The Practice of Therapy

Gordon Brewer: Well, hello everyone and welcome again to the podcast, and I'm so happy to have back on the podcast, Dr.
Tara Fossen. Kemper. Tara, welcome. Glad you're here. Thank
Tara Vossenkemper: you. Yeah, glad to be here. Thank you for having me. I, I appreciate it. Yeah, I'm
Gordon Brewer: happy
Tara Vossenkemper: to be here. And so,
Gordon Brewer: Tara and I have been acquainted with each other for several years now. Just, I don't know when we first actually met, but Tara, I dunno, either.
I've known, known, known about you for a long time, but, um, tell folks a little bit more about yourself and how you've landed where you've landed.
Tara Vossenkemper: Yeah. Um, yeah, I'm trying to think. Uh, we had to have met through Joe or Casey or, I'm, it's, it's years and years ago. Yeah. It's crazy to think about. Mm-hmm. Sure.
So that's. Let's see. I landed where I landed, I started in academia. I left quickly and I shifted into private practice. I had a baby in that mix and I finished a dissertation and I just realized I don't wanna do academic life. And so shifted over into private practice and. These are sort of like overlapping.
When I had my baby, I also realized, oh, my first child, I should say I have three, but I realized I needed somebody to see some clients in my absence, so I brought on a supervisee. And so that sort of like evolved and morphed into within a year I was, you know, I had five other people with me or something like group practice ownership and.
Also at that point that probably year later I started to take it really seriously. And so I was, you know, devouring all of these books as you do when you are mm-hmm. Learning about group practice stuff. And so reading all these books and listening to all these podcasts and doing masterminds and anything I could, anything I could get my hands on basically.
And then that of course, like kept going and I think at some point I. At the risk of like being wrong. So some people might look and say like, she's not very good, but at some point. I think I got good at business. Like I, it just clicks for me the systemic thought around it. The nuance of people like holding space between structure and autonomy and ensuring culture is healthy.
Like all of it just, it, it lights me up. You know, when I did clinical work, I specialized in couples because I like the song and dance between. High level meta and like, no, no, no. This is how we actually say things and the, the most effective way, you know, this like high level and then like boots on the ground.
Mm-hmm. And for me, that also was business. And so it was, I like needing to be grounded theoretically, and then also having to apply everything I'm learning has to like be applied, you know?
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm.
Tara Vossenkemper: And, and I think, so I'm saying that to say at some point, I think I got good at it because then people would start asking me to do some consultation.
I would just randomly people ask me, Hey, can we do this? And so then I started consulting. And so that's been much, much less. I haven't really hit that hard. I've been doing it on, and, you know, like for a few years I've been consulting, but I, I have never really focused heavily on it.
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm.
Tara Vossenkemper: And so recently I've.
I in my group, which has just continued to like get healthier. We implemented the EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system in well twice, but the first time was a bus that, and I didn't do it the right way and the second time. Mm-hmm. It's just, maybe it was 2021. I think we started it and it, it's just continued to evolve and just get healthier from there, which has allowed me as the visionary in my practice, my group practice.
To step out and then mm-hmm. I feel like now I have this system, the structure that is very well run, not because I'm the one that has my hands in all the pots, but because the, the structure is sound and there's mm-hmm. You know, it's very rich and like, I'm, I'm digressing. My point is. Because of this being healthy, I'm able to step back as a legit, you know, visionary and then now focus more on consulting.
Mm-hmm. And so maybe like five months ago, I also started, four months ago, it was very, it was February of 2025, I started a podcast as as well. And so I have, um, yeah, I guess that's what I have going on. I've got a podcast that, I mean, you know, podcast, it's. Like you're, you're just sharing information with people if they wanna listen to it.
I have a membership, a program through my consulting, of course, I have, um, consulting period. So we'll just say broad speaking, there's Coul Consulting on one side, and then my group practice is still, you know, trucking along on the other. Yeah, I felt like that was so long-winded. I hope not. I'm sorry. No,
Gordon Brewer: no, no.
That's, that's, that's, that's perfect. I mean, that's just, uh, I love, I love hearing people's stories and how they get to where they are and you know, one of, one of the things that I know is a passion of yours is just the culture of a practice. And so, you know we, we throw that term around just, uh, having a good culture.
So, but what in your mind is a good culture in a practice? I mean, what makes for, for that?
Tara Vossenkemper: Yeah, I oh my gosh, I have a lot of thoughts. So, high level, I would say for me, Daniel Coyle, the Culture Code. Mm-hmm. His book, the Culture Code, I love Daniel Coyle, and he says, really, healthy cultures have three things.
They have vulnerability, they have belongingness, and they have purpose. And so. That's great. And he actually, um, after he published that book, he came out with a workbook, which I think is great. 'cause I'm sure a lot of people were like, well, how do you get this? You know? So on a more practical lever level, excuse me.
So I agree with that belongingness purpose and. Oh my gosh. Vulnerability, excuse me, Uhhuh, that we have to have these things to be healthy. Mm-hmm. I think of that as like, um, if I, if I were to walk into my practice, or if somebody is to walk into my practice, I want them to feel those things. About like the entire system.
They're seeing this all around them in terms of how we relate to each other, which for me, this is part of building those, those three broad things, but how we engage with one another, with our community, with our clients. We frame that as these are our core values. Our core values are, you know, be authentic and candid.
Own your shit. Be excellence oriented and growth centric. Embrace interdependence and have depth and fun. And so mm-hmm. We assess on these values. This is like the more of the day-to-day thing. These are the things we're looking at, our core values. Mm-hmm. And our core values are set up in such a way, and, and I'm saying this because we've gone through.
Every quarter we're looking at our core values and we're, we're looking at them and saying, okay, is this, is this still accurate? First of all, are we missing anything? Mm-hmm. Like, we're trying to poke holes in them. In them, excuse me. And so this, like, there's been this active grappling process with core values over four years.
Um, it's like
Gordon Brewer: mm-hmm. They
Tara Vossenkemper: just been through iterations. A lot of them are very, even the, the very inception of the core values. You're, there's a lot of through threads, you know what I mean? And like, but there's been some evolution. So the core values are the way that we show up with each other and. On purpose.
Ours are set up in such a way that if we live these out, we're building this other stuff out as well. We are ensuring belongingness and vulnerability and purpose. Mm-hmm. And then also, if we go back to the core values, we are ensuring that we're not showing up with horsemen like Gottman horsemen. Mm-hmm.
No contempt. No defensiveness. No contempt. Mm-hmm. No defensiveness, no criticism.
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Tara Vossenkemper: And so then there's that. So we've got, you know, again, Daniel Coyle stuff at the Top Core values, how we engage with each other, sort of in the middle on a day-to-day level. But what's also really important to me, and what I think is part of culture is, um, and I got this from Cal Newport, I also love Cal Newport.
He wrote this book So Good, they Can't Ignore You. And in the book he referenced that people, oh, I'm gonna butcher this, but. Because it's been years since I've read it, but this is how it lives inside of me, you know? Mm-hmm. People who feel like they have a calling have high levels of autonomy, relatedness, and, ooh, what's that third one?
Competence. There we go. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so for me, also, I'm thinking to myself and all for, I'm thinking to myself, how do I. Anytime. Okay, here's a, here's what I mean by this. Okay. Anytime we are looking at a process in our practice, we need to implement something, we need to do, do something new. My question is always going to be always to myself and then also to my team.
'cause my leadership team now knows this is like very important for me. How do we implement the, the most? Like the smallest level of structure that we need that gets us what we need. That ensures the practice is uniform and streamlined, but then also give people space to flex within that structure.
Mm-hmm. I refuse to do anything that will I. I'm not gonna implement a structure at the erosion of autonomy, if that makes sense. Mm-hmm. Right. And then, and with the competence piece also, it's if we're gonna implement something, how do we ensure that people feel confident in doing this thing, whatever this thing might be.
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm.
Tara Vossenkemper: So that's a, yeah. A it might be a lot of talking, but it's like, yeah.
Gordon Brewer: So what, can you give an example of that or maybe a shift you've made and some of the core values that you're, that you've, that you've rethought, I guess.
Tara Vossenkemper: Yeah. Oh my God. Let me think back to the very beginning. You know, half depth and, and fun has always been there because of course we love depth, but also like, I'm gonna tell far jokes like everybody's, there's like a.
You don't have to like stay in the deep, you know, you can just, life is also fun. Like Uhhuh, it's fun and it's deep, you know? So let me think. A core value that evolved, oh, I have a good example. Okay. We had, um. Embrace interdependence is more of a recent core value. And so we had somebody who left and after they left, and it was a good departure where it was like, I don't, I don't think you want this role.
Like, and they were like, yeah, I don't, I actually don't know if I do either. And so it was like a good conversation and a, the departure was fine, you know? And so after the fact, I remember meeting with leadership and having the discussion like, what, we are missing something here. Like we have, you know, depth and fun, excellence oriented and growth centric.
We have this stuff, but there's nothing here that's reflective of in us. And not just an I and the person that was the person that left, they they wanted to work in a silo. Like they wanted to just do their own thing and they didn't really want to. They didn't want to put effort in to see how this thing that they might do has an impact on all these other related pieces.
Gordon Brewer: Right?
Tara Vossenkemper: And so from that departure came this discussion that was like, we're missing something, like something's not right about this. And then there's like, you know, a an hour and a half or two hour long conversation about like, oh, okay, what, what is it like, what is the thing that's missing? And finally coming to this, like symbiosis, this is a mm-hmm.
A living entity that everything that we do impacts the people around us. Not like the role Sure. But also like the person around us maybe. So that's like an example of how embracing interdependence came. Mm-hmm. I, yeah, I think that, I think that makes sense.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. And so I, I guess the challenge becomes being able to communicate that to people on the front end about, you know, what, what the culture's about and how they fit into it.
Yeah. And all of that sort of thing.
Tara Vossenkemper: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We, we do, we start that in our hiring process. Mm-hmm. Like whenever we bring people on, we, um. On a, on a quarterly base. I keep referencing quarterly because through EOS, we do leadership team full day quarterly meetings where we review our entire vision and traction organizer.
It's, you know mm-hmm. Stuff is like. Kept in one place. And then after that meeting, and we set new quarterly goals, you know, we reflect on the ones we just had, we set new ones at that. After that meeting, I will host a full team state of the practice meeting. It's like an, it's just an hour long thing, but we're doing like an overview of like, Hey, okay, we said we were gonna hit these goals we did or didn't.
Here's why or why not. We've recap values there where it's like, all right. You all tell me like, what are the values? Like you should know these buy now. Mm-hmm. You know, like, what are they, how are you living them out, et cetera. Mm-hmm. So we, I talk about them frequently and we'll reference them like.
We'll do shout outs, like, Hey, shout out to, you know, Gordon for, um, authentic and candid conversation. Like that was an incredible conversation we had, like mm-hmm. Kudos. I might not get into detail about what it is, but I'm gonna do a team shout out, you know? Mm-hmm. But in the very beginning, our phone screen even we have values, specific questions, and then if they get through the phone screen, you know we do a team meet and greet and the people at the meet and greet, I have.
I don't allow any direct superior to be there, like direct supervisor or like, I'm not at the meet and greets. The, if it's for a clinician, my director of clinical ops is not gonna be at the meet and greet. It's just gonna be the whoever, like whoever's on the hiring committee, you know?
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm.
Tara Vossenkemper: And their goal, and they know this 'cause I, I have a whole little like, hiring committee manual.
It's just a couple pages, but helping them understand the full process and you know what I want? What I want out of them, what I want them to do is to assess for values, right? Just sit here and bullshit with this person and just be thinking like, keep the lens in your mind. Keep this filter in your mind of art.
Am I seeing values? Like, am I seeing candor, candor? Am I seeing authenticity? Am I seeing depth? Am I seeing fun? Like, be thinking about these things and then we, you know, of course we continue, but I, I think, and we. We talk about it, we talk about it, we ask for lived examples from people, and we assess it for, in like a much more mild state.
You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Like in mean, greeted, it's way more low key. It should be fun for people realistically to be there. It's not. Yeah. Right. But all of those things are just, now I have like multiple points of data on this. Mm-hmm. And so if somebody is not a values fit, we don't. We don't bring 'em on.
Yeah. I don't care how skilled they are as a clinician. Like if it's not a values fit, it's not
Gordon Brewer: Yeah.
Tara Vossenkemper: They don't join. Yeah.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah. It's gonna, yeah, you kinda get it, nip it in the bud, as they say, before it starts as much as
Tara Vossenkemper: possible. Yeah.
Gordon Brewer: Sure. Sure. So I, I know we said we weren't gonna talk about it much, but explain EOS to folks that might be curious about that.
Tara Vossenkemper: Yeah. Mm-hmm. So, um, EOS is, I think I said, but just in case I didn't, it's the entrepreneurial operating system developed by Gino Wickman. It is detailed thoroughly in the book traction. Okay. And then if you want a Fable version, sort of like Patrick Lencioni style fable, you know, a book that brings traction or EOS to life is called Get a Grip.
And when I first started doing this, I was bouncing back and forth between the two. I would retraction, I would listen to the full, get a grip, I would go back and retraction. I would listen to get a grip. I would go, I would just bounce back and forth because traction is very much like I, I mean, I literally, it's in my work bag still.
Like I have it with me all the time. Uhhuh. Yeah. It's marked up and it's just, yeah. Incredible. So traction is basically an entire, it's. What does he say in the book or maybe on his blog or, I don't, I don't have any idea, but. If you think about your, literally like on your computer, it runs on an operating system.
There's all these rules in the background. There's all these codes and like ways in which you are, the thing that you're using is operating from something underneath that you're not really even privy to.
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm.
Tara Vossenkemper: It's like the same idea for business, that we have to have some structure in place that helps us handle problems as they come up in real time.
And keeps us moving towards a vision. Mm-hmm. And like, I, that's like a very, very nutshell version, but it's, there are six components to traction. Mm-hmm. There's your vision, there's data, people process issues, which is probably one of my favorite levels and traction itself. Mm-hmm. And so when he says traction, he's talking about like, um.
Where rubber meets road like Yeah. Right. Accounta. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah. So it might be actual accountability, but also even like your, your meeting rhythms, so like a weekly cadence and then quarterly and, you know, annual for one big one. So I cannot recommend traction enough. I cannot recommend EOS enough. It was it, I could talk about it for hours.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah,
Tara Vossenkemper: I, yeah, I really could. So I'm like,
Gordon Brewer: I could
Tara Vossenkemper: talk so much more. Is that, how, is that like a helpful start at least, you know? Yes,
Gordon Brewer: it is. And I think, uh, and we'll probably we'll have reference to it in the show notes and the show summary so people can look it up. But, um, yeah.
And so I've gotta be aware of our time, Tara. Oh, oh, yeah, yeah. But, um, yeah. But, um, tell folks about your podcast and,
Tara Vossenkemper: oh, what
Gordon Brewer: is, um, what the, what, what they can hear there.
Tara Vossenkemper: Yeah. So. The name of the podcast is the Culture Focused Practice Podcast because we do all things through a lens of culture, just period, you know?
And so, mm-hmm. Um, that's the name of the podcast. I think you can find it anywhere. Our podcast, I also have a bunch of stuff on YouTube, so culture focused practice on YouTube. All my podcast stuff is on YouTube as well. Everything that we talked about today. So leadership and more actually, but leadership, I talk a lot of, there's EOS and structure.
Mm-hmm. Oh my gosh. Culture. Mm-hmm. Employees. I love employee engagement, health oversight, organizational structure, et cetera. So leadership, culture, employees structure. Also, I, I developed this framework for. Uh, practice, sort of basically looking at it as a full organism, you know, sort of like a cell.
Mm-hmm. And some of the other components that I don't talk as much about but that are part of the conversation are also feedback financials, and then marketing. Mm-hmm. And I don't mean marketing, like do Google ads. I mean marketing, like alignment and conceptual and why are we doing something? Why are we doing something and how does it connect to our, like who we are, sort of mm-hmm.
All the way down to the center, so
Gordon Brewer: Yeah.
Tara Vossenkemper: Yeah.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah, I think that's it. Well, that's good. I can't wait to listen to it. I'm looking forward to that. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So, well, Tara, I hope we we'll be able to have more conversations. Yeah. Here again, uh, we, we went too long without having you back on the podcast, but I know it was a while.
Yeah, it has been a while. But, um, tell folks how they can get in touch with you and find out all your stuff.
Tara Vossenkemper: Yeah, everything is at www.taravosmfer.com. Boom. Work with me stuff. Sure. But also link to the podcast is there. So if you just wanna go find that, just go to the website. Sure. We'll access stuff there.
Yeah.
Gordon Brewer: And we'll have, we'll have links in the show notes and the show summary as usual. And, uh,
Tara Vossenkemper: yeah. Well,
Gordon Brewer: Tara good to ca reconnect and we'll have you back here soon.