The Observer's Notebook

Why Your Private Practice Stopped Growing (And It's Not Your Niche) You know what I'm tired of watching? Practice owners who've done everything right getting told to niche harder. She's been in practice for ten years. She has a full caseload. Her website works. She did the niche work already, years ago. And she's still getting told by every article, every podcast, every consultant that what she needs to do is niche down more. No. She doesn't. That's not what's happening in her practice. And part of why nobody is naming what's actually happening is that the entire industry around growing a private practice is built for people who are just starting out. Which is fine. New practitioners need that advice. It works for them. But if you've been in practice for seven, ten, twelve years, and the growth has stopped, and you can feel it, and you've been quietly wondering what's going on, there's almost nothing being written for you. So you end ...

  Why Business Coaching Didn't Work for You For founders who have done the work, hired the coach, showed up to every call, and still feel like something is unresolved. Let's start with what's not true. It's not that you weren't committed. You showed up. You answered the questions honestly. You did the reflective exercises and filled out the intake forms and came to every call prepared. By any reasonable measure, you were a good client. It's not that coaching is broken. Coaching works. For the right problem, at the right moment, with the right person, it is a genuinely useful thing. I'm not here to burn it down. What's true is something quieter and more specific than either of those explanations. The process was solving the wrong problem. And because the process was confident and structured and staffed by someone with good intentions and real credentials, you didn't question it. You assumed the misfit was you. It wasn't. Coaching Is Built on a Pre...