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.

Adam Kalish

I fell into starting my own firm. I was out of a job, and the job market was bleak. I received an interview from a small firm in Brooklyn. At the end of the interview, the attorney told me that he didn’t have a job for me, however, he could rent me some space if I wanted to start my own firm. He needed someone who practiced real estate and could take on his estate clients. I didn’t necessarily practice real estate but I also didn’t have many options for criminal law. So I decided to learn everything I could about real estate. I filed for my professional corporation and agreed to rent a desk and started my career. The phone didn’t necessarily ring for a while. I walked the streets, stepping into agents’ offices, shaking hands, and introducing myself. It took about 6 months to get consistent work but it immediately snowballed. Transactions turned into litigation and vice versa and soon I was on my way to building a top real estate firm in Brooklyn. Read more>>

Jack Binder

FilmBudget.com Worldwide was born out of inquires as a film and television producer for help with film finance, production, and creating a film budget. As a Producer for HBO, The Walt Disney Company, Columbia Pictures and many other Hollywood studios I had many colleagues asking for guidance. As a working producer I managed to find the time to start FilmBudget.com as a vehicle to respond to the requests for film budgeting and scheduling services. This branched into Film Finance Plans as were similarly being asked for by associates in the industry. Read more>>

Diala Burjak

Starting my own business was an uncalculated risk driven purely by passion. I wanted to improve my CV and teaching experience, but more importantly, I wanted to fill a gap I noticed in surgical education. After asking myself, What am I good at? What can I teach? it became clear: suturing, a skill I had been honing for years. The idea stemmed from my own experience at a suturing workshop during medical school. The event was crowded, tools were worn out, and each participant had minimal practice time. I left with a basic understanding of two techniques and a deep desire for more. I decided to create a workshop that provided students with an ideal experience: small groups, high-quality tools, and plenty of hands-on practice. Read more>>

Amber Soiland

The inception of Rapid CPR was born out of a deep passion for education and a commitment to saving lives. I recognized an urgent need in my community for accessible, high-quality training in life-saving techniques such as CPR, ACLS, PALS, and other critical interventions. As a licensed instructor with the American Heart Association and a professional deeply embedded in healthcare, I saw an opportunity to fill a gap by offering more dynamic, hands-on training that could truly prepare medical professionals and laypeople alike to act confidently in emergencies. Starting my practice required a meticulous combination of planning, resource allocation, and bold decision-making.  Read more>>

Jessica Dresden And Natale Garrity

We decided to start our own mental health practice, Embolden You, as we were craving life-work balance (yes, life comes first!). The work we do can be hard, and we wanted to make sure we were taking care of ourselves so that we could most effectively support and help our clients. We both had young families, and knew we wanted to have balance between our work as a psychologist and our important job of being a mom. Our backgrounds in having both training and work opportunities in private practice settings helped us significantly in creating a strategy for opening our own practice. Read more>>