Watch the video ...

Listen to the recording ...

Or read the interview transcript ...  

Megan Walker: Hello and welcome to the Health Course Podcast. I'm Megan Walker, and today our very special guest is Lyndsay Babcock, who is the director and principal psychologist at The Self Center. HiLyndsay, how are you? Hi

Lyndsay Babcock: Megan. I'm really well. Thank you so much for having me. This is really fun.

Megan Walker: Oh, I'm so glad to have you on board.

And you know, everyone has this. Story as to why they've arrived at the decision to go in with a healthcare course. It's not an easy decision to make but you have, you know, a, a few reasons there driving you. So I thought it would be wonderful to touch on that today. But start us off. Tell us about your practice where you are based.

What sort of services do you deliver? Who do you work with, that sort of thing.

Lyndsay Babcock: Yeah, sure. Happy to. So the practice that I own and run is called the Self-Center. And so our main practice is in Sydney. So we have a team of. Six or seven psychologists working in Sydney which is really cool. They do great work.

And then we have a new branch in Kingscliff, which is just south of the Gold Coast that we opened earlier this year. As well, we offer telehealth across Australia, which is really cool as well.

Megan Walker: Big, brilliant. And you are working across all ages and stages in your clinics.

Lyndsay Babcock: Yeah, so we mainly see adults, mostly adults who are referred by our doctors.

So most of the people who see us are working under our mental health care plan. Some are not. But we mostly see adults. We see a few adolescents. And we don't have anybody on the team at the minute who see children. That's just not something that we have focused on. So we're really focused on that kind of later adolescent, adult population.

And most of the people we see are usually they're professionals or executives or medical practitioners, frontline workers. You name it, we just kind of see everything, which is really lovely.

Megan Walker: Yeah. Amazing. And so the vision for your practice tell us about getting it started and what you had in mind when you were starting, you know, creating this amazing.

Practice that you've built up. I mean,

Lyndsay Babcock: it's been, it just evolves. These things just evolve. So, I mean, I really, like, I was, I think I was 16 when I realized I wanted to be a psychologist. Mm-Hmm. And very quickly I realized I wanted to be in private practice. I don't know. I don't know why. I can't explain why, but I knew that.

And so that was just my driving force from the time I was sort of 16. Until now is to be a psychologist in private practice. And so when I finished my training, I went into private practice work with someone else, and worked in their beautiful practice for about seven years, which was a lovely experience, and then stepped away and had my babies and decided to open up my own doors, my own room.

And I did so, and very quickly, the demand grew. You know, within a couple of months I needed to have people working with me to meet the demand, which was a great thing, but I, but it was very overwhelming as well. I had kind of no idea. What that really looked like and how to do it. 'cause I also had a one-year-old and a three-year-old who at the time were undiagnosed autistic in A DHD.

And so life was very full and busy. And so I contracted my first associate very quickly. And then it just sort of grew from there. And you know, it's, it's, I've kind of always tried to stay up. A bit ahead of demand so that we never have long wait lists That became really important to us, particularly through Covid.

And so our vision really is to make sure that we offer really top quality customer care, that we're highly ethical evidence-based in our treatment, and that we're really focused on building outstanding relationships with the people that we work with.

Megan Walker: Amazing. So. What are, say a couple of, you know, two or three challenges that.

You discovered in, you know, being the owner of a big practice that you weren't aware of before going in. Like what were some of the things that you might say to someone else who's starting a practice and go, Hmm, might wanna keep an eye out for this? It's a question without notice. So

Lyndsay Babcock: yeah, it's, it's a really good question by the way, so much.

There's so much. I think the first thing that I didn't. Realize was that I really needed support. And that theme presents itself in various ways throughout my life. But I needed support as a practice owner. You know, I stepped into this role and all of a sudden I felt like I had this massive responsibility to know everything, to do everything, to be everything to everyone.

And so, as soon as I started to get support and coaching, everything changed for me. So that was really helpful. So I would suggest that anybody who's opening their practice and to make sure that you hire or work with colleagues who are really aligned to Mm-hmm. To you and to your vision and to what you really value.

I think a value alignment feels really important as well.

Megan Walker: Yeah. Great tips. Mm-Hmm. Isn't it funny how we try and do everything ourselves because we think, oh, it's just so much easier or faster for me just to do it myself. I don't have the time to train someone. It'll just be easier. But it really stalls growth, doesn't it?

That mindset

Lyndsay Babcock: doesn't Yeah, doesn't it? I had this idea for so long that because I was the boss, even though I was never a boss, I had associates, not employees, but because I was the, like the person, I needed to know everything and I mean, what a huge amount of unnecessary responsibility. Exactly. Yeah.

Megan Walker: I know in my business, when I had eight full-time staff, I remember at one point thinking, yeah, I don't need to know about the schedule for servicing the fire extinguisher.

There's surely someone who can I need to let go.

Lyndsay Babcock: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. And it's okay not to know because we can learn from each other and we can grow together and there's so much more authenticity in that I think as well. Isn't there? Absolutely.

Megan Walker: Yeah. Now leading up to your decision to go into online courses, you've also had a health journey, so you've got your babies.

Mm-Hmm. I'm hearing there that there's been a journey and help. There was a journey. I can relate to that one. Yeah, that's like a Kota trail, isn't it? You just know what's coming. It's,

Lyndsay Babcock: it's indeed.

Megan Walker: And are you comfortable telling us about what you've been through as well with you on Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Your health. Yeah.

Lyndsay Babcock: So, you know, the back, the bit of a backstory. So we, I had my practice in Sydney, as I said. Actually I've run that business for 10 years in Sydney over 10 years actually. And in. 2022, my husband and I decided we wanted to have a sea change and so we decided we were gonna move to Northern New South Wales.

And that was a big deal because, you know, it meant that I would have to leave my practice and figure out how to work remotely to support my practice, and the kids had to adjust to new schools and all the things. So that took about a year to kind of get underway. And my plan was that I would go back to Sydney every two to three months really to support and be present.

So we moved in. January 23 mm-Hmm. And settled the kids into school and just started to feel our way into our new house and our life. And I was just about to, in fact, I went to Sydney once to say hello to everybody and you know, start the process. And six weeks after we moved to our new home, I was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer.

So that really kind of put a spanner in our plan. Yes. Very unexpectedly. And then I spent the next 12 months in treatment, so it was a really full on 12 months march to March. Wow. Yeah, so it was, it was really intense. Wow. And it required, it just required, you know, a lot of adjustment from a lot of people.

Megan Walker: Yes. And that's so raw and so recent that you've just stepped out of that.

Lyndsay Babcock: Yeah.

Megan Walker: Treatment focused time.

Lyndsay Babcock: Yeah. Yeah. So I finished my final infusion in March this year. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, congratulations for being out

Megan Walker: the other side of that.

Lyndsay Babcock: It's been a journey. Yeah. Oh, wow. It's such a jour, it's such a journey.

You know, I've been cancer free officially for a year.

Megan Walker: Oh, congratulations.

Lyndsay Babcock: Thank you. In August, which is great. And yeah. But treatment continues. You know, you, I, I was told that the cancer had been. Was effectively treated with chemotherapy, which is great. But then I still had six months of treatment that I had to go through to help minimize the risk of recurrence.

Megan Walker: Okay. Right. Yeah. And so I can only imagine the choices that that forces you into make of what's available with your time. Yeah. Yeah. Talk about a fast track way to do it. This is gonna sound. Maybe slightly blunt, but a time productivity, baptism of fire. Like if you've only got so much energy and you've only got so much time.

Yeah. Where are you gonna spend it? Yeah. So what are some of the big changes that came about for you with.

Lyndsay Babcock: Yeah, well, so prior to having my diagnosis, I was really hands, really hands-on in the practice. Having said that, I wasn't doing a ton of clinical work. I was doing a little bit of clinical work but I was doing all of, and I, and I have returned to doing all of my initial intake.

So every. Person who presents to the practice, I do a complimentary session, initial session with them just to make sure that we're the right fit, nice, that we can be helpful for them, et cetera. And I couldn't do that when I was unwell. Yes. I just couldn't do that. So, and I couldn't do supervision with a team.

I didn't have the energy for that. I couldn't do a lot of the admin, you know, have a great admin person who supports me. So she kind of really had to pick up. A lot of what I do and my clinical team had to support each other. And you know, I just sort of faded into the background a little bit 'cause there were weeks where I, you know, I had chemo every three weeks and there was one week where I couldn't work at all.

Out of one out of three weeks I couldn't work at all. And then the other two, you know, I was probably running at about 50% capacity. So I just had to kind of pull back and. You know, it was such a practice of letting go and radical acceptance. And yes, faith in, in the people that I had worked with for many years before the diagnosis and trust that it would all, all the things that I had put into place over the years would continue to work, and most of them did.

And my team, you know, my associates, my colleagues, they're amazing. Amazing human beings. They just kind of picked it all up and did it all. Mm-Hmm. And carried us all through. Yeah. It was pretty amazing.

Megan Walker: Hence your point about hiring people for like-mindedness and the people that you wanna go on the journey with you.

Yeah. You chose so well before knowing any of this

Lyndsay Babcock: Yeah.

Megan Walker: That then they, that you could have faith in them to carry things through. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And so, oh my goodness, there's so much we could talk about. Mm-Hmm. And we just feel like saying, what do you wanna talk about? Do you wanna pull out, so you.

Creating healthcare course. That's one of the things that's come out of, but you were thinking about that before. Mm-Hmm hmm. You, you were looking at ways to diversify your, your business. Mm-Hmm.

Lyndsay Babcock: Do you wanna touch on that? Yeah, sure. So my business is our practice. It's been a really interesting thing.

So our practice is sort of a generalist practice because we see a lot of mental health care plan people with mental health care plans and everybody is different. Orientation. So there were kind of two things that I wanted to do. I really wanted to have a program that supported our clients kind of no matter what they were presenting with.

And so we have a online course that people can do that's kind of basic psycho ed about mental health care, and it really kind of supports the work that they're doing with their clinicians. If they're not quite ready to start and they want a little taster that sits there. So I wanted to, I really want to develop that and have that become more robust in our practice.

Yeah. As well though, I have a really special interest in working with women in midlife who are stressed and burnt out and doing all the things and, and probably also have some mild to moderate trauma. I really love working with women in that. You know, demographic. And so I wanted to, I want to also have, in fact, I've built an online program where women can learn some skills, some basic information about how to manage their stress, how to support themselves, how to set boundaries, you know, how to be healthy and, and do all the things that can be complimentary to their clinical work or again.

Prior to or after their clinical work.

Megan Walker: Yeah. Amazing. So good. Oh, I love those ideas.

Lyndsay Babcock: They're fantastic. So yeah, so they're, so they're, they're, you know, they're kind of twofold. So there's one for like my specific area of interest. Yeah. And then there's one for the practice. Yes.

Megan Walker: Very good. Okay. Brilliant. And what have you.

Discovered so far in creating healthcare courses that's different to how you've worked up until this point. It's so different.

Lyndsay Babcock: It's so different. I think I've discovered the content creation. I mean, figuring out how to get really specific about the content that I deliver has been tricky because as psychologists, we're kind of trained to know a lot about a wide variety of things, and so to get really specific about one thing and not consider all of these other factors that we're taught to always consider is really tricky.

Mm-Hmm. Or has been for me, really tricky to get really narrow focus. But a really good learning exercise. And the other thing that's been really tricky is just the time that it takes to market it all. Yes. That's, oh yeah. That's, you know, and that different, it requires in a completely different skillset.

yes. True. To figure out how to market it. True. Mm-Hmm. True. That's true. That's been the trickiest thing. So to learn how to do that has been really fun, but really challenging.

Megan Walker: Absolutely. A whole new skillset packed into a short period of time. Yeah,

Lyndsay Babcock: yeah, totally. No, sure. Totally. Yeah, totally. You know, 'cause we're trained to be clinicians.

We're not trained to sell a product, but we're just not trained to sell a product. Right. And so to kind of think about having to do that differently has been. It's been really fun.

Megan Walker: Some people that I talk to almost even grapple a little bit with the permission of giving themselves the go ahead to, to develop a product.

I hear people say, well, who will approve it? Who will let me do that? Mm-Hmm. Who says that it's okay for me to step outside my clinical role and create this Mm-Hmm. Education piece over here. Did you have any of those challenges come up for you?

Lyndsay Babcock: Look, I don't know whether it was approval seeking, but more about, is this ethically allowed, right? Like where are my ethical limits and boundaries here? So, you know, we're trained and I am very mindful, always to be really careful about delivering anything to someone in or out of, you know, my clinical space that, you know, I don't wanna do any harm. And so it's been really tricky to think about, okay, well if I say this thing, this one thing.

If this, like how is that going to be interpreted by a whole range of different people? How's that gonna land? And is that ethical for me to say given who the audience might be? Yes. So that's been really tricky for me to get my head around often.

Megan Walker: Interesting. Oh, it's so good. I always learn so much when I talk to health course creators.

It's like, oh yes, I didn't think of that. I didn't think of that. Okay, I've got the insurance thing happening. I've got opera, I've got legals. I've just started thinking about this permission piece, and of course the ethical. Yeah, definitely like, I mean, in my head it's quite. Clear being a lay person of, okay, clinical one-on-one is delivered there.

And then general education, widely applicable is over here, but that still can be triggering for people, can't it? Where do you then definitely have in mind that you would tap people back into your traditional practice? You know, if they need help, if things come up that they could book a telehealth, do you have that option?

Lyndsay Babcock: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think one of the things that initially I really loved the idea of building this. Product that I didn't really have to have any involvement in that I could just build and I could put out and I didn't have to do any of the work. I could do it once and leave it, yes. But because in my mind I'm really mindful of how.

Triggering. It could be for some people. I feel like I need to have at least a touch point with some, with everybody who goes through the course. Yes. So that if they are impacted or affected, then I absolutely have an ethical I. Obligation to offer them additional support where they need it. Yeah, sure.

Yeah. Yeah. So then they could touch back into our practice or I would, you know, recommend that they see, you know, a different practice based on their needs, just depending on what they're needing.

Megan Walker: Yeah. So good. I love that. Love that duty of care. Rounding it all out. This is, we are not doing this to get rich quick and make money.

This is a longer game view. With that care. I mean, I would love

Lyndsay Babcock: that. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna lie, I would love the like, get rich quick thing. I would love that. But, but I, but we can't, we just can't. I just don't think that, I can't do that. I really have to think about people's emotional wellbeing. Yeah.

You've gotta sleep at night too. You know what's,

Megan Walker: we all know what's right and wrong. Yeah. Yeah. Oh,Lyndsay, that's so great. And so, how do people get in touch with you if they wanna find out about. particularly the, I have a lot of women that you described before who might be interested in finding out more, where can they go and follow you and start watching the progress?

Lyndsay Babcock: Yeah. Yeah. So, my practice is a website, self-center dot com au. Yeah. And then on Instagram I have two handles. I have the Self-Center Australia, which is obviously our clinical practice. And then I also have my coaching business, which is Lyndsayb. And I can give all, give you all the details.

I'm sure you can. Yes. Put a pillow so people can follow me. Yeah, people can follow me there and then be in touch. People are often in touch through Instagram and all of our contact details are on there as well. So, so

Megan Walker: good. Is there anything that I haven't asked you that you wanted to share?

Lyndsay Babcock: Oh, I mean, I'm sure, I'm sure I'll walk away and go, oh, I should have said all these different things.

But you know, no, you know, it's been such a pleasure to be in conversation with you today and to talk about all the things and I think it's just really exciting for healthcare providers right now to be able to think about delivering our services. In different ways. Yeah. And to offer additional things alongside of the work, you know, the private practice work we do.

It feels like it's just sort of starting to emerge and it's, it's lovely. I think it's great because it gives people the public access to healthcare that they may not otherwise have. Yeah, and that's my whole vision.

Megan Walker:  Absolutely. I don't want anyone languishing or thinking, you know, or, or stuck because they didn't have access or it wasn't available.

It's like, okay, there's knowledge in people's heads. Every single practitioner and clinician that I meet with has got a unique set of knowledge that can help someone. So let's package that and get it to those people so that we're, yeah, improving. Healthcare outcomes. Yeah, that's the whole driver. So, yeah.

Yeah. Thank, thank you so muchLyndsay, for sharing your story. I only imagine that the hardship of that for you personally, your family and your practice, so thank you for sharing that. You, you actually

Lyndsay Babcock: Sure

Megan Walker: exude so much positivity. I can a picture for anyone listening to this who is faced with similar challenges to just know that there is another side.

Lyndsay Babcock: Yeah.

Megan Walker: Is amazing. Yeah.

Lyndsay Babcock: There's another side. And also to lean into support. You know, that was for sure the biggest lesson for me to lean into support.

Megan Walker: Yeah, brilliant. Gosh, there's a book in you, isn't there? But hang on, don't do a, don't do a book. An online course is far more profitable. Channel it into tip.

Thank you so much again,Lyndsay, and please get in touch with her. Contact details are below. 

 

Links and further information