Today we’d like to introduce you to Bob and Polly Hamp.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I have played a number of roles trying to best find my fit in the world. I have been both a counselor and a pastor. Before I moved to the metroplex I had begun a group of counselors called “Freedom Counseling” in Abilene, TX. I moved here to work at a local church and help them develop large scale programs that could deeply change peoples lives.
When I left the church five years ago, I went back into the counseling practice.
But I have always taught classes and trained people to help others. This season of practice needed to reflect that part of my calling.
We are structured as a group of independent practitioners and coaches all sharing common space and a common vision. We also utilize our space to hold free classes for the public on a variety of topics. These topics are all designed to provide help for people in their various walks of life.
A significant part of our business is to develop resources (Videos and Books) to help people who either can’t afford counseling or simply want to benefit from our particular approach.
After I transitioned back into practice, an old friend of mine attended one of our training events. It didn’t take us long to discover we had both been through painful divorces since the last time we saw each other. We reconnected in a whole new way as we began to date and Polly began to be an active part of our counseling center.
Polly brought a real sense of family and nurture to our practice as office manager. She is very effective in helping people and began her training as a Certified NLP Practitioner. She quickly transitioned from office manager to Think Differently Coach.
At the same time, we transitioned from dating to married!! We both found real healing and redemption in joining our lives and our vision.
(Polly) My passion and heart have been seeing people know who they truly were created to be. I founded a ministry that reached out to women in the strip clubs and any part of the sex industry. We started with strip club outreach then developed a model to help build a family and community around each woman.
I believe the power of one’s story and that we each have a voice to help heal ourselves and then others. I desired to reach more people, so I wrote a book that invites you into my story but is meant to help you heal through your own.
Transitioning to working at Think Differently and now working with individuals makes my heart light up! I love getting to do life and our calling together.
In the last year, we have been formalizing our training processes. We began this year our inaugural class of a Certification Program. The Think Differently Certification blends three approaches to helping. The model of “Freedom Counseling” that I have developed over the last thirty years is blended with Neuro-linguitic Programming and a Family Systems approach to train coaches to help people really discover who they are and how to overcome obstacles to return to their created identity.
Has it been a smooth road?
Mine and Polly’s road’s intersected a few years ago. The road up until then had been very difficult for both of us. My career change (bob) was also marked by a very painful divorce and all the family struggles and other related changes that go with that. The difficulties of joining vision and building this business have been minor compared to that.
Rebuilding after a divorce is always difficult. My emotional stamina was quite low and it makes it difficult to operate from a place of vision. Polly and I have found that we breathe life into each other and that really restores that place inside where vision comes from.
(She just nodded and agreed with all of that!!)
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Think Differently Counseling, Coaching and Connecting story. Tell us more about the business.
The difference is also clearly stated in our name.
While our model is a Christian model based on the Bible, we zero in on the meaning and implementation of the idea of “Think Differently”
The Phrase is a translation of a Biblical word, but I think far too often a misapplied word.
The idea might be best capsulized by the old Einstein quote “You can’t solve a problem using the same level of thinking that created the problem in the first place.”
While “Think Differently is the name of our Center, it is also the Title of my first three books.. (Think Differently LIVE Differently, Think Differently LEAD Differently and the soon to be launched Think Differently LEARN Differently). All three books and our model for change focus on first helping people to recognize and change thought PROCESS. The idea is that new thoughts in old thought processes can bring little change.
As a result of the thought process shift, people learn to think in several new ways. They learn to think of the world as both a natural and a spiritual realm. They learn to think of themselves as someone who was created with greatness, but somehow lost sight of it, They learn to examine their own thoughts as something they have power over. They learn to focus on identity and spirit first and feelings and behavior second.
They also learn that the most important context for change is true connection and relationship first to God and then to others.
Our vision is to make healthy independent disciples, without the need to build a congregation.
As a company, we are most proud of the caring and connected community we are building that is an essential context to anything else we do.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
We are looking for ways to make change available to those who may not be able to travel easily to grapevine. In a world of internet and social media, we have the root system of larger community but our live events are not easily accessed by our international audience.
We are searching for ways to deliver more content online, while still maintaining the context of human connection.
Spiritually speaking, people are hungry for growth and change and many are frustrated with old ways of doing things. We want to meet people’s needs for help and transformation without feeding that frustration.
In our industry (Spiritual Growth and Self Help), the changes are already happening. Churches and larger organizations are being rocked my the #metoo movement, and a general sense of dissatisfaction. We believe our message speaks directly into this world, feeding people’s souls without feeding. the conflicts.
We see video and internet as way to broaden our impact and give people the chance to develop their own spiritual growth guided more by their own connection to God than by any pre-prescribed program.
We are adding to our free internet content and print resources a series of e-courses that will be released over the next year.
Pricing:
- Counseling and Coaching is $100-$175 per hour
- Our Freedom events give two days of impact for about $200.00
- our 2-3 day Trainings range from $197-297.00
Contact Info:
- Website: TDCounseling.com. bobhamp.com. pollyhamp.com
- Phone: 972-201-3437
- Email: hello@TDCounseling.com
- Instagram: @bobhamp @pollywright_hamp
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheBobHamp/ https://www.facebook.com/PollyWrightHamp/
- Twitter: @bobhamp. @pollynay
Getting in touch: VoyageDallas is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
