In this episode, Amity Cooper and Kym Tolson dive into the depths of transforming their therapy practices through technology and a digital nomad lifestyle. Both therapists share their journeys, from overcoming initial pandemic disruptions to fully embracing remote work that allows for extensive travel and greater work-life alignment.
The discussion pivots to the transformative use of new tech tools. They emphasize the critical role of personal development and proactive learning in adapting to technological advances, positioning themselves not just as therapists but as pioneering entrepreneurs in the mental health field. This episode is a treasure trove of insights for anyone looking to blend their professional endeavors with personal aspirations, especially in the evolving landscape of mental health services and AI
Key Points:
About Amity Cooper:
Amity Cooper is a seasoned entrepreneur, trained mental health professional, and entrepreneurial coach.
For over 20 years, Amity has run a variety of businesses, from designing handbags to making and manufacturing gourmet chocolates, which has given her the knowledge and experience to help others start and run their own businesses. Now, as a trained therapist, equine-assisted psychotherapist, and Lifebook facilitator, she is focused on empowering other mental and behavioral health professionals to serve their clients without burning themselves out by becoming what she calls “therapreneurs.”
She does this through her professional development company Clinical Career Collective (C3) and her Do This First 7-Day Bootcamp by not only teaching therapreneurs how to run their own businesses, but also how to embrace new, emerging technology in this post-pandemic world so they can better help the people they serve.
Amity hosted the virtual event Virtually Unlimited… The Healing Entrepreneurship Summit (with Mike Michalowicz as the keynote speaker) where she and other professionals spoke about the advantages of adapting new technologies for a modern mental health practice.
A lover of travel, Amity splits her time between Denver, Colorado and San Diego, California with her husband, two kids, two horses, and their English Shepherd, Beau.
I love using AI in my private practice, but HIPAA is a huge concern when I'm writing my progress notes!! I've been using Berries.icu to write my notes and I can't believe how easy it is to use! Click the link here and use coupon code: 50FromKym and write notes for free!!
Connect with me:
Instagram: @thetravelingtherapist_kym
The Traveling Therapist Membership:
https://kymtolson.kartra.com/page/travelingtherapistmembership
Revolutionize Your Private Practice with AI Course:
https://kymtolson.kartra.com/page/ai
Signup to learn more about life as Traveling Therapist:
https://www.portablepracticemethod.com/free-training
The Traveling Therapist Facebook Group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/onlineandtraveling/
Bill Like A Boss Insurance Billing Community:
https://kymtolson.kartra.com/page/blab
Subscribe to the Podcast:
Apple iTunes | Spotify | Google Podcast | Stitcher | Amazon | Castbox
TRANSCRIPT:
0:00
Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the traveling therapist Podcast. I'm really excited you guys. So I've got Amity Cooper here with us, and before I hit record, she basically popped on and we both just started gushing at each other about our BIOS, because it's oh my gosh, you're just like me. You're like a multi passionate entrepreneur. You're into AI, like I am. You're into, like, living this freedom, this lifestyle. So I want to get into all of that, but I always start the podcast out with, how did you go for just being a traditional therapist to a traveling therapist? Oh,
0:34
okay.
0:37
Big question, right off the table, yeah.
0:39
Big Question. Big question, I think that one, I've always been a traveler. And I was telling you Kim early before we started and hit record, I was like, traveling the world has been that's who I am. It's, I'm hardwired for that. And the therapist part really sort of officially came online for me about six years ago, I think I finished up in with my masters in 2018 and so. But I've been a therapist my entire life. I don't know about you, it's it's location that calls to you. It chooses you. Literally everywhere I go, whether I'm traveling and on some other adventure or just pulling up a chair at a restaurant. It's like, somebody wants to start talking to me and telling me exactly, I think I'm just born this way.
1:30
Totally my boyfriend, he'll learn the bathroom. We come back, and I'm like, This is Jane. She's had three kids, but she's going through a divorce. And he's like, how has he held you to learn all this about all these people, and I'm like, Oh no, I don't even say anything. They just tell me it happens, it just happens, just happens. Yeah, so gotcha, it's always a therapist, always an empath, probably, and then finally, went back, went to school and got your degree and all that. Now you're a therapist, but it sounds like from your bio, you've also got this bug, like I have with this being like a multi passionate entrepreneur, all the things, yeah,
2:03
I started out 20 years ago. I started out with an inkling an idea, and I was like, Huh? I think I can do that. And then that was the first time that I started an official business. And so that was in fashion. And then I for 20 years, I hoofed my wares, and I basically entered multiple different markets with zero experience, zero know how, but just that idea and that creative passion, and I entered markets successfully. So I went from fashion chocolate, and then in 2015 It was super tasty, and I'm really sad that it ended, but at the same time, if you learn anything in manufacturing, it's like you're only good as your next factory. And so when you have a factory to produce your wares, you're out of business. So that's what happened to me. And when that business closed, it really sent me on a tailspin down and I didn't know what I was going to do, because I didn't really fully comprehend what was my identity, without my business. And I think this is a hook for a lot of would be therapreneurs out there. It's hard to separate between Are you the therapist only, or are you wear multiple different hats and whoever you are, and that's the self discovery process. And so I spent a good year trying to figure out what I was going to do next, and I realized loved working with people, and I wanted to be more internally driven and focused, instead of always dictated by what the environment was telling me, was my product good enough? Was it cute enough, or was it tasty enough, or whatever it may be, and that's what led me back to get a second degree in counseling. So that's the back door into this field, and I have no regrets. It's been such a wonderful, powerful journey for me. Yeah,
3:59
I love that story and the message behind it, because, similar to myself, there's been, I have so many ideas, so many things I want to do. I'm so creative, but not everything works out. But what I've at the time, it does feel devastating. Oh my gosh. I put all this effort into this. Course, nobody wants to buy it, that sort of thing. But then you just learn from it. You pivot and where I think, luckily, I've got some resilience around that. And I don't know how you could, you know, estimate the resilience, or teach people that resilience. But that's a huge part of this entrepreneurial world. I think it even being a therapist and a private practice business owner, you know, you've got to pivot sometimes when things aren't working out, or marketing's not working out, or Blue Cross, Blue Shield, just stop paying all my claims, you can give up, or you can, like, pivot and be resilient around it, and then learn from it, and then build something that is going to be more successful. So I just love that message. Yeah,
4:50
I couldn't agree more, and I think that's a really great if we were just to isolate that last phrase of just like, how do you got to learn from. It you gotta life is practice. It's life school, and it's an opportunity for you to grow and change and develop new strategies for making your life work in your favor. And I think this is exactly why our clients are coming to see us, just we're mirroring back and forth about what is happening for us in our lives, about the what ifs is, are we going to make this business a go? Are we? Am I doing the right intervention? Am I really meeting the client where they're at and that client, that end user, client, patient, whoever you want to call them Allie, whoever doing the same things. That's why they're seeking out you for assistance, because they're trying to figure those very same things out in their lives. And so together you you work in concert, you create that alliance, you create that rapport, and you're always shifting together. So it's an ongoing design build process, if you will. I love that.
5:59
Oh my gosh, yeah, I can just talk about that, the process of it forever, and that's something I, even in my private can try to try to teach that resilience around it. Don't get too emotionally connected to the launch. Look at the numbers and the stats. That's something I've had to really work on. Oh, my God, only three people bought this. But when you look at the numbers, only 20 people hit the landing page. And that helps. Like, that emotional piece, that emotional kind of struggle that happens being like, multi passionate like this, without seeing clients, but also trying to do other income streams to give me more freedom, to be able to travel like we were talking about before, live your life how you want to live it, the freedom.
6:34
Couldn't agree more. I think it's, it's definitely like I said, it's like a design build process. You know, you always have to be reflect. You got to build that foundation, and then you're assessing, and you're making sure that you got all your framing Correct. I mean, I love that analogy of building a house. It just, it makes a lot of sense, because you're building the practice house, and how does that apply? And what does each room, you know? What value does it bring? How are you delivering that experience in your practice? And what are the end results like? How do you want your clients to feel when they interact with you and when they interact with your brand practice? So I think it's old. It's really, absolutely, yeah, absolutely, yeah.
7:21
So I do want to shift gears a little bit, and before we hit record two, you had said that you just took, like, the most amazing bucket list trip in the entire world that anybody could think of when he said, I was like, oh my god, so I'd love to hear because this is the thing that comes up all the time for traveling therapists, is like, how do I go take a month and we'll talk about your trip if you want to, if you don't mind. But how do I go take a month in this place and still manage my business? Do I still see clients? Do I not see clients? I'd love to hear your process for that, like, how did you manage that? And what did it look like for people that might be listening? And, of course, please tell us about the bucket list
7:58
trip. Oh, that's so great. I love that we're talking about this. Okay, so I people might relate to this. I hope that they relate to this. When I married, I was married for five years before we were trying to figure out if we were going to have children or not. And I have always consciously decided that the way I live my life is that whatever I desire, I strategically think about how it fits into my life, how it serves me best. Now I love my children and I love my husband and I love the life that we have created for ourselves, but the fact is that I dictated how that was going to occur. Somebody else's rules or assumptions or biases or lectures or whatever you want to call it, didn't inform me on those voices. So the reason I'm saying that is that I think in anything in life and business is dictated by the choices you make and how you choose to go about fulfilling those dreams and values. So a key value for me has always been travel and exploring the world. I feel like a world citizen, and I want to participate as a world citizen, and it's very much early on in any of my businesses, I always put travel as the top priority in my life. So I designed my life and my business which serves me to make room for that. The way I do that is planning. I always allocate four to six weeks of time a year that's devoted to exiting my life so that I can have that multiple amazing experiences, and I design everything else around that, oh
9:54
my gosh, that is amazing. Yes, so the bucket list trip I'm talking about. That is a month in Africa, right on Safari. And yeah, total. So
10:04
the time away was 28 days. Bucket List trip was a safari. I went to Kenya, Tanzania. It was my first venture the continent. And it just was mind blowing. It was wonderful and thrilling, and I would love to talk everything Safari, but that's not really.
10:30
It's a motivator, right? And then we ended up in the Seychelles, which is about a four hour flight east from Kenya's shores. So we finished off that trip, and I took it was a family trip. So I have a 19 year old and a 15 year old, and we did it all together. So oh
10:51
my gosh, that is amazing, yes. So I love this message, right? This is what I try to teach, too, like in coaching and the traveling therapist and all that is, start with your plan. What are your values, exactly what you're saying, and then build your life around exactly what you want to do. So like you it sounds like you weren't working during that time, like you had maybe just blocked all that off. And it was like, No, I'm taking this vacation, right? So designing it exactly how you want to be able to do it, you know? Like I do it differently. I work every week, but I have, like, certain hours, and I have batteries around how I'm doing that. But that's the key to this whole thing, is like you can create people will save me all the time. It's all you're so lucky to be able to do that. It's I am not lucky. I am a determined person that made a decision a long time ago that I'm not going to live like some traditional lifestyle that people told me I had to live, get married, have kids, live in one place forever, like that whole story. And I designed it around that. And before we hit record, we were actually talking about out of the box kind of things. And one of those is the use of AI and how out there it seems now, and out of the box and everything. So I just, I'm wondering we could shift gears a little bit just talk about grasping these things that maybe are outside blocks that can make our lives a lot easier. And one of those, before we hit record, we were saying, like, online therapy, right? That was, like, unheard of back in 2018 and I decided to go online. The people in my office were like, You can't do that? I was like, Yeah, I can. I'm doing it because I take eight weeks of vacation a year, and I don't want to do that anymore. I want to just go whenever I want and be wherever I want to be, and work online. And it seems like aI now is coming on the scene too to make our lives even easier, more flexible, give us more freedom and all that. So I'd love if we could just chit chat about bringing those outside the box things into our lives and how to embrace it.
12:42
I went that I love, that I gosh, I get all tingly when I think about talking about tech I don't know. And if this is what the crazy thing is that I am, I know this about myself, like I am not really tech savvy, but I get really excited, and I get really into learning something new and seeing how all of these pathways interconnect together. So that's what is exciting about technology today, as we, as Kim just said, as you just said, this idea of when 2020 hit, we were really comfortable. Our industry at large was just super comfortable in the status quo of having really deep conversations and relationships with our clients in our physical therapy space. And then all of a sudden, we were thrown from being going from knee to screen, and we just did not know what to do. It was an explosion we had. We were forced to do things that we just weren't necessarily comfortable doing, and our industry and our training institutions really were struggling to keep up with the demands, the needs, how to train up for this, all of these tools, all of these needs, were really brought to the fore, and we just didn't know how to cope with that. And so we had to implement we had to get creative. We had to get we had to get risky. We had to take risks. We had to get great figuring out how we were going to manage this. And you know what? We came out on the other side, really. You know, it's like, old hat for us. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. And gosh, now the flexibility and freedom we have because of it is just unbelievable. Like, I would never go back to an office. I don't know what I would do if I had to, for some reason, but I just would never want to do that, because it's too like, I just always felt trapped in like a place like my office, and I had to go on vacation, I had to come back, I had to commute to the office, that whole thing, it just felt like a huge trap. And I didn't even really realize it until I got like wind of, like the online therapy world. And I was like, Wait a second, it just felt like my whole life opened up, you know? Well, so I'm curious, did your. Clients also bring that to your sessions. Were they feeling frustrated and uncertain or unsettled about the status quo of how things were go to therapy? Just rules of therapy?
15:13
Yes, yes. You mean, like once I went all online, like before the pandemic and everything. Yeah, that was quite the transition, I actually took a course by Amber Liza. She's one of my dear friends now, but she taught a course how to go all online, and that's how I even figured out I could do it. But at the time, a big discussion in that course was, like, my clients are going to be so resistant to this? So there was a lot of discussion around and scripts around, like, how do I talk to my clients about this? How do I make them more comfortable with it? How do trial and error, like a couple of remote sessions in the back in the office, just to get them more comfortable with it before I totally transition out. And I'm seeing that with AI now too. Before we hit record, I partner with this company called berries. I love them. Barry's got ICU slash therapist, and it records your session. It's just running in the background. It records the whole session, and then when you're done, you click a button, it turns it into a beautiful progress note. In about two seconds, you copy and paste it into your EHR, and you're done with it. But what I'm getting right now, the pushback around that is, I don't how do I know it's HIPAA compliant? I don't feel comfortable asking my clients if I can record sessions all of this like resistance right now, because it's so new. It's just like people don't get therapists are not comfortable with it because they're not sure it's okay. Can I really do this? Is it okay to talk to my clients about it? All of that so
16:31
interesting, and I agree with you. I see that as well. I think there. I think within our industry, we're just not a group of people that are quick for change, and I we're not entrepreneurial in general. Yeah, it's not something I think we don't consider ourselves worthy of abundance or yes, we see this as somehow dirty, that business is a is a dirty word. I don't know why. I don't know where this comes from. My guess is that a lot of it is what's been modeled or taught us, and then, as a group, we gravitate towards this, this process, community, mental health, and this is where you play. This is your sandbox of operation. And those that model, that paradigm, has just been blown up, and we are trying to figure out how to put these new pieces back together again. It's like creating new Legos, a new Lego set. And along that path, there's going to be a lot of gripe and there's going to be a lot of resistance, because change is hard, no matter which way you look at it, and with all of these new tech tools at our disposal, incorporating them, where technology is going at such an exponential clip, it's really hard to play catch up if you're a little bit slower and analytical on that, oriented in that way. So I think there's always this shifting, and maybe even I call it a great digital schism or divide between us and how we're using technology, how it applies to us, and how ultimately our clients are using it, because the reality is, we're all using it every day. We just don't realize that it's running in the background the way it is for everything that we do.
18:29
Exactly, yep, no, I couldn't agree more. And just that, like you were talking about coming up in grad school, the shame is, the like conversation around community, mental health, private practices for money hungry people, and then I was way too early in grad school to ever get any talks around type things where we're building multiple income streams and using our skills as therapists, because we're all really good people to tell things, and it keeps their advantage. It really, yeah, exactly, using our therapist skills to be able to apply it to different scenarios and bring money in from other income streams where it was it's it was so shameful for so long to just sell a product as a therapist. Like, there's therapists out there that sell T shirts and stuff. Like, 10 years ago, exactly, that wasn't even a thing. And I feel like now it's almost like becoming the next evolution for therapists. It feels like, to me, like it's starting mental health. And then you go maybe work for a private place, group practice, and then maybe you go to your own private practice, and then you get burned out with that, and you realize the one to one model just isn't going to work as far as time, energy and money is concerned. And then you start branching out to coaching or a course, or
19:45
we do. But I think to add to that, not everybody is wired like you and I are. We're absolutely true. There are fabulous, talented. Right? Clinicians who like to stay in that lane. They don't want to be bothered with managing a private practice, let alone a business that's not for them. And yeah, beauty is that there's always a place for everybody in this field. We are in the most amazing industry, and there's so many opportunities that are coming our way that we can be a part of that we can be change agents and way showers and so if you are a clinician technician, if you really would prefer not to be bothered with all of the back office oversight of running and operating private practice, if you will, there's plenty of space and opportunity for you to shine as a team member in a group practice, or going work and working in mental health, or maybe you have a Fancy for advocacy and legislation, there's so many roles that we can step into being the trained professionals that we are that we just have not really explored, or it hasn't been presented to us, at least in our clinical training. And granted, I know that the institutions that we all went through, we got great skills on learning how to be good clinicians, but they didn't teach us all of this other stuff, because that's just not what they're meant to do. So we have to fill in the gap, like we have to
21:31
absolutely, yeah. I couldn't agree more, yeah. And
21:34
I think it also applies to a mindset shift. It all circles around that drain of like, how do we approach ourselves? How do we view ourselves? What is our mindset around business and money and maybe martyrdom or missionary work, depending on how you view yourself, how you position yourself, these are all ideas and concepts that need to be addressed, especially when you're entering private practice or business ownership,
22:04
absolutely, yeah, I could not agree more. So what are you doing in the field right now? I know you're doing you're a therapist, but you've also got other projects going on that help therapists, right if they want to become millionaires. Or maybe you could talk, could we talk a little bit about that? And you got the tech piece. So I love to just chit chat about that a little bit, like how you're doing all that.
22:26
So there's a couple of things. I seem to have my hands in many pots here, and I love it, because it all correlates and combines together to make that special sweet sauce of how I feel like I can deliver and value in service and be in service to other people. So I have two I have to correct myself. I have three companies. First one, primarily focused on professional development services, is called clinical career collective, aka d3 and what I do there is I train and teach clinicians how to open up their private practices, starting with my course boot camp called do this first. So for many of us who come into this field and to come into this world of entrepreneurship, you get a lot of information and a lot of training on how to market, how to find your right clients, and so forth, but there isn't a lot of training or information about, literally, the fundamentals of what a business is. How does it function? How does it operate? What's the biology of it? And so I start from the very beginning by teaching and instructing individuals, whether you're a novice professional or a seasoned clinician and you're just trying to figure out how to shift your business and your strategy, I teach them. I teach you how to do it in seven days. So I take you from structure all the way through systems and automation, and and in that I also add a lot of information and resourcing of what all of these new tech tools are that you can implement in your private house, not only in your back office, but also using them as tools in your clinical work. So that's what I do, that yeah, and then it's so fun. I really enjoy it. And so I run this course on a monthly ongoing basis. And so at the last week of every month, the course is up and running. So you can sign up for that, and I'll see you there. And then the other thing that I do is I have my consulting and coaching practice called wayfinding practice, and I'm also a certified equine therapist, so I love being outside and working with individuals in nature, with my horse partner. So I have that business, and I have just opened up, and I'm about ready to launch. I have a guest ranch that I'm setting up for other clinicians. And professionals to come and access nature and run their own retreats and events and programs. Out of amazing
25:07
is that in Colorado, I think it is, wow. That is fantastic.
25:12
So that's for me,
25:16
yeah. And of course, anybody listening put all this in the show notes, so you guys can reach out to Amity and work with her in many different ways. It sounds like Yeah,
25:26
but one thing that I think is really relevant, and we've already discussed the use of AI, we've already talked about telehealth, and this the use of video, right, which is an incredible software tool for us to expand our reach and to touch many lives by having these conversations and the way you can use it in your business and with clients. And then there's also, I'm really excited about, I don't know how much you know about immersive technologies, but vr Virtual Reality, yes, are really coming online. And part of the service that I provide in my to this first course is I actually send you a VR headset and a recording tool so you can put your phone up and you have a light and you're ready to go and hit record. And so I'm trying to teach fellow clinicians and my peers how to do this and not be so afraid of technology, because it really could be your gosh,
26:25
well, that's so much. I'm already thinking, I'm going to have you as a guest in the clinical AI club to come in and do a little lesson or something for the members there. Because I don't know a lot about the VR technology, but I know that therapists are starting to adopt it, especially for like, systematic desensitization type things where you can simulate environments and somebody might have a phobia around or anxiety about and and practice that way before they actually, like you push them out to the real world to do it, all kinds of things like that. It's just the technology is coming. And I talk about this in the AI club and also my free Facebook group for running the private practice with AI. I feel and to your point, every therapist is different. Not every therapist is going to embrace this, but I also feel like AI is the future, and therapists that aren't adopting these strategies may not have as many clients coming in that might want to use the VR technology, or might want to interact with the clone of yourself when you're not available, if they need to talk to Amity. You know about the problem through a really sophisticated chat bot, or we're talking about these personalized assistance you can do. You can make gpts that simulate your whole personality at this point, because you can give it so much information, and I've read a lot of studies around especially like teenagers right now are using a lot of chatbots as therapists. There's therapy chatbots out there, so I feel less as therapist, we don't want to become obsolete. We're going to have to figure out a way to adopt this into our business, whatever you call it our business style, our whole profile that will be offered to clients. Maybe now, if you're working, working with the elderly population that might not want to have anything to do with it, but generally, overall, AI is going to be writing our progress notes. It's going to be doing our treatment plans. It already is so I just think it's just, it's so new that people are uncomfortable with it. But eventually, maybe 1015, years from now, is just going to be like the norm? In my opinion, I think it'll be five years.
28:23
I think I think the future is faster than you think if I'm the title of one of my favorite books. But it is true. I don't know the exact statistical point here, but what has occurred in the last 10 years of our society has far outpaced exponentially, what the last 600 years looked in advance in industry and just culturally. So if you think about that, the last 10 years has outpaced the last 600 years. This is not technology is here, and it's been here for the last 25 years, just not mainstreamed the way we know it today. And so there is urgency here to embrace what we can figure out what is going what tool is going to help us the best, and we don't be an expert in everything, because we truly don't want that in our own practices. We can't be a generalist today, right? Need to find and we need to really triple down on the one tool that you think is going to go the longest, it's going to work for you in the longest capacity, in the best way possible to deliver the best kind of outcomes for you as a business owner and for as a clinician, to help and treat and work with your client base. I. So if that would be my recommendation for all of you, is to be open, to be to explore, to expand yourself. Sign up for continuing education course and personal development. Take a tech class, do whatever you need to do. Sign up for one of Kim's courses and try, try, push yourself because everybody else is doing the very same thing, and you don't want to be become obsolete.
30:29
Yeah, could not agree more, yeah. And even if it's weird right now, just remember how online therapy was and how it is now. It's coming. This wave is coming. Yeah, Amity, thank you. I feel like I could just talk to you forever about everything you're doing. I really appreciate you coming today, and of course, we'll have everything in the show notes. And if anybody has questions or want to reach out to Amity, I would strongly encourage it all this tech and private practice building. I think it's amazing to put those things together in container to help therapists do that. Thank
31:00
you so much. Kim, this has been such a joy for me. I love talking about everything tech and travel, so
31:07
it's you too, my sister from another mister or whatever they say, yeah. So thanks again. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for being here.