The Practice of Therapy

Gordon: Well, hello everyone and welcome again to the podcast and I'm happy for you to get to know today. Carolyn Boldt. Welcome, Carolyn.
Carolyn Boldt: Thanks for having me, Gordon.
Gordon: Yes. And Carolyn is located in Atlanta Georgia. And today we're going to be just talking about how you're, How your therapy space and your office is set up.
That's really kind of Carolyn's background is interior design and architecture and she really specializes kind of in our niche of therapy and that sort of thing. So. Carolyn, as I start with everyone, why don't you tell folks a little bit more about yourself and how you've landed where you've landed?
Carolyn Boldt: It's been an interesting ride. So yeah. So I am an interior architectural designer studied in Texas. And so, yes, I am a Texan. And in 2000 ish, I started working for myself and started working with my husband, who's an architectural Engineer and a general contractor and we did work in the Atlanta area and doing design build.
And our largest client was life university, which is chiropractic college and that got us immersed in the business of holistic health. And health care in general, but more of the alternative and holistic and the not the typical just medical model. And out of that, we had an opportunity in 2010 to teach classes to the chiropractic students on the value that your office space has in elevating your success.
And out of that. We organically ended up starting to design chiropractic offices all over the country, and then that merged into other alternative health care and other, so any brick and mortar practice management practice group that we can work with, that we're able to work with all over the country.
So our goal is to elevate. a person's business. So we look at interior design and interior architecture. Is it, it's a business expense, just like building your website. It's that type of a marketing. Thing you need to show up physically. Yes, the way you wanted people to see you so we can talk about that all day
Gordon: Yes.
Yes. Well, it's interesting to me as you were describing that that the chiropractic Folks are getting some marketing stuff in their training. Whereas for most of us as therapists, we get very little if little to no training and marketing and how to run the business side of our practice and all of that sort of thing, which is why I started this podcast to begin with is to kind of teach people that, but You, you do bring up a good, a good point, Carolyn, because I think it's important for people to think about the space that they're in as a marketing tool.
Carolyn Boldt: Yes, yes, it very much is. So, you know, when, when we talk about design to, obviously to really large corporations, interior architecture, interior design is just. It's part of what they know to do. It's part of what they do as a business. They understand how it enhances their operations and enhances their business, etc.
But the smaller practitioner doesn't. They look at it as more of a luxury. And in reality, interior, commercial interior design is not a luxury. Commercial interior design is good business. choices in good business sense. It's very different than residential design, which would be much more of a luxury.
So my goal in these, being a guest on these podcasts is getting that message out. So people are not you know, turned off by, Hey, that's just an ex a luxury when it's not at all. It's definitely, it's just like doing your own website versus hiring someone that knows what they're doing to do your website.
It makes a world of difference.
Gordon: Yes, it does. It does. So, as you've done all of this, and we're starting to work with people in our fields, what have you learned about where we maybe can improve and what we need to do better as far as thinking about our space? I know one of the things that is concerned for a lot of people is just, you know, maintaining confidentiality, but also comfort and that that sort of thing.
Carolyn Boldt: Yes. So you're what you just mentioned is very functional needs that you'd have as an office. And we always have to work. 1st, we, we adhere to form follows function. So what that means is it has to function 1st, but. The form would be the three dimensional space.
So once we get past the function, so yes, in a therapist office, confidentiality, making sure it's quiet, making sure it's, it sound, obviously, all types of things that have to do with sound. First, the sound not going through the walls. the sound being contained, feeling that sense of safety. You want your patients, that's a really high value, is to make sure your patients feel safe so that they can be heard.
Once that function is done and they're, they're comfortable, you know, they can sit somewhere that the, the springs aren't breaking out of the chair and things of that
Gordon: sort.
Carolyn Boldt: But once that is done, if you think about it in terms of marketing though, marketing is creating an environment For the for interiors, it's creating an environment that actually helps support the image and the what you're trying to get across is who you are and how you can serve your patient and then also looking at designing a space that will be.
Enhance the, enhance your ideal patient's experience. So it's about the experience. It's all about the experience. So we think about retail design and hospitality design when we talk about design. Because it, if you think about retail design, when you walk into a store, the space needs to match what the product that's being sold in there is.
If it doesn't, then there's a disconnect and the sales go down. So in every, if therapy is also a choice in any kind of Medical healthcare profession. That is a choice. And and at this point, they're all a choice because there's competition with the ones that, you know, the cancer doctor may not be your choice, but there's still a competition in which cancer doctor you go to.
But with that. There's a choice. You just need to tell you show up so you may show up wonderfully. But if your space does not match that,
Gordon: you're
Carolyn Boldt: losing.
Gordon: Right?
Carolyn Boldt: So that's that's so retail design is the first impression. And then hospitality design brings in the culture that you're creating. So when you think about, hey, I'm going to go to dinner tonight.
You think about the food. And you think about the product you're going to get, but you also think about the atmosphere you want. And so as a practitioner, what kind of atmosphere do you want for your patients? And if you can create that around them, everything gets easier.
Gordon: It's I remember a few years ago I had A client come to me that had been working with another therapist.
And, you know, of course I was curious as to why they were changing therapist or whatever, and the, the picture I got was, is that the, the other therapist was just very disorganized and their office was very cluttered. And so that just made them feel just uncomfortable and just felt like, okay, does this therapist really have their act together?
That sort of thing. And that's not anything against that therapist. They were probably a very good therapist, but that impression was made on the client. And that, that's those, those first impressions are so important.
Carolyn Boldt: Yes, very much important. We have a a free resource for your listeners that I'll make sure that you can have in the show notes, but it's it's the five point designer checklist and what it is, it's the five things that we would tell people to look at first in their office to consider how their image shows up.
Gordon: And
Carolyn Boldt: the very first one is, is it cluttered? Is it dirty and is it cluttered? And it's amazing because we live in the space and we forget. We don't think about it. We don't. And so the what we tell people in this booklet is don't you look at it. You need to bring in another party to be your eyes and ears to walk through with this checklist with you.
And ideally that third party is, well, it's someone you trust and that they're going to be absolutely brutally honest with you, but also that they represent your ideal patient because You need to have your space be designed for your ideal patient to attract it, just like you would talk about your website.
It's like, what, what's the benefits of your therapy versus the next guy? Maybe you may not say versus the next guy, but why, how do you want to show up and how do you want to be?
Gordon: So yeah,
Carolyn Boldt: that's one of the very first ones is clutter.
Gordon: Yeah. Well, while you're speaking of that, what are some of the other things on the, on that checklist?
Carolyn Boldt: Yeah, the clutter and dirty and just, you know, not all therapists have their own offices with bathrooms and things, but dirty bathrooms are a real turnoff. So just be sure that that's not something that you have. But just that feeling when you first walk in. The second one is, Not, it goes beyond just being cluttered and dirty, but is it damaged?
Are things broken? Are they torn? Are they ripped? You'd be surprised how many exam tables we see with duct tape on them. It's just like, what, why does that make that okay? Do you know what I'm saying? So what that does is that gives the impression of, of not caring, of not quality. Do you know, it just downgrades.
You would think about if you would go to a restaurant and you had duct tape on the chair. The next one we talk about is. Things being dated. So although you don't have to be things don't have to be expensive to be well designed. They need to be more current. So interiors date every 7 to 10 years. And if you're and you were talking about websites, websites date a lot faster than that, don't they?
Oh, yeah.
Gordon: Oh, yeah. But
Carolyn Boldt: interiors just like clothing date every 7 to 10 years. And you can be really comfortable for seven to ten years and you can, your stuff starts to get dated and you're fine for the patients that have been coming to you if they're coming to you that long because they like you, they come to you, but it's really hard to start attracting new patients because you don't feel like you're up to date.
You don't feel like you're, it's also very hard to sell your practice if that's what it looks like. So being dated and then the other thing we look at is just. One of the ways you can update is your color palette and your finishes and things of that sort. And the other way is lighting. So the lighting in your space is a very critical, it, you can really use it to work for you, or it can be really offensive.
Gordon: Yeah. Yeah. You, you want to say more about that, about the lighting?
Carolyn Boldt: Sure. Sure. So their psychology of lighting will that has to do with interiors. So the brighter the light, this is some generalities, the brighter the light, the more energy there is in the space, the lower the light level, the less energy it's naturally understood.
You go outside middle of the day, beautiful, bright sunshine, you get energy. It gives you energy. Same way as if you go want to go to sleep at night, you want to get all the darkness so that you can go to sleep and get that melatonin going. And that actually is a physical reaction of your body. So you can use that to your advantage.
So if you want say you're working with some patients that have You want to make sure that that space feels very calm for them. So you want to make sure that the light levels are consistent and they're not too bright. They're not too low. You want to make sure that there's not too much clutter and pattern
Gordon: Because
Carolyn Boldt: that can disrupt their mind and just keeping things calm and easy and stressful because you want them to be comfortable so that they can get past where they are.
So the same thing with working with children,
Gordon: you know,
Carolyn Boldt: if you're working with children you don't want the light level to be so low that they feel like they're going to go to grandma's and go to sleep and take a nap. So you just need to, so sometimes dimmers work if you have a variety of people, you know, that you're working with, but lighting is a real.
Valuable thing and just paying attention to it. Having an office space with overall wash of light
It's not really conducive to a real warm conversation
Gordon: Right, right and I and I would guess too just the coloring of light Makes a difference as well. Just i'll just think about you know, when you go to buy light bulbs are either warm or or cool
Carolyn Boldt: Yes, exactly right.
Exactly right. So, the warm light. Which is exactly what it says that has the lower what they call it a Kelvin color on it. If you know what I'm talking about the warm light. So our original light bulbs were incandescent as we know, and you can't even really get incandescent anymore. I mean, you can get the Edison bulbs, which are almost orange.
If you know what I'm talking about, you see the filament, but that You know, those were used psychologically. Those are used that low, low light. You didn't have a lot of it was dark. It was home, you know, it was people didn't work after dark like that. They were in their homes, et cetera, years ago. So when light started to change, it started to become the fluorescent.
And so. Then you would go to the other extreme and you'd have this wash of almost a blue green light above you. Mm-Hmm. that washed everybody's faces out. And that was not very appealing either. Mm-Hmm. . So LED gives you a lot of variability. You know, you can even get LED bulbs that'll change the color lights for you, just like you would a dimmer.
So you go to more of the yellow light and things get really calm and you go to the more of the white light once again, which is like, sunlight is the whitest light, uhhuh, , and you get a lot of energy.
Gordon: Yeah, yeah, that's, that's fascinating. And I think it's things that we maybe don't really think about how, how important do you think it is to have colors that match your brand?
I would think that that would be, I don't know why I thought of that, but I would think that that would be important.
Carolyn Boldt: Well, I think it's important. So let me, let me say this with a. Grain of salt. It depends on the color of your brain. So if you have anything to do with building digital or websites or graphics, the color, there's PMS colors, right?
There's hex colors, et cetera. But those colors are always going to be much more saturated because they're used in a small. A small little bit of color are they're using small little items. So when we have people come to us and they're, let's just say their color is this bright, bright blue on their logo card, et cetera, and they want to paint the wall that color.
That's too much. Okay, so depending on the color that you're using, you need to use it sparingly. At the same time I say that, your logo should not just be a logo, your logo should be a representation of a brand. So your brand In the marketing world is how you're showing up and how your identity is. And so what that identity represents, let's just say it's very trying to think of one to use, but say you've chosen a logo that has a lot of a lot of movement in it because maybe you're going, maybe it's more, maybe you work with, with Women.
Okay. And so your logo itself has more femininity to it. That femininity, if you're working with women needs to be transferred into your office space. The same way, say you're working with. You know let me say very masculine, you know, X, X marines that have PST or something, you know, that needs to be translated to for them to feel comfortable into your space.
And so that logo. would be a represent, it's a small little representation of the whole image that you're trying to capsulate. So if you're using color in the logo, it's nice to have that transferred because that color should be representing the same thing that your brand is representing because there's a whole psychology of color.
There's a huge psychology of color. Oh,
Gordon: sure, sure. Yeah. I'm reminded of my colleague shout out to him. I was just in a meeting with Uri Gelford and He's out in California, but his, the name of his practice is in tune family counseling, or family therapy. And the whole theme of his office are musical instruments and recording and not all of that sort of thing.
And so it's a memory. Yeah. Yeah. Creates a
Carolyn Boldt: memory. Yeah. So of how that all works. So if you think through that, that's, that's clever. That's very clever. So yeah. So to answer your question it's, it should have continuity and it shouldn't contract. It shouldn't fight each other by any means,
Gordon: but
Carolyn Boldt: necessarily saying this is the PMS color and I want to paint my wall may or may not be a good thing.
Gordon: Right. Right. Yeah. That makes sense. So Carolyn, what other tips do you or things that you run into with, in working with folks and kind of revamping their offices that are maybe some of the common problems you see that people have?
Carolyn Boldt: Besides the, the ones we just mentioned, clutter, things being dated and things of that sort, I think that one of the I know one of the challenges with some of the people we worked with that are therapists is that they don't own their own space or they don't have, they don't have the ability to manage everything around their space.
They're renting a room or two. So I would say to them, if that's happening to you You know, think about where people are walking through to get to your space. Before you rent that space.
Gordon: Yes, you
Carolyn Boldt: can have a wonderful so that it's just like in real estate that curb appeal as you come into the space. If there's not, you can't do a lot to change it, then, you know, you have to work harder.
I'm saying, so you have to, if there's, there's always a compromise, you know, it may be the best rent in town and it may be in a great location, have great parking, but the parking lot is full of holes and the front door is broken. And some of those things that, you know, is part of the impression that people are getting as they go.
Oh
Gordon: yeah. So just
Carolyn Boldt: what you can't control, you can still choose.
Gordon: Yes, you can still
Carolyn Boldt: choose and you may need to choose no to that space. Right,
Gordon: right. You know, a funny story about that. I was, as you were talking about that, I think about one of the very first spaces that I used when I first got into private practice was at a doctor's office.
And the room that they had available for me, you had to actually go through an exam room to get into the, into the room where we were doing therapy. So that message right there was, was difficult. And then if we use the, if somebody were, they had to use the exam room and I had a client, There was no, there was no noise filter whatsoever there.
And it was just a nightmare, but I didn't need to say I didn't stay in that place long at all. But yeah, it was just, just reminded me of just thinking, okay, when people come in. Which way are you taking them to, to meet with you? And are you going, you know, like, are you having to go through down a back hallway or something, you know, just that kind of thing.
Carolyn Boldt: Exactly. Exactly. You, you can make your space wonderful,
Gordon: but yeah,
Carolyn Boldt: what they have to walk through to get there is not
Gordon: right. It's not really
Carolyn Boldt: appealing, but if, if you can control your space, you know, if you do have control of it, just. really I guess the biggest thing is just being aware and being my big mission is to make people aware.
Cause once you have that awareness, then you begin to discern if this is good or bad, do you know, as opposed to just going through with blinders on and not really, and it's not your, that's not your job.
Gordon: You know,
Carolyn Boldt: that's not what you were trained to do,
Gordon: right.
Carolyn Boldt: You know, it's the, just like I wasn't trained to be a therapist, but just as I become aware of things.
You know, being around therapy or being with therapists, et cetera, I become much more aware of things that you see and you see straight through them. You'll see straight. It's just different. And that's what a designer does. I mean, that's their job. And you said that just you know, that class that we taught it at life, are we still teaching it live?
They get like one semester of business. So it's not like they get a lot.
Gordon: Yeah,
Carolyn Boldt: because they come out of school complaining of the same thing. And I went to interior design school and the majority of interior designers and interior architects end up working for themselves. So we don't learn anything about business either.
So you having doing what you're doing, You know, they go to these docs go to school. These therapists go to school to get licensed.
Gordon: Right.
Carolyn Boldt: They get, they get everything they need to do so that they can get licensed and then start to learn what they need to do.
Gordon: Right. Right. Well, well, this is this has been a great topic, Carolyn, and I've got to be respectful of your time.
But yeah, yeah. I think that a few points that I kind of. Kind of take home points is what I'm trying to say is that your, your space really is a marketing tool for you.
Carolyn Boldt: Yes.
Gordon: Yes.
Carolyn Boldt: tool. And you need to be intentional, pay attention and be intentional.
Gordon: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Well tell folks how they can get in touch with you to find out more about your work and what you do to help folks.
Carolyn Boldt: Yeah, I'd love to. So our company's name is Crossfield, C R O S S F I E L D S and our website is crossfieldsdesign. com. And that handout I was telling you about, you can do it at crossfieldsdesign. com and the forward slash listeners. And you can download that five point designer checklist and you can, our website was created originally as a blog of information and educational articles before we ever started designing specifically for the.
Practitioners. So there's a lot of information on it. I'd love for you to go there and
Gordon: search
Carolyn Boldt: around.
Gordon: That's great. And we'll have links here in the show notes and the show summary and for people to access that easily. So, well, Carolyn, it was so good to get to know you and enjoyed our conversation.
Carolyn Boldt: I enjoyed it too, Gordon.