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[JOE]:
This is the Practice of the Practice podcast, with Joe Sanok, session number 462. When you’re in private practice, it can be tough to find the time to review your marketing efforts and make improvements where needed. Whether you are a seasoned clinician whose current website needs to be revamped, or a new therapist building a website for the first time, Brighter Vision is here to help by first understanding your practice and what makes it unique. Brighter Vision’s team of developers will create you a custom website catered to your specific marketing goals. Better yet, they provide unlimited technical support to make sure it stays updated and professional, search engine optimization to make sure you rank high in online searches, all at no additional cost. To get started for $100 off, head over to brightervision.com forward/Joe. Again, that’s brightervision.com/Joe.

I hope that you are doing awesome. Hey, we have a really awesome free… How many times can you use awesome in a sentence? Awesome, awesome, awesome. We have a great webinar coming up. It’s all about insurance and billing and the software that you need to know. It’s gonna be on June 23, at 1 o’clock Eastern, 12 o’clock Central, 11 Mountain and 10 Pacific. We’re gonna be having Jeremy Zugg come in from Practice Solutions to talk all about insurance and billing. Again, it’s June 23, you can register over at practiceofthepractice.com/100k webinar. That’s the number 100 k webinar. We’re gonna have other webinars and master classes listed in there too. But you’re going to want to make sure that you join that we’re gonna have lots of time for Q&A and all sorts of other things. So again, that’s on June 23, right around the corner for you, and make sure you join us there.

Well, today we’re talking with Karen Solomon starting over after divorce. I met Karen out at New Media Summit, an event that was in San Diego in fall of 2019. So, without any further ado, here’s Karen Solomon.

Well, today on the Practice of the Practice podcast, we have Karen Solomon. Karen is the author of Sexy, Sassy, and Starting Over, teaches keys to confidence from the bedroom to the boardroom, and inspires her clients to create their lives congruent with their deepest needs and desires. Karen, welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast.

[KAREN]:
I’m really happy to be here Joe.

[JOE]:
Yeah, we both are. We tried to do this recording like a month ago and we had some tech issues. So, it is nice to be talking to you again. We got probably 10 minutes into the interview and then it just blew up. So, I’m so glad to be doing this again with you.

[KAREN]:
Me too. A moment of panic, but you know, it’s not an emergency room. We’re all good.

[JOE]:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I love the work that you’re doing for individuals for people that want to build their confidence. Let’s go back a couple years and talk a little bit about how you got into this work.

[KAREN]:
Okay, well, let’s see. I think the easiest way to start is that I think we all have superpowers, Joe. And I have been, since I was three years old and I tried to teach me, I thought it would be helpful for my baby sister to know how to tie her shoes, because I had just learned. And so, I tried to teach my one-year old sister how to tie your shoes. It didn’t go so well but it’s just always made sense for me to teach people what I’ve learned. And I started my personal development work in my 20s, which was a long time ago, like back in the 80s. And just started learning what I didn’t know that I didn’t know like finding all these cool courses. And then in the end, I’ve always been a style consultant. That’s the other thing I went from school teacher, to doing some sales, to running into a friend that I sold some, he became a friend, I’d sold some computers to him. I like to say to people, you know, we dated for a minute, but truth is we became really good friends. And one day I said to him, “Look, you’re really good looking, you don’t know how to dress. Could I please take you shopping?” And he just looked at me and he said, “Okay, next paycheck.” Well, next paycheck, we took him shopping, and I dressed the guy and he’d always been colorblind. And I dressed him and then he said, “You have to show me what matches what.” Anyway, fast forward. He took a trip to the east coast to see family and do some business and everybody thought he won the lottery. What happened? He came back took this 30 something, young 30 something out for the fanciest dinner she’d ever been taken out to in San Francisco and said, “That blew my mind.” And I said, “Really? Going shopping? What would you have paid me?” And I ended up hanging a shingle and helping people get you know, transform with their clothing, which was never about the clothing Joe, it was about the congruency of feeling great about themselves. And it was, so it was not like I was all about designers and this and that, but I realized that I was all about people transforming, like, wow!

[JOE]:
And I want to pause right there, because I feel like the most successful therapists, the most successful private practitioners, are the ones that find a pain, and then talk about the transformation. That people, they don’t buy clothes, they buy the transformation, they buy the feeling that comes with it, the attention from others. And, you know, the same is true in the counseling world that, you know, people are sick of, you know, getting the phone call from the principal for their kid that keeps getting kicked out of school. And they don’t want to feel like a bad parent. They don’t want to feel like their kid doesn’t have opportunities. They want to have a child that is able to kind of maximize whatever skills they have the best they can. And when therapists can really understand that transformation. I mean, when you nail that in your copy, in your emails, in your marketing, that’s really what’s going to fill up a practice more than anything at all.

[KAREN]:
Right. So, let me tell you how that’s morphed. Here’s the thing about, you know, I used to teach swimming programs for toddlers, and to see a kid go from I can’t swim, I’m scared to put my head underwater to be, you know, swimming like a fish and floating and all that, was one of the most tangible things I’ve ever taught. And so is image consulting, teaching someone how they can look and feel their best is so tangible. But then we get into the less tangible, which you know, as a therapist, Joe, and all the therapists who are listening, it’s like, how do we help them transform their being, how they’re being? What they’re attracting in their life, and to get them to see if, when they’re smiling, they’re going to attract smiles on a more superficial level, you know? So, but that it’s an inside out job. So, my personal development work morphed in the early 90s. I was single didn’t want to be single anymore. I was now 35 and I’d always been single. And a guy friend of mine and said, “Listen, I can’t go to this little event, this intro event tonight unless I bring a woman. Would you come with me?” And he was a business friend. And I was like, “Well, what is it?” He said, “Well, it’s this intimacy thing. It’s called Tantra.” He said, “Don’t worry, we’re gonna have out clothes on.” Like, okay, I was always open to learn what I didn’t know, I didn’t know. And I found myself in a room with about, it had a gender balance. Maybe there were a couple of couples, but it wasn’t about couples, it was just about, but at one point, at the end of that evening, I was sobbing. And the sobbing was a combination of joy and grief. It was joy at what might be possible for me with intimacy, and grief at what I hadn’t had yet. Because I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and I don’t come from a “me too” story background, I don’t have trauma in my background. I was always you know, just happy kind of carefree, you know, person, young person in the 70s and 80s and having a good time, but I hadn’t had the intimacy that I knew might be possible. So, I dove in and started studying about intimacy, and sexuality, and connection, and the differences between men and women, and worked with many different Tantra teachers. And actually, the first one, Joe didn’t have a whole lot of money, I dove in and became their sales and marketing person so that I could take their courses for free. That’s how adamant I was about learning it. And I also made a decision that I’d meet a man who was into that level of intimacy, that he too was wanting to explore that and not just play golf and have his career, but that he was interested in diving deeper than that. And so that’s, I did end up meeting my now best friend, former husband, in that world, a couple of years later. And we had the opportunity because we had a lot of time and resources to take some courses with some of the best in the world. And as I said, I’m a teacher. So, you asked me how did I actually get into this work, which is helping people start over their lives, particularly after divorce or after being widowed or just relocation, all of it, you know? The hardest thing is starting over. And kids getting out of college start over. And one of those, in 2001 I had a beautiful home that I could throw retreats and do my women’s work in and do not for profit events. And a young woman said to me, you know, she’s the daughter of a friend of mine, and she just graduated Stanford and she said, “You know, you’re so easy to talk to about relationship stuff. Can I come over and spend some time with you?” And I said, “Sure, bring your friends.” I put my school teacher hat on and got ready for a few weeks later, when I had nine, brilliant, early 20 somethings with me and I had them come on a Friday night and leave on a Sunday night, because I had kind of a retreat house. And I thought what do these young women need to know? They need to know about men and the differences between men and women? They need to know about sex and everything about intimacy to make the right choices. And they need to know about money, which is lifestyle choices. And Joe, that’s actually a trademark workshop I have now called “Men, Sex and Money” because it’s a catchy title, and you and I met at the New Media Summit, and we decided at the New Media Summit that that will be the name of my podcast, when I start it toward the end of the year, so, but anyway, yeah.

[JOE]:
Well I, so, you know, when you say that, you know, kind of starting over, I think that’s something that, it happens a lot, at least, you know, in your 30s and 40s, and, I mean, there’s lots of times that you start over. Right now, you know, I feel like a bunch of our friends are in the midst of divorce. So, if only for my friends to ask some questions around that, what are some things that maybe are some maybe unhelpful thought patterns that happen? You know, either during a divorce, after divorce, when you’re moving on after it, maybe take us through just unhelpful thought patterns first.

[KAREN]:
Nice question. Let me have a helpful thought pattern to figure out how to answer. Unhelpful thought patterns. It’s all my fault. I F’d up. It’s all me. I’m a bad person. I don’t deserve better. So that would be you know, my instinct, my instinctual answer. It’s all me. Or, it’s all them. Either way, it’s that finger pointing, you know, with the three fingers pointing back, Joe. And I think it’s really important, you know, to blame oneself or to blame the other, I think it’s more important to say, “Wow, how did we create that mess?” Or, “Wow, why didn’t we leave?” I think it’s really important to not have the thought pattern be turned in on oneself or to blame the other person entirely. Because it always takes two.

[JOE]:
Now, if you’re not kind of turning it on yourself, it sounds like you’re saying like, don’t go all into blame and shame and all that. But there’s probably also a balance there of how do I make sure I don’t repeat these tendencies in my life? Because you know, we all have patterns that we get from our family of origin, from our friend group, from just naturally our experiences. How do you find that balance with people between I don’t want to blame myself and get into all this blame and shame, but I also don’t want to make the same choices in the future that maybe weren’t that healthy in this first relationship.

[KAREN]:
Yeah, the old if we keep doing what we’ve done, we get what we’ve gotten. So, I’m really glad you asked because I’ve just started working with a woman who is in the midst of a gnarly separation and divorce, like as gnarly as they get. Restraining order type things, I’m like whoa, okay, I don’t know if I can take this on. But I am. And it doesn’t mean I don’t bring in a therapist to work with her, I’m so not a therapist, I’m an educator, really.

[JOE]:
I’m glad you said that. Because that was gonna be one of my questions of when do you decide to refer out but I think that’s great to have a team.

[KAREN]:
Not even a question. And you know, and let me step back at why I mentioned her, because she said to me as she was coming on board, she said, okay, well, let me tell you how I work… So, what I do is it’s usually at least a six-month process, you know, coaching, and consulting, and therapy, they happen over time. It’s not like a one shot, one punch deal, like let’s go to one personal training, any of it happens over time. And so, but the first thing, I have a little moniker, you have to complete or you’ll repeat the process. And so, I said to her, listen, this is a, you’ve been with this person 24 years, we need to, we need to have you fly down (she’s in Northern California, I’m in Southern) fly down, we do what I call a “deep dive immersion.” And we use a process I call “the completion process,” which I actually got from one of my teachers named Bill Lamond, back in the 90s. And it is just an extraordinary process of what we really, and for a big marriage, it’ll take, you know, it takes us all day to really get through it. And what we do, is we look at what were all the pleasurable things that worked in that relationship. And let’s save those. And what was not pleasurable, and who do you need to forgive, of course including yourself in all these lists, and who do you need to think in order to move on? And then we need to at some point, it sounds trite and simple, it’s not, but when we really can peel back the layers of the whole thing and look at whoa, you know, where did we really, when did I really know and what really was pleasurable? Because you probably just stayed too long if it got too gnarly divorce point. There was love, there was a reason you joined up with this person and had a family, or didn’t, or whatever, but spent that time. And let’s get back to remember the pleasurable and look deeply at what wasn’t so you don’t repeat it again. Because and you know…

[JOE]:
I love that approach because I think that it mirrors so many other things. There’s this kind of philosophical way of looking at human development called spiral dynamics. And the idea is that we go through different phases of either philosophical or kind of human development. And the tendency when you’re in tier one is to kind of look back at your previous way of thinking and saying, “I was so stupid for thinking that way.” And then you kind of level up to the next one, “I was so, I can’t believe I used to think that way.” But then tier two is all about what they say is transcend and include. And so, the idea that you’re moving forward, you’re evolving, you’re growing, but you’re still keeping the best of the things before you. So, for example, I was raised Catholic, and so there was a lot when I became a young adult, and I was like, “Ah, I can’t believe I believed that or thought these things” and, but then to say, “Well, you know, there’s all these great things that you know being raised in that structure gave me that if I just threw it all out. I’m not taking that best of it with me.” So, the idea of transcending, but then also including the best of kind of what you’ve gone through.

[KAREN]:
Right, and also what you just said, when you said, you know, “I can’t believe I did all that.” It gets into that whole black and white thinking, it’s all bad, he’s a complete, blah, blah. And it’s like, well, you married him, he wasn’t that bad, or at least you didn’t see that then? You know so…

[JOE]:
If you knew you he was a psychopath, and you still married him, what’s that say about you?

[KAREN]:
Yeah, anyway, we could go on about that. We won’t.

[JOE]:
But you’re right. I mean, you know, when someone does marry someone, or does have a relationship with someone, there are some good things about them. And so that idea of, you know, in a healthy way, saying, you know, what were the good things and I’m going to carry that forward. What else would you say are maybe skills that people need to develop, or mindsets that as they move through that starting over process can be helpful?

[KAREN]:
Communication, communication, communication. I truly believe that when we’re in communication, truly in communication with another being, including our self, anything’s possible. And when we’re not, and being in communication, I mean, it means learning how to communicate in a way that’s respectful. You know, it’s as simple as I teach something called “artful communication,” my name for something I’ve learned that was called “the training cycle”, who wants to be trained? What man wants to be trained by their woman? Well, we’re training each other all the time, but the word kind of indicates milk bones, you know? So, I call it “artful communication” and it’s, let’s say somebody, let’s say my partner’s touching me, you know, like, absent mindedly key word, he’s flipping channels and kind of scratching my arm and I hate to have my arm scratched. And I, if I say, “Ew, you know, I hate when you use your nails.” He’s gonna look at me, and he’s probably gonna move further away, he’s certainly not going to lean in, right? Because I just basically was emasculating in my way of speaking. “Ew, you know that.” Well, obviously, he didn’t know that in a moment. But what instead if I said, “Hey, honey, I love that you want me to feel good? Would you touch me a little bit more softly? Thank you.” I appreciated him first – I love that you want me to feel good. I made a request – Would you touch me a little more softly and then I thanked him for hearing the request. It works magically from the bedroom to the boardroom. “Wow, isn’t that great that you got this memo in an hour before it was due? Would you be willing to run this draft through spellcheck and get it back to me? Thanks,” is way better than, “This is a piece of you know what you can’t spell?” You know what I mean? Like bad management. Bad management from the bedroom to the boardroom. And so, it is the simplest thing. And I’ve had some of my most powerful client, for instance, one woman had just moved in with their fiancé. They’re very high-powered people, huge careers. Her kids were launched, she had a military background, you can imagine she probably raised her kids with a lot of boundaries. Let’s just put it that way. And he still had an eight-year-old that was with him half time and he was feeling incredibly guilty for having left, for having broken up the little girl’s family or in other words, her mother was no longer with him. So, the little girl came and he didn’t have a, she would be with them three nights a week, and there was no bedtime for an eight-year-old. Well, we all know that doesn’t work.

[JOE]:
Having an eight-year-old, I agree.

[KAREN]:
Do you have an eight-year-old right now?

[JOE]:
I do. I have an eight-year-old and a five-year-old and so very clear bedtime routine thing. Yeah, we even have this checklist that’s all icons of exactly what they do, you know, get their backpack out, eat their snack, brush their teeth, like every single step just cause they need it.

[KAREN]:
It keeps them safe. And I’ve got a two-and-a-half-year-old step grandson right now, that’s hilarious. But anyway, we won’t go there. But it’s true. They have the exact routine, and they said to me, “you’re our favorite grandparent, Grammy Karen, because you do our routine.” I’m like, of course. And she won’t even let, my daughter-in-law won’t even let her own mother babysit because the mother’s like I want to do it my way. And she’s like, excuse me. So, anyway, that’s a diversion, but the boundaries are so important. And where were we? Why did we get to here. Oh, you know the story about the eight-year-old, let me just finish this because it’s amazing. So, the woman was like, “You know, I can’t stand the way my guy has no bedtime for this kid.” And I, and she like, was really getting upset and I said, “Try this tonight. So, Honey, I was thinking, you think it might be good idea for us to, for us to have a like the little girl go to bed at eight o’clock so we can have some intimate time after? What do you think about that? Thanks for hearing it.” He loved it. And she said, she looked at me wide eyed, brilliant financial planner, to me, “That was like the easiest thing I’ve ever done.” Because, all she did was not be “Hey, you’re doing it wrong.” What man wants to be told he’s doing it wrong? So, there you go.

[JOE]:
Yeah. Well, so, what would you say in regards to so when people are, you know, kind of well past the divorce and you know, they may not be over it, but they’re kind of moving into whether it’s the dating world, or just kind of finding their life again. What are some things that you would say are key to starting over at that phase?

[KAREN]:
Getting absolutely 100% clear about your must haves, your deal killers, and your preferences, and making the distinction. An example of that is, if you’re completely committed to a healthy lifestyle, and eating organic food, and working out keeping your body fat, it would be an absolute deal killer to be with somebody who lets their body go and eats a whole lot of junk food, and has a whole lot of extra weight. Right? That would be a deal killer. And whereas, five or 10 extra pounds, or a little bit slippage here or there might be a preference to have them be absolutely fit. Does that make sense?

[JOE]:
Yeah.

[KAREN]:
It’s getting really clear. And then, it’s so funny, I just taught a class recently, it was a group and I had just three men show up. It was an, I put it on the meetup platform, and so we ended up doing a class instead of just talking conference, I call it relationship real talk. And it’s a meetup group that I facilitate. And I had the guys, and we were making lists on a big whiteboard. Where I had these are your must haves, and it was making the distinction, and I said, for instance, what would be a preference for you? And the guy said, I ride horses, a lot. It’s a big part of my life. It would be a preference for me to be with a woman who rides horses. He said, but it’s not a deal breaker if she doesn’t as long as she’s okay with me doing my horse thing. And so, the distinction was for somebody else if of horses or their whole life, then they would want somebody in that life. Right? So, that kind of thing.

[JOE]:
Yeah, yeah. If every weekend and every week night, it’s horse world, you probably want to have someone that’s in horse world.

[KAREN]:
I mean, I am 100% clear. I don’t want to be with somebody who has to do golf every single weekend morning. It’s not my thing. And I don’t want to be a, like what have I heard, golf widow. It’s just not, wouldn’t be my thing. So, there, it’s not a bad thing, I just don’t do it. And it’s a preference for me because I’m a, skiing is my thing and it’s a preference for me to be with someone who’s a skier because it’s a whole lot of fun to do that with someone. But it’s not a deal breaker. If somebody said, oh my god, I skied for years, I don’t have the knees anymore. Okay. You know what I mean? As long as I can go ski.

[JOE]:
Yeah, we all have our kind of things we do on our own and things that we want to do with someone else, you know? Yeah, I mean, I started joining in, I joined an improv troupe back in September/October. And yeah, my wife hates like doing improv or being put on the spot, she loves watching it, but that’s my thing I do on Tuesday nights, you know, I go do improv and it’s my creative outlet and I get to have fun and it doesn’t have to be with her. But if I, if every weekend, I’m going to improv and going to improv things, and that becomes my world and she’s not in it, of course, like that’s not gonna work for our family relationship.

[KAREN]:
Exactly.

[JOE]:
Well, Karen, the last question I ask is, if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know?

[KAREN]:
You say private practitioner, Joe, are you referring specifically to therapists?

[JOE]:
Yeah, to therapists, we do have some massage therapists and some chiropractors and folks, but yeah, every helping professional out there, if they’re all listening, what would you want them to know?

[KAREN]:
I would want them to know that they’re part of that person’s team, that they’re not the answer for them. Because I don’t think that I’m the answer for anybody. I sometimes call myself a concierge, or call myself like the master contractor, “Let’s bring in the therapist/Let’s bring in the personal trainer.” I don’t pretend to know what I don’t know. And I think sometimes, I know I personally have gone to chiropractors who are very arrogant and they think that, “No, I can heal everything.” And I’m like looking at them like, “What? You’re a chiropractor.” Or and I think that there’s a place for each of us. And I think that it does take a village you know, it’s a little trite, but it does take a village for us all to heal, for any one of us to heal and for me to choose my practitioners accordingly. So, I think that if remembering that you’re part of that person’s team and to not hold on so tight that you don’t, like, I literally fired some clients and said, “You need a grief counselor right now.” And that’s what they needed. And it wasn’t fun for me to lose the revenue, they were very big clients of mine, a couple. But the truth is, that’s what they needed. And I just, I think that that’s important for us to get out of the way in the interest of the client having the best possible life they can.

[JOE]:
Awesome, Karen, if people want to connect with you or your work, what’s the best way for them to connect with you?

[KAREN]:
Well, if they want to go to karensolomon.com, and that’s all O’s in the last name. I wish it were A’s and I’d be related to the ski people but no, it’s all O’s. Instead, it’s a direct descendant to the king. Yeah, right. Anyway, so it’s karensolomon.com, SOLOMON, and if you go there, you can choose a couple of fun, free downloads, one for either more fulfilling dating tips or for a juicier sex life if you’re in a couple. And when you do that, and you can always click on getting onto my calendar and speaking with me, I would love that. But for now, you can just go to karensolomon.com and check me out a little bit, and download your freebie, and then I’ll be sending you some follow-up, really great content. So, that’s probably the best way.

[JOE]:
Awesome. Well, Karen, thank you for being on the Practice of the Practice podcast.

[KAREN]:
Thank you, Joe. Really appreciate your time.

[JOE]:
So, whether it’s for you, or for your clients, such important information to hear from Karen. Thanks so much for joining us today. Again, head on over to brightervision.com/joe to access that deal. Also, if you are a next level practice number you get an even better deal, so just make sure that you tell them that you are a next level practice member when you sign up for brightervision.com/joe, and then you’ll get that deal as well. Thanks so much for letting me into your ears, into your brain. Have an amazing day. Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music, we really like it. And this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests, are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or other professional information. If you want a professional you should find one.