540 Making Mental Wellness Remotely Available with Sara Makin

Sara Makin has built Makin Wellness into one of Pennsylvania's top online therapy platforms in just five years. She started Makin Wellness in 2017 on a mission to help millions of people heal and become happy again by providing excellent mental health care.
 
Today, Makin Wellness has over 50 employees and a goal of becoming a national provider of a results-based, individualized approach to online mental health care. Sara entered Psychology Grad School with a clear vision of having a multi-state Mental Health Company.

In this episode, Aaron and Sara discuss how to scale a remote mental health startup, managing millions of dollars in medical billing, and articulating a clear vision for your company.

Sara Makin’s Challenge; Take ten minutes in the morning to do something nice for yourself.

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If you liked this interview, check out the episode Ketamine for Mental Health w/ Mindbloom founder Dylan Beynon.

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Makin: So the number one priority was getting the number of clients up. And then once the volume starts to increase, then the priority is ensuring that the operations are able to run smoothly. And once that was in place, it was really brought on more. talent and more providers and making sure that the right people and with the right training and with the right intentions.
Watson: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to going deep with Aaron Watson. My guest today, Sara Makin is the CEO and founder of Makin wellness. Makin Wellness is a mental health and wellness startup that delivers all of its care via remote consultations with their providers. She has been at it for just five years, but has already scaled to a team of over 50 people.
And in this interview, we talk about how she has optimized her medical billing systems, the clarity of vision that she has had for years preceding the founding of the company and how she has thought about growing the platform. I took a ton away from this. I was really impressed with how quickly her business has grown.
And I think you're gonna take a lot away from it as well. Here is my interview with Sara Makin.
You're listening to Going Deep with Aaron Watson.
Sara, welcome to the podcast. I'm excited to be talking with you. 
Makin: Thanks so much for having me on. I'm so excited to be here with you. 
So I wanna start off because I've been aware of making wellness for a couple years. We'd known each other for a little while when you came to the, I think it was the original going deep summit years ago.
And I, I had not appreciated the scale of the enterprise that you've been building here over the last couple years. So can you just give us a starting point and then current day where Makin Wellness stands and what they're doing? 
Makin: Yeah, absolutely. So I founded make and wellness in 2017 with the intention of helping millions of people to heal and become happy again, through excellent therapy.
And when I started, it was just me, no angel investors, no venture capital, nothing. It was just myself and my $4,000 that I had. And we've essentially grown between 100% and 247% year over year, ever since then. And we now have about 50 team members. We're licensed in Pennsylvania and we are growing exponentially, which has been really exciting.
Watson: And is all of the therapy that is delivered to patients, customers. I'd be interested in what your parlance is within the organization. Is it all delivered virtually? 
Makin: Yes. Yes. So our model at Makin Wellness is all remote care so our providers are trained and how to provide evidence based online therapy so that our clients can experience reduction of symptoms and start to live the lives that they really want to live.
Watson: And you said right here at the beginning that you started with this vision to deliver better care to millions of people 
Makin: Mm-hmm. 
Watson: Did you have that vision that clearly articulated right at the jump, because I've, I've experienced a couple things. There's companies where they have the vision from the jump and it's like, literally I can see 10 steps down the board and I just kinda need to figure out the intervening eight ,there's those that they kind of start with the kernel of an idea. But once they start to pick up momentum, like, okay, I need a focusing vision, and then there's companies that I don't say they have no vision, but it's kind of constrained the whole time and they just continue to, you know, scoop ice cream or whatever the entity is maybe responsible.
Makin: Yeah. Yeah, that's a really great question, Aaron. So my vision really started years prior to me starting the business. 
Watson: Wow. 
Makin: I actually went to school for psychology and counseling because it was always my dream since I was about 12 or 13 to have a huge mental health company.
Watson: Wow. 
Makin: So it was always my intention and I actually remember in grad school, there's a class. I forget exactly which course it was, but we were going around sharing what we were going to do with our degrees and everyone said sort of normal answers of like, I want to work in a school, I want to work at a clinic and there's me like, I'm going to have a company where we're licensed in every state and we have at least a hundred locations and we're providing therapy.
And I remember certain classmates just looking at me. What, who answers like that? And I thought, why would you not want to have an organization like that? And so I didn't realize how weird it was to think in that way or to have visions like that. But it's, I've always, I've always sort of been like that.
Watson: And so did you pick that up from a role model or mentor that had their own big business, maybe in a different industry? 
Makin: That's a great question. So I really feel like it's in my bloodline because my grandfather was an entrepreneur. 
Watson: Okay.
Makin: And that's on my dad's side, on my mom's side and on my dad's side, a lot of people were in healthcare, so I've grown up very accustomed to the healthcare system. And I've just always been very entrepreneurial. I mean, Ever since I was a kid, I remember my first venture was lemonade delivery because lemonade stands were just not innovative. 
Watson: That's awesome.
Makin: So I've just always, always been like that, I guess.
Watson: Very cool. So one of the things I, one of the biases that I bring to this conversation, and then I brought to the first time a mutual friend of ours had suggested this as being interviewed is some skepticism around therapy generally. 
Makin: Yeah. 
Watson: It's not saying that there, I know that there are mental health problems, that there are people that struggle with them. I know that unequivocally there are people that report substantial benefits. Having some form of therapy. I guess maybe we don't necessarily do this and unpack my bias here. This is an interview going in one direction, but my, my kind of question for you is you cited evidence based models for care.
Makin: Mm-hmm 
Can you just talk a little bit to folks that may carry a similar skepticism to me about how you think about what type of care to provide that is evidence-based invalid and how as an individual, we can go through the world trying to make those kind of judgment calls for ourselves.
Makin: Oh, absolutely. It's important to have the right information so when someone is going out to get a therapist that they're improving the likelihood of success. And so one of the most important things for outcomes is actually ensuring that you are seeing a therapist that you actually feel comfortable with, because if you don't feel comfortable, whenever you're talking with them, if you don't feel like there's a connection, then what that means is that the therapeutic alliance really isn't there, and it doesn't matter what they say or do. If you don't feel comfortable, you're not really gonna share what's happening. So this is the first thing is whenever you are connecting with a therapist, if you don't feel comfortable, if they're, if you feel like you're being judged, if they are not being compassionate, then that is one major sign that that's not a good fit.
Another major thing to look out for is this person listing that they're specialized in like 500 different things, because in reality, you can truly only be specialized in maybe two max, three things. So whenever you are looking for a therapist, make sure that they actually are specialized and they don't just have every type of treatment as a specialty. And the final thing is really how they are trained. And so if they're saying that. I'm specialized in, trained in how to do 20 different types of treatments. That is also a big warning sign. 
Watson: Yeah. 
Because to get specialized and even one, it really takes years. And so what you would look for is that they are trained in either C, B T EMDR, MI, or D B T.
Those are typically the. Common and effective evidence based practices. So when you're looking for a therapist that has an evidence based modality that they're using, they're listing one, two, or maybe three primary areas of treatment. And once you actually meet with them, you feel comfortable and you have a good connection with them.
And all those things can help to increase the likelihood of success. 
Watson: And in terms of buckets or analogies or metaphors that I can use to understand it, we've moved into this space of better understanding mental health as part of your overall health and, you know, you could see your nutritionist for dietary issues. You could see a trainer or a physical therapist for some kind of more physical orthopedic issue. But the physical trainer ortho, physical trainer, physical therapist is kind of an interesting example where I get a 6, 8, 10 week script to see the physical therapist. And once my ankle, my ankle's working again after the really bad sprain, he sends me on my way with some exercises to do.
But I could see my personal trainer and she could work me out two days a week for the rest of my life to maintain a base level fitness. So are there similar protocols and models for mental health that you guys are executing, where maybe someone needs a, a recovery, a change, a trajectory alteration, versus those that are doing something more like basic maintenance?
Makin: Absolutely. That's a really great question, Aaron and so it all depends on what the patient is experiencing. There are times when we'll see a client once a week for two months, and their anxiety has reduced so much, they have the tools and the skills, and they're implementing them on their own volition.
And so they don't need to be seen more than once a month or once every four or five months afterwards. Then there are of course cases where it's more, more cases where you need to be seen like once a week or twice a week for a year or so, or three, or even more than that. And there's some clients that are seen once a week for the rest of their lives.
Watson: And it all really depends on what the diagnosis or the condition is and how big of an issue it is in their lives. So it really all depends. We've had some clients where we've seen them for like even a month and a half and they're like, wow, I didn't know. I can do X, Y, and Z as a coping skill and then you feel better and it's not necessary anymore.
Makin: So once clients start to feel better and the results are there, AK results, meaning reduction in symptoms, then we reduce the treatment.... 
Watson: makes sense. 
Makin: .....frequency. Yeah. 
 So coming back to this business that you've scaled to over 50 people and starting with just one person getting there in five years is a really impressive rate of growth.
Watson: I wanna ask about the sequence of roles that you delegated away. So if it's just you at the start and you have the degree in psychology, we can safely assume that at the very beginning you were one of, or you were the person delivering care, and then you had this whole apparatus of admin sales and other things kind of that took up the rest, the remainder of whatever time you had.
And eventually you've, you've parceled those off. So how have you thought about that sequentially? 
Makin: Yeah. So really the number one priority in the beginning is just increasing the number of patients and increasing the revenue and adjusting the company in a way where it was as profitable as possible.
So I could reinvest the profits back into growing the organization. So the number one priority was getting the number of clients up, and then once the volume started to increase, then the priority is ensuring that the operations are able to run smoothly, that clients have a good experience of getting scheduled in online, scheduling is set up, automated appointment reminders are established and that we had a medical billing and credentialing team in place to be able to handle the follow up with collections, collecting bills and helping to estimate how much a patient was to pay per visit, and once that was in place it was really bringing on more.
Talent and more providers and making sure that the right people and with the right training and with the right intentions, because for myself and for Makin Wellness, our mission is to help people to heal and become happy again, and so I really wanted to have very talented providers that were on board with that.
And so we started to partner with different universities like CMU and University of Pittsburgh and Duquesne University to have internship programs and so that was the next step. And so it just kept growing and evolving and my role went from being a solopreneur to like being like a ringleader of all this chaos happening and doing my best to get everything situated and systematized and organized, and then bringing in the right people and delegating roles and responsibilities and empowering them to take ownership of various divisions or various parts of the company and helping them to do so. 
Watson: So with you being licensed in Pennsylvania, does that constrain the potential patient pool to those that are residents of Pennsylvania? Is that how that works? So maybe so far. 
Makin: Yeah. That's a great question. So we're actually working on that now we have a provider actually depending on when this airs starting very soon if she hasn't started already in New York. So we're working on developing our presence in New York and we have another provider, Julie licensed in Delaware too. So Delaware, New York and Pennsylvania at this point in time and that is one of our initiatives for the next several years is to ensure that we are able to practice in additional remote areas too. Medical licensing laws are very interesting....... 
Watson: Yeah. 
Makin: ......to say the least. 
Watson: You can, you can take us down the rabbit hole, but from the standpoint of, if you're building the platform to enable this care to be delivered digitally and you know, there isn't, you're not investing in a storefront where, you know, you're hanging hours of therapy, time on a shelf somewhere.
Makin: Yeah. 
Watson: Then it kind of lends itself to that scaling across borders in a non geographic type of framework. But you are still, it sounds like constrained by the regulatory apparatus for this specific type of care. 
Makin: Absolutely. Yeah. Anything medical service related is very much so, and so this step is making sure you have awesome attorneys to help out to make sure that as you grow that you're doing so in a way where you're not accidentally violating any laws or policies or anything like that, so, 
Watson: Right.
Makin: Yeah. 
Watson: Take me through the thought process then of when, you know, it's that time to expand because like, I have to imagine, you probably serve a ton of people in Pennsylvania, but you haven't completely tapped out the market or dominated all the.....
Makin: Oh yeah....
Watson: ...... in that sense.
Makin: ....not yet. 
Watson: What is the kind of balancing act there of doubling down on a region versus this starts like the initial stages of tapping more geographies?
Makin: Yeah. We started to look at it whenever we started to have to turn clients away because they weren't a Pennsylvania resident. And even last week, I think it was about 50 patients that we had to turn away because they found us typically organically through Google, so that is when we really started to look at prioritizing, like, what states do we need to get into? How fast can we make this happen? What all needs to be in place? And so when the demand started. increasing for those services, then we really started to look at getting that established.
Watson: And that also tells you where to focus, because if everyone's coming from Tennessee looking for you, that's like, okay, let's prioritize Tennessee, but if no one's coming from Utah, I'm making up random states here...
Makin: yeah.
Watson: ....like then it's okay. We can table that until sometime later down the line. 
Makin: Exactly.
Watson: Got it. So you talked about the kind of specific regulatory challenges associated with any company in the medical sector. The other thing that's interesting is the way cash flows through a business, right?
Makin: Yes. 
Watson: So in certain instances you'll have businesses where they have to go make this upfront investment for a product run. And, you know, if you've read Shoe Dog with Phil Knight, that's the, the quintessential example where you're trying to put as much capital as possible into the latest run of sneakers so that their margins can improve when they sell this set, but then they have to go hustle out and sell them to like almost play catch ubup......
Makin: yeah. 
Watson: .......to the capital being deployed. And then you have other instances where, you know, we just interviewed Josh Caputo who talked about his first customer paid in full before the first, you know, prototype had been launched, and so he now has a runway to go like, actually, you know, figure out how to fulfill it. It sounds like there's a little bit of, you know, specificity here where someone will come in, they will want care, and then you have this billing and collections department that's responsible for following the correct trail down to actually getting the transaction to be completed for your firm. So can you talk a little bit more just about how that works? 
Makin: Oh yeah, absolutely. So we partner with insurance companies. We have partnerships with all the major commercial plans in Pennsylvania at this time. So the way medical billing works is if they have a copay or a deductible, you collect that fee at the time of the visit, and what happens then is you code a bill in a certain way that indicates what service was rendered, who the provider was, how much was collected, what's the location, and then you send it to a medical billing team to review that this, that this is accurate. 
Watson: The medical billing team is on your part of Makin or they're a third party?
Makin: They're outsourced.
Watson: Got it. 
Makin: They're outsourced and we work extremely, we work very, very, very closely together.
Watson: Yeah. 
Makin: Medical Billing Solutions. They're amazing. 
Yeah. Anyone is....
Watson: They like having you as a client, it sounds like. 
Makin: Yeah. They're amazing. So then the medical billing team reviews the claim to make sure it is accurate because every insurance company requires billing to be coded in a certain way. If even one number is off, they will deny the claim, which then turns into a longer collection process. 
Watson: I would be so bad at that job. Just 
Makin: Same, same terrible. It is like I remember starting out, they, they, the one lady would send me emails all the time like I am so sorry, like details are not my thing, but I will work on it, you know?
Watson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 
Makin: So then they clear it and then they send it to the insurance company. With our process, it is electronic. So all this is done through an electronic medical record system that we have, and typically within 45 days, which is actually very fast in the medical world, we get paid by the insurance companies. I know a lot of people don't like working with insurance companies, I personally have loved it, I've really enjoyed the experience of it and I think a lot of it is just making sure that your systems are tight in that, there's a emphasis on timeliness because the longer it takes to release the claim, the longer it takes to get paid. So.
Watson: And, basically making that more efficient is gonna have all sorts of downstream, positive ramifications for your business, where, you know, another thing is like demand planning. So if we're expecting more patients to come on and we have this coming demand, but we don't yet have the right kind of capital in place to go higher, the next 5, 10, 15 providers that we need, we're gonna be constrained from actually taking on the, and actually growing our business. So the ability to turn that over and actually get the deal closed is a really important part of the process. 
Makin: It is, medical billing is so, so important.
Watson: And so is the relationship with those insurance providers, and this may be basic stuff, is that really just contingent upon you, you and your organization having the right licensure or is there another degree to which is like relationship building or something like that? Cause I have to imagine the insurance company's like happy to find people pay for policies, less happy to go be paying the people, making claims. Not that they don't want to, but just, 
Makin: Oh yeah.
Watson: it's a, it's a more convoluted process.
Makin: Oh, absolutely. And they're really concerned about making sure that their patients are getting effective care. Something that we've been seeing and hearing more talks of is value based care, and what that means is there is proof and evidence that the care that the physician or the provider's providing is actually helping, and so that's a new model that is that I hear a lot of insurance companies are working to get set up and certain plans have done it already and have that in place like now, so part of it is relationship based, but even more so is the way that you handle your medical billing actually, because the way that you do something is the way that you do everything. 
Watson: Right.
And so if your claims and your medical billing is sloppy, many times the clinical operations of a company are also going to be sloppy and disorganized.
Makin: So they use that as a way to measure where your company's at. and also they have all this data on like your company and what, what you're doing, and they put a lot of emphasis into doing their due diligence before you can even get a contract, like for us with UPMC Aaron it took us three years to get a contract with UPMC. Three years of consistent follow up. And of course you don't give up, you stay persistent, but it takes a lot of time to get these agreements in place, and so once they are in place it's important to make sure you're doing what you need to be doing, so you're not causing any issues so you can keep them. 
Watson: And so anytime anyone's pursued something for three years and it finally comes to fruition, there's gonna be some, some sort of celebration for that. But to just make that super tangible, to make sure I'm understanding....
Makin: Mm-hmm.
Watson: ....the UPMC insurance apparatus had this three year run up and after which patients with UPMC insurance were now covered to use Makin Wellness as a mental health service provider. Am I explaining that correctly? 
Makin: Yes. 
Watson: Got it. So on the flip side, another part of the medical experience, particularly in America, Is the referral out to specialists. So you see a general practitioner, you see some, a generalist, and then they kind of shoot you in, in a certain direction to make sure that you're getting the highest level of care and orthopedics or whatever the thing may be. How has Makin built a funnel for inbound referrals from other providers, or has that not been as important as perhaps digital marketing or the presence on certain websites? Or like what, what has kind of driven that growth? Yeah, that's a really great question that we partner with certain companies like Quartet receive those referrals.
Makin: So Quartet, if anyone's not familiar, it's a platform where primary care providers can refer out to mental health or addiction specialists. And so that has been the main funnel for being able to coordinate care with primary care providers. The main way that people have found us has been through word of mouth. Insurance companies were listed on all of them as well and online advertising and search engine optimization and. 
Watson: Got it. 
Makin: Yeah. 
Watson: Is there one that's like a standout or is it kind of an even distribution between those different entities? 
Makin: I would say just like thinking through. 
Watson: Yeah, yeah.
Makin: Google and search engine search has been a game changer for us, for sure.
Watson: Yeah. 
Makin: Yeah. 
Watson: It seems like. So from, from, there's a couple things that you've said here, I didn't wanna make it about Piper too much but it ends up, but...... 
Go for it.
........you know, bleeding into every conversation, right? So you talked about it. Finding therapists that are, are specialists in a specific domain. And we see that in marketing agencies, cuz if any agency isn't really at scale, but they say they do it all, they're either contracting everything out or they're kind of not really experts in these things......
Makin: yeah. They're generalists.
Watson: ....doing, doing a mediocre job at it. But the other piece is, you know, we get these different inbound leads from all sorts of different entities and sometimes you're working with like the head of marketing as a certain entity and they kind of, they, they get it, they know what they're looking for and they just need the function. They can really clearly articulate what they're looking for. And then very, it's not a frequently that comes in for us, but there is a relatively consistent experience of when interfacing with folks who are in medicine in some way, shape or form the entire, you know, realm of marketing, really being opaque to them, like not even knowing the basic parlance, the basic kind of contours of what to look for, what to ask about how it works the same way I would be. I would be beyond equally useless in a medical environment. But it's just interesting that that's part of your edge, where many of the other firms that it's just not a kind of skill set, that's gonna be baked into their DNA from the jump.
Makin: Yeah, absolutely. And if you think about it, if you've been trained for years and years at a time of how to do something in a certain way and what's important and what's not like in a provider's mind, all they think about is like, I just need to do a great job with providing excellent client care, which is extremely important, and effective marketing and branding and positioning and ensuring you're communicating what's happening and getting the public to get more and more familiar with your company is extremely important because that's going to be your one to many, 
Watson: Right. So it, what it sounds like then is that a good performance marketer has a pretty solid base from which to work on in a business like yours, because if there is a basic understanding of what the cost, I'm sorry, what the revenue per visit is of that patient coming in and the kind of standard quantity of visits that they will do, you can back into the average value of what that entities worth when they come in the door, and so there, you know, more or less off the bat, what the max budget is for your kind of digital ad spend. And now really in terms of a constraint of growth, if you have the capital, because your billing's tight and you have the clarity on what to,what you're willing to pay for one of these entities, then it's like, let's run an experiment anywhere.
Makin: Yeah.
Watson: To see if that translates into more people coming in the door for us. 
Makin: Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's a numbers, numbers game for sure, and measuring your conversions and even earlier before you and I met today, I had a meeting with my team about conversions specifically, and one change that our team made increased our conversions 7% within a timeframe of one month. And so tracking all of these analytics is incredibly important for sure. 
Watson: Right. So in terms of incentives, right? The most obvious way you incentivize is a salesperson with a commission, but that's not necessarily ideal in something like healthcare. So how do you think about incentives for the prov, these, these care providers and then the rest of the members of your team to kind of keep everyone aligned and continue that skyrocket that growth?
Makin: Oh yeah, absolutely. Well, one of our company values is collaboration and I'm very adamant about making sure that we're all working together in a harmonious way, and as we grow, there are lots of opportunities that we provide to our team members and we have different things, like we have different referral bonuses, or if you refer a provider to work here, And they're an outstanding fit, that's another bonus opportunity. And we also have a profit share at the end of the year, contingent upon how profitable we are, how much we've grown and what their contribution to that is. And it also looks at their adherence to our values because we are in a value, different driven company. All of those things go into helping of course, like give back to our team as well. And they're all very, they appreciate all of those things. And it's also helpful for us too, because you know, the more quality providers we get, the more partnerships that we can get established with other places, and the more we can have our team really taking ownership of, you know, this is our team, this is our company, and having that mentality really helps with the growth for sure. Because everyone is very invested. 
Watson: Yeah.
Makin: Yeah.
Watson: When did you implement profit sharing? Was that from the jump or was that like when did you make that decision from a policy standpoint? 
Makin: Yeah, so I was doing it informally and I was not realizing that's what it was called until later on and so I've I'd say I've always done it, but it wasn't a formal process until about two years ago. 
Watson: Got it. Interesting.
Makin: Yeah. 
Watson: Well, I am I. I'm really impressed by the growth that you've experienced and it, clearly that the vision part is, is really Impressive to me, cuz I think that's probably an area of my game that I could tighten up a little bit.
So... 
Makin: yeah.
Watson: ......I'm gonna have to maybe debrief after here with uh, with some ways that you've cultivated that, but I want to aim towards wrapping up before we ask our standard last questions, is there anything else you were hoping to share today that I just didn't give you a chance to? 
Makin: We went over everything.
Watson: Yeah. 
Makin: Yeah. 
Watson: What are some of, what are some of the specialties? So you talked about the therapist talking about having 20 specialties, that's not valid. Like what are some of the most common ones or what maybe, maybe some that you wouldn't necessarily expect if you weren't in this space. 
Makin: Yeah. So the most common specialties and the challenges that come here to make and wellness are depression, anxiety, and PTSD by far.
Watson: Okay. And are there any kind of new, or like nascent niches that people have really kind of focused on that are a specific realm of care?
Makin: For treatment? 
Watson: Yeah. 
Makin: Could you reword that please? My bad. 
Watson: So, you know, depression, anxiety are kind of these broad specialties that someone could apply themselves to, but is there anyone that's like, this would be over the top?
Makin: Yeah. 
Watson: But like specifically folks that have been in a skiing accident and like, that's, that's like, it's, it's way more niched down, but it's, you know, there there's clearly a need there that it's, it's being addressed and having that hyper specialty really differentiate differentiates you and your capability to provide that care.
Makin: Oh, okay. I really appreciate you clarifying that. 
Watson: Yeah. Yeah. 
Makin: So something that we've so far regarding specialty care, we support a lot of very busy professionals and executives. 
Watson: And so helping them to just manage the kind of complexity of their lives and the lack of time and the kind of stress associated with that. 
Makin: Yeah. Typically it's some type of stress that they need support with. And sometimes it's cases where they legally are not able to talk about certain things that cause them a lot of stress. So they're able to talk to the counselor about it because through HIPAA, we're not able to self we're not able to disclose a lot of things. So we support a ton of attorneys, actually like a ton.
Watson: Interesting. 
Makin: Yeah. 
Watson: Well, that's very fascinating. If folks want to learn more about Makin Wellness, what digital coordinates can we provide to learn more? 
Makin: Yeah, absolutely. You could go to Makin wellness.com and you can check us out on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest at Makin Wellness.
Watson: Awesome. And you've got the tag, the handle for all of them. 
Makin: Exactly. Yes. 
Watson: That's huge. That's huge as well. We're gonna link all that in the show notes. You can find it as you can with every episode@goingdeepthere.com slash podcast or in the app. We are probably listening to this right now. But Sara, before I let you go, I'd like to give you the mic one final time to issue an actionable personal challenge to the audience.
Makin: I would love to do this first off Aaron, a challenge that I would love for you to do is to take 10 minutes in the morning to yourself to do something nice for yourself before you start your day. And it can be anything that makes you feel good. That is healthy for you. So nothing self-destructive 
Watson: That's a good caveat. Set your day off on an odd course there, if that's not part of it. 
Makin: Yeah, exactly. 
Watson: Yeah. 
Makin: Maybe put the alcohol down. 
Watson: Yeah. I love that. And I, I wanna shout something else out here before the recording turns off, you have a very interesting habit that, that wasn't I was gonna see if it was the challenge before I, I shouted out cause I didn't wanna step on your challenge there. 
Yeah. 
But you always end your emails or any message that I've sent with you, or even a call telling the other person to have a lovely day, or I'm sure you're doing it intentionally. How do you make sure to do that with every single message? Cause I've definitely noticed it in our communications.
Makin: Oh my goodness. Well, I'm really happy. You did notice that. So typically I'll say have a lovely day or have a successful day and I'm saying that to the person so they keep that in mind for themselves, like what can I do to have a great day? What can I do to have a successful day? And then I also tell it for myself too. So it's a gift, but it's also a little bit selfish. 
Watson: Yeah. 
Makin: Because then I'm thinking, okay, like what else do I need to do to have a successful day? 
Watson: Yeah, I think I noticed it in a message. And then we were on a call and you, and you kind of signed off with that, and that was enough for me. Like she was definitely intentional about doing that. And then I was reflecting on, I mean, that felt, feels great to hear because you're not hearing that from every person that you, that you interact with on a day to day basis. 
Yeah. 
But it also feels fantastic to, you know, pass that on to someone else. So I'm gonna add that in. I think that spending 10 minutes at the beginning of your day is a fantastic challenge for folks, but I'm just gonna add on, because it's also something that I've noticed you do is to just dial up your sign offs 10% and it doesn't have to be steal exactly what Sara's saying, but tie up your sign off a little bit because I noticed it, I appreciated it and I think that it'll have a, a net positive impact for a lot of people. 
Makin: Oh my gosh. Absolutely. 
Watson: This has been awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Makin: Oh my gosh. Yes. Thanks for having me. This has been awesome. We just went deep with Sara Makin. Hope everyone out there has a fantastic day.
Hey, thank you so much for listening to the end of my interview with Sara. If you found this valuable, I think you'd also enjoy our past interview with Dylan Banon the founder of Mind Bloom. He is also building a remote- only mental health startup focused on administering ketamine to folks that need it for mental health conditions.
I also learned a ton from this conversation because this is a field that is completely foreign to me. I think you'll take a lot away from it as well, including Dylan's own story of working on his personal psychology and a whole lot more. Check it out.Thanks for listening. Connect with Aaron on Twitter and Instagram at Aaron Watson 59.