The Balance Between Humane and Efficient Is the Actual Work of Scaling
There is a specific moment that arrives in almost every service business that grows past one person.
You are on your third call of the day explaining something you could have written in a two-line message. You know the message would be faster. You also know the call is why your team trusts you.
So you take the call. And then you look at your calendar and wonder how long you can keep doing that.
That tension has a name. Yael Eiserike, a former litigator who now runs a therapy practice for attorneys and high-achieving professionals, put it plainly on this week’s episode of FoundHer Rising: the goal is to do things in a way that is “efficient, but also very humane.”
Most founders treat that as a temporary problem. Something to solve once the systems are built. It isn’t. It’s the permanent condition of running a business with people in it.
Context and the Big Idea
Yael’s path is unusual. She practiced employment defense litigation, passed the California Bar, and then left the profession entirely to become a licensed clinical social worker. She spent seven years in community mental health, moved into a group practice in 2020, and eventually opened her own practice serving lawyers.
Today she leads a small team. Three people including herself. And she is explicit that she is not trying to make it large.
That choice is worth sitting with, because it reframes what “growth” means. Yael didn’t decide to stay small out of fear. She decided that a certain kind of quality requires a certain kind of contact, and that the contact does not survive past a certain size.
Deciding where your ceiling is on purpose is a strategy. Drifting into a size you never chose is not.
Four Ideas Worth Taking Into Your Own Business
1. You do not have to become the expert in everything
When Yael went out on her own, the surprise was not the clinical work. It was accounting, admin, and the business mechanics.
Her response was to hire out early. Lawyers. An accountant. Her reasoning was blunt: what would take her hours and hours to learn takes them fifteen minutes.
Most founders know this intellectually and stall anyway, usually on cost. The reframe that helps is not “can I afford this.” It’s “what is this actually costing me right now, in hours I could have billed or slept.”
2. The hiring filter that matters most is trust, not credentials
Yael interviewed a lot of people before choosing anyone. Her screening rule is one line long:
“If the person makes you feel dumb, or doesn’t know how to answer your question, or in any way you don’t feel like you can really trust them, don’t hire them.”
This is more useful than it looks. You are hiring these people to guide you on decisions you do not yet know are important. If you can’t ask a naive question without feeling small, you will stop asking. And the questions you stop asking become the problems you find out about later.
3. Ask what future you would want
Yael’s decision test is simple and portable: will future me thank me?
She uses it on small things. Whether to pay the extra $150 for better coverage. Whether to cut a corner now that will cost more later.
Christine extends it further in the episode. The same test works on boundaries, on which clients to take, on which services to offer. Play the decision forward six months and twelve months and ask what that version of you inherits.
4. Saying no early is cheaper than saying no later
Some of the hardest calls Yael described were not about money. They were about clients who could pay, who fit her schedule, and who still weren’t right.
Her line for it: if the work isn’t a good stretch, and instead it’s a “I’m going to be up at night thinking about this person,” it isn’t worth it.
Christine adds the compounding version of this, passed to her by a mentor: consider how hard it is to say no at the start, then consider how much harder and more complicated it becomes once you have let it run.
Putting It Into Practice
If the humane-versus-efficient tension is live in your business right now, three moves are worth making this month.
Name your ceiling out loud. Not a revenue target. A structural one. How many people can you lead and still lead well? Write the number down. Every hiring decision gets easier once you have it.
Sort your team by what they actually need. Yael’s two clinicians need opposite things from her. One came from private practice and understands business but needs clinical structure. The other is a strong clinician who has never had to network or market. Same title, different support. Uniform management is efficient and mostly wrong.
Decide which conversations stay live. You cannot put everything on a call. You also should not put everything in writing. Pick the two or three categories of communication where the follow-up question matters, and protect those. Systematize the rest without guilt.
The Myth Worth Dropping
The myth is that boundaries are the cold option. That every limit you set is a small withdrawal from how much you care.
Christine names the correction directly in the episode: having boundaries isn’t the opposite of being humane. Clearly communicated boundaries are one of the kindest things you can offer the people who work with you, because they replace guessing with knowing.
Yael’s version of this is practical. She tells her clinicians in advance when she’s in session and when she’s reachable. She responds to a text by asking how urgent it is and then offering real options, including right now if it’s an emergency.
That is not distance. That is structure that makes the warmth reliable.
The Part That Doesn’t Get Easier
Here is the honest ending. Yael doesn’t claim to have solved this. She says she has a strong pull in both directions, and that she expects to always have it.
That is probably the right expectation.
The founders who struggle most with this are the ones waiting for the tension to resolve. It doesn’t resolve. You just get better at choosing, faster, with less guilt, and with a clearer sense of which side of the pull you’re currently over-serving.
If you’re in that stretch right now, where the business is asking for more structure than your instincts want to give it, that’s not a sign you’re doing it wrong. It’s a sign you’ve grown past the size where instinct alone was enough.
Listen to the full conversation with Yael Eiserike on FoundHer Rising. And if you want help building the structure without losing the thing that made your business work in the first place, that’s the work we do at Hakkola Horizons. Book a Growth Clarity Call.
Full Transcript
Christine: Welcome to FoundHer Rising, the podcast for women founders in wellness, coaching, and consulting who are ready to build businesses that create freedom, impact, and income. I’m your host, Christine Hakkola, business coach, former psychotherapist, and mentor to women scaling service-based businesses.
Today I’m joined by Yael Eiserike, a licensed clinical social worker and therapist in Los Angeles. She supports lawyers and other high-achieving professionals. Yael, welcome to the show.
Yael: Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here.
Christine: You’re actually the second lawyer we’ve ever had on the show, and I’m so curious to hear about your unique experience and path into building your own private practice. That shift from law to therapy is one that intrigues me to no end. So tell us a little bit about what was going on for you, coming from the world of law, deciding to become a therapist.
Yael: Sure. I’ll start by saying that being a therapist was something that in some ways had always been in the back of my mind, that I opted not to do right out of college. I had double majored in political science and psychology and thought, well, psychology is too easy. This is too easy. I should do the thing that’s hard and prestigious.
Christine: I’m sure all the therapists listening are laughing along with us about that.
Yael: Totally. So I went to law school and I sat for the bar exam and worked at a firm and did all the things, and was working actually at a really nice firm with good people. There weren’t any horror stories of colleagues being mean to me or anything like that. I was just deeply unhappy.
I am forever grateful that I had a case that went to trial in Northern California. At the time I was marathon training in LA, so I would drive up and drive down, and it was 400 miles almost exactly from my house to the hotel that I was living out of for about six weeks. I was doing this drive twice a week and had a lot of time to think and feel and connect, and really wonder, is this what my life looks like? Is this what I want my life to be? Am I happy? And the answer was no, I wasn’t happy.
I am again so thankful I had the time and space to reflect. And then it was a matter of, well, do I go to a different firm? Do I do something else? Do I go to public interest or government or in-house or whatever? And I realized I just didn’t like being a lawyer. I am by nature much more collaborative, not super adversarial. I actually don’t love conflict. [FLAG: audio garbled at 02:44 to 03:05. Original reads “I think many people know. in and I’m like, I don’t really want this.” Line not recoverable from context. Verify or cut.]
So I really forced myself to have an honest conversation. If money, if prestige, if those things really were just off the table, what would I most enjoy doing? And I realized it’s those one-on-ones, sitting and helping people, connecting with people, that just really resonated with me. Once I made the decision to go back and get my master’s in social work, it was like all the doors opened. Everything just made sense.
So I went back to graduate school. I worked in a community mental health agency for almost seven years, working with low income families and children. I loved the work, and hadn’t seriously thought about private practice until 2020, when a lot of things were online. It felt a little bit more necessary and available. And I had always had this wriggling thing in the back of my mind, that whole law part of my life. It didn’t go away. I just didn’t do anything with it.
Christine: I want to ask you about this part for a second before we move forward.
Yael: Okay.
Christine: You said something that really caught my attention, because a lot of the women I hear from who move into their own private practice or build their own business, many of them come from corporate backgrounds. I often hear stories about the toxic work culture and whatever it was that was really untenable for them. And it sounded for you like that wasn’t your experience. You actually had a pretty decent work experience and good colleagues, and there were things you didn’t like about the law. But what would you say it was for you? If it wasn’t something really wrong, was there something missing? Was it a sense of longing? What was it?
Yael: If I could really summarize it, I was lonely in my work, because a lot of my work was reading alone, writing alone, researching alone. Especially as a junior associate when I was first starting, a lot of that work is alone. And I realized I just was spending many, many, many hours of my day by myself. I’m just by nature such an extrovert. I love being around people. I love connecting with people.
The days that I was most happy in my work were the days that I got to go on site with clients, or interview people, or talk to whoever, or prep for depositions, anything like that where I was directly one on one with people. So I think for me, that was a lot of where I felt something was missing, because so many hours of my life were being spent alone. And I should also add, indoors. Which obviously is still part of the nature of the work, but I would drive to work and walk from my apartment down to the garage, from my car to another garage, up an elevator. A lot of my days were sort of by myself, working alone, indoors.
Christine: That’s one thing, living in a state like I do, like Maine, where it’s winter eight months out of the year and mud season the other three. But being in California, I can imagine that that was really, really difficult.
Yael: It was really challenging. I remember I would go for walks on lunch breaks, and again, the parts of my day that were far and away the best were when a colleague and I would go grab a coffee or go grab lunch. I remember even thinking at one point, I was in the Starbucks in the basement of my building, and looking at the barista and thinking, gosh, wouldn’t that be great? I could just make coffee all day for people. That sounds wonderful. And that should be a sign that this probably isn’t the right fit for me.
Christine: Right. I really admire the way you tell your story, but also the degree of self-awareness. I know hindsight is 20-20, but when I hear you tell your story, it just sounds like there was a lot of personal reflection. You talk about running the marathon and having that time for introspection. I also imagine that it wasn’t as easy as it sounds, that there was probably a lot of turmoil around that. What was the hardest part for you about making the decision to leave a career that you’d gone after for many years of your life and make a total switch?
Yael: This may sound really naive, but I wanted to be essentially a social worker who ended up as a lawyer. I wanted to do public interest work. The money wasn’t really ever a motivating factor. So leaving it wasn’t as hard, because I had had some really wonderful mentors, even in law school, who said the golden handcuffs, beware. Really don’t live a lifestyle that you have to sustain with this kind of a job. For that, I’ll always also be very thankful.
I think the hardest part was in some ways how people reacted to it. Particularly some of my colleagues who were still lawyers were like, why would you do that? And a lot of people who weren’t lawyers, I would get that from them even more. But you went to law school, you took the bar. It was a three day exam. What are you doing? Do you just really like school?
I mean, yes, I suppose I really do like school that much. But it was a lot of having to explain myself, especially to people who I hadn’t brought into that process of self-reflection. I had close friends and family that knew I was unhappy, and that I had bounced ideas off of them and talked through different things with them. So they weren’t at all surprised. But the people that were a little bit more on the periphery, they seemed shocked. So it was having to have those kinds of conversations. Why would you do that?
Christine: What, like you had to defend yourself? Or was it more like, no, this is right for me, this is what I’m doing?
Yael: I had to defend myself to some people. And also in some ways, I would imagine for other colleagues that were still in the profession, it might have felt like an affront. Like why would you choose to leave?
I still remember my exit interview, being asked something like, is there something we could have done, or was there something about the firm? Give us feedback, essentially, why you’re leaving. And I said, well, it’s really the nature of the legal profession. It’s not any of you guys. And I just remember the partner laughed when I said that, because that really was what it was.
Christine: You weren’t leaving the firm, you were leaving the profession.
Yael: I was leaving the profession. And so it was nice in that I stayed on good terms with people. Like I said, I was really fortunate. I worked with some great colleagues, some of whom I’m still friends with to this day. It just wasn’t who I am, in a way that I was trying to make myself be someone that I’m just not.
Christine: I wonder, did you receive a similar kind of response of people going, why would you do that, what are you thinking, when you decided to go into private practice?
Yael: Yes.
Christine: Interesting. Say a little bit more about that shift. [FLAG: audio garbled, transcribed as “that chef.” Reconstructed from context.]
Yael: Well, we’ll fast forward. So jumping ahead, 2020. I had been working at a community mental health agency, also really great people. Best place to get trained. I still to this day am thankful that I had the supervisors I had, the training I had.
I think for anybody who is starting out their therapy journey as a therapist and they want to get good training, please go to an agency. I think working with kids is really hard, and it’s important to do early in your career so that you know how to do that. And then how to work with adults, I think, is a little bit easier. At least for me, it’s easier to work with adults.
But when I left, it was one of those things where it was 2020. My husband’s job was sort of wrapping up, and we needed for me to work a little bit more. So I was looking for something extra. And I just found this practice group where I felt like I could really learn this whole other part of the therapy business industry that just wasn’t in a nonprofit setting.
Christine: I’ve heard from a lot of folks who had the opportunity to work, whether it was for an agency or another private practice as a clinician, how imperative that was to get the confidence and learn some of the business skills before going out on their own.
Yael: A hundred percent. I really could not have gone out on my own if I hadn’t gone to a group setting. I learned so much.
And I do remember it was very bittersweet to leave my agency. I had envisioned a life where I would stay there. I was moving up in terms of as a supervisor, as a manager. I was really enjoying the work that I was doing. But this just made a lot more sense for our family. It made more sense for me. It felt like the next kind of big push.
And I will say the other part of it that, again, it sounds obvious in hindsight, but I didn’t really think about at the time, was that the more successful you are in a community or government setting, the less client contact you have. So I wasn’t seeing that many clients anymore. I was supervising and doing some administrative work, and it was totally fine. But I wasn’t having that soul filling kind of experience that I used to have when I had just a full caseload and I was seeing clients.
That was one thing I had missed a little bit. I didn’t realize I’d missed it. And then when I was doing full-time private practice, even in a group setting, I was doing some supervision, but most of my time was spent seeing clients. I was like, oh, right. I love this. I really enjoy this.
And then that was where that whole other law part of my life kind of came together. Because in a private practice, especially the way this group was administered, I could choose who my clients were. I could really identify, this is the population I want to work with. And I thought, well, gosh, wouldn’t it be great, because I know a lot of lawyers, I’ve been a lawyer, I understand this world, I understand the unique challenges. It was a matter of saying, well, I just really want to work with lawyers and these high-stress, high-intensity professions, particularly women. And it was like, I found my people. Yes, this is it.
Christine: So you have a really clear niche, and I want to dig into that. But before we do, going back to that transition from agency work to a group practice into private practice: besides that desire, and it sounds like a parallel desire to what prompted you to leave the legal industry in the first place, just following your passion and this relational work and what you really wanted to do, getting the choice of who you worked with and how you worked, what were some of the other appeals of private practice that you, and it sounds like your husband as well, had talked about, that you thought this is going to be a better fit for our family?
Yael: It was a lot more flexibility in terms of what hours I would and wouldn’t work. I think one of the challenges of an agency setting is that, especially once you’re licensed, being the on-call person, or being the late night person who’s there to make sure everything closes in case of an emergency or whatever it is.
I had a couple of times, certainly when my kids were little, little, where I didn’t put them to bed because I was there till eight o’clock, and then by the time I got home they were already asleep. And I missed that. It didn’t happen all that often, and I will say this agency, all things considered, did a pretty good job in terms of work life balance. But there were still times that I had to not be there.
So being in a private practice, I could really set my own hours to align with the time that my kids are in school and they’re busy and they’re doing activities. And at the same time, if they do have a concert or a performance or something that really is important, I could carve out a random Thursday morning and start my day a little bit later, because that is a priority for me as a parent as well.
Christine: As flexible as many employers are these days, sometimes nothing beats being your own employer and making those choices.
Yael: That’s exactly it.
Christine: In the earlier years, when you look back, when you were still building your one-on-one practice and getting your footing, what would you say were some of the most unexpected challenges of running your own business?
Yael: So I left the group and then started out my own full private practice. And I would say, learning a lot more on the business, administrative, accounting side of things.
I will say I’m glad that I decided early on that I didn’t want to become an expert in all of the things that it takes to run a business. And I hired lawyers and I hired an accountant. I know what I know, and I also know there’s so many things I don’t know. For me, what it would take hours and hours and hours to learn, for them it’s 15 minutes.
Christine: That’s smart. [FLAG: transcribed as “Both smart.” Reconstructed from context.] And they know what they’re doing right. It’s a good use of time.
What would you say to that early business owner who is hearing you say that? Maybe some part of her knows, yes, that’s smart, I’ve heard that advice before. But the other part is scared. They don’t know how to hire. They’re afraid. How can I afford this? What would you say to somebody who knows they should probably do that but is worried about taking the leap?
Yael: So I will say, I interviewed and met with and got ideas from and talked to a lot of people before I selected the people I chose to work with. So take the time to do that. Ask a lot of questions. And if the person makes you feel dumb, or doesn’t know how to answer your question, or in any way you don’t feel like you can really trust them, don’t hire them.
Christine: I think that’s such great advice. One of my mentors, and I don’t know that she coined this, it probably comes from many circles, but she gave me this advice of, only hire rock stars. Rate them. And unless they’re a 10 out of 10, don’t hire them. That’s always been really powerful for me.
Yael: I think that’s exactly it, because you’re entrusting these experts to guide you on lots of really crucial decisions that you don’t even know are important decisions.
I’ll say, I think investing in yourself early on. What I would always think about is, do I want to take the shortcut? Do I want to cut this corner? Do I want to spend money on this and not that? I would always think, will future me thank me?
Christine: Oh, that’s a great one.
Yael: Or will future me think, oh, you really should have. With insurance, for example, will future me be kicking present day me that I didn’t spend the extra $150 a year to get the max coverage of X? Or should I just pay the $150 and future me will thank me? Kind of think about it that way.
Christine: And I would suggest that whether it’s a choice around what to spend money on, who to hire, what to invest in, or just what boundaries to set, what clients to take on, what services to offer. I’ll often do that experiment with clients of, if we go down this road, where’s that going to bring you in six months, in 12 months? And what’s the best choice, as you said, for future you?
Yael: I love that. A hundred percent.
Christine: Before we keep going, I want to say something. If you’re listening to this and thinking, oh, I’m in that season right now, I’d love to talk to you. FoundHer Rising isn’t about polished success stories. It’s about real growth, hiring decisions, the revenue plateaus, the identity shifts that happen when your business starts stretching you. If you’re building something meaningful in wellness, coaching, or consulting, and you’re willing to have an honest conversation about what scaling actually looks like, apply to be a guest. The link’s in the show notes. I’d love to meet you. Okay, back to the episode.
Yael: You asked another question. I was going to add one more thing, because I don’t know if I fully answered it. But things that are hard. This happened to me in the group practice, and I had a lot of autonomy there, so I feel like it was like baby practice, sort of my own practice. It was sort of steps.
Feeling comfortable saying no to potential clients, and even potential associates or anything like that. Because it’s my license, it’s my responsibility. I take what I do very seriously. And even if a client is willing to pay your fee and meet at the availability that you have, if there is something that is not really in your wheelhouse, that isn’t a good stretch, but it’s a “I’m going to be up at night thinking about this person,” it’s not worth it.
Christine: I think that’s such great advice, just considering that even though there’s the short term potential gain of getting a client, the gut feeling, that intuition that we have that this probably isn’t going to go well, this might not turn out well, this isn’t the best hire, whatever it is, it’s so important, because the chance of that working out the way we really want it to is so low.
And again, I had a different mentor say to me once, consider how difficult it is to say no in the beginning or early on, versus if you let it go on, and how much more difficult or complex that’s going to be down the road.
Yael: Oh, 100%. Very well said. Yes, I agree with that.
Christine: I can’t take credit for that. It was shared with me.
But let’s fast forward again to today. So you have built more than a one-on-one practice. Tell us all about what you’ve got going on.
Yael: Sure. So I really took my love of working with attorneys and very much leaned into it. So my practice is very much about serving attorneys and those who love them. And I say that because one thing I was noticing that was missing in just me was the kids component. Even though I can work with children, once I had my own, I realized, no, it’s too hard for me.
So I had worked with a woman years ago. We had stayed in touch. I had supervised her. I know her quality of work. She’s excellent. And we were having a conversation about the possibility of her at some point starting in private practice. But she said, I don’t know a lot of the business side of things. I don’t really know how to do this, but I’d work with you because I know you and I trust you. And she specializes in zero to five, maybe zero to seven.
And I was thinking, oh my gosh, perfect. So she works with the kids of my clients. My clients, for example, are usually these super on top of life, polished, put together people. And I can’t tell you how many sessions we were having where it’s like, my kid will not put on his pants and we need to get to preschool so I can make it to court on time, or whatever it was. And I was just missing that. And then she and I were having this parallel conversation, and I was like, oh, I think this needs to happen. I think these two things need to converge. And so she just works with kids.
And she does, I don’t know if you’re familiar with Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, or PCIT?
Christine: I’m not, no.
Yael: PCIT is an incredible evidence-based practice. And what it does is, and this existed pre-COVID, but really it is meant to be a remote kind of intervention. Pre-COVID, the parent or the caregiver would bring the child into the office. They would go into a room, the therapist would be observing outside and have a microphone. The parent would have an earpiece and they would be getting in vivo live coaching. They would label exactly what’s happening. They would have the debrief. So it’s really focusing on the parent to enhance the relationship with the child.
And so it’s perfect, because now they can do that in their home. The parent can open a laptop, be in their playroom, in their living room, in the kids’ room, whatever, have the earpiece, and the therapist is in their ear saying, okay, this is why little Timmy is doing whatever. Now let’s try this technique that we’ve been working on. And it is really effective and it’s perfect. So it just has balanced out the work I was doing beautifully.
And then I brought on an associate as well who has a particular love for OCD and even some eating disorder work. And it just fit, because I do a lot of anxiety and panic and insomnia. So it just really rounded out the offerings. It’s just been kind of a natural organic growth in terms of the services that we provide.
Christine: I love hearing these stories where the growth just feels so synchronistic almost. I don’t mean to get too woo-woo, but a little bit like it was meant to be. These people and opportunities just come into your life. One of the things I know from working with many, many female entrepreneurs is that our intuition, those gut feelings, those synchronistic moments, are so important to follow and pay attention to. And many times when we do, it opens up great opportunities.
And what’s not intuitive on the flip side is how to actually run a business at that level. Many of the earlier things we can kind of be scrappy and figure out. But as we start to grow a team, and systems are required, and services expand and get more complicated, there’s a lot of learning there. What are some learning edges for you, or again, unexpected challenges at this stage of business?
Yael: I think it’s knowing, I mean, there’s so much to it in terms of bringing on a team and providing them support and trying to balance really giving them autonomy and confidence to do things on their own, but also giving them guidance and training.
And what’s interesting is that my associate who is unlicensed, she’s almost exclusively worked in private practice settings. So she understands how a private practice works. She understands business. She understands that side of things. So with her, it’s been really clinically focused in terms of, how are we going to implement these kinds of boundaries and create structure with your clients, and how are we going to do treatment plans and move towards goals?
Christine: So it’s really a more rounded delivery.
Yael: Exactly. And then with my other colleague, she’s only worked in community settings. She’s a tremendous clinician. She’s never worked in private practice. So for her, it’s a matter of, what does networking look like? Because if previously you’ve worked with Medi-Cal populations, which in California is sort of welfare recipients, you don’t need to look for them. There’s always a waiting list. There’s no need to market. There’s no need to network.
So they each have completely different skills that they bring to the table. And so it’s nice, because they need different things from me. And I can provide them support in different ways.
Christine: As you look into the future with your team of two now, but I imagine there’s future plans, which I’m going to ask you about in a moment. What are some of the growing edges that you anticipate, whether it’s around mentoring your team, or the systems that go along with it, or just the growing complication of handling finances of a business? What are the things that you feel like are next up in terms of your learning edge?
Yael: Great question. It’s hard to say, because I don’t yet know what I don’t know.
I think it’s continuing to do things in a way that’s efficient, but also very humane. That’s a balance that when you’re trying to manage two employees, three, I guess, myself included, it’s easier to do. I’m not looking to scale to be massive or anything like that, because I think the quality of work still requires that human to human contact, and still sometimes to do things in a way that’s less efficient.
So right now I have the luxury of saying, hey, can you hop on a call so I can explain to you why I’m giving you this feedback? And it can be a little bit warmer and it can be a conversation, more than just, hey, for this progress note or for this thing, do it this different way. Because I think you lose something when it’s delivered in writing. Sometimes you don’t get that opportunity for follow-up questions that can really unearth where the confusion came from, or what the rationale is, or whatever it might be.
And so I’m noticing that that is taking up time in my day. And I still want to be committed to that, because I think that’s really what working in a good environment is about, really feeling like the human connection. But I think inevitably as things grow, it’s hard to keep that.
Christine: I really appreciated that you mentioned, and I’m going to borrow your words, you said the balance between being humane and being efficient. And I haven’t quite heard it articulated that way before, yet it’s a conversation I find myself in pretty much every day, working with heart-led female service providers.
Most of us, our first priority is always, whether it’s being humane, being heart-led, putting the client first, authenticity, integrity, all those things. It’s so important. And as we grow a business, especially beyond one-on-one, we have a team, we have other services, we bump up against some of the needs of the business for efficiency. There’s a time and a place for systems and setting standards for the entire team. But like you said, sometimes that tricky place is, how do we actually respect our time as the business owner and set standards that work for everyone, while also being heart-led and being humane, as you say? And it sounds like that’s a growing edge for you too.
Yael: Yeah, absolutely. And I think in some ways that always will be, because my instinct, I have a strong pull in both directions. But really when it comes to my colleagues, I care deeply about them. I want them to succeed. I want them to do well. So it is a balance.
I find myself sometimes responding to a text message with, how important is this? Happy to chat. Here’s when I can chat. I can chat tomorrow. I can talk right now. If this is an emergency, absolutely, I’m going to step out into the other room and talk right now. Trying to get a sense of that, and have some boundaries, obviously, with personal time and families.
Certainly I let my clinicians know, hey, I’m going to be in session. I know you’re going to have this tricky session with this client. If you need to reach out, I’ll be in session, so I’ll be free at this time, whatever it might look like.
Christine: So just having clear communication. And you touched on it, but I want to name it fully, is knowing that having boundaries isn’t the opposite of humane. I know that sometimes service providers run into that. And I often find myself saying, having clearly communicated boundaries is actually one of the kindest things we can do.
Yael: Absolutely. It’s necessary. I totally agree.
Christine: As you look into the future at what you’re building, you already said you’re not looking at scaling massively. It’s very clear that you are a heart-led person. You’ve said numerous times, and it’s clear in your story, how relationship driven you are, and it’s clear that that’s always going to be front and center for you. As you look to the future of what you’re building, what do you see and what are you excited about?
Yael: I’m excited about the possibility at some point of potentially bringing on someone who is passionate about couples work. Because when I look at the work that we’re doing, right now that is a need that none of us are really providing. I think couples work is tremendously important.
Diana, who works with kids and family, she’s doing that piece, but that isn’t couples work. I do individual work exclusively. That’s not couples work. So I think that right now, bringing on someone who is passionate about working with couples. And it’s interesting, I’ve just noticed anecdotally, a lot of lawyers end up with other lawyers. Someone who also has a skill set for doing couples work, particularly with two litigators in the room who are professional arguers, and knowing how to navigate that, to me would be really rounding out a full team that we can deliver quality care for professionals in a way that feels thoughtful and meaningful, kind of as a one-stop shop.
But it also, not, you know, oh, I see everybody, all the things. I really want people who are experts in what they do and who they see and how they treat their clients. Because I think that’s where you get the best quality care.
Christine: Just hearing your story so far and how relationship focused you are, it doesn’t surprise me at all that that’s what you really look for in the people you bring onto your team.
And I know you said it’s something you’re looking forward to kind of way in the future, right? Not in a rush. And in my experience, I’ll just throw it out there on your behalf, sometimes when we name things, especially in a public setting, that may come true sooner than we anticipate.
Yael: I don’t know if you can tell I’m blushing, because that’s kind of what has happened. I think with these two women joining the team, it wasn’t something that I was necessarily looking for. But I was sort of putting it out there, like, it’d be nice to have somebody who could do a little more eating disorder and OCD work. Oh, it’d be nice to have somebody who could do kids. And again, it did kind of happen. So maybe that’ll happen sooner rather than later.
Christine: Well, I’ll just go ahead and name the obvious. So if anyone’s listening who’s a couples therapist and has experience with attorneys and high achieving performers and leaders. Yael, go ahead and share.
How can people get in touch with you? Whether it’s somebody wanting to come and join your practice, or somebody wanting to learn more about what you do, what is the best way to get in touch?
Yael: Absolutely. So my website would be the easiest place to find me. It’s yaeleiserike.com. That’s Y-A-E-L-E-I-S-E-R-I-K-E dot com. And all of my contact info is there. You can send a message, email. My phone number is there as well.
Christine: Fantastic. This has been so much fun. Thank you for sharing your story and your tidbits of advice and your challenges, that I’m sure so many of us can relate to, because they’re just real. I so appreciate you being here.
Yael: Thank you so much for having me. This was great.
Christine: Thank you, listener, for tuning in to FoundHer Rising. If today’s episode resonated with you, follow the show, share it with another founder, and leave a quick review. It helps more women find these conversations.
You can connect with me on LinkedIn or learn more at HakkolaHorizons.com. Until next time, keep rising and keep building the business that gives you freedom to live, lead, and create on your terms.
