We don't work in one industry. We work in healthcare, we work in higher education, we work in regular school systems, we work in jails, we work for ourselves, we work in group practices, we work, we are not in one system. When you think of a union, you think of everybody in a car union, right? Everyone who's unionizing, everyone is working in the car manufacturing industry. We are not. We are maybe some of us work in a car industry. Who knows? We are so far all over the map that we we do not have one system that we would be trying to bargain with. My second idea was with legal counsel was then what can we do? And I realized the reason our associations are not working is because our associations, as you just said in this interview, are by license. Our licenses are by states. And then in the individual states, we have these job settings, job titles, niches. I mean, we have lots of individual places, but nobody ever said, well, how do we go across? And TRI was built to go across. I decided it would be a professional membership community, a real professional membership community, not for one part of our job, for every part of our job and for every job, for every person, every license. So we go all the way from master's level students up to retirees. I actually have two retirees that are, or one who's a retiring and one who's a retiree, trying to help me put together enough programs in there so that they feel like they're part of the business when they're sort of doing that, like I've stepped out of direct care or I've stepped out of this job, but I don't want to like have nothing. I want to stay involved. I want to mentor somebody told me. I want to, I want to do things. I just don't want to do it like in the job that I was doing it. So I decided that our professional membership community would be there for everyone. Every single one. By the way, if you are on one of these platforms, you're welcome in there. I'm not gonna shame you that we're not allowed, by the way, when you get there, you have to sign an agreement. You are not allowed to have, you know, mean girl energy, tech row energy. Like you, this is a welcoming, supportive, no dumb questions type of place. This is where everyone can go and we've already had people talk about I'm feeling vulnerable because, you know, uh I don't for the first time I don't have a wait list. We've had people in there talking about one of my clients noticed I was sad. We've had people talking about taxes. We've had people talking, like this is the type of place where you can really talk about what it's like to be in this field and supported, not some anonymous Facebook person who starts saying, you should know that, or that somebody asked that question seven years ago. Why are you asking that question? This is not shame-based. The idea started to give us power in these systems, but what I realized is we also needed day-to-day support for sustainability because our exit rates are pretty darn big. Oh, yeah. We don't want to keep doing that. We want to be able to stay in this career for as long as we want, for making as much money as we need to live, truly live, but with the sense of community, even if you're a private practitioner or if you're the only, you know, therapist at a jail, or if you're the school social worker or a school psychologist. Like we needed a place where all of us could come together and then talk about these things that are coming in, then talk about the places that are not representing us correctly, and going to them and saying, No, I'm not directing it. I'm gonna let the members tell me what they care about. And then I'm going to go to Congress and I'm going to go to the associations and I'm going to say, I would like to be the bridge. I'm not gonna I don't want to shame you, but thing, but you guys have like things have gone through your fingers. So how do we come together and start getting some of our power back?

SPEAKER_01 22:30

A hundred percent. I mean, and that's like the whole reason for the podcast. Because I have met so many amazing people from all over the country while doing this podcast, realizing we need to know about each other. Because you shouldn't be alone going to Congress when I know a bunch of other people over here who are putting policy proposals together. Like, that's right. Why are we doing this separately? Why are we not connecting with each other? Which is what I loved about TRI because it felt so aligned with what I'm trying to do, which is like, hey, everybody, like I keep saying, this podcast, I feel like my goal is for it to be a megaphone, to be like, hey, everybody, this is what's happening. We need to understand this and to be able to highlight folks like you who are doing work. So people aren't reinventing the wheel. We shouldn't have 10 different people all over the place trying to do the exact same thing, right? Because there's power in numbers and we should be coming together. We have a louder voice. That's right. And there's more bandwidth because you have more people. Because it's this is hard stuff. I mean, we're fighting the biggest systems that exist. And so we can't do it in isolation. So I love this idea of community that you're building with TRI because that would exactly, and we've already talked too, like we're gonna do something together. I know we will. We've already talked about that. Like, there is there's enough of uniqueness in what we're both doing, but enough overlap in what we're both doing that I would, you know, and Sharon knows this, that uh I want to find a way to partner with you to get the word out on what you're doing. Because I think the other thing is people can sometimes get too precious with this stuff too, and it defeats totally the bigger goal of where we're trying to go, right?

SPEAKER_00 24:04

And I guess I get it. There's a lot of ownership. There's a listen, there's a lot of hard I know what I've put into this business. I know the hours, I know that I know the getting up at 5 a.m. and working on this before because I still a private practice owner, guys. Like I still have a real client list that I go and I work and I do all of that, right? Um, I know how much money and time and sweat and I understand what it's like to build a business. But my favorite thing I'm gonna give you a shout out if you don't mind, is you're like me, which is you said, I want to talk to you, not oh my gosh, you're doing something similar to me. Don't step on my toes. Like and I don't, I don't, this isn't a race. I don't care who wins. I hope we all win. I hope the industry like becomes stronger and better and more powerful because we come together and I understand that someone who's listening to this might worry that they are doing something niche. And I say, I don't care, come talk to me. I'll talk to you. I find the people who really don't want to talk to me though are the ones who are making money off of the unhealthy systems and who, you know, and and those are the people that you're right, we don't have anything in common. You're right. You're right. Don't don't contact me because I'm not gonna promote you if I know who you're getting paid by. I'm sorry. And you and instead, I think I think if TRI won't work with you, then maybe you should sit down with your mirror and your your ethics that you had to sign to. And I think it's time for you to have a real sorry, I know Easter is like Jesus. You're coming to Jesus, it's time.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

I think you were going there. I'm a Jew. I'm an atheist Buddhist Jew, so I can say that.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

Yeah, but like if if I won't work with you, that's don't get mad at me. If I'm writing, by the way, I've had lots of people reach out to me. They're assuming, they're always assuming I'm talking about their company, which is hilarious because I don't name companies. But if you think that what I've wrote about is so close to what you're working in, then you need to think about where you're working and what you're promoting and what you're making money on. Don't write me and say, you know, we should have a private conversation because I can tell you I'm like, I can tell you you've got this wrong. No, no, no. If you think this was your company, then chances are I'm not the one that has something wrong.

SPEAKER_01 26:07

I think that going back to the fact that I I don't see you as competition. I hope you're incredibly successful in what you're doing. But I think it also just it's I think that is also happening across the field with scarcity, this very scarcity mindset where, and I think that's part of the push with like these venture-backed platforms of they've now created this system where people are so scared about getting referrals that then they and the reason that referrals are down is because of the platforms, but then they feel obligated to join the platforms because they can't get referrals. And then I hear people joining the platforms thinking they're gonna get referrals, and then they're not getting referrals from the platform. Oh, but you end up in like four or five of them. So now you're paying fees to four or five companies. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, you know, I've coined this term therapist farm, is it cheapens the work we do. It gets in the middle of the relationship with the client. Because if, you know, I mean, I've heard stories about people's psychology today profiles, for instance, being managed by one of these companies. And so people that are reaching out for that therapist are being funneled into one line where then they're handed out to whoever they want to give them to, not even the person that they initially contacted, right? That's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 27:27

So it's like they're not thinking about the zombie, the zombie profiles.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

Is that like are those like ghost networky type things? What is a zombie profile?

SPEAKER_00 27:35

So a zombie profile is let's say that you signed up with one of these companies and now you leave it. They keep your profile up there. So you might be competing against yourself in your own zip code. That's crazy. Because they own your profile.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

That's crazy. And it reminds, I don't know if you I don't know how if how many episodes you've listened to. I know you listened to the first one, but I interviewed Kim Kabar, who's a uh LMFT, and she has got she was a journalist for many years. And I don't know if you heard her story around her psychology today profile got hacked by Grow Therapy. She, well, she had, what was it? She wasn't getting any referrals. She was already with Headway, already with Alma, desperate for referrals, right? And so she deactivated, um, she had two different psychology today accounts for different licenses in different states or something. Then she deactivated them and then had the idea of like, I'm gonna create a new profile, right? Trying to get in front of the algorithm. She went in to record her little video thing, accidentally logged into one of her deactivated profiles. And all of a sudden, she looked at it and it said, This profile is managed by Grow Therapy. Oh my gosh. And the email was changed and the phone number was changed. She didn't even work for Grow. She had interviewed with them, but she didn't even work for them. And that started her down. You want to talk to someone, she's a good person for you to connect with as well.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

Well, that's similar to what happened to me with the Seven Cups.

SPEAKER_01 28:56

So um Oh, seven cups, yes.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

Let's talk about seven cups for a second. Seven cups, yeah. Sadly, because this is owned by a mental health person. So Seven Cups went and just, from what I understand, I'm not there, but literally took profiles off of other directories, put them onto their company so that if somebody was referred to and they searched for me, I was coming up on a platform that I didn't pay for, I didn't work for, and I did not get any referrals through. And somewhere on it, it had very small writing, like that this person may not work. And by the way, it wasn't even mental health people. It was like volunteer. It wasn't even it wasn't remember what they called them.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

It was uh, and you didn't even have to have a license or anything. They were just like friends to talk to, kind of thing. I don't know what they called it, but I know what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

Which is which is, by the way, I mean, talk about legal liability. Like some of that is. I I don't even, I don't even I don't I I wouldn't spend a day without my insurance, I wouldn't spend a day without my lawyers. There's no way I'm doing something that's gonna put me out there like that, where someone might call, let's say they're suicidal. Now they're talking to some volunteer, not even a licensed mental health provider, and you and you, and that profile isn't even like the one that you got paid for. I don't even I don't even know.

SPEAKER_01 30:07

But I mean but I mean I think overall what you're talking about is we've completely lost control over the narrative of our field. 100%. We've completely lost like our it's like how did all of these people outside come in and take over like this? Like we're at the mercy of the uh of all these this money and people.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

So the other part of this is, and and I might have told you this, so I apologize for being repetitive, but so here's what happened. When I found out I was on Seven Cups, in case you guys haven't noticed, I'm not shy. So I went to Seven Cups and I and I wrote them, I need you to take it down. They said, No problem, they didn't take it down. I wrote them again, they didn't take it down. So then I wrote my licensing board, I wrote NASW, I wrote the state's attorney general for where the company was located, and I wrote the Better Business Bureau. And do you know what they did? Nothing, not one thing, nobody from any of these organizations came back and said, Hey, you're right, this is terrible. Do you know how I ended up getting my profile down? I said that I'm a SAG AFTRA member and you don't have a right to own my thing. I own my own identity, and then it came down.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 31:17

Which is, by the way, so that's the other thing that led me to TRI because nobody that was supposed to protect me did. Nobody that was supposed to at least have a conversation with me. Not one of these places called me and had a conversation with me about this. Not one, and I know there's a movement now. I mean, this is years later now. Like this is this is year, oh great. I'm so glad there's a move, like, and and I say this all the time. So help me if I'm asked to sign another freaking petition after the fact of someone hurting a therapist. So help me. Why can we not be proactive? We keep talking to our clients about not getting ourselves in situations. I don't understand why a field, why we haven't figured this out. I don't understand as a field why we have not talked about good faith estimates before they were in front of us. I don't understand as a field why we're paying for CPT codes that we're forced to use with insurance companies. Like, I don't understand why everything in our field is so reactive. The goal of TRI is to give you the day-to-day support, but the bigger goal is to have lobbyists and have a bigger voice before things happen to us, not after.

SPEAKER_01 32:17

I think you're bringing up such a great question, which is like, how did we get to this place where it's a free-for-all and where everything is out of jurisdiction or scope of practice, and that nobody, like our professional associations at that level, nobody's touching this. And I think part of it, one of the issues I see in this is, and I sit on a new board for the Mental Health Professionals Equity Alliance, is the silos of licenses, where to me it's indicative of like how people in this country operate anyway, which is instead of looking at like the big systems that are oppressing us, we fight amongst ourselves instead. And I feel like that's what's happened in the field. And I see that shifting, like when I interviewed the Wamka executive director, where she was like, we're building a coalition now with clinical social workers, with marriage and family therapists, with psychologists, so that we have a stronger lobbying base in the state of Washington. I think part of the reason of starting MHPEA was because it's like we don't have a national association for all disciplines. And we're all fighting for the same thing. We all work in similar contexts, or we were colleagues with each other, or we're doing identical work. We just have a different training focus coming into the work or whatever. But it's these silos that I think has really prevented national outrage and coming together because we feel beholden to these like professional identities, like I'm a licensed mental health counselor, I'm a clinical social worker, I'm a marriage and family therapist, I'm a psychologist. It's like fine. And we don't work in silos. We all work together in a lot of ways. That's right. So I think that it's in trying to preserve professional identity, we've kind of gotten fucked because it's preventing us from being. I mean, how much of the workforce, how many therapists are there in this country? There's a lot of us with different licenses. I can tell you, are you ready?

SPEAKER_00 34:11

Oh, good, good, good. What how many? Okay. You're gonna fall over. There is 1.27 million of us if you go from master's level students up to newly retired. 1.2 million, and somehow we have not figured out. I mean, I think our largest association is a couple hundred thousand. So that's a pro and that's only one, right? And they're all fragmented and siloed. So one person asked me a question, and I and I'd like to address it. They said, I think we need an association that goes across all of this. And and you just mentioned association, and I have two things that I want to say that. And the first one is there's a lot of bureaucracy in an association. I do understand that part of associations. There's a lot, there's a board, your board changes all the time. Like you, you, you, you have very different roles. But the second part is, how can I possibly ask people to join something that you, if you feel that the ones that we have have not been answering the call? I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna like do another one, like, I'll leave your association, and I don't want to compete with associations. TRI wants to be the bridge. We want to sit at the table with you. But I don't want your bureaucracy. I want if I have a lobbyist, I want them to go and fight for something. If 50 people in TRI say this is bothering me, I want a lobbyist to go figure that out that day. I don't want to wait until we have a board meeting and the board proves something and then you know I'm the same way. I'm very just don't operate like that. I'm just like, let's just do it. Let's just do it. Tell me afterwards we can't, but let's try. Right? And then tell me, and then tell me how we can, because you know I'm already everything that I've mentioned on this show. I already have a legal idea of how we can go around it, how we can figure it out. I love it. And I just need the lawyers who do it.

SPEAKER_01 35:43

Well, and that's the thing. That's where it's that coalition building, and it's that networking and it's that connecting, and it's getting people that are as passionate as you are. It's also about educating folks on what's going on, which is like the big big focus of this podcast. Is there's so many people that don't understand why so many of us are pushing back. You know, I see it where it's like, I need to make a living. And I'm like, I get that. I totally am not gonna disparage you. I would not disparage anybody for being on headway. Like to get started. I I understand it, but I also think it's important that you have the information so that you you know what you're signing up for and that you're honest with yourself about the long-term implications of that choice for the whole field. It may be a seem like a short-term solution right now, but the long-term impact could mean that, yeah, you're making pretty good money now, but you may not have a job in a few years because of it.

SPEAKER_00 36:37

That's exactly right. That's exactly and well, and here's the other part that I always like to remind therapists, and this is very true. There's a reason that they offer so much money for you to bring your friends in in recruiting. There's a reason, and that's because of how much money they make off of us. Like, just think about that. They're offering hundreds and hundreds of dollars for you to recruit another therapist. I see more ads at conferences in magazines, in and that, and I know those therapists are getting more and more and more recruitment offers. Like, bring your friend, I'll give you $300, $400, $500, right? Why aren't they spending that money getting these people clients? That's a big question mark that you should, again, before you get involved in these, or if you're already involved in these, you should be asking this. Why am I getting more emails or solicitations to bring a friend in and offered more money than you then I'm seeing commercials on TV to get me clients?

SPEAKER_01 37:34

It feels like a pyramid scheme when you talk about it like that.

SPEAKER_00 37:37

It certainly does feel like that, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_01 37:40

The Lou LaRoe of mental health. And I also wonder what is the endgame in dumping all of this money into a field that is notoriously underpaid to begin with. And what are these investors planning to get out of it? Because I have to look at ROI on this. Mental health doesn't feel like a field with a really high ROI. So that's what goes back to what you were talking about earlier. There's something else going on here. Well, there's two things the data. The data is my big thing that I think is fueling a lot of this, that there's money to be made elsewhere from client data. But that's my theory.

SPEAKER_00 38:20

Well, yes. So, so right, I think that that's a very decent theory. I think there is actually a lot of money in mental health. It just doesn't come down to us. Okay. I think there's a ton of money in mental health. But again, when they when companies are nickel and diming us and taking back $125 because they don't think that this happened the way, you know, there wasn't enough medical necessity. Which by the way, I don't even understand medical necessity. I think if a person comes into your room and they say, I need help, that's medical necessity.

SPEAKER_01 38:48

Like it do you know that there is no true definition of what medical necessity is?

unknown 38:52

Of course.

SPEAKER_01 38:53

There isn't. There isn't there's none. There's none, it doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_00 38:56

At any time, at any moment. Right? Well, and and we're gonna jump onto my other soapbox. Are you ready? I love it, but bring it.

SPEAKER_03 39:04

Bring your soapbox.

SPEAKER_00 39:05

Okay, the other soapbox that I have is not only is there not a true definition of medical necessity, and it's and it gets and it's arbitrary because the companies then get to decide things. I think the entire system is quite interestingly anti-getting help on purpose. Tell me more. I think that there's a lot that gets done to people when they are in a state of fragility. And I just wonder sometimes why we're not proactive in our mental health system, why we're not proactive in our healthcare system at all. Everything about the American system is very reactive, right? I mean, you have to like you have to pull teeth in order to get an exam, even if like 15 members of your family had a certain type of heart disease, you have to pull teeth to get approved to have that as an exam. Well, and then who are the people with big lobbyists? It's the companies that make money off of us being sick. So if we talk about less people getting outpatient treatment and more people getting inpatient treatment or or may, oh my gosh, these school shootings, what are we possibly gonna do about it? I don't understand why kids have more anxiety. I mean, if I see one more person say, I think kids have more anxiety because of social whatever, and they're not also talking about the fact that they've been having active shooter drills since they were in kindergarten. We know that there's things that are making the population more anxious. We know that there's things that are increasing the suicide rates. We know that there's things, and yet we go, oh my gosh, somebody came into your room and I don't know, you were working with them for a whole year. I think that you're like milking this. Are you kidding me? So I think maybe there's a lot of money in keeping people sick.

SPEAKER_01 40:39

Well, and then it fuels better help and talk space, where you can make money off of all of that with. I mean, talk about data breaches and poor behavior. Like BetterHelp, I think is like the Mac Daddy of that kind of stuff. But what it does, and now I'm thinking about this, I'm a verbal processor. Yeah. But then I see now there are more mental health apps. So now there's like they're they're removing this sort of we we have liability when when we provide services. But now it just feels like, okay, everybody feels like shit and it is fucked up. So everyone's getting on the bandwagon. I saw some app, I wish I could remember what it was called, but it was like adjacent to EMDR. They were like, this isn't EMDR, but it kind of is like EMDR. And you can download an app and in 15 minutes you can do this stuff on yourself. And you don't need it, literally was like, you don't need to go to see a therapist anymore. Right. And I'm like, what the hell is going on? So it's like people are there's a obviously an awareness that mental health people are struggling with their mental health.

SPEAKER_03 41:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

But now it's just a money-making thing where people can get away with doing this stuff where there's no liability, where it's just selling you something. And when it comes down to it, what we all know is the core of therapy is the human-to-human relationship. Of course. And in all of this, where is that now? I mean, I see these newer clinicians, and everybody is so afraid of not having enough clients. People are financially strapped. We don't get paid enough. And so the whole focus of the field becomes so, and I get that we need to make money, but it starts to really feel like it's operating from that place and not like why we all got into this, because they're putting us in this scare place of scarcity where we're forgetting about why we're therapists to begin with. And it starts to be about surviving us trying to survive so that we can help and sit with other people. And it's just become a commodity. I get maybe that's just like the overarching thing. It feels like they're trying to turn this into a commodity just a commodity.

SPEAKER_00 42:47

Well, hold on. And I'm and I'll challenge you because bring it, bring it. Okay, ready? Because I actually think that we're very underpaid. And when they start making us think that we're asking for too much, uh and I agree. I I think I think there's another hidden agenda. When you think, like, oh my gosh, you should be a martyr, you should love what you're doing. This is what you should do it because you love it. I think that we're buying into their game, and I don't want to buy into their game. I consider us when you think of, I think, I believe somebody out there can um write me if I'm wrong, but I think it's nurse practitioners that we have the exact amount of time in school, time before licensing, and we have even more steps than them about hours and then the licensing exam. And I think it's we have more steps than them, and they make on average $50,000 more a year than us, even when they're starting. Well, and think about that. Think about that. What we are saying in that moment, that somehow that they are doing something different to than we are, and that our job is less. I also think because our income has been so slowly moving, like instead of largely moving like other industries, I think that ours is going down. I feel like I I I feel like well, I feel like that's gonna be the next point data point. Like all these people that have gone into these platform companies, when They start really reporting how much they're making. Like when we have a lot of data on this, you're going to see, right, that ours probably went down. I agree with you. And again, definitely compared to what the cost of living is, right? The call, we're nowhere near making what we need to for the cola.

SPEAKER_01 44:12

Well, I also want to say that I I'm not disagreeing with the fact that we need to make money and that our time is valuable and we should be making more money. What I'm saying is that because they've created this scarcity. Oh, yeah. It has created, they've put us in a place where we have to be so concerned about money that I think it's harming the field.

SPEAKER_00 44:36

Yes. Because okay, so now, yes, now we're definitely on the same page because I'm I'm I really do believe that we need to make more from the beginning. I think that's the other reason these platforms seem really uh great to somebody just coming out of school. I mean, I've I've done it, right? I've worked in the mental health, I've worked with severe mental illness, I've worked with people who are, I say this, everyone knows what I mean in the field, that are that can be intimidating to a new clinician. And so if somebody came to me when I first came out of school and said, hey, you can stay in your pajamas and just open your laptop and I'm gonna pay you for this, sure. I totally get that. I totally understand why I like again, I'm not against the therapist, I get that. But what I always say when I talk to new clinicians is you don't know what you don't know. Like I would never in a million years give back that time in the community mental health. I would never give back my time in the hospitals. I would never give back that time because you are surrounded by a staff that understands. You learn from people in the moment. There's nothing that you're afraid of. And if you think that private practice means you don't get people with severe mental illness who have psychotic breaks, who who tell you something that they're in harm, that I've done, you know, CPS reports, obviously, in private practice, or an adult whose spouse is stealing their money or beating them up, or, you know, and and not in poor neighborhoods, like this is anywhere. This can be any, you do not fall for the working well. The working well is gonna sit on your couch or across your Zoom lens, and they are gonna tell you someone is hurting them, they are having psychotic ideals, they are suicidal. I would not replace my time of working with teams because every single time that happened in my office, I completely knew what to do next. I am very proud that everyone has stayed safe in my practice.

SPEAKER_01 46:14

So, and I think, you know, your training as an LICSW is more systems focused than like a counseling degree. Hearing what you're saying, it's making me think about, you know, I got my start mostly, I worked with SMI initially in a like an independent living residential kind of setting and did more case management work. And then I did school-based mental health in wildly different communities from the south side of Chicago to a very wealthy suburb of Seattle. So, like polar opposites. What it instilled in me, because I got my start in Chicago, I always say I was raised by social workers, was understanding the systems that people are in and being in those systems, because I feel like now that I'm a group practice owner with newer clinicians, I hire associates. I have to sort of through my own experience help them understand the larger systems at play because they went right into a group practice setting. They haven't necessarily had that being within a system, whether it's community mental health or a school or a hospital, whatever, right? All these different systems to really understand the impacts of those things on clients. And even with like referrals or all of that stuff, I feel like there's a it does a disservice to our ability to fully serve the entire community. I also think people over-specialize too quickly. But that's another conversation.

SPEAKER_00 47:40

And that's that's something that I know everyone thinks that they have to have a niche. I don't think you do. I think you have to have things you're interested in and you could take it from there because you'll you'll learn things over time. The work of the people are being pushed.

SPEAKER_01 47:51

People are being pushed to niche now. And I'm like, am I just old? Like, am I aging out of this? Because this is not how I was trained. I'm a proud generalist. I'm proud to be a generalist because it opens up my referral base. I feel like you put anybody in front of me and I can figure something out. I can work with them. I can figure out how to work with them. And so I think we're overly niching. Everything feels like it's like narrowing.

SPEAKER_00 48:13

Yes. And it's what we not need or what we need the least. Sorry, that wasn't great grammar. But that's what we need the least, you know. I don't know if you guys have read my newsletters, but I say I write the way I talk. So if the sentences, you know, make no sense. There you go. Now you know why they sound like that. But yes, I think these are you're making really great points. And I love that you were starting conversations on them. I think the other part of TRI is that there's so many of these conversations that we're not having. Like, right what you and I just said, what you just said, I love what you just said. I want to give you full credit. Also, by the way, I love therapist farms. I think like we should all use that term.

SPEAKER_01 48:49

We're gonna we're gonna make it go viral.

SPEAKER_00 48:51

Let's make it go viral because that is what these are, right? These are therapist farms. And I worry that people are gonna leave this field in those therapist farms or in private practice or what out in the field because they've niche, because these platforms are not doing what they promised, and they're gonna think they're bad at this. And it's gonna have nothing to do with the quality of work that they could have done as a therapist. It's going to be that they started from a negative space. They're all of these things that we talked about, they're not getting the support, they're not getting the help, they're not getting the training, and they are gonna walk and they're and I am so worried for the profession that people are gonna think they're not good at something, and I know they can be. If if you got through school, then there's something about this that you are good at or that you would be good at. And if you are not feeling it because you're in a platform and you are not getting clients, then then it is not you.

SPEAKER_01 49:39

And so, and so And there's no community there either. There's no culture community cons. I mean, I'm sure some of them do consultation groups or whatever, but like uh you can't work in a vacuum, especially in your early years in the field. I just think it's a recipe for burnout.

SPEAKER_00 49:54

I agree. And burnout and just and and again, being with the wrong place, with the wrong type of clients, because that's the other thing I hear about these platforms, is they'll sign up for something and they they get things thrown at them that they don't feel competent in. Now, what you're saying, it's great to be a generalist. It's very different to work with something you don't feel confident in and to worry about that because that is it, you're gonna worry about seeing that client the night before. You're gonna worry every session, you're gonna feel intimidated. I remember the first time I worked with a really angry parent, you know, and that stuff is intimidating. I don't care now. Like now I know what I'm doing, but but you need people to talk about and talk with in those moments. And I hope that hearing this on this podcast and hopefully within the community of TRI lets you know you're not alone and you're not bad at it. You just don't have the right support.

SPEAKER_01 50:39

I a hundred percent agree. I always tell clinicians in my group practice, you will never have the level of support you have right now. Now is the time to explore clients that you feel a little incompetent with. And I feel like we're losing that. Yes. Because even a lot of group practice owners are opting for this 1099 model, which I personally don't like. I'm just gonna be honest, I'm judgy about that. I think that you're not really a group practice, you're a managed service organization. You're an MSO at that point, and you're not. That's my opinion. I'm just gonna say that. And we've I feel like the industry is losing this sense of we're a field that's always in training. I always tell people consultation never ends. Like you can't, you cannot get cocky in this field because you're gonna fuck someone's head up if you get too cocky. And I think that again, it goes back to that scarcity thing where it's become such like economically driven. And again, we need we should be paid a million dollars. Fine. But that scarcity, I think is we're losing our connection to the work itself and what it takes to have a sustainable career, which requires community collaboration, consultation, mentorship throughout your career. I think that's right. That's 100%. And these models, these current platforms, that the models that we're working under now just do not support it.

SPEAKER_00 52:04

Therapist forms is the best way to say this because you're you're not in a place where you're getting that hand holding that you absolutely deserve. There is nothing wrong. Dear clinicians, dear new clinicians, dear older clinicians, dear people who've been in the field for 40 years and people who've been in the field for four months. You sometimes need hand holding. You need support and you need structure and you need to understand what's happening and why it's happening, and you need a place where you can say, this makes me feel afraid. Now, I'm not gonna say every government agency or every hospital or every group practice is is the right place. Sure. But here's what they don't do. They don't also exploit your client data. Like, yeah, they also aren't in, you know, legal things because they're selling your client data. Like, I think these are this is like the conversations we need to have. And I still think that there's ways you could do both. I think that there's ways you could work at a community organization or, you know, um in a hospital part-time while you're like if your ultimate goal is to build that private practice, I get it. I totally get it, you know? But it doesn't mean that it has to be all or nothing, especially, and I want you to hear this if the all means that you're not in this business in three years. Exactly. That's where you have to say, okay, I might not want to work with that person who's, you know, has schizophrenia. That might, that person is smelly and scary and this, that, and the next thing. Go do it. Do it with a team. It doesn't mean you have to work with them forever, but at least know what the signs are, know what the symptoms are. Know what it really looks like when you're working with somebody who has one of these issues. Know what it's like when you work with a family who's in. I mean, I did in-home in motels, in motels. They did not have a home. I did in-home once in a car. They did not have a home. But you know what I'm not afraid of? I'm not afraid when somebody comes into me and says, Hey, I'm really worried about my family member because all of a sudden they're not sleeping. They've been awake for three days and they started talking to God. And like, I'm not afraid of that. And I can walk them through that. As I said before, all of these things will end up in your room. Do not think that private practice saves you from any of these conditions. You will get bipolar, you will get psychotic, you will get family members of them, you will get people who are poor, you will get people who live in motel, you will get all the you will get people that go through a divorce and now are living in a motel. And they will come to your system no matter where you are. And I hope you feel very competing in those things. And if you don't, and you're with a platform right now that is not giving you people, taking money from you, selling data, and not making you feel competent in the areas you need to feel competitive in, let us let us help you find a new way.

SPEAKER_01 54:39

And by let us, you mean TRI.

SPEAKER_00 54:42

I well, I mean TRI and people like you.

SPEAKER_01 54:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I want to hear about yes, a hundred percent. And I'm also I want to hear a lot about TRI. And I also want to say that I think that as I don't want to say this, even within our own field, I see exploitation at the group practice level. I see like we need to do better internally. And so I push back. And one of my projects I'm talking now, I'm collaborating with someone on, is to have a leadership academy, not how to run a business. This is different. This is how to be a leader. Yeah, that's great. Because there's a lot of folks, I know you, and this is kind of a segue. I know you help with business training as far as that kind of thing. And I think that's a vital, vital resource that people need to learn. And complementary to that, I think that we need to teach clinicians how to be leaders. Absolutely. So they can create, they can create the environment where clinicians can thrive. That's right. And where we're not getting sucked into the scarcity mindset and turning into a mini headway ourselves, where we're becoming the ones exploiting our own. I have a lot of concerns about that. I don't think people necessarily go into it with that intention, but I think the systems are so broken that fear takes over and then leadership becomes very poor. And then it pushes people into the VC platforms because they're like, well, at least, you know, I could probably make more money at this VC platform than I can working for this exploitative person over here.

SPEAKER_00 56:15

That's right. That's right. We I think we have to do better on all the fronts. I think that whether you're in an agency, whether you're in a group practice, I think that good. I hope I hope if there's something that comes good out of the VC backed platforms that have just absolutely inundated our industry. I hope it's that things become more competitive. Money has to go up, and and these companies have to do better by the newer clinicians. Like I hope that happens. I think that would be a great Yeah, I would love that.

SPEAKER_01 56:43

Yeah. So talk more about the offerings because we we should be kind of starting to wind down this conversation because I could talk to you forever. But I really want you to highlight some of the offerings that TRI, what are you doing? Give us some examples of some of the things that you're doing. I know you have your newsletter. I know you have uh it sounds like a consult some consultation kind of group stuff you were talking about. So what where's this the whole spectrum of what you're trying to build here?

SPEAKER_00 57:09

Sure. Thank you for asking. So the first thing that we think of is community. And we have, of course, uh the break room forum, which is where anyone can go and ask any question at any time where other professionals can answer you, right? They can you can hear really from someone in the field, not from an influencer who hasn't been in the field for five years, but from real people who are in the field and doing this. And and I and I do I do have a little bit of a concern about the influencers, but so let's come back and talk about that another day because I think a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 57:36

Oh, we can have a whole episode on that.

SPEAKER_00 57:38

A whole episode on how they've gotten approached by these companies and how much they're selling these companies. And they're no longer in the business. So if somebody's asking you, I talked to somebody this week who pays who's paid twenty thousand dollars in marketing for just to work one day a week in private practice. I was like, No, like we gotta do better by each other, we gotta do better by each other. That is that is that is shameful that somebody took this money from this woman. That is shameful. That's opportunistic. It's terrible, right? So, okay, so anyway, off my thing. But somewhere like that, like this woman could have came to TRI for less than 30 bucks a month and then a whole bunch of people help her figure out how to market herself for one day a week, which by the way was a weekend. I was like, oh my gosh, you don't have to market anywhere. You just have to contact a couple of therapists and say, I have weekend hours, and I guarantee you're gonna get you're gonna be fine. Nobody should have taken a dime from you, you know, because you could have just said, I have weekend hours, like done. But so we offer that real life conversation. We also have the directory and referral desk. And so if you are a person, now if you're a student or you're retiree, you don't have to put accepting clients, but we have this and you can put accepting clients on it. And I want to talk to you about what we've done differently, because right now it's gonna sound just like a directory. But first of all, it's fun. You put up some fun information about yourself. This is not public facing, this is private facing. But the one problem that I also heard over and over again is that people who are in private practice have a lot of trouble referring to each other. They actually don't always know. So they have a client that wants to come to them. This is outside their wheelhouse. They don't have that stockpile of like, oh, this person deals with this, this person deals with this, and this, and this is who I sent to, you know, for this issue. And so we wanted to really make it an easier way for people to just go on, do a quick, like, you're in this state, you uh accept this insurance, and you can look at what the person specializes, and then you can send them a private referral request. And all of it is you don't give private information, you're setting up a time to talk where you can do 15 minutes. Hey, I have this client, I'm seeing the parent, I don't want to see the child, I see you see children, and you're in Illinois, and I I want to send them to you, and you are I already know you take the insurance, you do this. So all you're doing is confirming that they're still available or that they're willing to take this person. That's it. You're you're just doing the handoff. Everything else is taken already, um has already happened through the directory when you did the search. I've had uh therapists who haven't seen each other in years that met each other on the direct, that saw each other on the directory, were like, oh my gosh, I haven't seen you. Like in years, that's super exciting too that people are connecting through that way. But here's what we did differently. I'll tell you why I didn't do a directory. I did not do a regular pri uh public-facing directory because I think there are incredible organizations out there for Native Americans, for black Americans, for LGBTQ community. I did not want to come in as a ciswoman and just say, here's my directory, my directory is gonna be better than all your. I didn't want to compete with them. So in TRI, you list your website and then you list what directory you want to be found on. If you want to work through Latinx, then you list Latinx. And then somebody can can send their client through. Like you decide how you want to be reached. And you and this way I am supporting the directories that are long overdue and should be growing, because I think that's also how we start taking things back from big corporations, is to support therapist-started directories that are meeting populations where they need to be met and that we're answering for populations that weren't being met in our big old systems. So that is something that is different within TRI, is that we wanted to support those communities, not fight with them, and definitely not compete with them. Third thing that we have, are you ready? Is we have a professional clinic and marketplace. And by the way, this is open to the public. Anyone, if even if you're not a member of TRI, you can go in there today. And this is where therapists get to put up their side businesses. So if you're in TRI, you get to promote. If you have a book, if you have a course, if you have a CEU, if you are a coach or consultant on the side, if you have a retreat that you offer. Finally, a place where just therapists look at it and it's not costing you thousands and thousands of dollars to try to get into a conference system or into a magazine to put it. And this is where I think this is something that's going to grow incredibly. This is where I talked to you about that. I also vet any companies that are not therapist-funded. I vet the therapist-funded ones, by the way, but I also vet companies that are not. You have to be registered within the United States. And if you're not, it has to be a system that I can see and a system that it has that somebody could sue you. I hate to say this. If you're in a different country, I want to make sure that somebody could have have liability.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:14

Can I just say you are the first person that I've ever met that goes to this level of vetting? And I admire it so deeply. And we talked about this in our pre-interview. Yeah. How important that is to you. It's just, I just needed to say that. I love it. It's like the level of vetting that you do is it's just it really speaks to your intentionality with what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:36

That's right. Because I want this to feel safe for mental health professionals. I want this to feel safe. And I don't want, I mean, you're on LinkedIn. I mean, I get 10 things a day. Right. And by the way, I had someone who asked me to be on their podcast. And when I looked them up, it said Detroit. And because I'm me, and I kept digging, and I went and I tried to find their business in Detroit, and their business was not listed in Detroit. And so I wrote them back and I said, I cannot find your business. And they said, Oh, I'm sorry. Uh, I'm in, I forget where it was. I'm in the Philippines. I'm in like they were nowhere near us and they lied. And they lied to me, and they lied on their LinkedIn, and they, this was not an American business. And they were not, and they said, Oh, we're working on our US. And I said, Well, when you're in the US, you call me back.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:18

Keep working on it. Keep working on it. And this makes more sense too with how you vetted me. Because when I saw that, you're like, I don't even remember where you contacted me, or but you found me on LinkedIn and you're like, all right, I've done all my research on you. Yes. So I feel kind of honored that I passed the vetting test. You sure did. You sure did.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:36

If somebody says to me they have a book, again, I'm looking at it. I don't care if you're self-published, but I'm making sure it's out there. I'm making sure you're a real person. By the way, to come into TRI, if you're claiming to be a licensed professional, you have to give us your license number, right? I have to make sure I can really find you. So, and not just me. I mean, I have, you know, people. That's the latest part I want to say about this.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:53

I have people. I love that. I have people. I have people.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:56

But they're therapists who are all doing this volunteering to help TRI grow. They are writing newsletters, they are doing all the things. They are um, we're gonna start. You asked what else we're doing on Wednesdays. We're gonna start sort of like a middle of the week break thing. So we're gonna have like a calm down video, or somebody's doing a Reiki video for us, or brief breathwork, or right? So that these are therapists that are in TRI that said, Yeah, I'll do this. I want to do this. We also have our meetings. We have our once a month happy hour where we get together. It's five o'clock on the eastern coast. I apologize a little bit for the people on the Pacific coast, that it's about two o'clock.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:28

A little teetotaling in the afternoon.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:31

That's right. But it's just a release. Like we've had the best, most fun conversations for privacy. Uh, let's just say our first one involved. What did I say? It was um sex, it was money, and it was plastic surgery for our clients. Like this is what we were talking about, right? And these are and these are in the Zoom link is the HIPAA compliant, so we can talk. But I always discourage like the identifying information. Sure. Right. And then next, believe it or not, in April, we're starting capacity mapping. So before we get to the point of burnout, what I'd like to do is help clinicians figure out where they are now. If we start tracking this and watching it and finding out what areas are maybe taking from us more than they're giving, then maybe we can stay in this field longer by having that awareness. And then, of course, TRI is going to start putting in the things that can help them, such as those Wednesday meetings. Like, so so I really want to make this an individual journey with group support that fights for you on the national level. So I love it. What is that? My social worker? Micro, meso, macro.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:36

Yeah, I love it. And I as I'm looking at you, and this is gonna be my longest interview, and I'm just coming to terms with that. It's fine. It's just so interesting. Sorry. But like I'm looking at you and I'm I'm just going, all right, how we will continue to talk because I definitely want to partner with what you're doing. I believe so strongly in what you're doing, and I see the overlap. I mean, the whole thing here is I feel like I'm such a broken record. We really need To be coming together on this. We can't be working in vacuums anymore. And so I get so excited. And again, there's no competition. I just get so excited when I see I want to lift people up. I want to amplify voices. And I find I want to find as many ways as I can to partner with people who come from a place of integrity and who are aligned and who are as passionate as you and I both are. And so I know I'm going to have you on the show again, Sharon, because I hope so. I love your energy and you're brilliant. And I my brain is just going in circles of like, I have all these proposals now in my head of like, ooh, ooh, could we do something together on this? Because like your directory, I have an idea. I'm well, I'll talk about that off lot.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:43

Fantastic. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:45

But it just gets my juices going. I love what you're doing. I want to have you on again. You you have some other things that you're doing that I think that we could spend some time talking about. And I think your lens on this is what I like about it is like mine, it's broad and you see how all of these pieces tie together. The reality is we can't, everybody can't focus on every single piece. So we have to find like our like our little niche area within that because otherwise it's just too big. There's just too many factors at play. But what I hope from my listeners is that everybody in the show notes, I will have all the links of how to find out about TRI, learn more about Sharon and all of her newsletters that she has. She loves writing newsletters and more information about what TRI is and how you can get involved in the work that she's doing. Sharon, I know that like we just met, what, like was it last week? Or the week I lose track of this.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:39

Yeah, it was a week or two ago, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:41

A week or two ago, but I already feel like we're such kindred spirits and I feel like I've known you for a long time. Definitely. And I know she's she's throwing me hearts, people. She's throwing me hearts. I do. I love what you're doing. I love it. I just, I, I get, I'm a little effusive. I just, I know that about myself where I just gush on people. But it's not every day that I find someone that number one energetically matches me. Um, but also like just how how what's the word? This is the menopause brain. How grounded you are in integrity, the vetting, all of that. And so I say that for folks because being a member, whether or not Sharon, if there's a is there a membership fee? There is a membership fee. There is.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:21

Yeah. I made it super cheap though, guys. So perfect. There you go. I want to keep it there. I want to make it that we go down over time that up.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:27

Exactly. Exactly. That we all do need to be paid for our time. And we're not, we're not, we're never gonna be paid for all of our time because we spent so much time. But I'm glad that you're charging. I think a lot of the time we try to give too many things away. But I think that this is the something that folks should support and check out and share, just like I'm always here's where I transition to like this podcast. Share this podcast, like it, subscribe. I'm a Gen Xer. I don't really understand all how all of this works. But what I do know is that if people are subscribing, if people are liking, if people are sharing, more and more people. Right now, I've gotten from my little app, we're being listened to in over 350 cities across the world. Wow. I have I have a fan in Singapore, whoever you are, thank you for listening. Isn't that fine? Um people contact you. Well, they didn't contact me. I just look and I'm like, someone's listened to like all the episodes from Singapore. Cool. I don't know who that person is, but thank you. We have to be supporting each other. If anything, sign up for TRI's newsletter so that you can learn more about Sharon's mind and the things that fascinate her and the things that she wants to educate you about. So, any final words, Sharon?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:38

Well, two. First of all, of course, I didn't even mention we have resources in there already about starting private practices and things like that. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Right? Finding your niche, talking about niche, talk about all the jobs that you could do. Um, and I have a lot of goals. So, and I'd love to talk to you about that because I have thought also about how we could give sabbatical years, maybe. Oh. Right? Let's talk about that now. I know, I know. We have we have a lot to talk about, but I would like to say one last thing, and I want everyone to really hear this and because I mean it. So you remember my idea for the union. I want you to know that everyone on my team will be paid before I am. And my idea is that when we get to the place where TRI is making money to be paid, that the membership would vote on how much money I get paid. I love that. I mean, again, it's it's because this is not about an ego thing. This is I'm really trying to change the industry. I'm really not change it, take it back if we ever have to. Exactly. Take it back.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:27

But it all comes back to leading with integrity. Yeah. Yes. Like what is the reason that you're doing this? And if it's coming from there, which for you it obviously is, then our decisions get made based on that. Yeah.

unknown 1:10:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:40

So I applaud you. I'm so glad that I randomly saw your wheel.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:44

That you stalked me. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:45

And that I was like, hey, we need to connect. And that you did your due diligence and you were curious enough about whoever this person was that was in your feed, and that you did your due diligence in looking me up and being curious and connecting with me. So I really, really appreciate that. I look forward to future conversations with you. Definitely. And thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you, everyone.

unknown 1:11:07

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:09

And I want to thank all of my listeners. Again, please share, like, subscribe. And my name is Civy Suckerman, and this is Therapist Unchained.