After 20 years at IBM, I changed careers and started a side gig. Now it's a 7-figure company — here’s how I grew it.

This as-told-to composition is according to a conversation alongside Becky DeGrossa, a 66-year-old who is originator of CounselingWise from Boulder, Colorado. It's been edited for dimension and clarity.

I earned a flat in device discipline from Cal Poly and afterward spent 20 years in total at IBM, leaving the business in 2003. When I left, I was a adviser and managing principal, and I was expected to be foremost the squad up the elevation — but I fair really wasn't passionate concerning it at all anymore.

I spent a twelvemonth thinking, "I'm going to go do item else. I've been current forever. What do I cognize how to do? What do I akin doing?"

When I idea concerning what I liked concerning my Big Tech job, it was being a manager. The most meaningful part of my job was gathering one-on-one alongside workforce to assistance them out alongside a issue or trainer them along. I'd additionally been in therapy and had established it extremely helpful, so I idea I'd alter careers to become a therapist.

I earned a Master's flat in behavioral discipline from 2003 to 2006 and afterward worked as a practicing therapist. While doing this, I started a side gig from my therapy office, organizing small groups of therapists to display them what they needed to do to create their own Google endeavor overview and advance their website. This was the commencement of what became my promotion agency CounselingWise, which helps therapists get established by clients through these services as fine as tradition websites, SEO, and Google Ads.

As I spent additional and additional period on my business, I didn't have period to be a therapist and build my business. So I closed my therapy custom four years following I started it to prosecute my endeavor complete time, combining my technical, marketing, and behavioral discipline backgrounds.

It was difficult to halt my therapy practice — I felt honored to stroll alongside my clients through several extremely difficult things in their lives, and I didn't obtain leaving lightly. I stopped taking new clients correct away, but I gave my existing clients six months' notice.

We've been a seven-figure business since 2022 and hit $2 myriad in June 2026. The endeavor has made about $300,000 in gain all twelvemonth for the former five years. About 99% of our income is generated from done-for-you services, including satisfied writing, website development, Google endeavor overview optimization, and Google Ads.

Here are the key strategies that helped me build it.

1. I helped group do what they didn't desire to do themselves

When I started working as a therapist, it took me a during to fig out how to create my website visible. I idea it'd be uncomplicated to fair put up a endeavor location and get my phone to ring, but I established that Google's local algorithm was really a particular way of promotion I knew nothing about.

So I took classes to study hunt motor optimization (SEO) and satisfied writing. I archetypal took a way in copywriting, afterward learned concerning ranking in Google Places, and afterward learned concerning on-page SEO.

Once I started implementing what I learned in these classes for my own website, my phone started ringing. At that time, all my allies were therapists since we went to academy together, so I started instruction a category to another therapists concerning online promotion strategies. I held the classes in my therapy office. We brought in chairs and sat in a circle and I taught them what I was doing alongside my website.

I idea they'd do it themselves formerly I taught them, but most of them didn't awareness specialized adequate or akin they were fine adequate writers, and I realized there was a petition for these services. It was exactly one stage at a time, realizing, "Oh, group don't desire to do this — I could do it for them."

2. I systematized what I learned

What helped my business's growth was putting my period likewise into learning the specialized side, and afterward focusing on administration and systematizing techniques to scale.

I learned that in a small nimble market akin mine, whenever I discover a fine idea, I test it out a figure of times to see if it works, and afterward I systematize it and employ group to do it. And afterward I go rear about — cleanse rinse, reiterate — to discover the next hopeful item that I can test.

So I have a small endeavor betterment squad that does all this evaluation on SEO techniques to rotate into apparent in Google and AI search. This consists of on-page optimizations to the website, off-page link-building, and optimizations of Google endeavor profiles. If a particular SEO method works, afterward we systematize it, measure it, and rotate it out. We're continually changing our scheme to remain up to date.

One example of evaluation a new idea happened in May 2024, whenever a important Google Search records leak occurred. Based on that records and our testing, we added schema to our residence and specialty pages. We tested this alongside multiple of our clients and it helped them position better, so we rolled it out as a new part of our strategy.

3. I created a civilization anywhere my squad cares concerning my clients.

The another part of administration I concentration on is creating a civilization anywhere my team — which fluctuates between 40 to 50 contractors who I pay hourly rates depending on their function and cognition flat — cares concerning my clients. In my world, our clients are therapists who are extremely delicate to individual interactions, so we don't fair employ astute group who can crank out code.

We employ project managers, for instance, who have extremely fine group skills. They can activity alongside a non-technical client to reassure them the entire way that we have their finest involvement at heart, and we're going to portray them fine on their website.

Because of my administration cognition in corporate, I have a viewpoint of what it takes to be capable to build a really fine position as a therapist. So I importune on this entire client attention part for our clients, since they do fantastic activity in the world, and I desire to obtain attention of them.

The key is making certain that my specialized scheme and systematizing go hand-in-hand alongside client care, to create certain we obtain attention of our clients in the procedure and create them awareness held by us. Those are the three legs of the stool that have allowed us to continue to grow.

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