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Conduct a broad-based assessment of personality and psychopathology with the Gold Standard Personality Assessment Inventory or PAI. The new PAI Spanish Revised Translation retains semantic equivalence while using clearer and more inclusive language. Learn more at parinc.com\pai.
Hello everyone. Welcome back. I am glad to be here with you. I’ll keep it short and sweet here for the intro.
Today, I am reflecting on the first annual Crafted Practice Retreat, which happened just last week, and I’m excited to share the experience of this event with you. Let’s dive into it.
Okay, y’all, here we go. Warning. This is a much more self-indulgent episode than usual and a self-reflecting episode, but I’ve learned over the years that processing and sharing on the podcast can be very cathartic and sometimes even helpful for others. So here we go.
Many of you know that I recently hosted the first annual Crafted Practice Retreat. It was the first retreat of its kind that I know of that was specifically aimed at testing folks in private practice. Hosting this retreat represented, [00:02:00] a really meaningful moment in my life. I’ve had the idea to host a retreat for years.
After going to conferences that were overwhelming, too jam-packed with sessions to even breathe, not helpful for those of us in private practice, and too theoretical or research-driven to actually matter in day-to-day life, I wanted to do something different, but I just couldn’t bring myself to take the leap.
There was a lot of fear involved, of course, questions like, what if nobody registers? What if people do register but then it sucks because of me and something I did or didn’t do? What if I actually have no idea what testing folks need or want in an event? All these questions and many more. Can I even pull this off? Lots of things.
[00:03:00] Luckily, I had the support and encouragement of a lot of important folks: my small group Slack chat of testing psychologists, my close friends, my accountability group, and of course my wife who has thankfully hosted retreats as well. She gave me a lot of guidance from her experience that turned out to be really helpful.Finally, it just came down to doing it. I knew that I wanted to do it. I knew that I loved bringing people together and trying to create meaningful experiences, but I had to do some research to create a little safety net. That’s what I do. I go to data.
In other words, the most important thing to me was finding a venue that had a reasonably flexible cancellation policy in case no one registered, which is a big fear, and just creating a really big spreadsheet to outline the budget and make sure that I wasn’t going to somehow lose money given that [00:04:00] this was a brand new business venture. But after those things were in place, it was time to take the leap.
Now, I, fortunately, got almost immediate affirmation because the event sold out in I think just over two weeks. At that point, I started to think, this might actually work. There may just be a need for this kind of thing in the testing world. And that’s when the hard work actually started.
It was an interesting experience to be really excited when it sold out, but then all that meant was now I had a lot of planning and details to take care of, but here is the interesting thing, I loved every moment of this. I have always loved bringing people together, like planning parties and facilitating connections, doing events here in our [00:05:00] practice and this kind of thing really gave me a lot of energy.
Even the small details were somehow enjoyable. I really enjoyed putting together the gift bags, planning the food, thinking through the schedule, thinking about where we were going to hang out and happy hour locations, like all those little things. The hosting aspect of this was really fulfilling for me.
This was just reflecting back. I don’t think I recognized this while it was all happening because it was just a lot and I was deep in the to-do list. But it was a remarkable and noteworthy point for me here afterward to recognize that really at no time during the planning of this event, did I get tired or feel burdened by it or anything like that.
Now, when it actually came time for the event, oh my gosh. Talk about imposter syndrome. [00:06:00] I was a wreck. I was super nervous. I basically did not sleep the week before the event and the first two days of the event. I was just ruminating on all the details on my opening remarks, on my presentation, on the process. And so all those fears just crept back in. What if people didn’t like the venue? What if the food is terrible? What if people don’t like each other? What if people don’t like me? All that stuff.
But I’ll say this. Once we got into it, the fears went away really quickly. It was so affirming. I breathed this huge sigh of relief when I showed up to the welcome reception the first evening, and there were already 5 or 6 people at the venue who had found it early and had been hanging out with one [00:07:00] another before the welcome thing even started and they were getting along and joking and I was like, okay, this might work.
Let’s take a break to hear from our featured partner.
Conduct a broad-based assessment of personality and psychopathology with the Gold Standard Personality Assessment Inventory or PAI. 22 non-overlapping scales cover a full range of clinical constructs, so you’ll get the information you need to make a diagnosis and formulate a treatment plan.
Plus for your clients who speak Spanish, the new PAI Spanish Revised translation retains semantic equivalence while updating language to be clearer and more inclusive. Learn more at parinc.com/pai.
All right, let’s get back to the podcast.
So I won’t go into all the details about the event, but suffice it to say that this was the best professional week of my life. The speakers started [00:08:00] us off each morning and were all just incredible. They delivered applicable, interactive presentations that were actually useful and practical.
Each afternoon I got to witness practice owners connecting and showing up for one another in our mastermind sessions. They provided support. They challenged one another. There were tears. There were a lot of meaningful changes that got set in motion at this event. People created real bonds and I think felt truly seen by one another. I heard more than once, “I can’t believe there are 20 people just like me who know my life.” It was incredible.
I’ll stop here. I’ll keep this short and just close with gratitude to sponsors for the event: Productive Therapist, Dock Health, RevKey, PAR, [00:09:00] and our premier sponsor Q-interactive and Pearson. The event definitely couldn’t have happened without them. Super grateful to my fabulous speakers: Amanda Zelechoski, Dr. Linda McGhee, Stephanie Nelson, Brandy Mabra, and John Sanders. I have tons of gratitude for my wife, my accountability group, my Slack group, everybody who supported me in pulling this together, and of course, so much gratitude for all of the attendees. Some of these folks came from Australia and China, y’all. They showed up. They did the work. They created meaningful connections with one another. It was amazing.
If you’re hearing all of this and may want to be part of the next event, there’s a link in the show notes to get on the interest list. I will absolutely be doing more of these in the future and would love to have you.
[00:10:00] All right. Thanks for listening and happy testing.Alright y’all, thank you so much for tuning into this episode. Always grateful to have you here. I hope that you take away some information that you can implement in your practice and in your life. Any resources that we mentioned during the episode will be listed in the show notes, so make sure to check those out.
If you like what you hear on the podcast, I would be so grateful if you left a review on iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
And if you’re a practice owner or aspiring practice owner, I’d invite you to check out The Testing Psychologist Mastermind Groups. I have mastermind groups at every stage of practice development: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. We have homework, we have accountability, we have support, we have resources. These groups are amazing. We do a lot of work and a lot of connecting. If that sounds interesting to you, you can check out the [00:11:00] details at thetestingpsychologist.com/consulting. You can sign up for a pre-group phone call and we will chat and figure out if a group could be a good fit for you.
Thanks so much.
The information contained in this podcast and on The Testing Psychologist website are intended for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast or on the website is intended to be a substitute for professional, psychological, psychiatric, or medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
Please note that no doctor-patient relationship is formed here, and similarly, no supervisory or consultative relationship is formed between the host [00:12:00] or guests of this podcast and listeners of this podcast. If you need the qualified advice of any mental health practitioner or medical provider, please seek one in your area. Similarly, if you need supervision on clinical matters, please find a supervisor with expertise that fits your needs.