Whitney Owens shares how an employer shutting down overnight forced her into practice ownership and ultimately shaped her approach to scaling a 17-plus-therapist group practice in Savannah, Georgia. We explore her shift from identity-based to values-based hiring, the role of SOPs in reclaiming sanity from recurring high-stakes work, and why the founder's ability to stay present and metabolize disappointment is often the real constraint on sustainable growth.

Lindsay Goldfarb didn't set out to build a therapy business, she started seeing a few clients to bridge a gap between jobs and accidentally discovered a niche serving young adults who wanted a therapist they could actually relate to.

Lindsay walks us through the full arc of going from solo clinician to founder of a growing group practice in Washington, D.C. She shares how overwhelming demand, a data-minded approach to risk, and a willingness to invest early — in admin support, branding, and physical space — allowed her to scale without burning out or losing the culture she was building.

For practice owners and service-based founders navigating the messy middle between doing the work and running the business, this conversation cuts to the heart of what it actually takes to make that shift — and why waiting until you're "ready" often means waiting too long.

Lindsay brings a rare combination of clinical training and analytical thinking to the business side, having grown the Sterling Group from a solo practice to a multi-therapist team while navigating two maternity leaves and a post-2020 return to in-person care.

Key takeaways include why hiring admin support before your first clinician creates leverage, how brand and vibe function as trust infrastructure rather than just marketing, the importance of slowing down to build systems after a fast growth phase, and why in-person connection is making a strong comeback with younger clients and teams alike.

Topics covered: solo-to-group practice transition, niche discovery, early-stage hiring strategy, brand investment for professional services, founder-to-CEO mindset shift, culture and accountability tension, demand-driven growth, in-person vs. virtual service delivery, accessibility in mental health.

Resources: The Sterling Group, Psychology Today provider profiles, Dan Martell's delegation framework, Michael Gerber's concept of the entrepreneurial seizure.

If you're a practice owner or service-based founder building something bigger than yourself, subscribe so you don't miss the conversations that make the journey feel a little less lonely.

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Episode Produced by Riggg Productions

Most business owners know they need to stop doing the work and start leading it — but the real bottleneck is the layer between vision and execution: managers who were never taught how to think like owners, develop people, or connect daily tasks to business outcomes.

In this episode, Wendy Sauré shares her career arc from running Jenny Craig centers to coaching small business owners through Michael Gerber's E-Myth organization to helping scale Siegfried from a small firm into a national enterprise. Along the way, she unpacks why the individual contributor-to-manager transition is the most underleveraged growth lever in mid-size businesses — and why efficiency without effectiveness quietly erodes culture, talent pipelines, and execution.

With organizations getting leaner, wages rising, and AI reshaping workflows, the pressure on managers has never been higher — yet most are still figuring it out alone, without frameworks, financial literacy, or real development from above.

Wendy brings nearly three decades of experience developing leaders inside entrepreneurial and private companies, from franchises to hundred-million-dollar professional services firms, giving her a rare vantage point on what actually makes managers effective at every stage of growth.

Expect practical insights on delegation as multiplication, why rigorous feedback is an act of care, how financial literacy unlocks better decision-making at every level, and why the "work on it, not in it" principle applies as much to managers as it does to founders.

Topics: IC-to-manager transition, E-Myth frameworks, delegation and talent development, financial literacy for managers, AI as a human-centered efficiency tool, scaling through people and systems, the cost of efficiency without effectiveness.

Resources: E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber, Scaling Up by Verne Harnish, Traction by Gina Wickman.

Subscribe to C-Suite Chronicles wherever you listen to podcasts and share this episode with a manager in your organization who deserves better support.

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Produced by Riggg Productions