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.

Dr. Mel Krug

Even before opening Inspire Life Chiropractic Center, I hit the ground running. I was determined to make connections and serve my community. I started prepping well before graduating chiropractic school. I spent my days (and long nights) planning, prepping, creating, and building a vision for what I imagined would be an epi-center of health and wholeness in my community. We experienced setbacks in our build-out, changes in the management of the space, and moments that felt like near burn-out. Those early days were exhausting, but SO worth it. Read more>>

Jordan Hubbard.

When I first graduated from dental school, I was so excited to dive into the “real world” of dentistry and help patients improve their oral health and smile with confidence. It wasn’t until I first started practicing that I realized that in order to truly fulfil my dreams of treating patients the way I wanted to, while having the work/life balance I desired, the only way to do so was to own my own practice. Read more>>

Leah Tarleton, MS, RDN.

There are times in life when we feel we are firmly in the driver’s seat—hands at the wheel, forging a clear path forward, shaping our own destiny. Other times, life delivers a different kind of experience. We instead find ourselves driven—by something greater than the force of our own will, not knowing what comes next and when, guided only by sheer guts, blurry vision, and a heart full of courage. When I decided to start my own practice, I would have preferred to be in the driver’s seat, but in reality: I felt like I was on the ride of my life. Read more>>

Gretchen Spetz

After my oldest daughter was born, I took a 12 hour per week outpatient nutrition position at the local hospital. It was a great gig for a new mama – minimal hours and I got to work with patients who had diabetes. I loved the clients, the job was flexible, but there was no opportunity for professional growth. When I returned from maternity leave after my second child, Read more>>

Tina Ratsaboutseua

Beauty has always been a passion of mine. Since turning my passion into a profession, I’ve grown into my understanding of what that means. My intention is to combine self care and self love through hair and skin. In order to embrace my full power, I needed to get out of my own way. I worried about how my clients would receive me and my beliefs about the universe and the spiritual. Would they listen? Would they judge me? Read more>>

Ben Roberts.

I’ve always known I wanted to go into counseling. Attending college I had a mission and vision years before ever starting. So Step 1. Have a vision, know why you want to do something. I also understood the necessary steps I had to take, so upon graduating with my bachelors; I prepped for graduate school and used my connections to think about licensure and supervision afterwards. My wife and I even moved to Nashville just so I could do supervision. Read more>>

Nichole Kuechle

The biggest challenges to establishing a practice are a) identifying who you serve, and b), knowing who you are and what you provide. It would seem easy to seek out training and then turn around to offer that training, however, it takes something to identify your values and make sure they align with what you’re offering and see to it that you attract the very person who needs it. Getting stuck in one particular way of doing things may work for some, though I find more and more practitioners looking to serve right from the heart, and that means innovating and creating, and being able to step away from the safety net and take some risks. Read more>>

Vincent Alvarez

I launched my business in May of 2021, but my vision and model had definitely been brewing in my mind for years prior. I have always wanted to own my own business, and being from California I felt like it was just way too saturated of a market to begin an elite training business. So coming to Utah during the pandemic, I felt like it gave me plenty of time to develop the the early stages of my training model and I was able to implement my training style with many athletes in need. Read more>>

D. J. Stavropoulos

I thought a real estate agent just sold properties and helped buyers find homes. However, my brokerage (Keller Williams) teaches you to run it like a business. If you’re a solo agent, as I was, you are wearing every hat. It’s akin to a person opening a restaurant all by themself and having to be the maitre d’, waiter, server, busboy, manager, etc. So, you have to initially learn to do everything and then over time figure out what you can leverage out to others. For example, you can hire a showing assistant. Read more>>