We recently connected with Kirsten Hartz and have shared our conversation below.

Kirsten, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

I like to think that I had an entrepreneurial predisposition by age 12, selling lemonade with my best friend and saving our summer earnings in a CD account. We’d watch it slowly grow with the intention of buying trips to the water park and beads for friendship necklaces. I was the neighborhood babysitter, petsitter, and lawn mower. It wasn’t just about making money; it was the process of learning a new skill set that I could be proud of.

Fast forward many years to when I was working in a mental health agency setting both during and after graduate school. My first job was at an agency serving court-mandated clients, which meant that many of my clients had spent their lives living at or below the poverty line and had experienced significant trauma at the hands of our justice system. I continued to work in agency settings for addiction treatment, in both in-patient and out-patient settings, where I learned trauma-informed care and how to handle crisis situations.

I was drained after only a few years of clinical work. There was a moment about three years in that I realized I needed to either get out of the field altogether or find a new way to support myself as a clinician. I have seen other clinicians exhaust themselves, working too many hours and in sustained stressful situations with not enough resources for adequate self-care. I knew this couldn’t be my path. After my agency work, I have been passionate about equitable access to mental health care, and for this reason, created room for a sliding scale in my practice for those that qualify.

I had the idea of starting a trauma-focused psychedelic therapy practice in 2020 while I was working in a group practice. It dawned on me that it wasn’t only client work that I cared about, it was also the business. My inner 12-year-old with the lemonade stand knew that being my own boss was the only way. Private practice felt like the natural next step toward finding sustainability and longevity in the field. Moving from idea to reality didn’t take long, but there were a few false starts that taught me where to better invest my time, energy, and money.

Here’s what worked: I started by creating an attractive website with excellent SEO (Search Engine Optimization). I have since found that solid SEO is the most effective way to market myself. I spent time teaching myself how to write SEO-heavy blog posts and boosting my SEO by maximizing my exposure on public therapy listings. Many of my clients come through word of mouth, which is a process I nurture by attending professional meet-up groups, conferences, workshops, trainings, and other events. I stay connected to other practitioners in my field through peer and case consultation groups and have an active referral network. The details of creating an LLC and S-Corp came together quickly, and all that was left was finding the right office.

As my caseload filled and I reached capacity, I hired a contract therapist to take on clients seeking EMDR, so that I could shift towards working more exclusively with ketamine-assisted therapy clients. My latest venture has been running a trauma-focused and somatic-based ketamine-assisted therapy group on a regular basis. Future goals include hiring additional clinicians to join the practice and eventually building the psychedelic portion of the practice into a more robust offering, especially as more medicines become available for clinical use over the next few years.

Kirsten, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I came to the mental health profession somewhat accidentally via my travels in India. I was in South India traveling, studying, and volunteering for over a year, which is where I first encountered Buddhism. I was 24 and urgently looking for my life’s purpose and meaning. I started to read the teachings of Chögyam Trungpa, the founder of Shambhala, which is a popular Tibetan Buddhist tradition in the West.

As I traveled, studied, meditated, and became more familiar with the teachings of Buddhism, I kept hearing about a university in Boulder, Colorado called Naropa University. Chögyam Trungpa originally founded Naropa University to teach therapists in training how to use the wisdom of Eastern philosophy to work with the mind. I entered Naropa University in 2015 as a graduate student in the Contemplative Psychotherapy and Buddhist Psychology program to learn more about mental health through the lens of Eastern wisdom traditions. If I were to boil my three-year education down, this is what I learned. Humans are born good, brilliant, and sane, and the layers of systemic and familial trauma impact our ability to live into our most awakened and whole selves.

As I moved from agency mental health work into private practice in 2020, it was important to me that I not perpetuate the patterns of a traumatized mental health care system in my practice. For me, this means engaging in a somatic (meaning “body-centered”) approach to working with my clients’ suffering. Sometimes it means incorporating psychedelics, when it’s appropriate, to ease up the boundaries a client has created in self-defense. Today, the group practice works with individuals interested in alternative therapeutic methods for healing trauma and trauma symptoms, including EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), mindfulness, somatic (body-centered) therapies, and ketamine-assisted therapy. I have been slowly shifting the focus of the practice toward a holistic ketamine-assisted therapy approach since I consistently find that it’s one of the most effective and efficient treatments available. The benefits of ketamine have been heavily researched in the past decade, primarily for treatment-resistant depression. Many clients seek ketamine-assisted therapy as a last-ditch option for depression symptoms.

For now, ketamine-assisted therapy is the only psychedelic therapy available for legal clinical use, but I’ve learned that it’s not a medicine to be underestimated. I know many clients who have experienced significant positive changes in their depression and other trauma symptoms by engaging in a series of ketamine-assisted therapy sessions. I also run ketamine-assisted therapy groups. While individual therapy can be very beneficial, there’s nothing like the power of a group to move toward deeper integration and healing.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

It helps to have been in the Boulder/Denver area for a while now! I went to graduate school in Boulder, as I mentioned, so there was a sense of belonging to a community of like-minded professionals right out of the gate. Since then, I have belonged to various peer and case consultation groups, participated in numerous workshops and trainings, and attended meet-ups and events to stay connected. Please excuse the platitude, but I do believe that when we lead with heart and vulnerability, we can make deeper connections in our community. I try to practice generosity with my colleagues, making referrals wherever possible, and showing interest in others’ business. I love to support clinicians who are entering the field and looking for guidance.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Network, network, network! I can’t tell you how much I value and appreciate the professional network of mental health professionals I belong to in Denver. This is where the majority of my clients come from. I do also invest energy in creating strong SEO, as I mentioned before, so that I’m visible on Google searches. I take advantage of all the paid and free professional listings out there so that I can get more visibility and boost SEO. I continue to resist social media (it’s a me problem!), but I believe this will be my next area to invest time, energy, and money in so that the business can continue to grow.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.kirstenhartz.com
• Instagram: @kh_counseling_group
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100076655190775

Image Credits
Amelia Vilona Photography