The Key to Client Retention Happens Before the First Session with Daniel Sorochkin, Founder and CEO of TakeOne

[00:00:01] This podcast is produced by Outcomes Rocket, your healthcare exclusive digital marketing agency. Outcomes Rocket exists to help healthcare organizations like yours to maximize their impact and accelerate growth. Visit outcomesrocket.com or text us at 312-224-9945.

[00:00:28] Welcome to Expanding Access, a podcast by Behavioral Health Tech, where we explore the cutting edge of mental health, substance use, and autism and IDD care. Each episode features insightful conversations with industry leaders who are driving real change through technology and innovation. Whether you're a provider, payer, or just passionate about expanding access to behavioral healthcare, you won't want to miss these stories. Let's dive in.

[00:00:57] Hello, welcome everyone. This is Solomay Tibibu, and I'm so excited to have our next episode of Expanding Access Podcast feature our friend Daniel here from TakeOne. We've got a lot to talk about. Thank you for joining us, Daniel. Why don't we get started with having you introduce yourself, please? Yeah, absolutely. First of all, thanks for having me. Really excited about this, talking to you today. But yeah, I'm Daniel. I'm the CEO of TakeOne.

[00:01:25] At TakeOne, we help platforms like NoCD, Octave, Thriveworks, and others to solve a big problem. Bed therapy matches. And our technology basically helps increase bookings. It helps with retention. It helps with reducing no-shows. But most importantly, it helps facilitate real human connection between therapists and clients before the first session even begins. And we do it through something very simple but powerful therapist introduction videos.

[00:01:53] So how did you even get into this world? Before TakeOne, I had a video production company for many years. And I did all kinds of work for some of the biggest companies in the world and some much more companies. And over the years, I've just talked to so many people that wanted to present themselves online authentically but professionally. But video production is very expensive. All the cameras, lights, film crews, all that kind of stuff.

[00:02:20] And I just wanted to find a technological solution to make it easy for anyone anywhere to be able to present themselves professionally online and create that connection with their audience. How fascinating. I can't wait to ask you more about that. But maybe we could just set the stage for our audience a bit more. Of course, there's a lot of areas for improvement in the mental health industry.

[00:02:44] But specifically when it comes to therapy profiles, what is it about therapy profiles and finding therapists that's really broken today? Yeah, I think something that's really broken is that most therapy platforms today give very little to the clients on how very little information to go for when choosing a provider, right? Usually it's just a short bio and a headshot. But these are pretty outdated.

[00:03:11] They don't really give clients a real sense of who the therapist is or what the session might feel like. And the results, I probably don't need to tell you, but we see that most of these platforms have 50% drop-offs after the first session, which is huge and unfortunate. We have a lot of no-shore rates. These remain high. And, you know, many clients feel like they're starting over multiple times with different therapists until they find the right one, which is pretty tough.

[00:03:38] The way you see it is that headshots can be misleading, especially when a lot of therapists use like photos from 20 years ago or they generate now AI headshots that look like them but not exactly. And clients essentially show up expecting or imagining in their head how the therapist would be light. And the reality many times is just totally different.

[00:04:01] So if you imagine yourself finally getting the courage to book therapy only to then sit through an hour that's pretty excruciating with someone that you don't feel like you can connect with. And then like we're expecting these people to do it again after that, like again and again until they find the right fit. It's really not efficient. It's painful. And it's really not a surprise that most people don't return after the first session. Just so many bad matches out there.

[00:04:28] And a lot of them even stop, right, pursuing therapy altogether. And by the way, I don't know if maybe listeners would relate to this, but I have had that experience as well. I booked a therapist, went over expecting one thing. The therapist was fantastic. He was a great person, but I didn't feel connected to them. And I would know that through video. And if they did have a video, then at least I would know what I'm going into. There's also that aspect to it.

[00:04:55] Like, let's say you match provider with a patient. Then if you show them a video, at least the person knows, OK, I feel more familiar with this person. I know how they talk. I know what to expect when I'm going there. The alternative is just like you showing up and feeling like, OK, this is completely not it. I'm in the spot. I'm in the moment. There's nothing I can do about it at that point. Wow.

[00:05:17] I can relate so much to this experience as somebody who has struggled with anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder since I was a teenager. I've had quite a bit of therapy experience and, of course, so fortunate to even have the opportunity and resources to do so.

[00:05:34] But I just I relate so much to that piece about the anticipation of meeting somebody new and just going through the whole story all over again just to realize that it's not a good fit. It's so extremely inefficient for everyone. So you alluded to video. So we'd love to talk a little bit about why is video your approach? Why is it the missing link today?

[00:06:02] So we know that trust and connection are the foundation for good therapy, right? And why don't we have it start before even the first session? We can start creating that connection before an introduction videos does exactly that. It gives the client a real sense of the therapist's presence, voice, personality, how the session is going to look like. And that familiarity just makes it easier for the person to take the first step and then stick with it. And it's not just a hunch that I'm like saying that.

[00:06:32] A study with over a thousand patients showed that 95 percent of people prefer watching a video over just looking at a headshot when choosing a provider. So the data is really clear and it's pretty obvious because today people are used to looking at videos. Every single platform, especially younger generation. We have Gen Z watching TikToks, Reels all the time. Everything is video first platform. And if we want to meet people where they are, you need video. That's the expectation. This is how people purchase things.

[00:07:02] This is how they get educated. All videos online. So that makes sense. That's the next trajectory. Yeah. And again, when clients show up to the first session after watching a video, they just feel more familiar. That makes sense. More comfortable. It makes it easier to create a therapeutic alliance. That's what we've been seeing. That makes a lot of sense what you're saying. All of the social media platforms have gotten the way of video. Even LinkedIn has been promoting video as a platform.

[00:07:28] And it's surprising why not more platforms in behavioral health aren't using it yet. Yeah, 100 percent. I think we see a lot of therapists do move to video right now. But the ones that don't, I think they have a few obstacles that make it a little harder for them. There's, for one, there's like a huge operational lift. So if you want to build a scalable video infrastructure, that's hard. It's expensive. It's complex. You need developers to work on it for months, if not years.

[00:07:56] You need editors because who's going to edit the part where the therapist does this and clicks record and at the end or eliminates the pauses or the ums and all that. You need support staff to give them the confidence or explain how do you position the camera? How do you do it? How do you upload a video to a Google Drive? Things like that. So there's a lot of things that have to happen in order to make video profiles scalable. And it's very hard. It can cost millions.

[00:08:24] And you need just like headcount to actually get it done. The second thing is that the quality really suffers without the right tools. So when therapists do try to do it, when platforms do try to create videos themselves or scale it up, even invest in the infrastructure in the headcount, then when the therapists record themselves, they record the results are just inconsistent.

[00:08:49] Bad lighting, poor framing, bad audio, vertical videos instead of horizontal, therapists reading off camera and talking there when they should be engaging with their audience in the camera. Basically, these low quality videos make the platform and the therapy look unprofessional, which actually a lot of the times I believe for these platforms to try it, it backfires. It lowers conversion because who wants to go to a therapist that is in a dark room and doesn't seem friendly and doesn't seem experienced, right?

[00:09:19] And then the last thing that we see is that it's not a secret. Therapists don't want to be video creators, right? They're not rushing to make videos. They are trained to care for people, not record and edit videos. And when platforms ask therapists to just figure out, go record a video, the results are just low adoption and basically high friction.

[00:09:39] And not only do you waste, like, as I mentioned, hours on the team side, like we see sometimes three hours on average that the team have to edit and all that videos, but you're wasting a lot of the clinician time. Like they spend hours on these videos trying to perfect and trying to make something that they feel confident with.

[00:09:58] Yeah, so basically what I'm saying is when platforms realize that there's huge obstacles and that it could cost them millions for platforms that have like thousands or more providers, then they just give up. Wow. Yeah. I even think about the few times I've had to make a short video. It's like, this shouldn't take long. Only 60 seconds. My whole afternoon is gone. And it still ends up with the half-baked outcome that you described.

[00:10:27] So, of course, you've piqued my curiosity a little bit about how does TakeOne approach these issues in helping providers? Basically, TakeOne is a plug-and-play solution, right? So the idea is to remove all these barriers, all these obstacles that we talked about. Some of our best clients are actually ones that tried to build something themselves and saw how hard and complex it is and then became our clients.

[00:10:53] So we're able to automate the entire video creation and distribution process end-to-end. So there's no headcount needed, no development needed. It's really a workflow that gets everything done, the recording, editing, uploading, quality enhancement, and distribution, hosting, and streaming. And this means that it's a huge time saving for the platform and the therapist. As I mentioned, like we save around three to four hours on average on each therapist video.

[00:11:23] So you can imagine that platforms with thousands or more providers could save sometimes years of work, essentially. And yeah, and the process is completely automated. They don't have to give support. We take care of everything. There's not much support, honestly, to even give. But the idea is really to take it off their back and make it super simple. And the integration is really fast. Most platforms integrate our API within just a few days.

[00:11:49] And one of the biggest values that we bring is also that we have a therapist-friendly app, right? So our app really guides the providers on step-by-step how to record a video. And they don't need any technical skills, no video experience. So the app generates a script for them based on their bio. It guides them on how to position themselves and their phone to find the right lighting and all that in real time. It has a teleprompter so they don't have to memorize lines or read off camera.

[00:12:17] They can just look into camera and do it in just a few takes. The video uploads automatically and it goes through automatic editing and video and quality enhancement. So basically, you get the whole thing really easy for them. They don't have to know anything. And yeah, and then the platform just gets basically consistent professional videos that are well-framed and correctly branded and always converting better.

[00:12:44] So I actually wanted to ask you, how do you feel about the threat of AI replacing human therapists? Because I've heard mixed things about it and wanted to kind of hear your thoughts. That's such a good question and one that I hear frequently. And candidly, I am not so concerned about that just yet or anytime soon. The reality is that people heal in relationships and while AI can be an excellent tool and supplement

[00:13:14] in so many ways, like we've got so many use cases where that can be the case, whether it's between sessions, some additional support or helping to helping the providers with note-taking clinical, blah, blah, blah. The reality is when it comes to the actual therapeutic relationship, I still believe that therapist to individual is so critically important. And I really don't see that going anywhere anytime soon.

[00:13:42] Yeah, that's exactly like how I'm thinking about it. I think that the human connection here is key. People want to talk to someone who understands them, who can actually feel their pain. I do hear troubling data about people talking to ChatGPT, asking for life advice, asking for relationship advice, making decision based on that. But I think ultimately people, when they really open up and if they want to really get better, they have to talk to someone who understands them.

[00:14:11] Even if AI is like faster, more available, or eventually going to be able to communicate better. And that's how I'm thinking about it as well. The problem for me is like the allure of AI. We see it everywhere. So people might be drawn to it a little bit more in some cases because it's so available. But the way I think about it is that therapists and platforms that want to kind of win this competition and race. The way I see it is that if therapists' biggest advantage is their humanity, then I think they

[00:14:40] should put it front and center. And that's like how I see it. And for me, that means, of course, videos or even if it's headshots, whatever it is, make sure that there's connection. Because if a client has to choose between just a text box and another just like written text, then I feel like the choice is not as obvious. But if you kind of make that connection as soon as someone has the option to get it, then I think it could be a lot more powerful. Yes.

[00:15:10] You brought up the topic of are people aware of the risks of using non-clinical AI tools for emotional and mental health support. And that's a whole other episode. But I think you encapsulated it wonderfully, which is the connection and relationship at the end of the day is what is most meaningful. So I couldn't agree more and excited to see how your team has really been facilitating so much of that. In a world where we really need more trust, especially in behavioral health, it's exciting

[00:15:39] to hear about your work. Can you talk a little bit about the impact that Take One has had? Yeah, absolutely. The data is actually really powerful in terms of conversion. So providers with video see 78% more bookings than ones without video, which is huge. We also see adoption is higher. So for example, for no CD, we got 60% of therapists to record their videos within 60 days. And it's just because therapists are more inclined to make videos when they know they have the

[00:16:08] right tools and the process is quick and easy and they don't have to learn video making and the results are professional, right? And they can present themselves in a way that they're proud of. Yeah. And other than that, we do see early signs of improved retention and lowering no-show rates. And then platforms are reporting better matches and more engaged clients. And yeah, also another small anecdote, but therapists also report that the first session is easier

[00:16:35] because again, the clients feel a lot more familiar with them. That is just so great. And we're big fans of no CD as well. There's such a great community of experts when it comes to obsessive compulsive disorder. As I mentioned, I have a personal connection to that. And how great to hear that you can better showcase their expertise because that is an area where I think a lot of providers are struggling to stand out and differentiate when everyone says they're a specialist at everything.

[00:17:04] So super interesting. 100%. No CD is a fantastic platform. They really care about the user. They've been doing videos, actually introduction videos for a long time. Understanding that that's super effective and they really, you know, care about giving high quality care to their users and making sure that there's a lot of trust and connection there. One of the things that I actually really like that they do that is pretty interesting is that they put the reviews of their

[00:17:30] therapists live on their website, which in a sense gives a lot of transparency to the fact that they're willing to take criticism. They're willing to put themselves out there. They're not afraid to be vulnerable in front of the world and say, like, we believe that what we do is powerful and helpful. And here are people talking about it. And if people are saying anything negative, we'll take it to heart and everybody will know about this and we'll improve.

[00:17:56] That's also a great piece of advice for providers listening to this is what's their approach to feedback and showcasing reviews. I guess I'd like to ask you, Daniel, one more question, if I could. If I was a new therapist in this space entering the workforce or maybe wanting to set up my own private practice and wanted to drive business to my organization, what are some steps that you would recommend?

[00:18:19] So I think as a solo practitioner trying to push yourself, it's it can be pretty hard. The reason is that let's say the first step that most people do is build themselves a website. Right. And of course, I can sit here and say, like, hey, make a video for that website, which would be effective. But only if people go into that website. Right. So the way you need to think about it is that if you're trying to create a presence, how do you bring traffic to that presence online?

[00:18:48] Are you creating social media content or did you create a website or curating blogs? Whatever you do, you have to understand what is your unique kind of differentiator and how can you bring people there? Otherwise, I do suggest that you go with the platforms that are bigger and they do bring you the traffic. That's just like an easier way to do it. Right.

[00:19:12] But if you had to do it yourself, then with my experience with video, with marketing throughout the years, it's just about being able to speak about something very specific, maybe a niche that people care about and being an expert in it. So don't talk about like everything, anxiety, eating disorders, like no OCD. Try to focus on one thing that you do really well and then people can really learn from you and push on that as strongly as you can. Right. Oh, that is so important.

[00:19:41] It's just going to be helpful for all parties across the board. So, Daniel, where can folks learn more about Take One? So if people want to reach out, of course, then free to reach out to me or go to our website, find us there, book a time to meet. Always happy to talk to people who are considering videos for their platforms, even if they want to build it themselves. I'm more than happy to give my two cents. Additionally, sometimes I have individuals or smaller clinics that we usually don't partner with because they're too small for us.

[00:20:10] Reach out. Happy to talk to anybody if they are considering a video and just helping them understand what are the next steps. Yeah. So basically reach out. Yeah. Awesome. Yes. Reach out. Take One's website. We'll follow up with some links and really excited to be able to showcase some of the novel technologies that behavioral health providers are using today. And so thank you, Daniel, for joining us and for everyone tuning in. Thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it.

[00:20:43] Thanks for tuning in to Expanding Access. We hope you're feeling inspired by today's discussion. If you've enjoyed the episode, subscribe and share it with your network. For more content and opportunities to get involved in transforming care, visit BehavioralHealthTech.com. Until next time, let's keep pushing boundaries and expanding access together.

[00:21:03] This podcast is produced by Outcomes Rocket, your healthcare exclusive digital marketing agency. Outcomes Rocket exists to help healthcare organizations like yours to maximize their impact and accelerate growth. Visit OutcomesRocket.com or text us at 312-224-9945.

[00:21:33] Thank you.