10 Things Nobody Tells You About Running a Business in Grad School
From someone who's doing both right now.
I'm not going to tell you it's easy. It's not. But I'm also not going to tell you it's impossible, because I'm doing it, and so are other people, and the fact that it's hard doesn't mean it's the wrong call.
What I will tell you is that there are things I wish someone had said out loud before I started. Things that would have saved me some confusion, some guilt, and some wasted energy. So here they are.
1. The path is lonely.
Your grad school cohort is focused on the clinical track. Your entrepreneur friends aren't in grad school. Your family is proud but confused. And the intersection of "therapist-in-training" and "business owner" is a small enough Venn diagram that you'll spend a lot of time explaining yourself to people who mean well but don't quite get it.
That's okay. Find your people online if you can't find them in your program. They exist.
2. Whatever you're selling has to be easy to you.
Low cognitive load is not a nice-to-have. It's a requirement.
You're already in grad school. You're already reading, writing, sitting with clients, processing supervision, studying for exams. Whatever you add on top of that has to draw from a different well, or you will burn out fast. This isn't the time to learn a brand new skill set from scratch and try to monetize it simultaneously. Pick something you already do well, something that feels natural, something that doesn't cost you the same kind of mental energy as your clinical work. The business learning curve is already steep enough.
3. Guard your capacity like your life depends on it.
Because if we’re being real, it kind of does.
Every yes to something that drains you is a no to something that matters. That goes for client work, social obligations, opportunities that sound good on paper, and anything else competing for your attention. You have less capacity than you think, and more will be asked of you than you expect. Get comfortable saying no. Get comfortable with a shorter to-do list. Get comfortable with the fact that doing less, but doing it well, is actually the goal.
4. You control your calendar. You also only get paid when you work.
This is the trade-off nobody glamorizes. The freedom is real. You can schedule around classes, practicum, supervision, bad mental health days. You're not asking anyone for time off. That part is genuinely good. But there's no PTO. No salary. No steady paycheck regardless of what your week looked like. When you're not working, you're not earning. That's a real adjustment, especially if you're coming from a salaried job, and it's worth going in with eyes open.
5. Nothing exciting is going to happen for the first 4 to 6 months.
Maybe longer. And that's normal. Consistency is the whole game in the early stages, and consistency is boring. You're posting, pitching, showing up, and often hearing nothing back. The algorithm isn't moving. The inquiries aren't coming. It feels like you're doing everything right and getting nothing for it.
You probably are doing things right. It just takes longer than anyone wants to admit. Stay consistent anyway.
6. Don't think of it like a startup.
Startup culture is intimidating, expensive, and not relevant to what most people in grad school are building.
You don't need a pitch deck. You don't need investors. You don't need to scale before you've made your first dollar. You need to figure out what the smallest viable version of this looks like, and start there. It might be cheaper to launch than you think. A website, a way to get paid, and one person willing to hire you. That's it. Everything else can come later.
7. A lot of people aren't going to understand. That's okay.
Some people will think it's too much. Some will think you're scattered. Some will wait for you to pick one thing and commit to it. You don't owe anyone a coherent explanation for a path they haven't walked. This is your life and your call. The people who matter will come around when they see it working, and the people who don't come around weren't your people anyway.
8. The goal is to be ahead by the time supervision hits.
This is the long game, and it's worth keeping in mind when the early months feel thankless.
Supervision is expensive. Internship is often unpaid. The post-licensure years are notoriously underpaid. If you spend grad school building something that generates income on its own, you enter that season with options. You're not scrambling. You're not taking the first job that will have you. You have a financial cushion that grew while you were learning. That's the version of this that makes the hard parts worth it.
9. Getting clients is way harder than keeping them.
In my experience, at least. And I think this surprises a lot of people who assume the hard part is delivering good work.
Delivery is actually the easier part if you're good at what you do. Finding the right people, getting in front of them, earning their trust enough that they actually hire you — that's the work that takes the longest and gets the least amount of credit in conversations about entrepreneurship.
Plan for acquisition to be slow. Invest in relationships. And when you do get a client who's a great fit, take care of them.
10. You don't have to choose.
Really. There's a version of this where you become a licensed therapist AND build something of your own. They don't cancel each other out. They can actually strengthen each other, if you're intentional about it.
The therapist who also runs a business understands the business side of private practice in a way that purely clinical training doesn't teach. The entrepreneur who's also a therapist brings something to their work that's hard to replicate. You can be a great therapist and a great whatever-else-you're-building.
If you're building your private practice and trying to figure out the online side of things, start here: What a Great Therapist Website Actually Looks Like. Or if you want to understand what actually fills a caseload — not just a pretty site — read this: A Pretty Website Won't Fill Your Caseload. Here's What Will.
Ashley Rhoden is a former corporate marketing leader turned strategist and website designer who works with therapists and private practice owners ready to stop being invisible online. She's also a grad student in a counseling program — not a therapist, not pre-licensed, just someone who understands this world from both the marketing side and the inside of a counseling program, and brings both to every website she builds.
Work with her to build a website that’s as unique as your sessions are. →
