We were lucky to catch up with Laura Sgro recently and have shared our conversation below.
Laura, appreciate you joining us today. What do you think it takes to be successful?
This question is interesting, because my perspective changes depending on whether I’m looking at this from a therapist lens or an entrepreneur lens. As a therapist and mental health advocate, success is fluid. When a client has a significant “a-ha” moment, learns a new skill, or experiences a moment of profound healing in session, that obviously feels affirming — even though, as we know, healing isn’t linear and a client’s experience can ebb and flow even throughout their care. But I think of my role as an opportunity to plant seeds for clients (and whomever else consumes my content), so when I can see those seeds being nurtured, that feels like success to me.
As a neurodiverse entrepreneur, however, I have to consider another perspective: success needs to be more objective (or, at least, measurable) because I’m responsible for building, adjusting, and sustaining every aspect of my private practice, despite my fluctuating focus and motivation. One month, success might be a new income threshold that I’ve reached. Another month, success might be *actually* posting a month’s worth of consistent content on Instagram. It could look like a productive networking call or an unexpected media opportunity. This makes it difficult to measure my own success at times because the landscape is constantly shifting. I have to really hone in on my weekly, monthly, and quarterly goals and acknowledge each small step, otherwise it’s easy to get lost in the endless perfectionism trap.
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?
From an early age, curiosity has been a core component of how I navigate the world; I have always been curious about people, about stories, about problems, and, of course, about finding creative solutions. This meant I was a go-to source of support for friends who needed someone to listen or give advice. After graduating college, I worked for a few nonprofit organizations before realizing that I wanted to truly hold space for folks looking for help. I went back to school, completed my master’s in social work, and learned how to bridge my natural curiosity about people with formalized, evidence-based education in the therapy room. Throughout my career as a therapist, I worked in a variety of settings — with kids and families, at schools, in homes, alongside the courts — until finally settling into private practice. Now, I help folks improve their connection to themselves and others. This means I work primarily with anxious people-pleasers and perfectionists wanting to heal relational and attachment trauma, increase self-compassion, and explore their identities to move towards greater healing and purpose.
In my therapy practice, I believe my clients are the experts on their lives and experiences, so I meet them where they’re at to begin the process of exploring themselves deeply. I work with clients to examine parts of their past, challenges in the present, and hopes for the future while honoring their intersecting identities and natural strengths. Through both research-based techniques and being a real and approachable human, I integrate aspects of EMDR, cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness, and narrative techniques with psychodynamic, existential, and humanistic approaches to personalize clients’ care based on their needs.
As a mental health advocate and content creator, I strive to continue this mission on a greater scale. On my Instagram account (@laurasgrolcsw), I create informative, entertaining, and actionable content that anyone can access and save as a resource. I offer email subscribers a free Self-Care Planner designed specifically for anxiety, and will be hosting a workshop this October to help folks understand and overcome perfectionism. Folks can also stay tuned for a self-help course about people-pleasing and boundaries to be released next year. In addition to public-facing content, I’ve also worked with several organizations and nonprofits in a consulting capacity, hosting workshops or creating relevant mental health content for their clients, so folks can also book me to speak or create for their organization as well.
Overall, my goal is to spread compassion and awareness about the universally shared experience of having mental health struggles, provide accessible and realistic strategies for navigating these challenges, and encourage as many people as possible to prioritize themselves and their well-being.
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
The #1 thing is always authenticity. It’s one of my core values, and I think it’s a big part of why my current clients are such a joy to work with. Like many new therapists in private practice, I struggled early on with turning folks away because I felt compelled to try to help everyone who found me. However, research shows us again and again that the therapeutic relationship is the top indicator for positive client outcomes. Over time, I’ve had to give myself the reality check that I simply cannot be the right therapist for everyone — which means focusing on those clients that I’m a great fit for. Being an authentic and relatable human is the biggest piece of that.
That being said, though, finding clients is an ongoing process in my profession. A unique aspect of being a therapist is the goal that your clients will eventually work you out of a job by making enough progress to function well on their own. While I certainly have some long-term clients that enjoy continuing therapy, in general there can be a revolving door of clients, which means a revolving door of marketing strategies.
I’m very comfortable with providing therapy, but marketing myself was an entirely new aspect of business I wasn’t prepared for. Now, I’ve got some great strategies in place to help, but it’s constant! I’ve worked hard to create a welcoming and effective website, and have my profile listed on several online therapist directories. I’m active on my social media accounts and advertise openings through reels and stories. I also attend networking mixers in my area and am active on therapist Facebook groups where we can share referrals. I joined the Board of Directors for the Los Angeles Chapter of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (LA-CAMFT) which has been an excellent way to forge new connections as well.
Finding new clients is directly linked to how effective my marketing strategies are, so it’s a constant effort for me!
What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?
That’s exactly what happened! Like many therapists, I started out working full-time in community mental health, providing county-funded, crisis-based services to children and families in high-risk communities. My degree is in social work, and a huge part of our training involves advocating for marginalized folks and those in greatest need, so initially this felt like an excellent fit.
Unfortunately, there’s a lot of bureaucracy in the county-based mental healthcare space, which over time can lead to therapists becoming overworked, burnt out, or jaded. I wasn’t able to escape that fate myself. At the time, it was a huge moral dilemma for me: do I continue working in a field that is designed to help those who need it most, even if my eyes have been opened to some of the ways in which that system is inherently flawed? Going into private practice didn’t really feel like an option because of the martyrdom surrounding the mental health profession.
My compromise was to begin working in private practice part-time while continuing my full-time work. As you can imagine, that didn’t really help with the burnout… but it did start to open my eyes to other creative ways I could give back to the community while still making sure my own needs were getting met. Eventually, the shift became permanent: during the pandemic, I left my job and went full-time in my own private practice.
hitting one year in private practice. I reflected on my caseload at that time and thought about all the ways I was trying to navigate the complex moral aspects of mental healthcare with the business-minded aspects of earning a living. It continues to be important to me that folks have access to resources for their mental health so in my private practice, I accept insurance for folks who need affordable therapy, but I also accept private pay for folks who need more privacy or don’t want to involve their insurance companies. On social media, I post mental health tips and relatable content, and am also working on publishing some on-demand workshops, in hopes that folks outside of my practice can benefit too. Overall, scaling my business has allowed me to create a variety of offerings for wherever folks are in their journey.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.laurasgrolcsw.com
- Instagram: @laurasgrolcsw
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/laurasgro