Page 24 of Guess Again
Milwaukee, Wisconsin Wednesday, July 16, 2025
THE MAHOGANY TABLE WAS IMMACULATE AND DOMINATED THE CONFERENCE room.
When the space served its true purpose, those who ran The Anonymous Client occupied the sixteen places around the table.
They included the chief financial officer, the head of clinical, the practice manager, board members, and Dr.
Lindsay Larkin, who always sat at the head of the table as the founder, owner, and CEO of the booming online company.
Today, though, the room and the table were empty, and Lindsay decided on a less regal location in the center.
She stood when the reporter from The New York Times walked into the conference room.
“Dr.
Larkin? Gayle Kirk.”
Lindsay smiled.
“Hi Gayle.
Welcome.
And, please, call me Lindsay.”
“Thank you.
This place is amazing,”
Gayle said with wide eyes.
“Your assistant gave me a tour.”
“Thank you.”
The floor-to-ceiling windows of the conference room looked out over Lake Michigan, where sailboats drifted under the sweltering summer sun.
“And thanks, by the way, for coming all the way to Milwaukee to do this.”
“It’s my absolute pleasure,”
Gayle said.
“I’ve been trying to get this interview for nearly a year, so I should be thanking you.
I know how busy you are, so I’ll try not to take too much of your time.”
“The morning is yours,”
Lindsay said.
Gayle took a seat and pulled notes from her bag.
“My intention is to introduce our readers to you and your unique company, delve into your background, and then take a deep dive into your philosophy on mental health and how you have single-handedly revolutionized the psychology industry with your brand of online counseling.”
“Sounds expansive,”
Lindsay said.
“I’m ready when you are.”
“Great.
Tell me about your background.”
“I was born and raised in Cherryview, Wisconsin.
It’s a small lake community just outside Madison.
I attended UW Madison, where I studied psychology.
When I graduated, I wanted to avoid the medical industrial complex and forge a new way forward to help those looking to improve their lives.”
“Let’s take a detour there.
How do you define the ‘medical industrial complex’?”
Lindsay smiled.
“Simple.
It’s our current healthcare system.
Although, a more accurate term is ‘sick care’ because the whole system is designed to produce chronic disease, and then perpetually treat those afflicted by the diseases the system creates with an endless stream of pharmaceutical products.”
Lindsay smiled again.
“Trust me.
I know many consider my position on this topic extreme, but I have yet to meet anyone who can disprove it.”
“Disprove that the U.S.
healthcare system creates, rather than cures, disease?”
“Let me give you an example,”
Lindsay said.
“The sugar and grain industries are massive contributors to and influencers of the U.S.
government.
This is not speculation, just look up the numbers.
The sugar and grain industries spend millions on lobbying efforts each year in order to get their agendas passed.
The result of this decades-long campaign is that the FDA has placed grains and carbohydrates as main components to a healthy diet. The result? Over the last five decades, America has become fatter and sicker. Forty percent of Americans are obese. About seventy-five percent are chronically overweight. This has led to, among other things, a diabetes epidemic. And who profits most from this overweight, diabetic population? The pharmaceutical companies that produce medicine to treat this chronic disease. A disease, by the way, that affected a much smaller portion of the population in the ’60s, before sugar and carbs were pushed as part of a healthy diet. About one point five percent of the population suffered from diabetes in the 1960s. Today, it’s over eleven percent.
“So, doctors are busy treating their overweight, diabetic patients, while pharmaceutical companies turn giant profits churning out new medication to treat a condition that is mostly self-inflicted.
That, in a nutshell, is the medical industrial complex.
And diabetes is just a single example.
My approach to mental health is to keep every client who comes to us for help out of the vicious cycle of that convoluted system.”
“And how do you achieve this?”
“First, we don’t employ members of the medical industrial complex.
That includes psychiatrists who push drugs on their clients.
Nor do we refer clients to psychiatrists.”
“You treat all your patients in-house, in other words.”
“First, we don’t have patients.
We have clients.
The word ‘patient’ suggests someone suffering from disease, and suggests that medicine is the ultimate solution.
Our clients are simply individuals who need our help to become healthier.
And we don’t treat clients, we help them achieve their goals.”
“Well, your philosophy is certainly catching on.
You’re headquartered here in Milwaukee, but you have offices throughout the country.
Isn’t that right?”
“Yes.
The Anonymous Client has offices in all fifty states.
But the offices are more for administrative purposes than for places to help clients.
Most of our work with clients is done online.”
“Yes,”
Gayle said.
“That’s what I want to discuss next.
You’ve revolutionized the psychology industry by bringing it online.
Can you tell me how you’ve managed to take up so much market share of the online counseling space so quickly?”
“As you know, bringing counseling online wasn’t revolutionary.
Many tried to do it before me.
But our philosophy is what’s unique.
All the other online counseling platforms are based around the concept of treating sick patients.
It’s a terrible model, as you can tell by how many online counseling companies are failing since we’ve come into the space. As I mentioned, we help healthy clients become healthier. That’s one of the reasons we’ve grown so quickly. The other is that our clients are given the option of staying anonymous, and that’s been the real game changer.”
“Tell me how that works.”
“A client seeking our services is able to approach us through our online portal, choose a psychologist, and then undergo sessions not only from the comfort of their own home, but also anonymously.
Many clients, thanks again to the intentional negative connotation the medical industrial complex has attached to mental health and therapy, still feel stigmatized by speaking with a therapist.
Clients who feel marginalized have the option of speaking with one of our therapists anonymously.
We’ve found that this has allowed many who might otherwise not have sought counseling to come forward.”
“How does a client stay anonymous?”
“Our online platform is state-of-the-art.
I majored in psychology at UW Madison, but I minored in computer engineering.
Since I was young, I’ve always had a knack for computers and coding.
And I applied that background to the first generation encryption prototype we now use across the country.
For those clients wishing to stay anonymous, they utilize an online filter that hides both their face and their voice. Our therapists will sometimes ask specifics about the client, such as gender and age, but it’s entirely up to the client how much they wish to share. The encrypted, anonymous filters are managed by a third party to ensure our clients’ privacy. And many people who might not have sought face-to-face counseling have come on board through the anonymous online portal.”
“Amazing,”
Gayle said.
“So it sounds like you were, perhaps, initially interested in computer programming as a career?”
“I was.
And that was the plan.
I was going to get my degree in computer engineering and move to Silicon Valley.
But those plans got derailed and I made a shift to psychology.”
“What changed your trajectory that inspired you to go into psychology?”
“Well,”
Lindsay said, puckering her lower lip, “inspired is probably not the right word.
But there was an instigating factor.”
Lindsay shifted in her chair.
“When I was in high school, my best friend went missing.”
“Callie Jones,”
the reporter said.
“Yes.
Callie disappeared without a trace from our little town of Cherryview.
It left many people, including myself, reeling with grief.
Callie’s mother, sadly, was never able to overcome that grief and took her own life.
I was heartbroken and had so many questions. I needed badly to speak to someone about how I was feeling, and to find a way past my grief. But my parents didn’t believe in psychology or therapy. They had fallen victim to the idea that mental health was something to hide. Something to deal with privately and on your own. Time heals all wounds, and all that nonsense from back in the day. My freshman year of college, I took an intro to psych course and learned that there were ways to deal with grief, and your feelings in general. I decided then that no one should go through what I was going through. At least not alone and without guidance. I wanted to help people overcome their grief, no matter what was causing it. It was then that I realized I would dedicate my life to that cause.”
“And so, from a terrible tragedy—the loss of your best friend—you’ve managed to find meaning in life while simultaneously helping so many others.
Your story is very moving.”
Lindsay blinked several times to prevent tears from spilling down her cheeks.
She maintained her powerful CEO persona as she smiled.
“Thank you.”