Benefits of Practice Consulting

When you are launching a solo practice, stabilizing a practice, optimizing a practice, launching a program in a school setting, converting your practice into one with employees or private contractors, opening an additional location, or some other business endeavor in the practice realm, it is beneficial to have a mentor or be part of a practice owner group. It is can also be helpful in the beginning stages of deciding which path you want your career to go! Sometimes the formula for your work life balance you are striving for and the goals you have for your career and the skills you have, owning a business might not be the most advantageous route. Before I started Larch, and at different developmental cycles of the journey, I engaged in various forms of business consulting. From individual consulting, to business groups focused on larger practice structure. As a business owner, you will always find the things that are unique to your company, AND, there are a lot of things that are common across companies. Practice consulting helps you not reinvent the wheel where it is not necessary, and provides space to conceptualize new ideas in a way you can launch a thought-out program or company. It also allows you to get real data from someone who has lived the experience, and interacted with many other practices over time.

Why Synthesis Practice Consulting?

Every counseling practice runs on a formula. Some of the inputs are constants — the ethics and laws of the counseling profession, the realities of the field, the fundamentals of running a business, the challenges that come with growing a team. But most of the important variables are yours alone: your clinical philosophy, your skill sets, your available capital, your community, the work-life balance you’re building toward, the people you hire, the programs you want to run. Synthesis is the work of bringing all of those elements together into something coherent and sustainable. We will start from some of the knowns, add in your variables, and create a practice that is your own.

My own variables shaped Larch in specific ways. Carpentry skills from earlier business ventures meant I could build out our office suites myself, which changed what was financially possible at each stage of growth. Limited time — I was balancing being a solo parent 50% of the time, holding a caseload, and expanding the practice – which meant Larch had to be built with efficiency from the start. I also did not have capital, so Larch has operated with a lean model from day one. Different variables would have produced a different practice, or in a different time frame. Your formula will be different than Larch’s, or many others, but aspects will be the same.

I’ve built Larch Counseling from a one-person practice in 2016 into a two-location group with 15+ team members across our Duvall and North Bend offices. In that stretch I’ve navigated most of the transitions practice owners face: starting solo, hiring a first employee, converting to a PLLC, building out clinical and administrative systems, launching a program inside a local school district, opening a second location, working through a pandemic, and adjusting as staffing, community needs, and the field itself have shifted. Before Larch, I spent nearly a decade building and eventually selling a separate business — an experience that shaped how I think about ownership, growth, and knowing when a model needs to evolve.

Synthesis Practice Consulting is built on that lived experience. That’s the synthesis process — identifying the variables every practice share, naming the variables that are uniquely yours, clarifying the outcome you’re working toward, and solving the formula by bringing it all together into a practice that actually fits you.