Most therapists launch a private practice because they love clinical work. Very few launch it with a clear vision of where it is going.
Melissa Manning is the exception.
By the time she founded M&M Counseling, a trauma-informed group counseling practice in Ontario, Canada, she had spent two decades in some of the most demanding leadership environments in social services: outdoor therapeutic boarding schools, adolescent prisons, Children’s Aid Societies, and children’s mental health agencies. When she finally went all-in on her own practice, she did not just hang a shingle. She built a clinic.
In this episode of FoundHer Rising, Melissa walks through the decisions, systems, and hard-earned lessons behind her evolution from solo practitioner to clinical director of a growing group practice.
Here is what she shared.
Your Vision Has to Come Before Your Systems
Melissa’s decision to build a group practice was not reactive. She always knew she wanted it. Her leadership background gave her the framework. Her clinical expertise gave her the focus: a fully trauma-informed model where every therapist on staff is trained in trauma, not just some.
“The majority of challenges we see have a trauma piece,” she says. “When we can recognize and acknowledge that, it helps the client’s healing journey.”
That clarity of vision allowed her to build with intention rather than scramble to keep up.
The Business Side Is Its Own Full-Time Job
One of the most honest things Melissa says in this conversation is that service providers often don’t realize they are signing up for two jobs when they launch a practice. The clinical work is one. The business is the other.
That means administrative policies, marketing, referral source development, and automation. It means learning platforms like Jane App and Google Workspace. It means building systems before you need them.
A professor told her in grad school, “You don’t put out your sign and they all come to the door.” That lesson stuck. Getting clients requires intentional, consistent effort, and the sooner practitioners understand that, the better positioned they are to grow.
Start with Daily, Weekly, and Monthly. Then Build.
When asked how she would break systems down for someone brand new to the concept, Melissa’s answer was practical and specific.
Start with what you are actually doing.
List your daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. Identify the tools that support those tasks. For her practice, that meant learning Jane App fully first. All intake forms, client reminders, and scheduling live there. Then Google Workspace for broader operational support.
The key principle: start small, get the basics in place, and build from there. Overcomplication is the enemy of delegation.
“Automation is really important, especially as you grow,” she says. “You get overwhelmed with a lot of things. Automation buys you back your time.”
Delegation Is Not Optional if You Want to Grow
This is the part most service providers resist longest. Melissa does not soften it.
She now delegates administrative work to her coordinator and outsources marketing. She is clear on her strengths and equally clear on her weaknesses. The weaknesses get delegated or outsourced. Her time goes to what only she can do.
“Some business owners get into trouble because they think delegation is optional. At the beginning, you have to do everything. But you reach a point where you can’t do it all yourself anymore.”
The business either grows or it stalls. Delegation is the switch.
Personal Adversity Can Become Your Most Powerful Professional Asset
This is perhaps the most resonant part of Melissa’s story.
She specializes in trauma and narcissistic abuse recovery. And the reason she does is deeply personal.
She is in the process of divorcing a narcissist. She identified narcissism in close family members. She navigated her own PTSD while running and growing her business at the same time. Her clients were showing up with similar experiences. And she realized she had something to offer that went far beyond clinical training.
“When I work with clients of similar backgrounds, I can say I understand how you feel, and they truly know that.”
Christine makes clear that Melissa is not alone in this. Nearly every woman founder she speaks with is navigating something significant in her personal life alongside the demands of building a business. The question is not whether those experiences exist. It is whether we let them become part of what we offer.
Marketing a Group Practice Is a Different Game
As the clinic grows, Melissa is navigating a transition many group practice owners face: the shift from marketing yourself as an individual clinician to marketing the clinic as a brand.
Her current approach blends both. Therapy listing services like Psychology Today feature individual therapists. The website carries individual profiles. But her networking, outreach, and broader marketing focus on the clinic and what it offers as a whole.
Christine frames the distinction clearly using the marketing funnel. The top of the funnel should be clinic-focused. Awareness belongs to the brand. As someone moves closer to a booking decision, individual therapist profiles and consultation calls take over.
“You can’t overly rely on one thing,” Melissa says. Her referral mix includes Psychology Today, Google Ads, Google Business Profile, email marketing, networking with family doctors, and word of mouth. Each channel serves a different part of the funnel.
The Foundation Is Who You Believe You Are
Melissa’s closing advice is the kind that stays with you.
“It starts with your own personal belief about yourself. If you don’t have a strong sense of self and strong beliefs about your capacity, along with self-compassion along the way, that’s your foundation.”
From there, do the work. Be willing to pivot. Adopt new tools. Grow with the times.
“If someone says absolutely not, I’m not using AI, that’s going to hinder their growth,” she says. “There’s a time and a place to take on new things.”
Connect with Melissa Manning
Melissa Manning is the founder and clinical director of M&M Counseling, a trauma-informed group counseling practice in Ontario, Canada. You can learn more at mcounselling.ca or connect with her on LinkedIn.
If this episode resonated with you, subscribe to FoundHer Rising wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you’re ready to move from consistent revenue to real scale, download Christine’s free guide, “From 10K to 40K Months,” in the show notes.
Full Transcript
Christine Hakkola: Welcome to another episode of FoundHer Rising, the podcast for women founders in wellness, coaching, and consulting who are ready to build businesses that create freedom, impact, and income. I’m your host, Christine Hakkola, business coach, former psychotherapist, and mentor to women scaling service-based businesses. Today I’m joined by Melissa Manning, founder and clinical director of M&M Counseling. She leads a trauma-informed counseling practice specializing in trauma, narcissistic abuse recovery, and workplace mental health. Melissa, welcome to the show.
Melissa Manning: Hi, thank you. Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Christine Hakkola: I’m so excited to have you. We were just talking about how you live in St. Catharines and I’m originally from Ontario. So even though we haven’t met before, I already feel a sense of familiarity. You’ve had a very long and rich clinical career. I’d love for you to start off by sharing a little about your background and what led you to build M&M Counseling.
Melissa Manning: I graduated with my undergrad in 2002. So it’s been a long time. It’s a rich and diverse history. In 2004 I moved to the States and started working in an outdoor therapeutic boarding school in Alabama. Very interesting. Literally running through the fields if someone was trying to run away. Within six months I was promoted to counselor supervisor. It was just a natural fit for me. Then I started working on my master’s, because being a therapist was something I knew I wanted to build toward.
I moved to Florida and was there for four years, working as a unit director in a prison for adolescents, managing all the staff while finishing my master’s. Also being pregnant the last year, which was an interesting combination. The strength I bring is really the leadership and operational side combined with the clinical therapy work. And then I moved back to Canada for personal and financial reasons. Canada is a lot more supported with social services.
Moving back, I took a leadership position at a CAS, a Children’s Aid Society in Ontario. That’s actually how I started my private practice, because I was in a leadership role but didn’t want to lose that connection with clients. So I always had a small private practice on the side.
Then I left the CAS and went to work in a children’s mental health agency. I was there almost ten years, always still doing my private practice. It grew, and then through COVID and maternity leaves, I eventually shifted to full-time private practice. I always had the vision of growing into a group practice because of my leadership background.
Christine Hakkola: That makes so much sense. Would you say your background in leadership and operations was the main driver of building a group practice, or were there other factors?
Melissa Manning: I think it was a little bit of everything. I really enjoy being a leader. A lot of my leadership style is about being in the trenches with people and figuring out how to help them do their job better. I enjoy the leading, the teaching, and the collaborating. I originally thought that would happen within a social service agency, but I pivoted and now I’m doing it in my group clinic. Right now I have two staff, an intern starting in May, and plans for future growth.
I’m also a perpetual lifelong learner. Always doing one or two courses, always reading textbooks. I think a lot of listeners can resonate. We get into a service-based business because we’re so passionate about what we do and we want to keep learning. Many of us who are creative and entrepreneurial also want our own business. And sometimes we don’t realize how much we’re biting off. It’s really two different jobs inside one.
Christine Hakkola: Exactly. You have to wear so many different hats. The transition from agency work into private practice sounds like it was fairly seamless for you. And I’m guessing with your background and experience, building a one-on-one caseload wasn’t all that difficult. So how did you know it was time to shift from one-on-one into building a group practice? What were you seeing or looking for?
Melissa Manning: Part of it was wanting to step back into more of a clinical supervisor role and reduce my caseload. And also wanting to grow and help more people. One of the things I want for my practice is a full-service model. So if I’m seeing a couple and they have children, one of my staff can see the children. Or if one partner needs more individualized therapy, I can refer within the practice. It makes for a more seamless and better treatment plan.
Another big piece was the trauma-informed gap I kept seeing. There’s a mixture of different therapists out there, but I want all my therapists trained in trauma, because the majority of challenges we see have some trauma component. When we can recognize and acknowledge that, it helps the client’s healing journey. For example, someone coming in on a stress leave might say they don’t like their job. But when we peel back the layers, there might be significant trauma there, or they might have had a narcissistic boss. A therapist with a trauma background really helps them achieve their goals.
Christine Hakkola: That makes so much sense. For listeners who are earlier on, whether they’re building a solo practice or have a full caseload in therapy, consulting, or coaching, what advice would you give about things to be aware of when making the shift from one-on-one to a group practice or expanded services?
Melissa Manning: You definitely need to have all your systems in place first. You need to know the business side. As therapists, we’re really strong on the clinical side, but there’s a whole business side you have to learn. Administrative policies, marketing, automation, networking. You’re essentially splitting your duties into two columns: the therapy side and the business side. If you want to scale and grow, you have to spend time on that business column.
Therapy can be a competitive market. You could start a private practice, but that doesn’t mean clients will come right away. You need consistent referral sources. I remember a professor in grad school saying, “You don’t put out your sign and they all come to the door.” That’s still quite relevant.
Christine Hakkola: Yes. And figure that out along the way if growth is your goal. I want to dive deeper into systems, because we can say SOPs, policies, procedures, and everyone nods. But for those listening who are new to the concept, could you break down exactly how you approached it? What was the first step?
Melissa Manning: Think about your daily, weekly, and monthly duties and identify what you’re going to do with each. For us, our client software is Jane App. That’s a great example of a system you need to know inside and out, because all your intake forms are in there, the reminders, the things you send to clients. Learning the software that supports you is the first step. Beyond that, learning Google Workspace and how it can benefit your operations.
Christine Hakkola: I love that. Start small, get the basics in place, and build from there. Otherwise you’ll get overwhelmed quickly.
Melissa Manning: Exactly. And then slowly build. I learned from my business coach that automation is really important as you grow, because you get overwhelmed with so much personally and professionally. Automation buys you back your time.
Christine Hakkola: I was leading a training last week and we talked about the difference between documenting complexity versus documenting simplicity. I have a tendency to overcomplicate things on my own. So one thing I’ve learned is to think about how a process can be made easier before I document it or hand it off. Either by simplifying it or automating parts of it. The tools available now, especially AI, make that so much easier than when I started in 2011.
Melissa Manning: Absolutely. AI has been growing and I hadn’t really used it much until the last six months. Now I’m definitely using it more, strictly from a performance and time standpoint. I can get more things done. It’s not about having it do everything for you. We’re still in charge of the process. I have a limited amount of time and I want to be resourceful with it. My coordinator and I have been using AI strategically. How can this help with this specific task? I think of it as a really well-trained assistant. And strictly from a time and efficiency standpoint, it has helped.
Christine Hakkola: Fantastic. You’ve held leadership positions before having your own practice. I’m curious about the differences you encountered in running a group practice. As you shifted from one-on-one to having associates, what were some of the leadership challenges or mindset shifts you had to make?
Melissa Manning: I was used to doing absolutely everything. So the shift was really about fine-tuning delegation as you grow. There are certain tasks I’ve now passed off to my coordinator, more administrative things. And certain tasks I’ve passed off for marketing. Knowing what my strengths are and what my weaknesses are, and figuring out how to delegate the weaknesses or buy back my time by giving those tasks to someone who’s really great at them.
Christine Hakkola: Such an important lesson. For those earlier on who feel like they have to do everything, that step-by-step process of identifying what to delegate is just the reality of building.
Melissa Manning: And I see some business owners get into trouble because they think delegation is optional if they want to grow. If you want to maintain a smaller practice, it’s possible to do everything yourself. And you have to at the beginning. But you reach a point where you can’t do it all anymore.
[RESOURCE — Christine Hakkola]
Quick resource for you. If you’ve hit consistent revenue but working harder isn’t creating more growth, I put together a free guide called “From 10K to 40K Months.” It breaks down what actually has to change when you move from solopreneur energy into real scaling: structure, profit, team, capacity, not just marketing tactics. If you’re ready for growth that feels sustainable instead of chaotic, download it. It’s free. The link’s in the show notes. Now back to the conversation.
Christine Hakkola: You’ve built a business you dreamed about for a long time. What would be some personal turning points, challenges, or lessons you’d love to pass along?
Melissa Manning: The first thing that comes to mind is personal life. It’s really challenging to build a business and grow when you’re navigating personal trauma and crises. One of my specialties is narcissistic abuse, and the reason it is comes directly from personal experience. I’m in the process of divorcing. I realized that my stepmother, who has since passed away, was a narcissist, and that my ex-husband was a narcissist as well. So I’ve been navigating these unavoidable traumatic things in my personal life while trying to build and grow a business at the same time.
The evolution into trauma and narcissistic abuse as a specialty really happened naturally because of my own experiences. A lot of my clients were coming to me with similar challenges. I thought, something is here. And it formed into a whole new niche.
Navigating all of that, including my own PTSD, while still running and growing a business, I’ve had people say to me, “Wait, you’ve been growing your business while going through all of this?” And I say yes. I’m still going. Still learning. Still pushing forward. For me, navigating personal life alongside building a business has been the biggest challenge.
Christine Hakkola: There are a couple of things I want to highlight here. First is just how important it is to normalize what we’re all going through. Whether it’s narcissistic abuse, trauma, or whatever it may be, I don’t think I’ve ever met a female business owner who wasn’t going through something in her personal life to some degree. We need a safe space to acknowledge that.
And specifically if you’re a therapist, having your own self-awareness is critical. Knowing your challenges and your weaknesses. Because that allows you to show up and be a better therapist for your clients.
Melissa Manning: Exactly. Self-care and a strong sense of self are foundational. We can’t show up for the demands of our business when we’re not able to show up for ourselves.
Christine Hakkola: And I’m often struck by how many women I speak with whose services align so closely with the gifts and experiences and lessons they’ve learned along the way. Can you say more about how personal experience can be a gift and inform what you bring professionally?
Melissa Manning: It was a natural evolution for me. After everything I experienced, and with so many of my clients bringing similar challenges to sessions, I felt a collective responsibility. How can I help people navigating similar traumas? Being able to bring my personal experience in a limited way, even just the emotional understanding, is meaningful. When I work with clients of similar backgrounds, I can say, “I understand how you feel,” and they truly know that.
My love for learning really shows in this too, because it started with me trying to understand my clients, then developing my own self-awareness, and then continuing that through more training and certification.
Christine Hakkola: Awesome. Looking ahead, twelve months to three years from now, what’s your vision for what you want to build?
Melissa Manning: One, three, and five-year goals are something I think about often. I want to continue growing the group practice. I’m looking at adding two or three more staff this year. I want to get the message out more about trauma and narcissistic abuse and about what it means to be a survivor. I was meeting with my coordinator this week to go over our marketing and networking plan to grow the clinic. Social media is going to be part of that. And I also have an idea for a book that I would love to pursue.
Christine Hakkola: That’s exciting. What has worked well for you in marketing? And what are the inherent challenges in shifting from marketing a solo practice to marketing a group practice?
Melissa Manning: Therapy listing services like Psychology Today are definitely important. Making sure you’re listed there, running Google Ads, and optimizing your Google Business Profile are the three main external things I’ve focused on. Internally, following up with existing clients and email marketing. And networking. I’ve been spending more time going to family doctors these past few months. You have to make sure you have different referral sources coming in. You can’t overly rely on any one thing.
Christine Hakkola: I love your focus on warm referral sources rather than just relying on the screen. I speak with a lot of private practice owners who struggle with shifting from marketing themselves as solo therapists to marketing a group practice. I see two approaches: some stick with promoting individual clinicians, and some shift to marketing the clinic as a brand. As the practice grows, promoting individuals can create problems, especially with turnover. What has been your approach?
Melissa Manning: I think the Psychology Today listings are more of the individual piece. The individual profiles are on the website. But a lot of my networking and outreach promotes the clinic and what it has to offer as a whole. There’s a time and place for both. I’ve done individual social media posts featuring different therapists. And my rack cards and flyers cover all of the services together. So honestly, I’m doing a mixture of both.
Christine Hakkola: I’ll frame that for the listeners. The top of funnel should be clinic-focused: who you are, what you do as a practice. As someone moves closer to a decision and becomes aware of specific needs, that’s where individual therapist profiles and consultation calls come in. Probably ninety percent of people start with a consultation call, and then it’s about finding the right fit.
Melissa Manning: Exactly. And if it’s not a good fit, we can make a switch. But that rarely happens right now, which is good.
Christine Hakkola: What’s the one thing you’re most excited about in the coming months and years?
Melissa Manning: The overall growth, and spreading the message about how we can work through trauma and through our daily life experiences.
Christine Hakkola: Fantastic. Final question, Melissa, for our listeners looking at what you’ve built: any last tidbits of advice?
Melissa Manning: It starts with your own personal belief about yourself. If you don’t have a strong sense of self and strong beliefs about your capacity, along with self-compassion along the way, that’s your foundation. Who you see yourself as, what your vision and values are, that’s what you build on. And then being willing to put in the work. There’s a lot of grind and effort involved. Entrepreneurs know that, or they learn it quickly.
And don’t be afraid to pivot and take on new things. We have to grow with the times. If someone says, “Absolutely not, I’m not using AI,” that’s going to hinder their growth. There’s a time and a place to adopt new tools and new approaches.
Christine Hakkola: Love that. Thank you so much, Melissa. For anyone listening who wants to learn more about Melissa’s work, where’s the best place to find you?
Melissa Manning: The best place is the website directly,www.mcounselling.ca. Or through my LinkedIn profile. And if you go to the website, there’s a messaging feature where you can reach out directly.
Christine Hakkola: Great. Thank you so much for being here and for sharing your journey. And thank you, listener, for tuning in to FoundHer Rising. If today’s episode resonated with you, follow the show, share it with another founder, and leave a quick review. It helps more women find these conversations. You can connect with me on LinkedIn or learn more at HakkolaHorizons.com. Until next time, keep rising and keep building the business that gives you freedom to live, lead, and create on your terms.
