I'm a Counseling Graduate Student Building My Private Practice Website Two Years Before I Graduate. Here's Why.
Most people wait. They finish the program, pass the exam, scramble for supervised hours, and somewhere in the middle of all of that, exhausted and overwhelmed, working under someone else's schedule for someone else's caseload, they think: I should probably figure out this website thing.
I'm not doing that.
I'm Kim. I'm a first-year CMHC student at Antioch New England. I'm also a UX designer, a Squarespace developer, and the founder of Tiny Zen Studio, a web design studio I've been running quietly for the past several years while life kept happening around it. And right now, two years before I expect to graduate, I'm rebuilding everything 🔧. My studio. My positioning. My online presence. My content strategy.
I'm doing it in public, and I'm documenting it here, because I think the people who need to see this are exactly the ones who are currently waiting.
The honest reason I'm starting now
I'll be direct with you: I'm doing this partly because I'm scared.
Scared of graduating and having nothing built. Scared of defaulting to the comfortable path, working under someone else, billing insurance at rates that don't reflect my training, doing good work that doesn't belong to me. I've watched colleagues navigate that path. Some are content with it. Many aren't. And I know myself well enough to know which camp I'd fall into.
I want to practice depth-oriented work. I want to work with people navigating complex trauma, existential questions, the kind of suffering that doesn't resolve in twelve sessions. I've spent twenty years in Vipassana meditation, sitting with impermanence, practicing presence, learning to hold difficulty without flinching. That's not a footnote in my biography. It's the lens through which I understand the work.
That kind of practice doesn't fit neatly into a platform like Rula or BetterHelp. It doesn't bill easily to insurance. It requires trust, time, and a presence that communicates something specific before a client ever reaches out. Which means I need a presence that does that communicating. And that takes time to build.
So I'm starting now.
What starting now actually looks like
I want to be honest about what this is and isn't.
It's not perfect. I don't have a professional headshot. I don't have a full portfolio of therapy-focused case studies. I don't have a finished course or a polished lead magnet or a YouTube channel with a thousand subscribers.
What I have is this: a clear niche, a documented strategy, a real story, and a consistent commitment to showing up weekly and building the thing.
Here's what I'm building, in order.
The website
Starting with this one, Tiny Zen Studio. Repositioned entirely for therapists-in-training and newly licensed clinicians who want to build independent practices. The copy is being rewritten. The services are being restructured. The blog, this blog, is starting now.
The email list
A free Practice Launch Checklist is coming in the next few weeks. It covers everything a new or nearly-licensed therapist needs to think about to build their practice infrastructure, before they're overwhelmed by it. If you want it when it's ready, get on the list below.
The content
One post per week. Honest, specific, useful. Written for the therapist who is exactly where I am, somewhere between the credential and the independent practice, trying to figure out how to close that gap without losing themselves in the process.
My own practice presence
Eventually, not yet, I'll build out the web presence for my future private practice. The one I'll open when I'm licensed, in Los Angeles, working at the intersection of Buddhist psychology, somatic awareness, and depth-oriented approaches. I'll build it the same way I'm building this. In public. Step by step.
The fork most therapists face
Here's what I've noticed talking to colleagues, classmates, and licensed therapists who are further along than I am. The moment of graduation arrives and most people take the path that feels safest. They join a platform like Rula or BetterHelp, or they go work under a group practice. Not because it's what they wanted. Because the alternative felt too uncertain.
Platforms like these exist for a reason. They handle insurance billing, client acquisition, and the administrative overhead that can feel impossible to manage alone. That is genuinely valuable, especially at the beginning. But there's a cost that doesn't show up on the surface. You build no brand. You own no client relationships. You earn far less per session than your training warrants. And you have no equity, nothing you're building toward, nothing that compounds over time.
The therapists I most admire are the ones who figured out a third path. Not abandoning platforms entirely. Not pretending the logistics don't matter. But building something of their own at the same time, so that when they're ready to go fully independent, the infrastructure is already there.
That's what this blog is about.
What this means for you
If you're reading this and you're a counseling student, an APCC accumulating supervised hours, or a newly licensed therapist standing at the fork between a platform job and something that's actually yours, this blog is for you.
Not because I have it all figured out. Because I'm inside this exact experience and I know what it costs to navigate it without a map.
The gap between clinical training and business infrastructure is real. It stops a lot of brilliant therapists from ever practicing the way they trained to practice. And it's a gap that can be closed, with the right foundation, built at the right time.
You don't have to wait until you're licensed to start building.
You don't have to figure it out alone once you are.
And you definitely don't have to choose between getting clients now and building something that's actually yours.
Three things you can do this week
Claim your domain. Even if you're two years from graduation, your name as a .com costs twelve dollars a year. Buy it now. It's the foundation everything else builds on.
Write down your niche. Not your modality. Your person. Who specifically do you want to sit across from in five years? The more specific the answer, the clearer your future website becomes. One sentence. Write it down somewhere you'll see it.
Get on the list. The Practice Launch Checklist covers the ten things most new therapists skip when building their practice foundation, the things that seem optional until the day they're urgently not. It's free and it's coming soon. Sign up below and you'll be the first to get it.
Wrapping up
I don't know exactly what Tiny Zen Studio will look like in three years. I don't know precisely how my private practice will take shape, or which books I'll write, or how the intersection of Buddhist psychology and clinical depth work will find its form in my professional life.
What I do know is this. The therapists who build something real, who practice the work they trained for, with the clients they're meant to serve, at rates that reflect their expertise, are the ones who started building before they felt ready.
Come back here. I'll be building in public, every week, for as long as this takes.
Which, if I'm honest, I think is the rest of my career.
Build your practice before you need to.
The free Practice Launch Checklist covers the 10 things most new therapists skip when building their foundation — the things that seem optional until the day they urgently aren't. Dropping soon.
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