Special Guest Interview: Virginie Goldstein of Tech Connect Reset
Today, we’re excited to feature an insightful conversation with Virginie Goldstein, a licensed marriage and family therapist and the founder of Tech Connect Reset, on the Sit and Stay podcast. With extensive experience in mental health, Virginie specializes in addressing screen addiction and supporting kids, teens, and families through evidence-based approaches rooted in neuroscience and psychoanalysis.
In this episode, Virginie shares her unique journey from Paris to California, her passion for understanding human behavior, and how she built a thriving mental health practice. She discusses the complexities of screen addiction, the critical role of parental engagement, and the challenges of managing a growing private practice.
We hope you enjoy this compelling conversation with Virginie Goldstein as she shares her expertise and how Tech Connect Reset is making a meaningful difference in the lives of families navigating screen-related challenges.
Parker Anderson: Welcome back to the Sit and Stay podcast brought to you by RipsyTech. I am one of your hosts, RipsyTech product manager, Parker Anderson. As always, I'm joined by RipsyTech founder and CEO, the resourceful and ever so brilliant Tom Tarshis. Hi Tom.
Thomas Tarshis: Hey, Parker. Two adjectives today. Thank you very much.
Parker Anderson: Two adjectives. Yes, I try to change things up. So today we are joined by a very special guest, and that is Virginie Goldstein of Tech Connect Reset. Hi Virginie.
Virginie Goldstein: How are you?
Parker Anderson: Good, how are you? [All laugh]
Thomas Tarshis: And we're really excited to have Virginie. Virginie is a dear friend that I've known for 17 years, and we met right as we were both sort of starting practices finishing training and Virginie's an outstanding marriage and family therapist who is from the most beautiful city in the world Paris, France. I think most people would agree with that.
Then, Virginie moved to the United States and had to repeat a little bit of her training in order to get her license active in the state of California, but sailed through that with no problems. Virginie's tri-ilingual, speaking French, Spanish, and English, and most importantly, I had the pleasure of working with Virginie for several years at the nonprofit I started. And really her skill as a therapist… it's similar style to myself, like keeping it real with families, working with kids, being good at calling out parents on what they need to do without getting them angry, which is an important skill.
And then Virginie, recently really found a niche with helping kids and teens and families with screen addiction and she started her own entity called Tech Connect Reset.
And we're thrilled to have you, Virginie, and hear about your journey as a mental health clinician.
Virginie Goldstein: Thank you for having me today. I really appreciate it, and I'm excited to do this podcast and share information, whatever can be helpful for people to listen to, whether they are clinicians or non-professional, and I will probably focus more on the non-professional aspect to help people get more resources and access mental health support and services in the easiest way, in a better way, at least.
Thomas Tarshis: Very good, and we always start our guest episodes by asking our [guests]: When did you know you wanted to be a mental health clinician? What was your journey to becoming a mental health clinician? Did you know when you were 5 years old or what was your story?
Virginie Goldstein: You got it almost. Around when I was five years old, it started…
Parker Anderson: Wow!
Virginie Goldstein: I probably think it always starts in our childhood anyway, and I had an influence from my life back in Paris. So of course, I was living with my parents, but I would spend a lot of time with my uncle and aunt in Paris who didn't have any children, so I was pretty lucky to spend time with them. My uncle was amazing, and he always tried to educate me. He was very curious about saying, “Hey, you should do this. Learn this.” He was into astrology, knew the planets and everything. [He] would wake me up at 4 am and look at Jupiter or whatever in Paris. And then when I was 12, he said, “Okay, now you need to read these two books.” So one book was called something like Basics of Psychology and the other book was called Basics of Psychoanalysis.
And I guess I read them, and I'm not sure if I was able to understand everything at that time, but it probably got into my brain a little bit then, and my uncle was passionate about behaviors, and I think the passion for working in mental health really came from him, and then the passion for behaviors, and I never get bored with my work because every time it's a different story, every time it's different behaviors even though we have diagnoses, and we work with an evidence-based approach.
And also what brought me to the field of mental health was, again, my uncle, when he was 40 years old, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, and for me, it was very hard to see him declining, and I was thinking I have got to do something about it, and of course I was very powerless. So over time, this was what brought me to Behavioral Psychology and also Neuroscience because I really wanted to understand the brain, how the brain works, and how the brain impacts the body and mind. So, I thought that trying to understand how the brain worked could help me understand psychology.
Thomas Tarshis: And I think it's true in Europe, you actually have a lot more Neuroscience training that you did in France than I think is common among people who train in the US to become marriage and family therapists. Is that correct?
Virginie Goldstein: The background in France is if we do Psychology, it's really focused on Psychoanalysis and understanding what's wrong with the mother, and I was thinking: What am I going to do to help people with problems? So, that was why I leaned toward more like Neuroscience and Behavior Psychology, but I do use my background in Psychoanalysis to really understand people and accept their behavior.
What is the meaning of their behavior? Like, okay this person is narcissistic, but is it from childhood? Is there something like that to understand? I'm not trying to judge the person, and I’m trying to understand the person better by using this background.
Thomas Tarshis: Very good, and the other thing we talk about is, you definitely treat everything, but would you say you have a specialty? Would you talk about screen addiction and working with those families? Would you call that something that you specialized in or were very interested in? How did that passion come about?
Virginie Goldstein: That passion started a few years ago when I was working with you, when we were running those programs with kids who were having more and more mental health problems and would end up at the hospital because parents would take the video games away, and I felt like there was something to do about it. And of course, technology is becoming very dominant in our lives today, and I think they still don't have the tools to manage that to create a balance and help their children to manage their time, and it can become very extreme.
So, I felt like we needed to do something about it because I think there was nothing in place for that, and I mean, we can work on cognitive behavioral therapy, but there is no diagnosis for screen addiction. The current diagnosis is internet gaming disorder, and when the behavior becomes maladaptive, there should be a diagnosis about it, and there is not a diagnosis we look at. We treat the problem as a dual diagnosis, so the parents bring the kids to us [saying], “My kid has an addiction. He doesn't sleep,” or, “He spends so much time on the screen and doesn't do his homework and doesn't socialize,” and they are so focused on the screen and them spending so many hours on the screen.
So we look at the behavior with their screens. What is the relationship between the child and the screen? And then, we also work on what the underlying problem is that is under the screen behavior, so we send a bunch of questionnaires related to depression, anxiety, ADHD… I mean, if there is trauma it's a little more tricky to see that, but we do treat both, and then we really help family realizing your kid has ADHD, and he has deficiency in dopamine and then is using the screen as a way to release dopamine, and then it becomes this snowball effect that never ends, and it really helps the family to understand.
Yesterday, I had a family who came, a mom who came to see me, and she wanted me to help her with her daughter who already has a therapist, and this kid has been struggling with her mental health for many years after the parents divorced. She did self-harm, and then she had to do a DBT program, and she's still struggling with her behavior. So she spent a lot of time on the screen, and as she was telling me her daughter's story, I understood that it seems like this kid is using the screen to regulate herself because she has difficulty regulating her own emotions. And a lot of time, especially in the Bay Area, it's pretty common. And then she was like, “I understand, I understand.”
And so the next step working with families is really working on communication first, and I tell them you cannot change a child's behavior if the communication is broken. So we need to work on communication first. You try to validate your child. You try to work on it effectively. When you open the communication, your child will come to you and then be more open to make changes.
Thomas Tarshis: Yeah, very very true. And I think there's a lot of people in the profession that are just working with the teens or the kids and are not having any conversation with the parents. And I think the success of your work has been a lot of the engagement with the parents and the psycho-education and then helping with those practices.
You know, Parker spends a lot of time on screens, Virginie. How should we help him? [All laugh]
Virginie Goldstein: We can have a conversation, a good communication to start with.
Parker Anderson: That's so funny. I think I've developed some of my own healthier behaviors around my own screen time. But it was interesting listening to you talk because I think my fascination with the screen time addiction piece definitely came from working in Tom's clinics as well. Working in that population and seeing how the relationship with technology has really evolved and even somebody in my generation who grew up with social media in its infancy, working with people who are then younger than me where it's been around their whole lives and seeing how that plays out over the course of their development was fascinating. So I'm curious how your psychoanalytical background has specifically helped you manage those cases of screen time addiction?
Virginie Goldstein: I use that with the parents. I mean, the kid is still young, and I can understand the child has developed their own coping mechanism when family are fighting and divorcing or they lose a parent, so I'm not so worried about that with the child. I focus more on the parents, trying to understand their personality, using a lot of mentalization-based therapy as well. Like, what is the meaning of the behavior? And I also try to teach the parents. Like yesterday, with the mom, I said, “What is the meaning of the behavior when your child says, ‘I don't want to go to school today,’? And then you see her spending so much time on the screen, and she comes to you with a problem, it creates anxiety for you as a parent. Try to not take it personally. Of course, you have good meaning, you want to help your child, and you have good values. If you take it personally, then the communication is over.”
And she was cool because she was like, “Yeah. I get that." So I gave this example with mentalization. Two teenagers, Cynthia and Kelly, and Cynthia sends a text to Kelly, and Kelly doesn't respond for 24 hours. So, what is Cynthia going to think? The first thing is she's going to take it personally and say, "My friend doesn't like me." Right? But if the kids think further and says, "What if the parents took the phone away? Yes, I take it less personally.” And I explained that to the mom, and I said, if your daughter comes to you, and she doesn't want to go to school, and you see her spending so much time on screen, what's the meaning of that? What is the underlying feeling? And she goes like, “Yeah, I understand better.” And everybody has some trauma to some level.
And when I work with the parents, answering your question about the psychoanalytic background, it's really if people are very hurt in their life, or they didn't have enough love, or they didn't become narcissistic, or just have low self-esteem because of their childhood. So, you see some parents, they become defensive because they feel hurt that they feel they cannot be a good parent. So [the method is] always trying to reassure the parents and accept the parents for who they are, and be non-judgmental with them. And I think this is where psychoanalysis helps me because with cognitive behavior therapy, there is none of that. It's like, you have a problem, you need to do this. But sometimes you cannot tell the parents what you understand as a clinician.
But we are really coming in in a non-judgmental way and trying to understand. This is what happens. You're doing the best we can. So, if you're ready, I think if the parents are aware of the behavior of the problem and they're ready to change it, I think the door is open for changes and to make a difference at some point.
Thomas Tarshis: And Virginie, you mentioned kids winding up in the hospital over screens, and this is when the usual story is that the kids have been using more and more screens, and it’s way past the time there should have been a conversation about it. A parent takes away a video game or phone or computer, then the kid starts smashing stuff in the house or cuts their arm or says they'll kill themselves, and the police show up and then the kid's in the hospital.
And on some level, you can feel like, man, that's ridiculous that a kid is ending up in the emergency room or hospitalized over a video game or a phone. But that happens so often, and I think that's where having that specialty or willingness to work with a population to help stop that from happening is a very noble and needed treatment in mental health.
Virginie, you're very savvy at business, and I feel like you've always had a little interest in business, but this podcast is meant to help people thinking about starting a business or who are interested but maybe scared. But can you tell us a little bit about your business background, and what it's been like starting Tech Connect Reset?
Virginie Goldstein: It started a long time ago. [Laughs]
Yeah, I mean I finished my hours as an intern to get my license. I did hours in a private practice. I mean, I worked with an organization, but, like I said, doing it in a private practice. So I got good training with my supervisor Barbara Rose, and she was amazing, and I really like the quality of work in private practice. I felt we could be more present for the patients. They had what they call “victim witness benefits.”
So then the families are more involved, and I would say the way I started was as soon as I got licensed, I opened my practice, and I could say I realized it was not that hard to open the practice because I already had something in place, so have patience. But the only issue was during training, I had all of these chats on papers, and I was like, “I'm not going to do that again.” And as a clinician, there is a lab where you need to keep the files for so many years after the patient is done. So, I started using an electronic system, which was easier. Then, I could write my notes, and I could also help families to build the claims for them whether they were in-network or not in-network.
So that was the big thing. And I wonder if you, Tom, told me about this.
Tom Tarshis: I think the unique thing that you did that you mentioned is you accepted this victim's witness insurance in California that would pay for kids with trauma, but then regardless, you would submit the insurance claims for you patients whether they were in-network or not, and most clinicians in private practice don't do that. They give a super bill. And I always encourage that if you can just do it. It's a lot easier for you as a clinician to fill out the fields and submit the claim for your patients even if you're not in-network, and I think that really is a good business strategy because it makes people feel better about going to see you even if you don't take their insurance, to submit their claims for them.
But you used the term “it was actually pretty easy,” but for people who are scared about running their own business or whether they will make enough money… Were those concerns for you or did you not worry about that?
Virginie Goldstein: It was a concern. I mean, when I saw the practice as soon as I got licensed I had enough of a case load, and I could continue to work in the practice and develop the practice, but the downside of that is I didn't want to work in a practice on my own. So that's probably why I joined your clinic because I didn't want to be isolated. That's the downside of building a practice. If people are ready for that, they should go for it.
But definitely if I had to redo it again, I would definitely get a good electronic health record and find a better way to track patients' progress with their treatment plan and their diagnosis. So, I would do that. I would redo it in a better way today including using those questionnaires you have in RipsyTech where it's so nice to have those questionnaires and to have them automatically rated. Because it would waste so much time, and I wanted to be evidence-based, so I would give the questioners to families, and I would correct everything by hand. Sometimes, I would not be able to do it because it was so time consuming.
So if I had to redo my practice again from the beginning, I would definitely focus on making sure I have a good electronic system at least to write my notes and have good documentation and especially for MFTs, the law is really strict in California. And it's not about audits or anything but the law with our own board of behavioral sciences is very strict.
Thomas Tarshis: Yeah, and Virginie, it was a little unique that and a lot of clinicians still haven't fully adopted evidence-based practices, but yeah, you were giving questionnaires and scoring them by hand and going over that with patients long before it was even cool, or long before they really pushed and recommended to be doing that, which is a nice feature.
And tell us a little bit about what it's been like having employees that work for you renting office space, how have you handled those situations?
Virginie Goldstein: One more thing I want to say about when you start a practice is definitely how you keep record of your notes. Find a good system, and then track progress, and also have a good billing and accounting system too. So back in 2020 when I started hiring my first staff, I used an accounting system online, so I made sure everything was in one place because I used to keep everything by hand. It was very complicated to do taxes at the end of the year.
I know sometimes it's more expensive for people to buy Quickbooks or something like that, but it's so easy, and it really makes their life easy as a business owner, so we can focus more on clinical stuff.
I think I started hiring interns, so I'm still a supervisor. So I started hiring interns, and it started that way. I was a little scared to hire a licensed therapist at the beginning, so I started bringing in interns. At some point I had five interns, and then I started having a licensed therapist. It was part-time, and the craziest thing is like it started during COVID.
I got my first employee in March 2020, and it went really well because everything was on Zoom, online. I also hired staff in Southern California in San Diego, and then I hired licensed people from there, and then I was trying to provide a good standard of care for the patients.
So in that way, I wanted to make sure for the patients to have a good standard of care. I have to treat employees well, and there is a really good book called First, Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham, a really good book about management, and what the book says is you need to take care of your employees before you take care of your customers or our patients. If your employees are happy, your patients will be happy. My priority is to make sure that the employees are happy because when I have good employees, they are happy to work with us, then I can sleep at night.
Thomas Tarshis: And how come you mentioned you were afraid to hire other fully licensed clinicians? Why was that?
Virginie Goldstein: Because I never had experience. I mean, I worked in clinics where I hired staff and because I've been programmed, and it's not the same when it's your own practice because a lot of time those licensed therapists… Of course, they wanted a W2, but I realized when I hired interns for the board of behavioral sciences they needed to be on the W2 anyway, and then I was kind of scared to hire a licensed therapist, so I started hiring them on 1099 for three months and as they increased their case load. Then, I feel like there is a good relationship between me and the employee, so then I can transition them to a W2, and if they do well, and they are happy, then over time, I can provide them benefits.
Thomas Tarshis: That's such a smart way to do it, to start them as 1099 contractors and build the case load, and then if it's looking like a good relationship, then to bring W2 is a really good business strategy, and I think for any of these sort of training fields that as you go through, there's always sort of supervising more junior people, and a lot of clinicians get very comfortable in that clinical supervisor role. But then there is that difference between a boss employee versus a clinical supervisor to a supervisee. And so I understand what Virginie means. Hiring an intern to work for you, you're comfortable with this relationship because you've done this sort of clinical supervision. Hiring someone equally licensed that now you're the boss, and they’re your worker can feel more scary.
Virginie Goldstein: Right, And that's a good point, exactly, because I hired them as an intern, and I have an employee, she's been working with me for four years. So I hired her as an intern. Then they’re associates, and then when she became licensed, we initiated the contract, and it was a whole different contract, and it's way more serious. So I have a lawyer who was kind of checking if everything is correct because I don't want to be in trouble. That's very important to make sure everything is legal.
And the other thing I wanted to say: Yes, you're right. When you're the [clinical] supervisor, you're also the boss, but you're mostly the supervisor, and when they become licensed, you become the boss, and I think it's a different relationship. Then, the other issue I had was when the licensed therapist is an employee full-time, so now I have full-time employees. For MFT, it’s 30 hours a week, so it's basically 24, 25, 26 patients per week plus six hours of admin time because I don't want the therapist to be burned out, and if they want to do more hours, they have the flexibility to do more hours, which is the case with the employees I have right now, and then I realized that as you're the boss, then you have to set up rules, and I'm sure Tom went through that in the past. You're the boss, and then you're in charge of who's taking vacation and PTO, and I learned I made a mistake in the contract. It's maybe something I didn't know because of English being my second language where I separated sick days and vacation time, and now, I'm changing that under one umbrella.
Thomas Tarshis: Yeah, no, and Virginie, we learn the most in business from our mistakes. And there are still companies that do separate sick and vacation days. It's usually more like the government or really big entities.
But from the business side, we know the data says employees will always 100% take their sick days every year. And the better business strategy is definitely to combine sick and vacation days into a PTO umbrella as the employer because, otherwise, it's human nature. Like, whether you're sick or not, the sick days are going to get taken, so even if it's the same amount, even if you're going to give one week of sick days and three weeks of vacation, it's better to just give four weeks of PTO. It’s a better company policy to avoid people calling in the day-of because they have sick days they need to use. But, how do you think your employees will react to your changing the policy?
Virginie Goldstein: We'll see. I just hired a new employee, so I think she'd be fine with a new policy, and I checked with my lawyer and I asked, “Can I change the policies from the contract?” And, of course you can change it, and I was scared to make the change, so you reassured me, so we're putting a new policy in place, and I have a backup with my bookkeeper and, of course, she's French. She's amazing. She lives on the east coast right now in Princeton, and she's amazing. She was also part of the national field hockey team. She's older than me…
Thomas Tarshis: Oh, wow.
Virginie Goldstein: But right now she's in New Zealand for the month to play. So she's my bookkeeper, and working with her, she's the one who is tracking the hours and PTO because we have the time sheet for each employee. I verify the time sheet, and then she does the payroll, and she's helping me. As a business owner, you cannot do everything. You need to delegate. That's very important. Even though sometimes you have to spend more money, and you don't have the money, you have to. So now she's a filter between me and the employees about payroll and PTO because I don't want to have a staff meeting and deal with that. My job right now is to work as a clinician. I love my work, and I will continue to do that, and also working on business development as well.
Thomas Tarshis: And I think we've talked about that on other podcasts. Part of knowing when I started my first business, I'm like, “I'll just do all the accounting myself.” And then I made big mistakes, and then you don't have the time, and now, we have an amazing accountant that works for both our clinic and also for RipsyTech, and it's well worth the money even though, as you say, it is another expense, but it is definitely worth it.
Virginie Goldstein: One more thing about my office location. So, I was also scared to fully take this lease over back in 2021 because I would sublease all the time. So now I have to take things more seriously. So I took this lease over, and I'm very happy about it. It's a fantastic place where I work. The property management, they just repainted everything. It's well maintained, and I changed it up. So this office was one waiting room and one office. And I remodeled everything, and I reduced the waiting room. So I have a small waiting room and three offices that I use with my staff.
Thomas Tarshis: Very smart. And your clinic does both virtual visits and in person?
Virginie Goldstein: Correct.
Parker Anderson: It sounds like you talked about the dynamic of being a clinical supervisor, but then becoming somebody's boss, and it sounds like, just from listening to both of you talk about running a business, that having that experience of managing all those business development items, would you say that you kind of feel like you have just come into that role confidently after dealing with these things that maybe [employees are] not thinking about in the background, but somebody's got to be thinking about it. Now, does that role as a boss feel clearer as time has gone on?
Virginie Goldstein: Yeah, I feel this year became a little more clear. That's a good question. I didn't realize that. And you're right. It's a good point. I didn't realize that I had to shift my role. Yes.
Thomas Tarshis: Virginie, we like to ask people what's something that's frustrating or that you would like to change in the mental health field? What could we do better?
Virginie Goldstein: Okay, what could we do better? It's really… focusing on normalizing the behaviors related to depression, anxiety or just well-being, and self-care. We really need to normalize that. I want people to realize that mental health is part of our health. It's together. I always tell people our brain is connected to our body. It's not disconnected. And they don't realize that. And I keep telling people that, anything we experience in life, we hear and see and say, it's always changing our neural connections, which always impact our way of thinking and feeling and behaving, and I don't know how we can help people to change that, and be more aware of that.
It really is probably focusing on their awareness, Yeah. I would like people to be more informed and be more aware of how to take care of their own mental health, how to take care of themselves, which includes health and mental health. It's everything together.
Thomas Tarshis: Do you think that's gotten a little better since the pandemic in the last couple years? I agree there's a long way to go, but do you think we're making progress?
Virginie Goldstein: I do think we are making progress. I'm not so sure after COVID, but I think probably in the past 20 years there has been a lot of progress. And in any kind of culture… I live in the Bay Area. Parker, you don't live in the Bay Area anymore…
Parker Anderson: Not anymore, but I grew up there.
Virginie Goldstein: I mean, but the population we're working with, they have different cultural backgrounds, and it's very interesting to see them actually be more open to therapy today, more open to getting help and just receiving support and in any kind of mutual background because we work with Indian families, Pakistani families, Persian families, French… I mean from everywhere, and it's really interesting to see people coming to us, and I also work with some Mexican families, and it's so nice that it's totally normal they're really open to getting help.
Thomas Tarshis: So some people who were immigrants or first generation in the US, you wouldn't even think about mental health treatment but you see a lot of change happening, and the Bay Area is full of diverse populations. So being able to work with people from lots of different cultures is very cool.
What is something you're excited about in the field of mental health right now?
Virginie Goldstein: Yeah, I'm excited about, I think, the changes happening because of technology, and I feel like when, for me, it all makes sense to reach for help, and I think now people have more access to the internet. There are podcasts just like we've been doing today, YouTube videos, or online reading. So if people have questions now there is the AI, and I attended a workshop last summer on AI and mental health. It was very interesting, and I think it's really cool because when people need help, they have a problem, they go online, and they look for help. They try to see what is going on. “My body is shaking. It's panic attacks. What is going on and what do I do about it?” so I think it brings awareness, and I'm excited about that because I think it gives more tools for people to get help, and also for clinicians because for us clinicians, I think there is more and more… I mean, we don't have blood tests to test depression, but we have more evidence-based tools, more research, and people are more aware of that, which is great, and I think for the patients, they can access mental health services from everywhere with the internet. And it's amazing that from a small town they can have online services, so I think this is what I'm excited about, and I think there are a lot of things to do around that and really connecting the world together. I mean, just in the US, connecting the US together.
Thomas Tarshis: I agree. And it reminded me of something I want to show you. We're talking with multiple AI companies, and we have one that is doing parent training, which you've done a lot of, and it's a very interesting product, and we're working out maybe integrating it into the RipsyTech platform. But right now, we're also looking for people who do a lot of parent training work, and I want to show you what the AI can do with the parent training model and get your impression. And I'm excited about some of those artificial intelligence possibilities as well. I think we're starting to put together some research projects because a lot of stuff is just happening without the research, but logically, some of the things I've seen look very exciting. And yeah, we'll connect about it. I want to show you this other parent training [AI].
Virginie Goldstein: Okay, great. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, there are more tools. It's interesting because of how many times I've been contacted by small IT or tech companies saying, "Hey, I can build an app for you." I would be super excited about it, but I need to spend so much time on that and money and right now I don't have the time and money, but there are so many opportunities and a lot of projects around that.
Thomas Tarshis: Do you have advice you'd give to a young mental health professional who's graduating that’s scared about starting their own practice or group? What would you tell someone?
Virginie Goldstein: Yeah, I mean I would say don't be scared. Everything will be okay. I mean it's a vague statement. I'm not saying starting small, but like I said, focus on three things: like a way to keep your notes which would be probably an electronic system today and more connected with the evidence-based system because they would have more credibility with their patients if they show more evidence-based methods. So that's one thing and definitely working on building a good system for billing and accounting.
And I would also recommend just seeing people in-person. There are a lot of young graduate students who just got licensed, they do online, and I'm like, okay, I don't get that. The first time I did an online session was back in 2017. I'm like what's going on? I was like, is that possible? Yes, it's possible, but it's not just that. We need to be able to see depending on the cases, we need to be able to see people in-person. We have way more information about what is going on.
Thomas Tarshis: That's really, I think, sound advice. And there are a group of graduating clinicians that have maybe never seen a patient in person.
Parker Anderson: Wow.
Thomas Tarshis: And there are, I don't know the statistics, but there is a very large percentage of clinicians who only do telehealth visits, and the data is still a little questionable. It seems okay for adults, but if you're working with kids and families, it's much more… and I'm curious what you think, Virginie, but I'm much more comfortable doing a video session if it's with a family that I've seen in person lots of times, or if I've seen them in my office, then doing the video visit feels better to me. Do you feel more comfortable seeing someone on video that you've also seen in person?
Virginie Goldstein: Yeah, especially and also with adults it happens right now. I had an adult. I saw him online, and now he's coming in-person. It's like the reverse situation working with kids. I don't mind doing the intake meeting with the parents first online. It's okay, but then I tell them [that] when I see the kids, I want to see the child in-person, and then if you have to be online, and in-person, but at least I see the kid in-person, and I can almost require to see both parents in-person at some point, or when they come to therapy, you alternate. You ask one week the dad brings the kid, the other week the mom brings the kid. It's interesting because people have a tendency to use the internet like doing online therapy, or they got therapy services online, and actually, sometimes it requires more time in-person. It would be more efficient depending on the problem of course.
Thomas Tarshis: Yeah, very true. Great. Parker, do you have any final questions for Virginie?
Parker Anderson: Yeah, I have a question, a question just popped into my head about how you mentioned when you started your practice that you'd kind of already had a patient case load that you could take with you, but I guess, nowadays, where do you find patients are finding you, or do you have to do any kind of marketing or putting yourself out there or do you have a good referral system? How was that experience?
Virginie Goldstein: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I've been in the Bay Area for several years, and I love doing community outreach. So, I do zero advertising for now. I have people calling from pediatricians. So I would recommend if people don't want to do advertising, my recommendation is you need to make yourself visible, which means you can go to… I'm connected with a lot of places where they have a treatment center. So I'm connected to the community outreach of the treatment centers for kids who have go to residential treatment or PHP, IOP, but mostly treatment centers in Northern California because when they have a residential treatment center in Northern California, they also have it in Southern California, so it's really be connected to those people, and when you work with kids, be connected with pediatricians.
Also, do presentations. That's also a good way to be visible. You can do presentations for schools, or you choose… I usually pick one topic, and every summer, I have a student who works with me and gathers data about recent updates on screen addiction. What are the most recent risk factors of screen addiction? And then I have all of this data together, and I put my slides together, and I do presentations for professionals or families. It's like reaching people, and saying, “Hey, I have a clinic. I'm here. I can help.”
And probably trying to think about being less focused on money as well. I'm not sure, but for me, it's like I have referrals for many people from everywhere because of all of the years being [here]. I'm not saying be visible, but for the work I have been doing through this unique time, I think it pays off to be able to have creative programs with you and people appreciate the work, and this kind of support and say you're here and really reliable and then, your background.
So I think it takes time to build community outreach and referrals, but it's worth it.
Thomas Tarshis: And you’ve done a lot of presentations to school groups and are active in different societies, and I think one of the luxuries of it being a number of years is if you've been visible, then you don't need to do as much marketing because people know you. Virginie, we're so appreciative of your time and thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. We'll put information on the book you recommended.
Virginie Goldstein: Yes, I can send you the information. It has two books, but the first one to read is First, Break All the Rules, and it's a very small book to read, and it's really straightforward on what to do to find success being a successful manager when you start hiring people.
Thomas Tarshis: Is Tech Connect Reset hiring right now if people were interested in joining your group?
Virginie Goldstein: I'm looking for another clinician. Yes, I will probably hire two more clinicians and probably a licensed clinician. And you asked me about supervision. I’d be happy to supervise, but I think now I also feel like having licensed therapists makes the business more stable.
Thomas Tarshis: Agreed. Very good.
Parker Anderson: And your business can be found at techconnectreset.com?
Virginie Goldstein: Yes.
Parker Anderson: Excellent.
Virginie Goldstein: Thank you so much for your time. It was really fun.
Parker Anderson: Yeah, thank you. I'll go ahead and close this out.
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Stay tuned for more insight and stories in next week’s blog post!
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