Meet Adrienne and Seeking Depth to Recovery
Racheal: Welcome, Adrienne. I'm so excited you're here with me on Promote Yourself to CEO.
Adrienne: Thanks for having me, Racheal.
Racheal: You and I have gotten to know each other over the last few years, but I'd love to start by having you share with everybody what you do with Seeking Depth and how long you've been in business.
Adrienne: Gosh, I was thinking about that earlier. August is going to be seven years in practice, and five years as a group practice, so that feels pretty monumental. You've been with us for about the half-life of our group practice. The CEO Collective has been huge in getting us to where we are.
We specialize, and I've taken a lot of your language here, as the therapists who provide therapy to people who've done therapy and still feel stuck. We believe that for folks who struggle with or have experienced relational trauma, that trauma gets reenacted inside the therapeutic relationship. So we use different experiential modalities like psychodrama, somatic experiencing, art, and EMDR to draw attention to those relational dynamics and gently start to unpack the patterns, so people can have a different experience in their lives.
We do that work through intensives. We were one of the first practices to bring the 90-minute weekly intensives to the area. My role has really shifted and grown since becoming a group practice owner, especially around how to train people to do an effective 90-minute session. It's not about filling time for the sake of filling time. It's very intentional work, and figuring out how to communicate that to onboarding therapists has been my past year.
Why she started a group practice
Racheal: It's been an interesting journey to watch, because a lot of therapists think the next step to growth is starting a group practice. Can you share what that transition was actually like, going from solo practitioner to building a group?
Adrienne: Gosh. I think about what even motivated me in the first place, and it's hard to talk about without talking about vision and values, because that's what's gotten really clear inside the collective. Knowing where we're going.
At the time I had my hand in a lot of different pots. I was doing substance use interventions, recovery monitoring, all kinds of things that aren't really in alignment with how we practice now. My original thinking was simple. I had this waitlist, and I needed good people to refer to for the families I was working with. It felt like it would be easy to just add a clinician and open the waitlist to them.
It was a much harder process than that. Getting people to trust clinicians who weren't me, being willing to work with someone newer, none of that came automatically. As I really thought about my vision, I realized what we want to be. We joke internally and call it our therapy farm. It's an outpatient retreat center for trauma recovery and trauma training. I've deepened into my role as someone who trains other clinicians in what I think are the most effective trauma therapy practices.
So I shifted away from "I'll get people off my waitlist by hiring them" toward really supporting developing clinicians, helping them figure out who they are as providers, and practicing newer, more evidence-based techniques than what we learned in grad school. I've embraced being a supervisor rather than a manager who just assigns cases. I support people in being the best version of themselves inside those therapeutic relationships.
The hard lessons of building a team
Racheal: A lot of people are exactly where you were, with relationships across different organizations and referral partners and huge demand, where the group practice feels like the logical next step. But I know we've navigated some road bumps. What challenges came up that made you evolve?
Adrienne: A lot of it was really challenging dynamics with the team. I had this great business plan on paper, and then there was the human factor I hadn't planned for. My original values were that I really wanted to be a safe refuge for therapists, because we're such an oppressed group. There's nobody else as educated as we are who makes as little as we do. We're poorly paid for what's expected of us.
I wanted to create a safe, anti-ableist culture, especially as someone with a neurological disability. I can't work full-time the way I used to. But I also set myself up to be taken advantage of. I made myself a stepping stone. People would come in, not see all the systems at work, and just notice that we charge self-pay so they don't have to deal with insurance. Then they'd get licensed and take their whole caseload with them.
It just wasn't sustainable. If it takes me about a year to stabilize a caseload, I can't have people turning over that quickly. I also had this idea about loyalty, that treating someone really well would buy their loyalty and they'd want to stay close. That wasn't the case. Those negative experiences forced me to look at what wasn't working and what was, and to get crystal clear about our values for the team.
The values that changed everything: ART
Adrienne: Our values now, I really love. The acronym is ART. Authenticity, relationality, and teachability.
We want people who are authentic, who show up in their own vulnerability. We're the ceiling our clients can rise to. If we're not willing to be vulnerable with ourselves, our clients won't be vulnerable either. We want that inside the group space and across the team. There's been a history of people being more interested in the pat on the back than in really growing and expanding their skills. I've been working professionally for fifteen years and I still pay someone for my own supervision. We never get to the top. There's always more to uncover and learn.
Relationality means we're successful together. This is not about one person being the star. We're motivated to succeed together, and we care about each other. This year has been so much fun. I've been letting my team guide how much they want me involved in their lives, and there's a whole group chat going that they started. They renamed it Therapy Farmers, which shows how aligned we are. We even did an art team day where we cut our own glass and made mosaics. I don't want a team that's profitable but not a joy to be around. If I'm paying my bills, I want to have fun doing it.
Teachability is the last piece. I want people who are motivated to learn. It's not a good fit for someone who comes in saying they learned everything they needed in grad school and they're just here for licensing supervision. These values have made every decision easier, including who's a good fit and which systems we revisit. One of our newer practices is that we interview people as a team now, and it's been so helpful. I used to resist it because it felt like herding cats, but the values put us on the same page, and the team loves being the gatekeeper of who joins their mental space.
The $65,000 wake-up call
Racheal: I love hearing this, because there's so much hype around hiring a team, like all you have to do is hire and it magically works out. But the human element requires more than what looks good on paper. It requires you stepping into a new level as a leader. A big part of that is accountability.
Adrienne: Right. As I think about systems, they keep getting clearer and clearer. The thing that's really helped is what you and I have worked on, figuring out appropriate accountabilities and how to express them in a way that's clear, relevant, and something people can carry with them. Even something simple, like a regular team meeting where we review last month's average census, our cancellation rate, our utilization, and the plan for next month, makes a difference.
One of the biggest things I did was start including our cancellation costs. I put up what our cancellations cost in 2025, and it was sixty-five thousand dollars. There was this massive gasp in the room. Immediately people changed how they handled cancellations and started following the policies we already had in place. We just hadn't made the accountability clear. Helping people see how the puzzle pieces fit into the bigger picture, which feels so intuitive to me, matters. They're not in my seat, so they couldn't see it on their own.
Racheal: What was interesting was that your intake numbers were still good. You said you thought you needed to work more on marketing, but your numbers were in the range you wanted. The real clarity came from knowing your goal numbers and then seeing how much revenue was lost to cancellations. And when you showed the team, they went from feeling bad about charging a cancellation fee to understanding it was actually hurting the business.
Adrienne: Yeah. I quote you on this often. Our clients benefit from us following those policies, because if we can't keep our doors open, we can't see them anyway.
Standardizing her approach to trauma therapy
Adrienne: Another one was retention. I had someone doing really great work, but focused on short-term, brief solution-focused therapy. That's wonderful, and it's valid, but I needed to go through that experience to get clear on what I want us to be doing. I get so jazzed about the nonverbal and preverbal trauma work, and we're not resolving that in a handful of sessions. It can take a year or two to develop a secure attachment with your therapist. If we're doing deep attachment work, it takes longer.
That whole process challenged me to think more critically about how I practice and to standardize my own approach. Through years of intensive work, it came together into what I've shared with you, Self-Triangulation Theory, the different ways we become triangulated into resilience roles and stress roles, and the modalities we use to strengthen the resilient parts and help the stress roles orient to safety.
The team has been so jazzed to learn it. They're all interested in psychodrama, and their enthusiasm reinforces my focus on the training objectives. We meet weekly for group supervision, and one of those sessions is a dedicated skills lab. Someone practices being the therapist and the client, and I observe them using skills in real time so they get hands-on feedback. It's something they might think they're doing one way, but a small shift can create a much deeper impact for their clients. I really enjoy that role.
Racheal: You couldn't do that a few years ago. You couldn't show up for your team and take them to the next level while also developing your own curriculum. It's hard to do that when you're trying to maintain chaos and keep everyone's calendar full.
What the 90-Day CEO Operating System changed
Racheal: I've watched you quarter after quarter get clearer. What has putting the 90-Day CEO Operating System in your business allowed you to do that you couldn't before?
Adrienne: I keep coming back to the word clarity. A lot of it is how I make daily, weekly, and monthly decisions. I have you in my head for everything I do, honestly. Even parenting. We homeschool, so we have vision and values for homeschooling, and that helps us decide which curriculum to focus on and which events to say yes or no to. I even bring it into my work with clients who are struggling with dating or family concerns. What's your vision? We do that in therapy anyway. I just have the language for it now. I see in systems.
Have you watched Portlandia? There's that bit, "we can pickle that." So I've got you in my head going, "we can systematize that." Documenting all my systems takes more time up front and saves so much more on the back end. It tells me exactly what I'm expecting of someone else, and it reduces friction and conflict. The resentment that could build up between people, we get ahead of it by being clear about expectations.
My process is a little different from everyone else's. I don't engage weekly with all the different pieces. I get what I need and then my brain has to sit with it for a while. I do the mastermind day with you each quarter, which is so helpful. I come in with everything that's happening, we organize it, and we sequence it where it makes sense. Then it all feeds into the CEO Retreat with whatever really needs my attention.
Managing shiny objects and staying focused
Adrienne: Even last week, I was covering for our admin. We usually get about seven inquiries a week, and we got nine in the two days I was covering. I'd blocked off time hoping to get CEO work done and ended up covering instead. But isn't that great? Two days also opened up for me to go to the beach this week, leaving Thursday instead of Saturday, so I'm just shifting things around and doing next week what I'd planned for this week.
One of the biggest things I took from you is naming shiny object syndrome. I have a whiteboard in my home office with everything I'm working on, and I color-code it. Is this a shiny object? Is this a parking lot idea? Is this in progress right now? I reserve a sandbox day so I can play with my shiny objects, because they are shiny and I enjoy them. But I can make clearer decisions about what's actually time-sensitive and feeds the rest of my month. My attention is focused, and I'm getting meaningful things done.
Racheal: I love that you have more capacity and more flexibility than before, so you can leave a couple days early for the beach and still know everything that needs to get done will get done.
Advice to her younger self
Racheal: What would you say to the Adrienne of two years ago, binge-listening to the podcast and wondering whether to say yes to the collective?
Adrienne: Okay, so Adrienne two years ago had a mixed relationship with Racheal two years ago. I loved what you said, and I also had some inside thoughts. You'd talk about treating yourself to a coffee every day, and I remember being so in the weeds thinking, "I would love to treat myself to a coffee. I can't treat myself to a coffee, you crazy lady." I don't talk to you that way inside anymore, but I did then.
Here's the thing. I was so in the weeds I couldn't answer your questions. You'd ask, "What's your vision?" and I'd think, "To pay my mortgage, Racheal. What more do you want from me?" So what would help Adrienne two years ago is knowing it's a long return on investment. There's that analogy about U-turning a canoe versus a sailboat versus a cruise ship. With everything I had going on, this wasn't a canoe. It was a much larger ship.
I expected you to hand me a magic answer, some honey hole where all my clients were hanging out, so I could suddenly have a wealth of people coming in. But it was really about changing the structure and systems so we could be sustainable. You say that in your intro, but I didn't understand it until I lived it. The CEO Collective is a year long for a reason. That's the return on investment. You can't make a couple changes and expect it to be over. You have to give it time. Be patient, and put these things into place.
Systems that hold you through catastrophe
Racheal: I love the ship analogy, because if you try to change too much too fast, you capsize the boat. This is your livelihood and your family's, not a hobby. If we change too much too fast, we don't know what's actually working. It's more strategic to work on the first things, get some results, then tweak more. That's why the 90-day rhythm helps. I can watch everyone and point to the highest-leverage moves so you get results without capsizing.
Adrienne: Absolutely, and that's where I am now. I can get into the granular. There are newer metrics I've started tracking, like utilization, and my inner critic pops up saying, "You're just now tracking this?" But I wouldn't have known to track it before, and even if I had, I wouldn't have known the story it was telling. The things I wanted revealed two years ago are finally being revealed, and it gives me a greater sense of control.
This is a tough season. April's a great month, and then May, June, and July slow down, so I get hesitant to celebrate. I think, "Well, I could go out of business next month." But I feel so much more confident. As you always say, and I quoted it in two sessions yesterday, we don't rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems. That's where I feel safe right now. I have systems I believe will hold me, even if something catastrophic happens. And catastrophic things did happen. In an eighteen-month period we had four people leave, my dad died, and one of my clinicians had a personal crisis. We had catastrophe, and we're still here.
Racheal: You're still here, and you know your business better than you ever have. You really understand the inner workings, and you can see ahead because you're tracking and having these conversations. Watching your confidence as a CEO grow has been amazing. You were always a skilled therapist. We knew that. But owning your role as CEO has been the change.
Adrienne: Thank you. I know it sounds cheesy, and I'm a guest here, but I genuinely feel this is a result of the work you and I have been doing together. It's been so impactful.
Closing
Racheal: Thank you so much for joining me today. So many nuggets. I especially hope anyone listening understands that this is a process. It takes time. It's not the sexiest thing to talk about systems and getting organized, but that clarity is a game changer. Your foundation is so strong now. You're setting up Seeking Depth to Recovery to become an amazing place for more therapists to learn from you, and there's a whole next level we're working toward.
Adrienne: I'm having fun with it, too, as I consider why I do any of this. I changed our mission statement. It's to enjoy our time on earth in meaningful relationships. That's what we're doing.
Racheal: I love that. I'm so glad we've gotten to know each other, so glad I've been able to support you, and I cannot wait to see what's next.
Adrienne: Me too.