Most therapists start out as solo practitioners. But the journey to group practice owner can feel daunting and uncertain.
In this special interview, join me as Figs O'Sullivan - creator of Empathi group psychotherapy practice - takes us on his journey from solo therapist to successful group practice owner.
In This Episode, You'll Learn:
- How to challenge your fears & insecurities
- How to figure out what you're best at
- How to get out of your own way
Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
Hi there! This is Uriah. Thanks so much for tuning into the Productive Therapist podcast today!
I'm really excited to share this conversation with you that I had with my old friend, Figs O'Sullivan. Figs is the creator of the Empathi Group Psychotherapy Practice. He's also chief empathi officer, husband, dad, wounded healer, and he was featured on NPR's All Things Considered.
As a champion for healthy relationships, Figs' life mission is to help couples feel more connected. Please enjoy my conversation with Figs O'Sullivan!
Uriah
Figs! Welcome to the podcast!
Figs
Thanks for having me on, Uriah. Good to see you.
Uriah
Yeah, it's really exciting to talk to you. It's been a little while since we checked in last.
Figs
I know, especially, like, actually face to face. Right. Faces. A long time. Although you don't look a day older than whatever it is two or three years ago.
Uriah
You as well. So here's a little bit of trivia fun fact. Do you remember when we first met and how long ago that was?
Figs
Well, I know I was an intern at Catholic Charities, so I'm so bad at time. I mean, it must be ten years ago, eleven years ago, or twelve years ago. Yes, quite a while. Right.
Uriah
The only reason I know that is because I'm not great with time either, but Gmail is google is good with time. So I searched it up and I found the original email you sent to me in 2011 because you were being supervised by somebody that I'd gone to grad school with, and you were working on starting a private practice as a pre licensed therapist. And yeah, that was like eleven years ago. Amazing.
Figs
Unbelievable. In some ways, it seems so long ago, and then others in other ways. It's kind of hard to believe that I've only been a therapist for eleven or twelve years. You know what I mean? Sometimes I go, oh, my God. That's so long ago. And then yeah, I'm like, wow, this is only eleven years.
Uriah
Yeah. It's amazing what's happened since you and I first met. Really? It is over email for both of us. For both of us, exactly. So when you reached out and asked if we could talk on the podcast, I was like, yes, 1000%. Because you have a very interesting story that's not I think it's uncommon in our field, kind of where you came from and what you've accomplished and how you think about therapy as well as business. So I was like, yes, let's talk about all those things. Let's get into it.
Figs
Yeah. And our paths. You've been so helpful to me throughout the whole thing right. Because I don't know if I have any strengths that you don't have, but you definitely have strengths that I don't have. Right. The whole business administration and organization is my weakest part. So you've just helped me so much through all of the kind of step ups from being like, an intern, try to get started. And then, of course, the big leap from, like, I wanted to start a group practice but didn't want to deal with the admin. It's very hard to see how I was going to do it without kind of your guidance at that point in my journey.
Uriah
Yeah.
Figs
So thank you.
Uriah
Of course. And just to set the record straight, you have plenty of strengths that I don't have. And also, I just want to publicly say thank you for the ways that you've encouraged me and pushed me because I was looking to my email, and I found one that where you said I would be happy to be your first coaching client. I was like, oh, my gosh, that was way before I was even considered myself a coach at all.
Figs
Right, yeah. Well, look, and I also remember you weren't into being I might be wrong about this, but, like, even this show, the podcast show, right. You didn't want to be the Voice or out there in front of people. So, I mean, well done. I'm glad I had some small little influence.
Uriah
Well, one other thing, too, is that you were one of the first Productive Therapists members, one of the first that we supported, and you had a huge influence in that way. I seriously can't thank you enough for that.
Figs
Well, that's part of why I wanted to talk to you again that was so helpful for me. The time I spent working with you and your team was incredibly helpful. And so, yeah, I thought it just made sense that we touched back, and hopefully it would be valuable for other people, because I'm imagining there are more therapists out there like me that admin, surprisingly, is not their favorite thing to do. Right. And so just like and then you and the company like yours, productive Therapist. That's right. Productive Therapy would be an immense help to get them going in that direction that they choose to.
Uriah
Definitely. That's what we're all about. So I think it would be cool to start with a little bit of your background and your story, if that's okay, because I think that'd be super interesting for people and lots of things to learn.
Figs
Yeah, well, I'm a therapist, so I probably err too much on the emotional side of the family history side of my background, so I'll try and keep it relatively short.
Uriah
Sure.
Figs
So I'm from Ireland. I always say it's the cliched Irish story. Right. I'm the son of an alcoholic father and heartbroken mother, and one gift that alcoholism gave to my family is all of us went on to become therapists. Like, literally, my dad, my mom, and my sister. Yeah. So if anything, all that other stuff I did when I first came to America, I studied business and economics in college, and I became a stockbroker back in the days, like I'm 51, it was just transitioning to what are called financial consultants, getting away from the stockbroker name. I tried to resist the family vocation and did the whole business and stockbroking thing, the head of business development for a startup for a little while, and then eventually I found a program that would let me be a therapist by going on the weekends and two full weeks a year. And so that's how I finally made the jump to become a therapist, that I could keep working because I was scared of not having money and having debt. So I paid for college as I went.
Uriah
Okay.
Figs
And it was just once then probably around 2010, 2011. I remember when I sat with my first client, that's when I was just, this is it. I know for a fact this is what I want to do now. And I went full on, if I'm reaching out to you, I need to start a practice.
Uriah
You don't do anything halfway, in my opinion.
Figs
Exactly, yeah. For better or worse, I have this look, it's really been good. I'm quite a fearful person and so I could be very motivated to do something, but it's not a lot of times it's not coming from inspiration. I'm like, I'm going to start a practice and I could fail. And so I then worked at two in the morning because I'm terrified of failing. I don't know if it'd be an admirable thing, but yeah, so I was really scared of failing. Like, when I wanted to start a private practice, it was a big motivator.
Uriah
That makes sense. Yeah. If you don't mind me asking, when you were a stockbroker, financial adviser, consultant, what was it that pushed you over the edge to be like, you know, I think I want to really consider this other option, this other career option. What, for you?
Figs
Well, this is the well, if anything, I would say, look again, I grew up, I went to private schools in Ireland. I was always the poor kid among rich kids. I really went into economics and business and became a stockbroker because I had a chip on my shoulder. I had a lot of shame. I already had a family shame, alcoholic, broken family, then not having as much money as everyone else. My accent in Ireland, you can play someone by their accent. This accent I have now is not the accent I grew up in. I can't say my th properly, I have to concentrate on it. So, to be honest with you, the whole stockbroking thing was just an attempt to hide my shame and my non belongingness. Like, I could get money quickly and I could then belong, I could have a suit on. I would say what really pushed me over the edge is, look, it just wasn't working. Like, surprise, surprise. Like, all of our coping mechanisms, the knots, sealer, Jeep is wounding your audience. Therapists. It didn't work very well. Right. I'm a stockbroker. I'm gambling. San Francisco in the 90s. I'm playing liars, dice and pool and drinking.
Figs
I would be a stockbroker by day, I was a bartender, at night, I'd go to, like, nightclubs and a suit in the middle of kidding. I mean, I lived. It was fun, except for the anxiety and the like. So the good news is, I don't have the constitution to live like that. Like, I suffer if I have a bag of M and M. I'll wake up in the morning with a hangover. Exactly. So the good news for me, I feel very lucky. Literally. My constitution doesn't allow me to suffer for very long without it being really clear this is not working. So I basically quit that whole lifestyle, that whole working, drinking, party and gambling like a good young Irishman in his twenty s. And I went and moved to Esselyn. And people don't know what Eslam is. Essentially, it's like a retreat center in Big Sur and it's been called before, the Harvard of the human potential movement. And I knew of it because of my family background with retreats and stuff my dad in Ireland was involved in. So it was like the Mecca that was like, if you wanted to change your life, go to and I went for a month and I stayed for a year and a half.
Uriah
Okay.
Figs
And I think of Escalating as my third parent. That's when my life went on a.
Uriah
Different that was a turning point, for sure.
Figs
Big turning point.
Uriah
Yeah. So you decided after your first session or somewhere around that time, this is for me, this is what I want.
Figs
To do as a profession. Exactly. I was really into it in the self development thing and doing workshops and growing and really into that world as a participant and watching master therapist work. And then once I did my first session, I was like it took me a long time to believe I could be the therapist. Like, I'm watching all these people at Essence like, do open Sea Bishop work, like creating what looked like to me, magic. People have these huge transformational experiences, part theater now when I look back. Right? But yeah, it took me a long time to realize I could be therapist. And then I remember at Catholic charity, sitting at my first clients and being scared and just like, this is amazing. I love improvisation. That's pretty much what I studied the whole time I was at Esplan. Whether it was within the therapy relationship, dance theater. I really love improvising, just meeting the moment with no agenda. And then the therapy room was just like, this is this incredible container to really improvise. That's so interesting.
Uriah
I didn't know that about you, but it makes sense.
Figs
Yeah. Improvising is my strength, but obviously there's a weakness. And that's why I'd rather be a podcast guest than a podcast show host. Because you have to do all this work on the front end and the back end. You can't improvise the pre production and.
Uriah
Post production only so much improvising you can do in life, in business.
Figs
Exactly. And that's my part of being a business owner, is the repairing thing of myself. Right. The way I often think of it developmentally is I didn't have the father figure, I didn't have the emotional stability as a kid to actually learn that I could do things. I didn't have to just fly to the seat of my pants. A big developmental step for me in running a business is. I really think of it as a reparaging process that I do stuff, not just get other people to do things for me. But I was as a teenager, I'd have my friends come over before we go out on a Friday night and one would be ironing my clothes, the other would be making me dinner. I got good at coping for my inability to believe I could do basic things by getting other people OK.
Uriah
I've always thought of my business as my best life coach because I've learned so much and I've been pushed to grow and change and develop. Sometimes forced feels like forest. But I've never thought of my business as a parent. But that is a really interesting India.
Figs
Yeah. And also the relational piece. Right. So I specialize in like public canceling relationship, marriage, all that stuff, right. That's my expertise, if I have one. I always say I have to be good at something. It turned out being a couple of therapists was probably what I'm best at, but so I got pretty good at understanding intimate relationships and understanding my fears and my reactivity. But then I noticed in business I can get really threatened. In business, like, I can get really scared. And so that's another way I look at being a business owner. It's just like another frontier of me developing the healing, the transformational experiences, not being reactive when I get threatened, not doing my Fight flight freeze placate. I'm able to actually feel my feelings and actually make grounded choices and decisions, not be. But that's been a process. Again, it's really worked me relationally, professionally, and I still have it. Now I have an incident recently with a therapist where we overpaid them for a year. We found this and I said, look, I feel so bad about this, why don't we just do look, you only have to pay back half the money.
Figs
I thought it was very nice. And they are like, I'm not paying back anything now. I read that message on a Sunday at the farmers market with my family and it's like, the money, that wasn't the issue, the interpersonal threat, like one of these I'm very proud of where I am now instead of what I do in the past. That person is like, don't worry, don't pay me back at him, but you're dead to me. I might not say that, but that's it. Just emotional shutdown. I was able to reach out to them and just say, look, I know you think I'm the boss and you're the employee, but I'm really scared and I don't want to lose you, I don't want you to lose me. I don't want to do my thing now where I just shut off, please, let's talk. So it was great and we resolved it. I mean, they're fired. No, it's made our relationship stronger.
Uriah
That's really cool. That's really cool. So you obviously went through your internship back when you called internship and not associate ship as it is now. And then you became licensed. What year was that?
Figs
No idea.
Uriah
Right.
Figs
I was doing 30 clients a week. I was marketing. Falling asleep at the computer at night, went full on. Was terrifying for other therapists because I would be used to little meek Associates interns, and I'd be like, okay, what are you doing? How much are you charging? How do you charge that much? They would be like, okay, calm down. Relax. But I think it must have been like, yeah, 2014. 2018.
Uriah
Okay, that makes sense.
Figs
Yeah.
Uriah
And then I think, if I'm not mistaken, it was right around 2017 or 18 that you started a group practice in San Francisco, right?
Figs
Yeah. Is that when you helped me?
Uriah
It would have been 2018, I believe.
Figs
Yeah, because I don't remember how I found out about your productive therapist. And I was like, listen. I was like, Look, I know it worked, right? I built up a decent reputation. I was getting more people, and I was really attached to who I sent them to. I wanted to make sure they got help. For a while. I was just giving to the emotionally focused couples therapy community. I was just given all the excess leads. I would just put it like, who wants clients? And I would just send people clients. I mean, when I say clients, I refer to the prospective clients, to them. And I knew I wanted to set up a group practice, but I was really daunted by the administrative path, and it's just you and I checked in, and you wanted to start the productive therapist. I'm like, oh, my God, this is like a match made in heaven. I was really like, I will be your first client. You set all this stuff up so I don't have to make this work.
Uriah
What I've got to do to make this work is kind of like how you approached it, which I so appreciated.
Figs
Yeah. Because, again, you're such a therapist that I see everything through this emotional development lens. Right? Like, I'm quite a in hakomi what we call a burdened enduring character. So when I look at the next steps and I look at how much work it is, I get real heavy and so hard. And so you like, you and what you were doing just was like, oh, my God, this burden. Your riot lifts this burden. I can keep moving forward without, like, this weight. So it was perfect.
Uriah
So cool to hear about that experience from your side and what that was like for you. And that's when I hear you say that. That's 100% what we do and why we do it. We want to make it easier for group practice owners specifically to handle all the incoming inquiries, to lighten their load as far as their administrative work and do what's really important, which is growing group practice, managing and following through on the vision and the purpose that they've got a hold of, so that is so cool.
Figs
Yeah. Well, thank you.
Uriah
It worked.
Figs
Thank you.
Uriah
Yeah. So fast forward to what year was it that you left San Francisco? Because I think that's an interesting part of the story, if you don't mind seeing that.
Figs
I'm from Ireland, my wife's from Hawaii, and we kind of were going back and forth a lot about wanting to leave San Francisco and become a one industry town. Like, how do you compete with buying a house with two tech middle managers? Right. It was impossible. Always behind. So we wanted to move back to Ireland or to Hawaii and could never work out how to do it until the pandemic happened. And then all of a sudden, we were always trying to do experiments. What if we went to all telehealth? Would it work? And even we even experimented with, I'll fly back to San Francisco ten days a month to live in hawaii, and I'll go back to San Francisco ten days a month. Decided against that. It just didn't seem like a realistic, like, long term to execute on that strategy. And then all of a sudden, as awful as the pandemic has been, you know, we definitely had our losses. One of the silver linings was now everything was telehealth. It's all online, and I think and then by July 2020, we just picked up and moved, and we said we'd stay for a year.
Figs
And, you know, I think even within a year, less than a year, like ten months later, we bought our forever home. And we're here, right. Unless something terrible happens, we don't plan on leaving any time, ever.
Uriah
That's amazing. It really seems like your whole family is thriving there, which is amazing. Yeah. If you had asked me, or if this had been presented to you three or four years ago, do you think you could manage a group practice remotely from another country or another state rather, or country, for that matter? Would that be possible? I think we would have said, I don't think so.
Figs
But it is, right? I know, it's amazing. Yeah, everything is. The pandemic kind of sped everything up ten years and 20 years into the future. Right. So yeah, it's been incredible. We've managed to really keep a very strong community feel. Like the therapist, they spend about 2 hours a week with me, 2 hours a week with my wife, two to 4 hours a week with my wife, 2 hours with our head of admin. We have a lot of contact with the culture community down from us. So it works. Yeah, it's great.
Uriah
That's so cool. Yeah. I mean, running productive therapist since 20 17, 20 18, it's been virtual the entire time. And so we've learned a lot about how to create and sustain positive work culture. It's 100% possible. You just have to be more intentional about it and more thoughtful about the way you implement that.
Figs
Right.
Uriah
But it works.
Figs
Yeah. Well, you've always been really good. I love how thoughtful I remember back in the day when you were buying air pods for I can't remember which one of your employees, I was just like, wow, so you actually were a really good role model for me. And also just that part of it, making sure that people really felt seen and valued and appreciated. You're a good teacher.
Uriah
That goes a long way.
Figs
Yes. No, it's huge. By the way, the other thing I didn't but one benefit of living here in Hawaii I shouldn't really say this, I want everyone from California to come, but once you get here, you want to shut the borders, the airport down. I'm kidding. But the time difference is awesome, especially as a couple therapists, because I still see clients. I don't just run the business. I don't think I'll ever stop seeing clients. Like my dad still sees clients at 79 years old. Wow. So the time difference as a couple of therapists, most people want to see me in the evening. I now can finish at 05:00 p.m. Local time and be done at 08:00 p.m. In California, like, for half a year, and then it's 2 hours difference the other half of the year. But that has been so I can do activities like a normal person, like a nine to five person. I've gotten into ocean paddling, like outrigger canoeing. It's my big passion at the moment for the last few years, and I just love it. And I can actually get out on the water at 05:15 p.m. And work till 08:00 p.m..
Figs
It's incredible.
Uriah
Did you plan that or was that happy?
Figs
No, didn't think about it. There were so many things I thought about that was just like a cherry on top. I'm like, this is amazing. It was great.
Uriah
That's cool. I have a friend who actually used to work in my group practice, and then he went out on his own and he went with his family and they traveled and lived in Portugal and in France for a year, over a year. And he continued to see his clients in the States, but the time difference was not beneficial.
Figs
Yeah, we've looked at that. One of the biggest things about, like, if we moved to Ireland with the time difference yeah. They're getting off doing clients in the middle of the night, or 05:00 p.m. To 10:00 p.m. Again, one could make it. This is the way I often think about it. I'm going to do it. But how are you going to execute on a day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year? I don't think that's a sustainable lifestyle, at least.
Uriah
Yeah, not for most people. Yeah, for sure. I'm so glad that's worked out for you. I couldn't be happy.
Figs
Yeah, it's been unbelievable. Sometimes I feel guilty because the pandemic has been so hard for so many people. And again, we had our losses too. And it's just we're living the life that we dreamed of, literally living our best life. My wife and I look at each other every day and we're like, can you believe this? We're just mouthing to each other. What is is this amazing? How is this happening? Sometimes I literally say, did I die? And I'm now in some other parallel universe? This morning, woke up, I didn't sleep well, feeling a bit groggy. Don't get me wrong, I'm not like, skipping every morning, but life is as good as it could have imagined.
Uriah
I have a question for you about that before we wrap up. It seems to me that a lot of therapists, maybe because we're in sort of a caretaking role and we're kind of trained to be available and present for the needs of others versus ourselves necessarily that it can be. Hard for us to dream bigger and figure out how could I live my most ideal, richest life rich in a sense of not just money, but time and freedom. What's my question with that? How can therapists overcome that when they have barriers that they think, whether it's geographical or otherwise?
Figs
Yeah, well, here's how I did it, to be honest, again, not that dissimilar to the change from why did I give up being a stockbroker and actually go in this other life, path of becoming a therapist is suffering. It just wasn't working. And once I became a therapist and got so driven and then became married and a dad, and so driven to succeed and provide, the way I often look at it, I was just taking withdrawals from my selfcare bank account for eight or nine years, and that is not sustainable. My last year or two in San Francisco with two small kids, I was getting sick a lot. You know, it's bad when your clients are coming in, they're like, should you go see a doctor? I was missing like a couple of weeks a month for six or seven months a year. I just knew that I had to change my lifestyle. I couldn't keep going the way I was going. And this is like it's not like I was doing it and crazy, other than I was just working too hard. Suffering was the main motivator. The other thing, and there were two things that I thought would be interesting, that most therapists probably don't talk about.
Figs
If you do have a moment that I wanted to share, is, because of my background in economics, what do I do with my free time? Like, I listen or watch content about rugby and Bitcoin.
Uriah
Nice, right?
Figs
So I think I told you before, like, bitcoin is my treasury asset both for personal and business, right? And it's changed my life. It's changed our life. So I've been in this world of looking at macroeconomics and what's happening since early ninety s, and I had never seen an opportunity like Bitcoin before.
Uriah
Sure.
Figs
That having an actual process where we were actually reinvesting any excess cash flows in an actual asset had a huge impact on the choices and the freedoms it could make.
Uriah
Right. More things possible for you. That makes sense.
Figs
Made a huge amount of things possible. Right. So I'm what do you call what's called a bitcoin maximalist. I don't invest in any other digital assets. I have a Bitcoin brand tattoo. Not quite, but almost. Right. But yeah, I believe exactly. Well, I know I'm kind of a non bumper sticker person. The only bumper sticker I was thinking of is, like, put my two closely held beliefs right here. That will offend you or something offend people. But yes. So that has made a big difference to us having kind of an actual not just growing the business, but then some kind of like investment philosophy and how we could change our families financial situation. And it works.
Uriah
That's great. I love that part. Very cool.
Figs
The other thing I thought was interesting because I haven't heard other therapists talk about this is just at empathy. Right. The name of our group practice. We're really dedicated to running a meritocracy.
Uriah
Yeah.
Figs
And here's what that means to us is we kind of think of ourselves if you think of like a high performance organization and kind of think of ourselves more almost like imagine like a professional sports team. And so we really want therapists that want to be the very best experiential psychotherapist, the very best couples therapist, and that they want to work at it. We're going to work at training you in conjunction with the Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy training that is run by Sue Johnson's organization, who founded Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy. And so we're then going to track how good are you at actually really becoming a ninja couples therapist. What are the kind of questions you ask in the training? How good are you at converting leads to clients? I mean, I hate to use that half sales language. Half therapy language. Right. Because, look, it's all about do you know how to be an experience with psychotherapist? And then when people talk to you, do they want to actually see you? And then do you retain the clients?
Uriah
Right.
Figs
And so we're really clear that the best people should charge the most amount of money. Again, I know this is sacrilegious for some therapists, so we're kind of providing like a journey for people that they could it's unimaginable to me that people could become as good as a therapist anywhere else than being with us. And then I assume five years from now, six years from now, we'll do a fist bump and that therapist will go on to be the master of their own private practice. We would love to take insurance, but I haven't found a way to really protect that meritocracy philosophy that really means so much to. US.
Uriah
That's fascinating. And I would assume with that focus and approach, that you attract different kinds of therapists, not just ones that want to come in, do a job, get a paycheck, and move on. Right. These are committed individuals who want to grow and progress and really be in an environment like that.
Figs
Exactly. It's not for everyone. And I always have to, like, look, you and again, just staying with the soccer metaphor, you could be Christiano Ronaldo, arguably the number one and number two best soccer player in the world, and you still are arguably the best soccer player in the world, but it doesn't mean you fit into this. Our particular way of doing things, it's no slide on you. Right. We do like Barcelona. We do this ticky tacky, short passes with this very particular way of doing things. Other ways of doing things are good. We're not saying they're not. Right? And if you're into it, just like I learned DfT, I had to like I'm a very opinionated person. I thought it was awesome as a therapist, and I let myself be a beginner, and it was really humbling to see to be a beginner and learn someone else's model and become proficient at it. And so that's what we're not an easy yeah. It takes a particular type of person that's willing to start as a beginner and kind of just be pushed a little past where you're at right now all the time. It's definitely not for everybody here.
Figs
If you don't want to become really amazing, that sounds terrible. If there isn't that hunger to just keep getting better. The way I often think of it is, let's say having a license is the fogging, the mirror. You can go work anywhere. There's so many places all you need to do is have the license.
Uriah
Never been more opportunity.
Figs
Yeah, and it's great, but we really are kind of which can be intense for people. We're like, look, you gotta show you want to learn this emotionally focused couples therapy thing.
Uriah
Yeah.
Figs
But anyway, so we've learned obviously through the years how to kind of make sure it's a good fit for us and the therapist. Right.
Uriah
I appreciate you sharing that because I think that's an interesting approach, and I think I would love to do something similar in my practice with family therapy. Right. Because there's not a lot of places to go to get proper training and being a family therapist, even though here in California, it's in our name. Right. Marriage and family therapist, none of us know how to do it. Almost. No.
Figs
Come here. You're right, I don't. By the way, it's really good. One good thing of this, by the way, I refer families to you, by the way, thank you for mentioning that right now, because we don't have someone, and you would think I've done family therapy training, but I really get it's definitely not something I do, and I don't know how to train other people to do it. I'd much rather refer out when it's not inside of our real house right now.
Uriah
It's definitely relational type of therapy, of course, but it's different than couples, different skillset.
Figs
Yes. But yeah, that's very interesting. And I'm happy to share with you how we run it like a kind of a training institute inside a group practice whenever you want to.
Uriah
I would love to hear about that at some point. Yeah, that'd be cool. I really appreciate you coming on the podcast and of course.
Figs
Thank you for having me.
Uriah
Yeah, we'll put all your links in the show notes. But it's empathy.com.
Figs
Empathywood and I on the end with not a Y compathywood. Y on the end.com.
Uriah
Is that being used, by the way? Just curious.
Figs
I remember, but I haven't checked now, but back in the day when I actually reached out to the guy that had empathy.com, probably was Elon Musk or someone. They were saying, no, I have plans for it.
Uriah
Okay.
Figs
He's probably, like, waiting for some Coca Cola or someone to buy it from them.
Uriah
I did find a funny side note. I did find a domain that I really wanted, and it's being parked, and the person who owns it will sell it for $1800, which actually is not bad.
Figs
I mean, depending on what you're going to do, right?
Uriah
It's not that bad.
Figs
Well, I spent $2,000 I don't mind, on empathywood. And I nbn.com in retrospect, I mean, I've made the whole brand around that it's worked out.
Uriah
Yeah.
Figs
But I don't know whether I would advise people like, you know what I mean, to do what I did. I don't know if you really need to buy a URL when you're starting off.
Uriah
Maybe not the first thing, but being able to stand out in any industry is obviously important.
Figs
Empathy with an eye on the end. Exactly. And by the way, that's how I teach my kids. They're not going to remember [email protected]. Empathy with a 90 another Y in the end. They kind of can remember that better than the numbers, right?
Uriah
It's great. Love it. Cool. Well, thanks so much again and talk to you soon.
Figs
So good to see you.
Uriah
You too.
Figs
Thank you. Bye.
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