Establishing your own firm or practice is an incredibly daunting task. From myriad of legal and regulatory hurdles to the financial and career related risks, professionals who choose to start their own firm have to overcome so much and so we wanted to reach out to those who’ve done it successfully for advice, insight and stories.

Alicia Patterson

I left graduate school at age 29 and knew two things : I needed much more experience in my field and I wanted to work for myself and have my own practice. I focused on these two needs and goals for years and made sure to satisfy them both. Right out of school I entered into some of the most challenging (and low paying) jobs the mental health field has to offer. I worked in residential treatment, crisis assessment in community mental health and hospital emergency rooms, and psychiatric inpatient care. Read more>>

Jansen Klefeker

I have had the privilege of leading and growing the J. Klefeker Group for 2 years now. It’s always challenging to transition from a solo role and implement key players into your organization. I’ve learned quickly with the help of wisdom from mentors in my life that investing in the people around me will take us to the right destination. The most rewarding ingredient in my operation and key factor to the continued growth of my team has been instilling into my team members a clear and concise mission. If everyone is bought into the vision and direction I want us all to move in, the daily actions are more easily accomplished and the hurdles we face become learning moments for the future. Read more>>

Heather Gibson

I actually had the idea to start my business during the chaos of the covid pandemic. I was still working in a very busy corporate insurance based setting but wasn’t sure where the regulations were going, and if we would even be keeping our doors open. I knew I didn’t want to stay home during the pandemic and wanted to keep working. I wanted to continue to pursue my passion for building my niche in treating women’s pelvic floor conditions. I also very much so wanted to keep working to be able to offer care to all these women who needed and deserved quality medical care, that many at that time were not receiving. Read more>>

Janet Bayramyan

I believe that every individual has their own story as to how they got to the place they’ve gotten. I know for me, it was not the easiest journey to get to where I am, as for many years I had to work on building my own self confidence and self worth to get to this place. Before I even started my practice, I worked at many agency settings and group practices trying to learn everything I could about mental health, mental health treatment, trauma and trauma recovery. I was adamant that I would be the best therapist I could be on my journey. Read more>>

Caitlin Holmes

I never actually intended to start my private practice. When I graduated with my Masters, I had a clinical internship lined up, and I was hoping I could transition this into a job at a later date. But the pandemic left me with no internship and no obvious opportunities to gain the clinical hours I needed for my credential. So, I decided to start my private practice! Even though this was not what I was expecting, I loved the prospect that I could have more say in my patient cases. I started with the basics: filed for an LLC, bought liability insurance, and set up a business bank account. Read more>>

Daneff Davila Ross

I remember having finished my masters in Spain and returning to Venezuela to open my own practice, working at a family center with adults. I played the typical psychotherapist sterotyped role, since i was taught tat was the must professional way to work. In mind i was trying to make myself be reliable for my clients and also trying to prove myself y was capable of handling such a key role, but honestly i always felt trapped in such a stif role. Read more>>

Yana Pekarski

“I don’t know if I’ll go back to dentistry” I told my husband after tasting a year of freedom. The freedom I speak of is being laid off due to “Covid layoffs,” after investing over ten years of my life working for a community health center. During my dental school interview in 2003, I was asked where I saw myself in ten years, and I told them I saw myself working with patients who don’t have a lot of money. That is precisely what I did shortly after receiving the Doctor of Dental Surgery degree from UCLA and completing an Advanced Education in General Dentistry residency program on Maui. Read more>>

Dr. Beth Maly, NMD

I have to be honest, while I was in school that was the only thing I could focus on…I couldn’t really think about the future – and that was true for many of us, but I know it was absolutely true for myself. I didn’t know who I wanted to help, how I wanted to help them, what I wanted to focus on. I took extra electives thinking sports medicine might be my love, or that environmental medicine might be something I wanted to focus on…little did I know that it would be my own experiences and having to be my own advocate of my health that would lead me to where I am now… Read more>>

Carrie Rittling, NMD

I had been in practice for about 7 years at a practice in the east valley as an independent contractor, when I started to realize that I wanted to have a choice about how my patients were scheduled, and how the front desk interacted with my patients. I wanted to be able to create a safe, welcoming space for the parents of my patients and my patients. I decided in December of 2014 that I was going to leave the practice I had been working at to start my own practice. I ended up bringing on a partner to help share some of the burden of running a practice while treating patient’s. Read more>>

Morgan Williams

Yikes! Well the beginning was rough and I don’t say that lightly. Starting my own business while traveling a ton was really difficult. The early days of my business were spent focusing on my husbands career first and my small business second. We were traveling monthly and were really only home in the summer months. Back then we didn’t have FaceTime, zoom, it was pretty hard to run a business globally. Read more>>

Becky Allen

I always laugh when I get this question, “what made you decide to start your own practice?” Well, the truth is, I never knew I wanted to be a business owner. In fact, I always said I WOULDN’T go into private practice! But, when you’re meant to do something, there is no stopping it. During my second pregnancy and early postpartum experience, my midwife would tell me at each appointment about a new wellness collective she was going to be starting in the Fall of 2019. Read more>>

Heather Finks

I grew up in a low-income household by my father who raised my brother and I by himself. Success was not something that was easily recognized by our family. At the age of 14, I became pregnant with my daughter. Life was no longer about me. I did not want to be a statistic destined to fail. Being a teenage mother fueled my desire to escape from the cycle of deprivation generations of my family had faced before me. Read more>>

Jasmine Pope

If I’m being honest, it was never my goal or dream to have my own private practice or build it into a thriving group practice where we provide mental health therapy to people from all walks of life, but here I am. In 2017, I thought that I was on the path of developing a successful blog via www.blessingsindisguize.com. But through my faith journey, I took the leap of faith and was placed under an amazing woman who helped me to establish the foundation of my practice. Read more>>