We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Adam DeVaney a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Adam , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear the backstory of how you established your own practice.

Oh, what a story. My internship in graduate school as well as my first two jobs were in toxic work environments. Going into my work as a social worker, I already knew I was not going to fit into an agency, so I chose private clinics. The first one led to the second opportunity with a doctor I was working with at the first one. This second practice was not destined to last, as the doctor had a second life that eventually came to bite everyone. However, both of these positions helped me learn exactly what it took to create and monetize a behavioral health and addiction medicine clinic, so when the second position suddenly ended with the arrest of the doctor we were working for (yah, a bad day to say the least), my wife and I decided that we not only loved what we had been doing, but we also loved the patients and clients we had been serving. With this as our laser focus, I tested and received my full, clinical license, and my wife and I spent the next 6 months recruiting nurse practitioners and cultivating our relationship with a new supervising physician. After about 9 months without any significant income and after having sold 7 acres of trees and our horse trailer to save our farm, we opened up Life’s Work Clinic, PLLC, in a small, rural village in an underserved region. We became the first and only to our knowledge outpatient buprenorphine clinic in the State of Michigan owned and operated by a clinical social worker. Many of our old patients and clients cheered the opening of our clinic, and we hit the ground running!
Recruiting was a big challenge. We decided to focus on working with nurse practitioners since they typically had better bedside manners as well as years working with patients directly. From a revenue perspective, we simply couldn’t open until we had these practitioners given that my counseling practice was still quite small. Once they were in place, we opened our doors with 6 chairs, a desk that really was designed to face a wall with cardboard up front, the computers we had and a determination that would not quit.
My advice to anyone thinking of opening a private practice would be to ask themselves about how they look at stress. Really. Having your own practice is amazing. I would say that it is not any more difficult than working for an agency or someone else’s practice, it’s just a different type of stress. I would suggest that people find a mentor. We literally did everything on our own with the skills we built helping manage and run other people’s practices, but for a lot of people, their experiences in other practices are limited to, maybe, just the clinical aspects since there are already staff in place to handle insurance, billing, scheduling and credentialing. Even internships rarely offer any training on these areas, so we had to learn this stuff entirely on our own. These days, there are coaches out there that can walk you through this, so don’t hesitate to take full advantage of that.
We actually have now created an internship program just for this. Our two previous interns have been able to create their own private practice while in their internship, and they have been able to take their clients with them. They transitioned right to their own practice upon graduation. I have been in contact with 5 different colleges that have social work or counseling programs this year and have worked with them to find students who are interested in this type of internship. I am in the process of creating a training program to offer this internship virtually, and upon graduation from this paid internship, the interns have the opportunity to stay on with us as their practice management company while they continue to grow and thrive in their private practice. It’s a win/win for everybody.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I have been a therapist for almost a dozen years. It was not until about 2 years ago that I found a remarkable process of healing called the Emotion Code. This has revolutionized my therapy practice, and the success of this approach has turned my therapy practice into one that is more than 50% referrals from current or past clients.

Not only has the Emotion Code work revolutionized my therapy practice, but it has led me to branch out even further into the global coaching ecosystem. I have now had clients from as far away as the UK, Australia and Nova Scotia.

In short, the Emotion Code is an approach to inner-healing that connects directly to the subconscious to identify and provide a process for the release of trapped and repressed emotional energy. When we have typically negative emotional experiences from trauma, loss or, well, everyday life, we tend to go into resistance, and the net result is that the emotional energy gets stuffed down into our subconscious. Since this is designed to move and not stagnate, it causes all sorts of mischief in our lives and our bodies. These typically show up as automatic reactions that are not in alignment with the person we see ourselves as, blocks that keep us from moving forward or achieving something desired and finally they manifest as dis-ease in the body. By going into the subconscious to allow it to identify these trapped emotional energies, we can then come back into a healthy relationship with the emotion by walking through a quick, effective and permanent process of releasing and moving the energy along. In total, it is a miraculous process that has radically improved my own life and the lives of those around me.

Much of this work revolves around our relationships. In my experience, the greatest shifts happen when we address primary relationships like parents and family member as well as past toxic relationships whether intimate or professional. There’s no shortage of these to address.

My coaching work as taken this to a new level by allowing me to help the helpers, to heal the healers, by focusing my work with other therapists, social workers and health-licensed professionals such as psychiatrists and doctors. This has been very rewarding, and it has inspired me in so many ways that there simply isn’t space for here.

I have also expanded the Life’s Work brand into Life’s Work Coaching, Loving Our Life’s Work Podcast and Life’s Work Apparel. These all fall under the umbrella of the Life’s Work Positivity Brand that connects to n-Vision Beyond, Inc.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

For the past 20 years, I have been studying the philosophies and practices of Dr. David R. Hawkins. His research on consciousness through the use of applied kinesiology has been a life-changing inspiration.

That said, when we look at Dr. Hawkins’ Scale of Consciousness, we see that personal power really begins with courage and integrity. Beyond that, the levels of conscious ascend to a willingness to be accepting. This has been the biggest part of what I believe helped me build my reputation in my industry.

Despite having worked for two different toxic employers, our patients have followed us, in some cases, through three different clinics that we have operated. Some of these patients have been with us for as much as 12 years! There is a trust there, a consistency and a knowledge deep in their bones that they will be accepted and not judged. This is so important when serving addiction clients. It’s really the foundation. Everything else is just process.

I was just talking with a counseling client the other day who has been with us through two clinics. The went through a really tough time in her addiction that led her to give up her only child to adoption when he was just months old. She is not only in our Suboxone program, but she also sees me for counseling where we focus almost entirely on the use of the Emotion Code. She was telling me the other day about how grateful she is for the acceptance and support she has received from us over the years. The mother of the family who adopted her child actually worked with us at the second clinic, and we were talking about that phone call way back when. She saw that the very people who were helping her child could help her start her recovery too. She followed us when we opened our clinic, and after a total of 7 years with us, she sill knows that she can come to us and will not only not get judged, but she knows that we will always be there to support her.

It is operating on this level, the level of integrity, willingness and acceptance that has made all the difference in our work in our community.

Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?

Since I have already shared my story of pivoting into a private practice, I want to share with you my philosophy on service, because I feel that it underlies all our success.

When people call me for any of the things I do from counseling, coaching or medication management, I always start with “How can I help you today?” Period. That is all I am there for. I am there in service to another precious soul. I have nothing to sell except my presence should they want that in their life.

Life is already hard enough. We have stresses, addictions, loss and traumas. Every. One. Of. Us. What we all need are people who are present, who are dedicated to being the healer in the room and who are willing to hold that space open for the healing and transformation to happen.

This is it. I embody this. Everything else is just process and technique. I do my best every day to live by the two greatest commandments: Love God and Love People. This is the fulfillment of the law, and it just works. Success is the natural result of this.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lifesworkclinic.com/, https://lifes-work-coaching.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61552663603099, https://www.facebook.com/adam.devaney.7, https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61555221657174
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@AdamCDeVaney/featured