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.

Andrea Kelley

The nonprofit I founded is called Beteseb Felega – Ethiopian Adoption Connection. We work in an area commonly known as “post adoption services.” Specifically, we help adoptees from Ethiopia regain their lost histories and family ties, and we also work with Ethiopian original/birth families to help them make contact with their children lost to international adoption. I am originally a musician by profession. I never thought I would be running an NGO as a second career. Read more>>

Dr Robert Joseph

After several years working for my business partner and noticed my income wasn’t changing and his was I decided to do a little research. I realized my salary equivalently was about 10 percent of what I was producing. Thru this I took what I learned from him and established 7 currentocatikn after 5 years and work in Both the la And Orange County and inland empire areas providing service. I’ve also acquired and became popular in the personal injury world handling devastating crashes and injured patients Read more>>

Lex Miller

I started my small business out of necessity to have space to heal with people in my community. When I first moved to the area I was in search for wellness centers that felt inclusive and safe. There wasn’t anything like it that was Accessible to me so I began the journey of creating that safe space for myself and for others. Read more>>

Hollywood Hypnotist Kevin Stone

A Passion for Hypnosis: I have always been fascinated by hypnosis. I decided to follow my dreams and enrolled at The Hypnosis Motivation Institute (HMI), the only accredited college of hypnosis. I have become a world-renowned expert and earned degrees as a Master Hypnotist and Certified Hypnotherapist. I later became a Board-Certified Hypnotherapist. Read more>>

Mama Santee

Starting my own practice was no easy task! As a matter of fact, it took years and living in Mexico before I realized I can do this! I was caught up in the lack mentality thinking i needed money to make money. This kept me running in circles for a while from house to house, client to client. Even though I was a mobile healer working in my industry, I flipping hated being mobile. Read more>>

Kathy Gruver

I had moved up to Santa Barbara from Los Angeles after I realized my acting career was not quite going the way I suspected it would. I took a really great production job leaving behind not only performing but also massage and healing work that I had been doing. About six or eight weeks of doing the job I realized it was not only not a good fit but emotionally and psychologically abusive. I quit and found myself struggling to decide what I was going to do with myself. Read more>>

Samira Soroory

I began working in the field of psychology before my graduate program started in 2012. Since 2012, I worked and trained under incredible mentors in the world of Anxiety and OCD. In 2019, I had the opportunity to start my very own private practice. It was intimidating, but a dream nonetheless. I was excited to get started into the clinical work my way. It felt liberating to be my own boss and have my own plan for how my business works. Read more>>

Kristamarie Collman

My story of becoming an entrepreneur and starting the practice began in 2020. This was in the middle of the pandemic and unfortunately from the impact of COVID, a lot of people were not getting the care they needed, including things like routine care or even physicals. Read more>>

Sheila Nazarian

I started my practice in 2013. I graduated at the age of 33 from plastic surgery residency at USC. I spent the first 6 months building out an office space that I shared with my husband, a neurosurgeon. We were sharing rent, which was a big help. It took 18 months for the phone to start consistently ringing but I had a decent flow of patients before that to support my initial efforts. Read more>>

Virmarie Diaz Fernandez

I had just finished psychiatry residency and was working as a psychiatry attending, supervising residents during their outpatient training. After several months of working as this position I started experiencing microagressions (“commonplace verbal or behavioral indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicates hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults”) not only from colleagues but my supervisor. Read more>>

Jiaming Ju

As an AAPI entrepreneur with a background in think tanks, I am used to doing things differently. Read more>>

Charlene Muhammad

As long as I can remember, I had an interest in natural healing. I love being outdoors exploring nature and believe that as creatures of the earth, human life can and is supported by our natural surroundings. Read more>>

Macala Lacy

I started graduate school knowing that I wanted to eventually be in private practice. My perspective and approach as a community-centered Black queer femme is inherently unique, and sometimes even counter, to the overwhelmingly Eurocentric mental health field. Because of this, I’ve known I would thrive most in a setting that allowed me to show up authentically and seek aligned clients. Read more>>

Deanna Fernandez

I’ve been a registered nurse for over 20 years working mostly in ICU. I’ve always had an interest in aesthetics and took my first injector course in 2017. While I didn’t pursue aesthetics as a full time career at that time, I did dabble with it on a part time basis for several years. In 2021 I relocated to Weatherford to be closer to family and worked through Covid in ICU at a local hospital downtown Ft. Worth and became very unhappy with the healthcare system. Read more>>