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.

Jen Boukari

“There’s got to more to life than this”, I said to myself as I walked into the building of my cushy 9-5 Corporate America job one morning. I was making more money than I ever had, I was getting the level of responsibility and visibility within the company that I wanted, yet I still felt something was lacking. I made a decision then that I would NOT continue this mediocre routine through retirement and that I needed to start a side hustle. Read more>>

Tia Te’aire Taylor-Scroggins

I have always been passionate about anything I pursued, from my youth until now. I would follow any spiritual guidance from the Universe for my path and run right into whatever it was, almost feeling like I had no other choice but to do so. Read more>>

Natalie Rosado

Starting my own mental health practice in the Tampa Bay area has been a rewarding and transformative journey. It all began when I noticed a significant gap in the availability of personalized and diversified mental health care for our community. There was a need to combine the accessibility of community agency care with the personal touch of private practice care, and I felt compelled to address this need. Read more>>

Dr. Airelle Rucker-Smith DNP, CRNP

Tell us the story of the early days from when you decided to start your own practice to establishing FirstChoice Primary Care. Read more>>

Jade Adgate

I never planned on opening a private practice as a death midwife. My entry into the work was accidental. I began volunteering for our local non-profit hospice, Alive, to honor the death of my great aunt. At my hospice volunteer training, another person in the room mentioned becoming a “death doula” and that was the first time I’d ever even heard that phrase. Read more>>

Rodrianna Alsip

I started Pulse Barre + Fitness after the death of my father. That really drove me to put the pedal to the floor and make my dreams come true. I started by envisioning how I wanted my studio to be and what type of business owner I wanted to be. I wanted to make sure I stood out in the community and provided a different environment for others to work out. Read more>>

Dr. Nikolas Amini

You know what they say. There’s no place like home, and there’s no place like your own to call home. I grew up in the suburbs of Houston and attended Texas A&M University for my bachelor’s degree before moving to Mississippi for my first Masters. I then acquired my Doctor of Dental Surgery from the State University of New York at Buffalo and completed a residency and masters in Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics in Jacksonville, FL. Read more>>

Arielle Sokoll-Ward

I started my private practice in 2020. At the time, I was working at a higher level of care eating disorder facility as their grief specialist. As COVID took over, like many other people in healthcare spaces, I experienced a lot of uncertainty and transition in my day-to-day. I had the goal of eventually starting my own practice, though due to the uncomfortable shifts I was personally and professionally feeling at my job, it sped up my motivation. Read more>>

Jen Phippen

I had been thinking about starting my own private practice for years prior to finding the courage to take the leap in 2020. I was being creatively stifled and facing serious burnout working as a Hospice and Palliative Care Social Worker. Working in dysfunctional systems that were more concerned with profits over people inspired me to establish something different, something based on my values. Read more>>

Margaret Harstad

When I first went to college, I began a major in nutrition. After a few years, I was encouraged to switch my major to art education. I ended up with a major in art education and elementary education. Read more>>

Doug Lawrence

I started my mentoring practice in the fall of 2009. I saw there was a niche in the market for providing mentor training and mentor certification. In the beginning I trained a lot of people and saw the benefits of doing so in the way that I was doing. I ended up partnering with an organization in the US to provide mentor certification based on knowledge. Read more>>

Kristina Burkhan

My story began six years ago. Inspired by barre workouts in New York, I realized that what was missing for me in those classes was the grace and dance elements. As someone passionate about classical ballet, I wanted to sculpt my body similarly but in a more dynamic and enjoyable dance rhythm. Read more>>

Rachel Nichols

When we hear of people starting businesses – oftentimes, we think about the physical groundwork and housekeeping, like establishing your business name, your LLC, your platforms. What we do not hear enough about, is the mental and spiritual groundwork and housekeeping that has to be done in order to even get started. Read more>>

Viola Murrone

My early days have been full of confusion. I had already practiced reiki and crystal healing for a while and my greatest and deepest desire was to be a healer, however that felt too “woo woo” and not “promising enough”. I decided therefore to do a health and life coaching course and start helping people in a more pragmatic way, if this makes any sense. Read more>>

Erica Hutson

In the early days of getting my business going, I felt like a sponge, taking in every webinar, training, coaching opportunity I could. I went through about two years trying to apply all the lessons and “strategies” I had learned–I learned a lot. But at one point I felt burnt out, burnt out on all my resources–energy, money, time. So I stopped doing anything and reflected for a while on what I really wanted. Read more>>

Dr. Suzanne Pikula

When we hear the word, “Chiropractor,” an image of getting someone’s back cracked, is usually the first thing someone thinks of. Read more>>