Why This Therapist Left Big Organizations to Build Differently

Although it does require a lot of effort and there are days that go well and there are

“days that go not so well, it's still something that if you're passionate about,”

you can absolutely have both things. Caitlyn Martin is a mental health professional entrepreneur and the owner of Arrow Behavioral Health. She helps individuals and families navigate life's challenges through compassionate care, evidence-based treatment and a commitment to lasting emotional well-being. I am a mental health therapist and my husband is also a mental health therapist and we have

worked for years for other companies and one day we decided that I was going to go ahead and

start my own thing. I was just really tired of working for other people and working for really large organizations that I felt. Not only did not have the client's best interest

“heart, but didn't have clinicians best interest at heart. What would you say are your three keys to success?”

The three keys to success for me are... The living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. Welcome back ladies and gentlemen to another episode of the Living Your Legacy podcast. Today I am joined by Caitlyn Martin. Caitlyn Martin is now Caitlyn, you just finished recording your episode. Talk me a little bit about like what's the number one lesson you want people to be

able to take away from your story? The number one lesson I would like people to take away from would be about how it is possible to be a mother and be able to own your own business as well. Although it does require a lot of effort and there are days that go well and there are days that go not so well. It's still something that if you're passionate about, you can absolutely have both things. She said I'm a mother ladies gentlemen and you know I find that to be so true among

like I've interviewed so many clients especially for like women in power and the mothership, the motherhood story is usually one of like you gotta kind of figure this out on your own. Like there's no there's no playbook on how to be a mom and a business owner at the same time. What was kind of like the what were those early days like? Those early days were really hard. Those were the days when I probably did not see my children as often as I would have liked.

You know they were days when I was working all throughout the day I would take a break, you know see them for a bit after school and then once they went to bed I would go back to working and those days were very long but it was absolutely worth it. Because you're building something at the end of the day that's gonna not only outlast you would just gonna last with them right and like you know as a business owner myself it's like

you have like the 16 hour days the 18 hour day like sometimes you pull some really ridiculous hours. Is it business owner? Yes. But talk to me a little bit about your business. What's what's the founding story? So I am a mental health therapist and my husband is also a mental health therapist and we have worked for years for you know other companies and other businesses as therapists providing therapy for individuals, for couples, for families and one day we decided that

you know that I was going to go ahead and start my own thing and it was at a point when I was just really tired of working for other people and working for really large organizations that I felt not only did not have the client's best interest at heart but didn't have clinicians best interest at heart and as a therapist you know you spend so much time holding space for

“your clients and for the people around you that you need to work in an environment that is supportive”

and caring of you as a person as well and that was ultimately my goal was to be able to not only

support individuals in their mental health journey but also have a space that was conducive for a therapist and their ability to grow in their professional lives. Now I love that you mentioned like being a part of like large organizations there's a phrase that let's talk about which is you know standing too close to an elephant right you stand too close to an elephant and all you see is this

plane it looks like an hat and so I think when organizations grow to a certain size they stop looking

“at people as people and they start looking at them as numbers right I think there's like a middle”

ground that you can be in especially as it was you're starting your own thing we're like I'm standing far enough from the elephant where I know it's an elephant right I talked to me a little bit about just like you know my dad is also in mental health he's a sports psychologist so he works in mental strength development programs and things like that he works in in the Olympics and these got all these crazy athletes but mental strength or mental health as it pertains to business owners

what are some of the things that you that you see often in your field I yeah mental health in regards to business owning is a huge component because you are looking to you know everybody talks about having this balance this work life balance and don't exist right and the idea is that everything

is supposed to be equal but it's never equal right like there are times when your your energy is going

into parenting and your children and there are times when it's going into yourself and there are

“times when it's going into your business and I think that that is something that people need to”

expect more that it's going to shift and it's going to change in a lot of different ways but as as an owner from a mental health perspective it's really about allowing yourself to make those mistakes or to have grace with yourself of you know this decision I made doesn't work and I need to scrap it and do it again and that was something that I had experienced for the first few years of growing arrow because it was you know I was just trying to figure it out and find what systems

worked and what was going to be efficient and cost effective and that's not always easy to find and

so now not only do I do that with my own business but I also do consulting with other businesses to be able to find those same systems or how do we change this or how do we make this more beneficial because as a business owner you also need your business to run without you if you are not available you gotta be able to scale out right especially so like paint a picture for me of like the arrow who is your ideal avatar of the person that you want to be able to help with your

business so the ideal person is that's actually it's a wide range right so we have people who come in due to you know they are they come in as a couple and they want to explore better means of communication we have individuals who come in and you know say our experiencing significant OCD symptoms and need help with anxiety and because of that we have quite a diverse population of therapists and specialties so that we can serve a wide range of clients and their

“mental health needs and that's why we that's what we look to do is so that we can support more”

people yeah the more people that you can help the more you can scale outwards and be able to really influence you know a lot of a lot of people around the country around the world whatever whatever your level of ambition right but you know we've mentioned mental health a few times and mental health nowadays I feel like it's become this like weird buzzword that people say all the time what's your in your experience like what's your take on the mental health of people nowadays at large like

what are some trends that you're seeing in mental health like I know from my perspective and being able to watch my dad's work like a lot of the things that we're dealing with are like ADHD OCD people are overworked underpaid they're depressed they're they're they're they're they're seeing a lack of options for them out there in society and it's causing a real like I feel like we're in a depression of the the soul you know what I mean so what's your take on that my take is I think we spend a lot of

time actually over pathologizing things and spending like that yeah yeah spending a lot of time trying to take a symptom and diagnose it and you know when we're thinking about a person as a whole person right and so say someone was just laid off and you know no longer has a job that they've had for 15 years and they're experiencing significant levels of sadness or a significant levels of anger maybe lack of motivation that is so appropriate for the situation and I feel like that

that's just one example of how we spend a lot of time pathologizing things that can be very normal

of worries from people that understandably so depending on the situation that they're in or depending on what they're experiencing these are things that are due to the environment or people around them

or you know the systems that they are working within that really impact people and so it's not always

like a neurologic or a chemical deficiency like all right you're serotonin and you're not prenephrine are depleted for these reasons but like it's not necessarily like something worth diagnosing or it's maybe maybe not worth diagnosing is the wrong terminology there but like it might not be that you have an actual deficiency in these things they're just depleted because you spent all day crashing out your dopamine because you scroll all day you know what I mean

so like there's other ways to kind of look at these things yes yeah no there are certainly

“other ways to look at them and and I think that that is something that I have always been a big”

believer in you know I spend time teaching in the graduate program in one of the colleges in Rhode Island and when I'm working with up and coming therapists those are things that we talk about of being able to look at a person as a whole person we're not just looking at the symptoms that they're coming in with but what are these other factors that are impacting them and how do we best support that rather than feeling like it's a problem or it's you know it's something that's bad

about a person hmm yeah like instead of looking at it's like all right this is the problem that I'm trying to solve in this person like like actually let me look at the whole person and figure out like right what what what how can I where do you need support right exactly right the support is a huge component of it now we're here at inside success so I have to ask this question ask it of all my clients on this on this show what would you say are your three keys to success the three

“keys to success for me are having a vision and a passion about that vision I think when you are”

starting anything a business or anything you don't have to have it all figured out in fact I think it's better that you don't how they figured out it would be really crazy actually if you did have it all figured out now I have questions for you sir were you getting where are you getting this information for right we want to know where the expertise came from really yeah uh being able to because I think that allows for people to be flexible right it allows you to make mistakes and those

mistakes are things that you learn from um where I think you know people are so hard on themselves

of like now I should have figured this out first and it's now we need more flexibility than that

you got to be able I'm a huge believer in like taking imperfect action like even if you don't have it all figured out just start taking steps in the direction that you're trying to go I promise you you're probably smart enough to figure it out away I figure it out along the way because most people that I know that have been come highly highly successful people that I've interviewed on this show they were able to identify a need craft a solution to that need and it wasn't

perfect when they started out but they kept iterating on it they kept asking questions of the people that they were trying to help how can I make this better how can I do this better how can I and eventually it became this thing that was wild they successful and I think that's like

“those are just the steps that you have to take mm-hmm but yeah I wanted to get at the reason”

to ask for everybody's keys to success is you know here at Insight Success a big part of why we do this is our audience is very entrepreneurial they're very business minded they're looking to the people on these shows for guidance right so if you could give a message to an audience member out there who is you know thinking about starting a business or thinking about working in their passion what message would you have for them I would have in regards to you know not only that piece about

having the passion is also having the stubbornness right having the being stubborn to be able to say okay you know even if I'm finding this barrier or this you know this thing keeps knocking me down being able to have a level of stubbornness and persistence to say okay you know but let me as you mentioned you know let me rework this how can I change this in a way that it's more beneficial or that it's going to work and I think when people have that resiliency and just

kind of grit inside of them it just it's something that will come you know you it will take time and you know as we reference there will be long hours and there will be long days but it doesn't

always have to look that way you know there will come a day when your business will run without you

you know you can fly to Miami and you know nobody the whole business did not follow my right

is the ultimate goal I think that's like probably the greatest feeling to as business owner is to be able to take a break for a minute and be like oh my god everything still works right when you come back

“nothing burned down right I think because the first time you do it I had a business that I was”

running a couple of years ago and I had to you know go away for I think it was like two weeks I had to go away for like a family thing and the whole time I couldn't stop thinking about like

somebody's gonna fuck something up I am you get the first time you leave it alone you're like

I don't know what's going on but I hope everything's okay every time you get a slack message you're like please tell me something didn't burn down or something didn't explode or somebody didn't like absolutely accidentally murder a client you know what I mean right yeah well your baby you know is it is literally your baby it's like leaving your baby with the baby center you know it's like

“is this gonna be okay I think the anxiety is crazy super super crazy you know as we sort of wind”

down here I do want to say I do want to just kind of what does the future look like for Arrow what's

what's next for you yeah so the future for Arrow we want to continue to grow and expand into other states which we are in a few states now and we want to continue that growth we also want to continue to see you guys down here in Miami I hope so I really love that I'm looking forward to right yes I'll let you know when we come down but I and we also want to add more holistic care so because you know we have we have therapists with a lot of diverse specialties and we have

nurse practitioners but also being able to incorporate other types of modalities such as you know therapeutic massage and more accurate puncture and things like that that way we can continue with the mission of being able to support a wide population so that people feel like you know even though we're a big company when they come in the door it's about them and what their needs are and being like a one-stop shop too because like one day I might come in there and I'm like

alright I have clinical depression and then like you know with enough therapy and enough time like that might not be the case and then I'm like you know what I could use that you put your session right and I already you know I like everybody at Arrow I'm gonna go over there yes

“it's like that I think that creating that that ecosystem I think is such a huge strength”

for a lot of business owners yeah um before we go I want to just say guys if you're still tuned in at this point make sure you check out her episode it will be dropping shortly after this podcast episode airs where can people find you on social media yeah so social media so they can find us on Facebook it is Arrow behavioral and I can be found on Instagram at Kate 0 3 1 0 and on LinkedIn under Caitlin Martens and Arrow behavioral health got you and we'll make sure we

put those somewhere on the screen on point in directions editors you know to do the thing um but it

has been an incredible pleasure having you on the show yes now thank you so much thank you for coming

in and now let's go and join Miami yes I feel like you guys gonna go find my office go do the beach well well we're already on the beach but yes go find the office because I need to know where I need to go but guys this has been another episode of the living your legacy podcasts we will catch you in the next one