She Built a Practice First. The Business Came Later

When Candice Thompson first launched her private therapy practice, she didn’t think of it as a business.

She thought of it as a calling.

“I didn’t realize I had a business until I’d had it for over 10 years,” she says. “As therapists, we’re trained in mental health—but there’s no training in grad school around marketing, scaling, branding. None of it.”

What she did have was deep clinical expertise.
Thousands of supervised hours. Years working in underfunded nonprofits. A passion for helping people find clarity and healing.

And that was enough—at first.

But over time, something shifted.
The work she had quietly built was thriving.
And she realized: she wasn’t just a therapist.

She was a founder.

Candice didn’t take the leap all at once.

Like many low-risk entrepreneurs, she eased her way into private practice—working evenings and weekends while holding down her agency job.

Eventually, her practice earned more than her day job.
But even then, she waited.

“I’m a low-risk risk taker,” she says. “It takes time to establish a practice that can sustain your life. And I wanted to do it right.”

Eventually, her employer gave her the final nudge—asking if it still made sense for her to keep splitting her time. She knew it was time.

She went all in.

What followed was more than growth—it was reinvention.

Candice started playing offense.
She began showing up on LinkedIn.
Started speaking. Teaching. Hiring.

She posted her first sponsored post. Landed her first brand deal. Got her first associate. Booked 18 speaking gigs in one year. Even began planning a TEDx talk.

But it wasn’t just about exposure.
It was about ownership.

“I made a game with myself last year,” she says. “Everything that made me jealous—I wanted to do. And I did. I just started saying, ‘If they can do it, I can do it.’”

That mindset flipped everything.

What she once saw as a saturated coaching space became a motivator.
The lack of certification among coaches didn’t discourage her—it pushed her.

“So many coaches were out there using business language therapists had never been exposed to,” she says. “And I realized—I’m doing deeper work than they are. Why wouldn’t I speak up?”

Today, Candice is more than a clinician.

She’s building a modern mental health business that doesn’t sacrifice care for scale—and refuses to let therapists be exploited in the process.

“What I’m selling is people’s freedom and healing,” she says. “And I’m good at what I do.”

But she’s also not pretending private practice is scalable in the traditional sense.

Therapy doesn’t scale like tech.
And when platforms try—things break.

“BetterHelp is trash,” Candice says plainly. “They pay therapists around $40 an hour and expect them to be available via text. That’s not sustainable. That’s burnout.”

She’s not just talking about it.
She’s working to change it.

Through consulting, she’s helping mental health startups avoid the mistakes that come from building without clinical expertise.

And for therapists?
She’s opening the door—showing them they don’t need to choose between being ethical and being successful.

She’s even considering building a roadmap to help other clinicians claim their identity as business owners—because too many still don’t see themselves that way.

Candice isn’t chasing scale for the sake of it.
She’s not building a group practice she doesn’t want.
She’s designing a business around what matters most to her:

Autonomy. Integrity. Impact.

And she’s doing it on her terms.