Your best next step isn't in a five-year plan. It's in what happened this week.
Great businesses are built by exploring the opportunities right in front of you, not by working backwards from a long-term plan.
Therapists have a natural, well-trained gift for curiosity. You use it every day with clients. Focus that same superpower on what's around you.
Acquaintances, local businesses, nonprofits, problems, business systems, community events—all of these are opportunities. You never know where they'll lead. The payoff is downstream. And even if the payoff doesn't immediately translate to practice revenue, you've learned something or established a relationship that may pay off down the road.
Explore whichever interests you most—just make sure it's new and challenging, not safe and familiar.
Should you do workshops? What topic? Paid or free? For clients or referrals? The answers won't reveal themselves through analysis. You'll find them through action: Get curious, ask questions, buy someone a coffee. Then try it if it still interests you.
As we say to our kids, "How do you know if you haven't tried it?"
Curiosity isn't something to indulge once your practice is "established." Curiosity IS how you build something meaningful.
Stop working backward from where you think you should be. Start working forward from what's interesting you right now.
That's not just a better way to build a practice. It's a better business plan.
