New Narratives for Success with Alison Pidgeon.

Oct 11

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Welcome today to another executive hustle podcast our guest is Alison pigeon CEO and founder of move forward counseling a mental health therapy practice for children adolescents adults families spanning our entire state with six to seven physical locations and offering online services such a great

topic for listeners today because mental health in the workplace and really just in society overall has bubbled to the surface since 2020.

I'm so curious about your take on that, the impact of business and how leaders can do better in this area.

But I don't want to get ahead of myself because this also isn't your only business of lots to explore today before we get started.

Welcome, Alison.

@7:23 - Alison Pidgeon

Thank you so much for having me, Kirsten.

@7:25 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

So excited to dive in. know, I often open these conversations, you know, just by asking, how did we get here today for you?

Did the seven to 10 year old Allison think you'd be a therapist, a business owner?

@7:40 - Alison Pidgeon

What? No, not at all. And actually, I, you know, went through college and really know what I wanted to do and had some great experiences along the way that propelled me to become a therapist and really sort of was going up that ladder and started getting promoted in the agency where I went.

@8:00 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

worked and I thought I was going to become a hospital administrator. That's a very different path.

@8:07 - Alison Pidgeon

Yes.

@8:08 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

So how did you branch out on your own?

@8:10 - Alison Pidgeon

So I always tell people this is where a really beautiful story comes out of a bad situation. I had been promoted to be the director of an outpatient clinic in this non-profit mental health agency where I was working and I had two little kids at home so there wasn't a lot of sleep happening and I just got super burned out and I showed up at work one day after I was up with my son all night because he was sick and just thought like what am I doing here?

You know I was just so stressed out just felt like I was putting out fires at home putting out fires at work and that didn't feel good and I just wasn't sure what I wanted to do and someone said to me why don't you just go start your own practice and I was like oh yeah why don't I do that that's a great idea.

So I gave them six weeks notice and then that time I started a private practice just with myself and that

@9:00 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

was back in 2015 about nine years ago now. Wow. And now you're across the entire state, multiple locations, and serving about how many clients you think?

@9:12 - Alison Pidgeon

I think at any one time we probably have about between 23,000 3,000 clients, and we have a total of 80 employees.

@9:19 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

Wow. That's amazing for nine years. Thank you. Yeah. And this is not your only business. obviously the start your own business bug bit you pretty hard.

@9:30 - Alison Pidgeon

It did. Yeah. I got really curious about other businesses. so along the way, I started doing business consulting. I started a virtual assistant company for mental health practices, which I had for about three and a half years.

And I sold that. I started investing in real estate, got really interested in that as a business and another stream of income.

Um, yeah, I'm trying to think what else there's just. Yeah. Well, now I'm doing a, a wellness center. So we started what we're calling the Inspire Wellness collection.

in downtown Lancaster. we're creating like a co-working space and community for wellness providers in that building.

@10:09 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

Wow, and that's still, you know, of in your niche here with mental health and helping people live a better life, which is part of my mission here with Live Better and Lead Better.

Tell me, you know, wellness, mental health, where are we today? have we come over the last couple years? How has it changed?

What are leaders facing in this area?

@10:31 - Alison Pidgeon

Yeah, it's been interesting. I've been working in mental health for 20 years to see how it's changed really pretty dramatically since the pandemic.

So obviously the fact that we could use telehealth and that is here to stay. So that's very different than it was pre-pandemic.

The other thing I've noticed is that there's just a lot more understanding of mental health and less stigma around it.

think everybody just kind of was like, yeah, we went through a pandemic. Like, we're all struggling. and that became much more normal to talk about and I think too when you sort of talk to people from different generations the younger they are the more it's just like mental health is so accepted like teenagers today will be like of course I go to therapy I go to the gym I go to the doctor I go like normal part of how I take care of myself whereas like the baby boomers are like you know hush hush we don't talk about we go to therapy yeah and then you get everything in between too yeah so it's more talked about it's more accepted does that translate to more people doing it I think so that's what we've seen there's been a big flood in demand since the pandemic and I think too like people were probably kind of struggling before that happened and then obviously that put a whole nother big you know keep of stress on top of people and so that really propelled people to seek therapy yeah and how does that show up for leaders

@12:00 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

you know, when they're trying to support employees that may be going through mental health challenges or the stress of work, you know, it's challenging in some many industries, you know, so just work can be a mental health trigger or source of stress.

What are strategies for leaders as they try to navigate being a supportive workplace, for instance?

@12:23 - Alison Pidgeon

Yeah, that's where I think like having some level of understanding of mental health issues and how that affects people is really important and also, you know, as a leader and a business owner, you kind of have to balance like, yes, I understand you may be struggling with these issues, but at the same time, like, I need you to come to work and do your job and how do you, that's a very delicate dance, right?

So I think, you know, asking for help, asking for, you know, consultation from peers about, hey, have you ever dealt with

You know, these employee issues come up all the time, so I'm sure other people have dealt with them and probably have good ideas of how to handle them.

@13:07 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

Yeah, yeah. One, you know, one thing that I ran into was, you know, leaders making it safe to talk about it, you know, and that may mean that they have to share some of their challenges or some of the struggles that they are under or just show that they're not, this might be just me talking about my personal experience, but not showing that you're a robot, right?

you can have an up and a down, you can have a good day and a bad day, you have needs and you have to take care of yourself and you're not always on all of the time.

@13:41 - Alison Pidgeon

Absolutely. Yeah. think modeling for them like, hey, I'm a real person too and I have my bad days and my struggles and it's huge.

@13:50 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and as a leader and as a female leader, right, I struggled with a lot of these sort of multiple roles that you have multiple roles.

You you have demands at work, you have demands at home. This has to be, you know, very familiar for you as well.

You seem to have a lot of success. What are some of the strategies that you would share are working for you right now?

@14:13 - Alison Pidgeon

Something that really was a huge game changer for me. Back in 2021 was that I hired a nanny slash housekeeper.

It's a full time job. So I have three kids. They're 12 and under and there's a lot going on.

There's a lot of laundry and dinner needs to be made. I was just spending so much time doing those things, not only at the time, but also just the space that it takes up in your brain.

Right? oh, I got to keep track of his soccer stuff. And what about this thing on, you know, the weekend and all of that kind of stuff.

And just to be able to pass that off to somebody and not have to even think about it anymore is just such a liberating feeling, knowing like she's got it.

that she can take care of it. don't have to remind her. She just she knows it's a task she does and she's on top of it.

so that has really been huge for me so that I can spend my time on my business and also I can spend my time hanging out with my kids.

Quality time. I'm not like yelling at them to pick up their shoes and why did you make this big mess?

@15:22 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

And you know what I mean?

@15:23 - Alison Pidgeon

I was like I felt like I was spending the whole time cleaning up after them and wasn't really spending time with them with them.

@15:31 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

Yeah. How did you get to that point? Because you know I I can see that being a real struggle for somebody thinking that you know those are the traditional roles of parenting male or female right.

We we we take care of the things in their house. This is how what we do and it's so ingrained.

You know what helps you get there to sort of release that narrative to be free from sort of that that restriction and be like this is not what I want to

focus my kids as parenting.

@16:03 - Alison Pidgeon

Yeah, I think we get that those like household duties like conflated with like being a good parent. So, you know, I think there's a lot of examples in our society of like, I made my kids birthday cake.

That means I'm a good mom, you know, and it's like, well, I don't have time to make my kids birthday cake, but I'm still going to have a cake because I bought it from the bakery and we're still going to have a party and we're still going to invite all their friends, you know I mean?

Like, we're still going to do a lot stuff, but I'm not going to spend like 10 hours leaving away putting together a party.

And that doesn't make me any less of a good mom. So I think that's where like, you know, because you're not the one making dinner every night and doing the laundry and all that stuff doesn't mean you're not a good parent.

And I think we have to like separate those things.

@16:53 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

Yeah, finding your worst in different places, right?

@16:56 - Alison Pidgeon

Not not where someone else is telling you to put it. Right. And like my kids aren't probably only going to remember I made their birthday cake, but they are going to remember I took them on vacation or we did this special thing together on the weekend or, you know, those kinds of things.

@17:11 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

Right. They're remembering the quality time together.

@17:13 - Alison Pidgeon

Right.

@17:14 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

Yeah. That's such a powerful message. think that's very liberating and powerful, I think, for parents out there trying to quote a quote, it all and have it all.

Right. Yeah. Oh, gosh. You know, you're leading an agency, it's quite large, it's across the whole state. What do you know now about leadership that you wish you knew back in 2016 when you started?

Oh, so many things.

@17:42 - Alison Pidgeon

I think in the beginning, I felt the pressure of kind of like keeping everybody happy and you know, kind of like we have these policies or these guidelines, but then I was like bending them to make individual people happy.

And then I saw how that like backfired on me and then I learned that I really needed to do what was best for the business as a whole, like the majority and the business and not necessarily like for one individual person.

Because that person could be there for a long time, they could quit tomorrow. I don't know, but I need to do what's, you know, best for like the health and sustainability of the business.

@18:26 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

Yeah. Yeah. That's a pretty powerful lesson. How's that showing up now and are you able to sort of coach others around that?

Because that's probably repeating itself with your newer managers. Everyone sort of experiences that type of I need them to like me.

I need to, you know, do things that make them happy as a new manager. So that that's a repeated lesson that gets learned in every agency, like at every level, over and over, in my experience.

over and over and over again.

@19:01 - Alison Pidgeon

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think that, I mean, this is probably similar in a lot of industries, but especially therapists, I feel like, want everybody to feel like Mormon Fuzzy and we have a good rapport and, you know, they don't want to be the bad guy, right?

So that has been quite the learning curve, I think, for our newer managers. But I think it really is helpful to give them, not that you want to go into too much detail, but like give them an understanding of like why this policy exists or why we've made this decision.

Because I think that really helps them then to understand like, Oh, okay, that makes sense. And then that helps them to uphold the the decision or the policy.

@19:45 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

Yes. Yeah, that's a great, that's a great strategy, making sure people understand the why so that they're not trying to make people happy with the person in front of them, because then they end up being, end up being seen and my experience is being really inconsistent.

@20:00 - Alison Pidgeon

because the next person that comes in front of them wants something different and that they get onto that person and then give into the next person that they become a manager who's inconsistent.

Yep. And then you're doing something slightly different for everybody and then it gets really confusing.

@20:12 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

Yeah, you can't run an organization like that. No. Yeah. So I love what you said around, you know, therapists and just the natural friction between, you know, how you're trained as a therapist and I have a clinical background also not necessarily in direct therapy, but you are trained around this therapeutic relationship and, you know, very strong ethics and things like that.

And there is sort of this natural friction with, you know, management and, you know, writing a business and sort of those policy procedure, almost black and white type of things.

And it's interesting to hear you talk about, you know, having to work new people through that and that that's sort of a pain point for you right now.

@20:57 - Alison Pidgeon

Yeah, I would say so. I think though the stuff that we have is really open to getting coaching and leadership and they're really hungry for that and they're open to learning and making those changes.

@21:09 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

that's really helpful. well, culture has a lot to do with that. I'm guessing that you having stepped away from a large agency to open your own practice, you've been very deliberate about the culture that you've created there to attract specific individuals.

Tell me a little bit about the culture and move forward.

@21:30 - Alison Pidgeon

Yeah, so I mean, typically in mental health, and this is not just where I used to work, but pretty much across the board, there's definitely this feeling of like, you are a therapist, you need to work for very little money, you know, like this martyrdom kind of complex where it's like, you know, too bad if you're tired, we need you to see more clients because there's more people walking in the door.

@21:52 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

And like, I never wanted any of that for my staff.

@21:55 - Alison Pidgeon

So we have some very different philosophies. From that kind of environment. So we really encourage the therapist to have a specialty as opposed to in community mental health It's like you have to help whoever walks through the door.

Well, if I have no experience helping that Person then I'm not gonna do a job, right? So we really encourage them to tell us like who do you work well with who do you not work well with?

It's perfectly okay to say, you know what? don't have experience with this type of issue. I don't want to see this client We're also really big on work-life balance.

So our expectation of the number of clients they see is pretty reasonable considering the industry I also You know in my previous role there was some lip service given to yeah family comes first if you need, you know take care of your family and fall out sick like That's what you need to do But then one push came to shove and you actually did it It was like you got the feeling like it really wasn't okay because you were calling it for the third time that month because you're taught

with risk again, you know, and I never wanted my staff to feel that way. I really do feel like, you know, your family and personal responsibilities come first and we work really hard at work and, you know, you need to take care of your family and when you come back, you'll take care of what you need to take care of.

So, you know, it's just interesting with the culture that we built and then people who come from other, you know, other places of employment and they, it's amazing to me how I don't know if I want to say like patriarchal that the environment was that they came from, but just like there were these like rules that just don't even make sense to me anymore.

Like we usually keep our cameras on when we're meeting on Zoom and the one Are you a good therapist?

Perfect. I don't care if have tattoos all over your body.

@25:04 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

Yeah. That reminds me of really those bigger agencies that you run into and having worked in some, they get so large and unwieldy that you end up with all of these rules.

they stray so far, and the layers are so many, that oftentimes you can't draw a line from the rule or the policy back to the intent or the purpose or the value that maybe one day in the past, it really did connect, but there's so few circles or connections of feedback anymore that they just, they don't know anymore, and there's these trails of policies and things that don't make sense.

You at your size have the luxury of continuing to say, like, wait, does this make sense?

@25:58 - Alison Pidgeon

Should this be like this? Do we need an actual rule? a policy for this, right? We're not, right? Yeah, even like with dress code, like we have a very relaxed dress code, because I think that's the way our workplace is moving in general, but I also am like, why do we have to get dressed up as therapists?

You know what I mean? Like, who said that was a thing?

@26:19 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

Yeah, yeah. So you're testing the boundaries. Is that a more professional thing for you, or is that a part of personality as well?

@26:26 - Alison Pidgeon

Um, I think for me, especially, I'm very passionate about like changing the mental health, um, landscape, not only for clients, but also for staff.

And I think that's a big, you know, that's a big piece of it is like, we don't have to do everything as usual.

We can create something different where, you know, staff is well taken care of, clients get great care, um, you know, staff doesn't need to get burned out, you know, all that kind of stuff, which is very typical.

So I just really want to show that like, you can treat your staff really well, they can take great care of the clients, you can run a profitable business, like they don't all have to be immediately exclusive.

@27:12 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

Right. Well, it goes back to the previous conversation around your personal narratives and how you're running your house, right?

You, both in person and in business, you're not allowing these false narratives prescribed by somebody else to dictate how you want to run your house, how you want to raise your kids, and how you want to run your business.

Right. More than one way to deliver value as a parent, as a clinician, as a leader. Right. It's a really interesting parallel here.

@27:43 - Alison Pidgeon

It's a very good summation.

@27:44 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

I never thought about it that way. Yeah. It's because I'm taking notes, you know, the advantage here. So tell me, you know, I've been in certainly in the helping profession and in the field.

felt slightly differently, but from your perspective, what's most challenging and what's most rewarding about working in the mental health, in the therapy practice, the way that you do?

@28:14 - Alison Pidgeon

I would say the most challenging thing is finding staff. There's generally shortage, their, you know, therapists have to be highly trained, have to be licensed, you know, further their makes the pool even smaller.

And then I would say the most gratifying thing is hearing from the staff, how happy they are, where they work.

That's number one for me. We've won several best place to work awards, and that is probably the number one thing that I'm the most proud of.

They get surveyed anonymously. And yeah, it's just, that's my thing, like I want to make the work environment as good as possible for the staff.

And then I do hear lots of great things when I'm out in the community, but also from the staff about clients, clients getting better, you know, clients who have had an experience in therapy that's really been life changing for them.

I can't tell you how many times I've been somewhere where they find out where I work and they tell me they're a client and they tell me, you know, what a great experience it was and how helpful it was to come to therapy and move forward.

@29:27 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

So that's super super gratifying to me. That's amazing. Making all the hard work worth it. Yes. Yeah. You know, and you're not alone finding the staff.

think every industry that I speak with finding staff is one up there in the top three main challenges. So unfortunately that is not unique to your industry.

Right. You know, one of the things that was really hard for me as a young leader was taking care of myself.

I had a real hard time prioritizing myself, I was always prioritizing the team, the goals, you know, what we needed to achieve, and some curious part of my mission now on all the work that I do in coaching and consulting and even the podcast and sharing these stories is a round of helping other people avoid some of the same mistakes, right?

If we can know better, we do better. So if you were to speak to a leader like that early in their career, know, rising the ladder and not taking care of themselves, what would you tell them?

How would you, you know, either what do they need to be doing or if they know what they need to be doing, how do you convince them to just do it?

@30:45 - Alison Pidgeon

That is a great question. So that took me a long time to learn. I will admit that I probably didn't really do that until the last couple of years and it was literally kind of born out of me running myself into the ground.

So, you know, I was starting to have like physical health problems. I was exhausted all the time.

@31:04 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

was like, in my late 30s, I was like, I'm way too young to be feeling this way.

@31:10 - Alison Pidgeon

And then I started to do things like, you know, take 20 minutes and sit down outside and stare out the trees in my backyard, you know?

And like, in the past, I would have thought, well, this is a waste of time. I could be working right now.

And then I realized that, you know, when I let my mind wander, have those sort of like blank spaces, that's when I like work through problems or, you know, have some of my best ideas.

And I started to see how that made me more productive when I actually was working. Because when I was feeling burned out or when I was just working all the time, I was, it felt like I was spending big chunks of time just like staring at the computer, not really getting anything done.

And so once I started taking those, you know, if... It was five or 10 minutes here and there. was like, OK, I'm just going to get up and take a walk because I'm just staring at the computer and not getting anything done.

just realizing how much that helped me to be productive than when I was working. And then I was like, well, this time is valuable.

I'm not just sitting here doing nothing. But I was very stubborn for a long time and didn't do that.

@32:23 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

So very similar, and this is the same advice that you see in many places. Right, Jack? Well, sculled window time, creative, free time, downtime, you're standing at the window, you're staring outside for you.

was looking at the trees. How do we get these leaders to avoid burnout earlier in their career? Because I really think we have a leadership epidemic of people burning out, people not wanting to be leaders.

was reading somewhere like 25% of managers don't want to be managers anymore. You know, that's a problem. And then, you know,

of many employees leave their companies because their managers aren't doing a great job. So, and it's fixable. It's just, know, and we have mental crisis.

there's just all of these signs out there that, you know, we sort of know what we need to do, but we're not doing it.

@33:18 - Alison Pidgeon

How do we help people out there? Right.

@33:25 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

So we need the solution we need to put out there in the next five minutes.

@33:29 - Alison Pidgeon

Got it?

@33:30 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

Okay, I got it.

@33:32 - Alison Pidgeon

I will come up with something brilliant.

@33:34 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

Solution one call move forward counseling and started on your next session because it's amazing. Or call for a job because it's a good place to work.

Yes. It is just frustrating when you run into somebody who is in the hamster wheel, right? One there. And then you can see it on their face.

And you just want to walk them outside, sit them down and say, you know, this is how this is how you get out of it.

But it's it's it's counterintuitive when you're in it.

@34:11 - Alison Pidgeon

Yes, yes, for sure. I was actually just talking to a friend about that. And I think too, the other problem is like, even if you think, okay, well, I'm going to go, you know, sit down and relax, whatever, you know, putting that in brain is still going million miles an hour.

then you maybe start, you know, busyness for people a lot of times is, you know, you're avoiding something, you're avoiding thinking about something, maybe you're avoiding dealing with a relationship.

And so when you actually do sit down and get quiet, those things pop up and those, you know, we don't want to deal with those uncomfortable.

Yeah, right. So we just want to keep going, going, going, going until we're exhausted. We hopefully fall asleep. But I think part of it, too, is like dealing with some

of that stuff and learning mindfulness and learning like okay these thoughts are going to pop up but it doesn't mean I have to judge them or it doesn't mean I need you know they're going to drag me down into a depression or whatever it's just like you know learning those mindfulness skills because that's part of what's going to come up when you slow down.

@35:20 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

Yeah just because it comes up doesn't mean I have to deal with it right now. Right. I can let it go and keep looking at these trees.

Yep. Yeah. Yeah it's such a powerful skill and but it is something to be cultivated. Right.

@35:34 - Alison Pidgeon

Definitely. Yeah because I think for a long time I was running from not wanting to think about things that were difficult in my life and that's why I was like working all the time.

@35:46 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

Yeah. so it sounds super similar quite frankly. I'm sure there's a lot of people out there that resonate with that thought.

Yeah wow this was really great super super helpful. reminding me of so many journeys that I've been on and I think there's just been so much that's been shared.

Oh gosh I'm going summarize a couple things because there's just been so much. I'll start with what we just ended with which was you know leaders if you're in burnout more work is not the answer.

Stepping away and finding some quiet time to think to be creative to just let your mind wander and as Allison said you know even if some things come up that aren't awesome right it doesn't mean you have to deal with them right that moment you know write them down get them out but don't use that as an excuse to not get some quiet time it is where your best ideas are going to come from.

Talked about a big shift in mental health it is much more of an okay topic to talk about the stigma is gone we're talking about young people are going to the therapist like pick one of the gym and us older people can really take

that as a lesson, and we need to do that. Leaders can make it safe for people to talk about that in their own companies by modeling good behavior, talking about their own mental health, showing that you know what, I need a day off today, right?

Those are the ways that you can make it safe. And I just love that we had this thread around a couple of different of your stories today, which was around letting go of false narratives, about some role that you may be playing in your life, whether it's a personal role or a professional role, that locks you into one way of thinking, this is how I have to deliver value, whether that's to my kids or to my staff or my spouse, know, that baking that homemade cake or whatever, that's the way I have to deliver value.

Well, maybe it's not. And one of their narrative may serve you better. So just amazing, amazing stuff today, Alison.

I am so glad we did this. If people want to know more about you, more about move forward, how can they find you?

@37:58 - Alison Pidgeon

Yeah, you can check out. our website it's www.moveforwardpa.com and you can see all of our different offices and all of our staff across Pennsylvania.

Probably the best place to connect with me is on LinkedIn. You can just look me up by my name, Alison Pigeon.

I do post quite a bit on there, different things I'm up to with my various businesses.

@38:22 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

And more to come in the future, I'm sure. I don't know if you missed. We will have all of those links in the show so people can see them there.

@38:32 - Alison Pidgeon

Alison, thank you so much. This was wonderful. Thank you so much.

@38:36 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)

It's been great. All right, take care everyone.

@38:41 - Alison Pidgeon

Awesome.

Vicky Russell

New Narratives for Success with Alison Pidgeon.

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