We caught up with the brilliant and insightful William Schroeder a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

William, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about how you went about setting up your own practice and if you have any advice for professionals who might be considering starting their own?

Starting your own business is always a bit of a scary thing to do. When I started out, it felt like a huge risk as there were a lot of unknowns. I tried to isolate the variables that would help my business. I officed with a psychiatrist, matched copays till I could take insurance, and did a ton of old school marketing. It was a lot of hustling but it paid off as my practice grew to be more than what I could handle and I hired a couple of friends to work with me. I continually hustled over the years and focused on building a practice where people would want to grow. Over the years we have grown benefits, training, and other incentives and worked hard on our marketing and relationships in the community to how hire over 45 therapists. It’s a process of building a sustainable business and quite humbling as it’s always changing. Luckily my background in technology, marketing, and business development has paired well with my wife’s strengths of planning, communication, and organizational development.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Before I was a therapist, I worked for Apple Computer in marketing and helped start a program that hired 3000 college students across the country. I also worked for a startup in the silicon valley for a bit in IT and then as a systems engineer – working as the technical interface between IT and sales. While I enjoyed technology, I always wanted to do more to help people. I have always been an empathetic person and enjoyed others and had wanted to be a therapist prior to going to college. After the 2001 crash of tech, I decided to return to New Orleans and start my own business while I was in graduate school. To be honest, this was humbling as it didn’t have much success but I learned a lot about marketing, branding, and business development. All of these skills later helped me with starting my group practice in 2007.

16 years later things look quite different than when I started as technology has changed a lot and the pandemic created a very different landscape in mental health. There are a lot of “Uber’s of therapy” that exist now that are focused on quantity, and not quality or personalization. Our company now covers pretty much every need clients may have and we have specialists in a huge variety of areas. We have 20 EMDR therapists which is a form of therapy that’s specifically good for trauma and PTSD. We have multiple child, teen, adult, and couples therapists. We do psychological testing for ADHD and Autism. We have a director of neurodiversity services and consult with large companies. We have an executive coach who travels to Europe and consults with large publicly traded companies like Dell. We are a one stop shop of quality care for our clients. What sets us apart from our competitors is that we are 100% locally owned and run by a husband and wife. We wear a lot of hats but focus on our target being high quality service to our customers.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Being a business owner is filled with high’s and low’s. You will have times that are wonderful and those that can be incredibly challenging and stressful. In those stressful times, I can be important to take a step back and refocus on what the problem is, how it came up, and what is the short and long term plan to address it. You have to be nimble and be open to a wide array of solutions. It can help to talk to peers and get ideas as well.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

My business partner is my wife and I met her at a wedding. I knew she was a therapist and beautiful but I didn’t realize just how gifted she was in areas that were challenges for me. She had worked with a non-profit that was constantly struggling and one that was very successful and taken a lot of important lessons from both experiences. One was thoughtful communication and planning. I have always been a big picture thinker and had a hard time with the small pieces. She’s a details person. The combo has been pretty powerful and it helps her family is very math-y and business-y. They have been like a team of consultants who help us at every turn. Choose your partners carefully as it can go a long way.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://justmind.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justmindaustin
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/schrowa/