Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Carmel Brown. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Carmel, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear your thoughts about making remote work effective.

Prior to the pandemic I completed 100% of my therapy sessions in the office. I’ve always occupied a building as I believed that was the best approach to providing mental health services. As a result of this perspective, I had never considered Telehealth or virtual therapy services. Currently everyone on my team works remotely.  Since changing to a remote company I’ve expanded my reach and now serving significantly more clients than in previous years. Working solely in a local office limited the number and range of clients that I was able to reach and serve to my local community and surrounding communities. Since transitioning to a remote company I am able to see clients around the globe while offering additional services. Those additional services consist of classes, webinars, and virtual critical incident and stress management debriefings based on specific and unique needs and requests from individuals, families and companies.

Running a virtual practice hasn’t presented an excessive amount of challenges outside of relying on technology to remain consistently stable and reliable, and confidentiality. Ensuring confidentiality has been the biggest challenge thus far. It’s great that society has become comfortable discussing mental health, and publicly announcing when they are seeing a therapist, however this sometimes results in clients being open to family members and friends listening to and having information and details about their treatment. Although a client can attempt to record therapy sessions in the office with a smart phone, it’s unlikely and rare. Therapists have more control in preventing private and confidential sessions from becoming shared or public when seeing clients in the office behind a closed door. Clients may login to a session at home without connecting to a headset while family members are within close range. Most often there are not harmful or malicious intentions when or if this occurs, however this is not safe and could cause legal or ethical problems for the client or the therapist for many reasons.

I’ve made switching to a remote company work by using HIPAA compliant platforms, discussing the importance of confidentiality with clients, and hiring more therapists.

I’m not against occupying local office space again when or if it’s a good business decision, but I must admit that I’m very excited about having significantly reduced our expenses by switching from a local office to a worldwide virtual company.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m a Licensed Therapist with 20 years of experience in the mental health field. I started my career in criminal justice shortly after completing my undergraduate studies in the late 1990’s. While working as a Probation and Parole Officer for the State of Missouri in my 20’s I returned to graduate school and earned an M.A. in Professional Counseling. Immediately after completing graduate school in 2003 I left the criminal justice field and began working for a non profit mental health and crisis agency. I started out as an intern and was promoted to Program Director by year 2. I completed the requirement of 2 years/3000 hours to obtain my clinical license through the state of Illinois while working as Program Director. After nearly 6 years I began working for the State of Illinois in a Forensic Center. In this capacity I worked with patients that were Unfit to Stand Trial and Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity. This allowed me to use my criminal justice and mental health backgrounds simultaneously. After 5 years with the state of Illinois, nearly 6 years with a Not For Profit, and 4 years with the State of Missouri I decided it was time to work for myself. I opened my therapy practice in 2016.

I began working with individuals, couples, and families in therapy and slowly progressed to working with corporations. Over the past few years I’ve facilitated workshops, webinars, mental health support, and training for multiple companies and in multiple states throughout the country. A few of the companies I’ve served include UPS, FEDex, CDC, EPA, SSA, VA, Ameren, Casinos, NFL, and various banks, medical facilities, and Railroad companies.

I’m most proud of having the opportunity to facilitate more than 30 mental health webinars for the federal government, and having provided support for more than 100 companies experiencing crisis, trauma, loss, or tragedy.  In addition, I’m very proud of having provided counseling, training, and consultation for individuals, families, and companies in more than 30 states and 4 countries. I should also mention that I’m very proud of being awarded with the Bea Wehrly Human Rights Award for outstanding human rights involvement in 2022 by the Illinois Counseling Association.

I’m currently the Illinois Counseling Associations President for Region V. Since becoming president of our chapter I’ve taken on other leadership roles such as Region V Representative for Governing Council, and a sub-committee to assist in planning our annual conferences for mental health professionals and providers. Most recently I had the honor of presenting as Keynote Speaker for the Illinois Counseling Associations 13th Annual Southern Conference in March of 2023.

I truly enjoy providing clinical supervision for counselors that are pursuing clinical license, and consulting with therapists starting their practices.

As a small business owner for the past 10 years I’ve learned a lot about entrepreneurship. Some of that learning occurred through research and consultation, and some by trial and error. I have provided consultation for new business owners through the Metro East Small Business Development Center at SIUE, and now proudly serving as a member of their Advisory Board.

Serving on the Auxiliary Board for the United Way has also been a way for me to volunteer my time to help individuals, families, and communities in need.

I take a holistic approach to therapy and typically focus on 6 key aspects of life that many of the clients I see in therapy struggle with. Those six areas are mental health, interpersonal relationships, business & career, fitness & nutrition, self-esteem & confidence, and self-care. I believe each of these areas overlap and directly impact each other. When one struggles or has deficits in one of these areas, it most often negatively impacts one or more of the other 5 areas. Spirituality is certainly a critical piece, but I don’t necessarily indicate it as one of the pillars as I believe that component fits and belongs in each of those six categories because it helps to determine the flow, progress, and outcome for each of those six categories. As a result it’s important to develop a plan and treatment approach to address all identified deficits in every major area of life. Sometimes that requires referring clients to other providers to assess, treat, or address identified deficits when it’s not an area in which I am experienced or qualified.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

The forced pivot and introduction into remote work in 2020 has certainly worked out in my favor. I’ve made new connections and partnerships, taken on leadership roles, added therapists and new services to my practice, been invited for more speaking engagements, various new opportunities, and earned a couple of awards. I absolutely love my job!

How did you build your audience on social media?

I hosted an episode on social media titled “Therapy Thursday” each week. I chose a topic that I thought was important and helpful each week, recorded it, and uploaded the video each week. Clients began to look forward to those videos, as I established myself as an expert and/or qualified professional that could help with many of the areas in life they struggled with (mental health, relationships, business & career, fitness & nutrition, self-esteem & confidence, and self-care).  In addition, I held various 30 day challenges online. Some of my favorite social media challenges were my 30 days of gratitude challenge, 30 days of healing, and various fitness and nutrition challenges.  Many of the challenges included journaling exercises, discussion, accountability, support, and a private group online. I typically increase social media presence when there is a new service or new developments within my company. Social media is a great way to let potential clients and partners know when there is a change. Now that I have more referrals than I can physically accommodate I’m on social media much less frequently than in my earlier years of business. I’m at a stage in business in which I’m focused more on managing the current demand for services than marketing for more referrals. Typically, once there’s a sufficient amount of evidence that we have the manpower, resources, and tools to sustain past and current growth, I begin increasing marketing and social media presence to open up the pathway  more growth.  In my field of work “biting off more than you can chew” can result in legal and/or ethical problems. Very often I’m booked and very busy. As a result, I work a lot of hours each week.

When you’ve built your business from scratch and realize you can no longer accommodate the demand and referrals, phone calls, emails, inquiries, and you’re working around the clock it can be overwhelming. However, It’s a great place to be and exactly where you want to be. I never complain about my workload because the other option is to not have enough referrals and to not succeed at the very thing you’re passionate about and have poured so much of yourself into.

Thanks for the interview.  It’s been nice sharing my experience as a therapist, wellness expert, and entrepreneurship with you.

Contact Info:

• Website: yourexhilaratinglife.com carmelbrowncounseling.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carmelbrownlcpc/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCseesTWb1Jw4PfqbbUuvM5A
• Other: I am also a podcast host: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ica-podcast-with-christine-and-carmel/id1676583731 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/your-exhilarating-life/id1598817079