Savvy business students watch trends. Mental health is a growth sector, with demand climbing year after year, while plenty of legacy industries are shrinking. But a trend only matters if you pair it with your why. Here are the five questions worth asking anyone in this business, with our honest answers.
1. Why would a mental health clinic show up at business events?
Because it’s easy to become unbalanced in any demanding work, and owning a group practice is no different: people, funding, administration, a lot of moving parts. We run a business whose product is balance. That makes us an interesting case study, which is exactly why student consultants are taking on our growth challenge in COMM 493 this January.
2. How does a private clinic actually make money?
The honest answer: the hardest part is keeping operating costs down, and space is the biggest one. Commercial leases have climbed so high that many practitioners end up working alone just to avoid the overhead, and finding and keeping space that can hold a group practice is one of the heaviest loads an owner carries. We make the model work three ways: our practitioners are independent professionals who share session fees with the clinic, plus a minimum contribution toward shared infrastructure like booking, billing, and mentorship; we rent consultation space to complementary practitioners, which steadies revenue because counselling demand comes in waves; and we watch every cost, because the lease doesn’t care if it was a quiet month.
3. What would a business grad even do in this field?
Honest answer: field experience matters. Running a clinic without understanding care is like running an electrical company without knowing what a wire is. But clinics genuinely need business minds in operations, billing, marketing, and growth strategy. This isn’t hypothetical. This past summer, a co-op student from the University of Waterloo built us a new financial model around BC’s upcoming governance rules. That’s the calibre of problem waiting in this field.
4. What’s really driving workplace stress and burnout?
For Practitioners it is doing too much and working alone! For the group practice owner owner it is stress becomes burnout when demands outrun recovery: people can’t switch off, can’t hold boundaries, and the basics of balance go first. Several of our practitioners came to counselling from entire other careers, including teaching, IT, and health care. They saw the stress in their own industries and retrained to treat it, and that integrated life experience often makes them exceptional therapists.
5. Isn’t it uncomfortable, mixing profit and mental health care?
It’s the right question, and BC is answering it on a schedule. From November 29, 2027, psychotherapists come under the College of Health and Care Professionals of BC. Clients are never commodities, and the new governance is expected to reshape how group practices operate. We’ve aligned our practitioner agreements with those standards ahead of schedule, and our $160 student rate shows what mission-driven pricing looks like.
One thing we’d tell every future entrepreneur
Most of what you’ll see inside any business wasn’t designed in advance. It was built out of necessity. A booking system because the calendar overflowed. A policy because something went sideways exactly once. Protocols are just experience, written down. So the skill that matters most isn’t arriving with the right tools; it’s being open to experience and ready to learn, grow, and build new tools on the fly. And know this before you start: being an entrepreneur is not a job. It’s a lifestyle. It follows you home and it wakes up with you, and if you’ve chosen work that means something to you, that’s the best part, not the worst.
One more thing we believe
Don’t choose a business just to make money. Choose a domain that interests you or connects to your life somehow. Some of our best practitioners struggled in school before discovering the thing they excel at; others built whole careers elsewhere first. We’re often born knowing we’re meant to help others, and sometimes it takes a while to figure that out. Follow the trend if it interests you, know your why, and your work life gets so much more juicy and fulfilling.
Three books to start with
If this page sparked something, these are the two we’d put in every business student’s hands. Trillion Dollar Coach by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle tells the story of Bill Campbell, the coach behind Silicon Valley’s biggest leaders, and makes the case that caring about people is a hard business skill, not a soft one. The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks is about finding your zone of genius, the thing you’re built to excel at, and noticing the ways we quietly cap our own success. Lastly, StrengthFinders 2.0 by Gallup. It's pricey but Shauna found it worthy of her time! Trend plus why, one book each.
Shauna's cassette-era curriculum
And if you want the shelf that got our Clinical Director started years ago: Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich and his quieter follow-up Grow Rich! With Peace of Mind, Jim Rohn’s The Art of Exceptional Living, Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and, long before podcasts existed, a steady diet of the great Les Brown on tape. The tools change. The fundamentals don’t.
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