Cecilia Mannella

12/12/2025

07/12/2025

Your therapeutic skills are your leadership superpower. For years, I thought stepping into leadership meant becoming someone I didn't want to be—more authoritative, less collaborative, less "me."

But here's what 17 years of building group practices taught me: The skills that make you an excellent therapist are exactly what make you capable of transformational leadership.
Your therapeutic skills translate directly:

Listening deeply → Understanding team needs
Holding complexity → Navigating team dynamics
Creating safety → Building psychological safety
Reflective questioning → Coaching conversations
Establishing boundaries → Clear role expectations

You're not missing leadership capacity. You're missing frameworks that honour your clinical training while developing your leadership skills.

The real shift isn't becoming someone else. It's becoming more intentional about how you show up.

Most business leadership advice is transactional: tasks, metrics, compliance.
But therapy practices need transformational leadership: vision, development, empowerment, meaning.

And your clinical training? That's transformational leadership training.
You don't need to adopt corporate management tactics that feel misaligned with your values. You need frameworks built specifically for clinicians who are becoming leaders.

What therapeutic skill has served you most in leadership?

04/12/2025

It's 9 AM on a Tuesday and you're reviewing your associate's session notes.
You tell yourself. I'm just ensuring quality, but the truth? You don't fully trust them with your established clients yet. They're clinically excellent, but something feels off.
Sound familiar?

Here's what 17 years of building a group practice taught me: The biggest reason therapists struggle to scale isn't lack of clinical skill—it's that we were never taught how to shift from excellent clinician to effective leader.

The gap between being great at therapy and being great at leadership? Nobody prepared us for that.

In this week's Purpose & Profit episode, I'm sharing:
+ The 3 most common leadership traps that keep you stuck
+ Why your therapeutic skills are actually your secret weapon
+ The 5 essential leadership conversations that change everything
+ How to step into leadership without becoming someone you don't want to be

You don't have to choose between being a good therapist and being a good leader. You just need a different framework.

Link in bio to listen to Episode 19 🎧
What's your biggest leadership fear right now? Drop it in the comments—you're not alone in this.

21/11/2025

Purpose isn't just some fluffy mission statement. It's your operational compass that helps you make business decisions that actually align with who you are.

Here are the 4 key elements every purpose-driven therapy practice needs:

1 | VISION ALIGNMENT
Your growth strategy has to serve YOUR vision, not someone else's. If you want 20 clinical hours weekly, why are you working 35? Your purpose starts with your vision.

2 | VALUES INTEGRATION
Take your clinical values and bring them into running your business. You value accessibility? Your pricing should reflect that. You want work-life balance? Protect your schedule like it's sacred.

3 | ENERGY SUSTAINABILITY
Your business should energize you, not deplete you. Some therapists thrive with large teams. Others with deep clinical work and limited admin. There's no "right" answer. Just what's right for YOU.

4 | MEANINGFUL IMPACT
How does your scaling serve your healing mission? Are you replicating clinical work or multiplying it? Does your growth help more people access care or just make you more money? (Both can be true; we need to be honest about it.)

This is how you build a practice that reflects who you are and serves your definition of success. Not someone else's.

Full breakdown in this week's podcast episode—link in bio 🎙️
Save this post for when you're making your next big business decision. Which element resonates most? Drop a number below 👇

19/11/2025

You just ran your Q4 report. You hit your target—maybe even exceeded it. Calendar's full, team is growing, and from the outside? Your practice looks like the definition of success.

So why does it feel so empty?

Here's what nobody tells you: You can build a massively profitable practice that feels like a complete betrayal of why you became a therapist in the first place.

Or you can build one that feels like yours. There's a difference.

The missing piece? Purpose. Not the fluffy mission statement gathering dust in a Google Doc—but your operational North Star that helps you make every business decision.

This week's podcast episode dives into:
✨ Why success feels lonely when it's not actually yours
✨ The 4 key elements of purpose-driven practices
✨ How to use the RECLAIM process to find your authentic vision

Because your practice should reflect who YOU are, not what you think you're supposed to build.

Link in bio to listen to the full episode 🎧

09/11/2025

What are you reading these days?

We started a book club at the practice and this is our first book. I can't put it down!!

It's a beautiful blend of humour, vulnerability and personal story of the impacts of childhood abuse and living with complex PTSD.

As a therapist, reading this book provides an inside perspective of the messy journey of healing. As a woman, it highlights the complex world we live in and how healing is intersectional.

is an incredible writer and I'm excited to have our book club discuss this book.

This is a MUST read! 📚❤️

05/11/2025

You're investing in SEO. Your consult calls are booked. New clients are coming through the door.

But three months later, you're still scrambling to fill your calendar.

Here's what's actually happening: You're losing clients after 2-3 sessions, and all that marketing effort is literally disappearing out the back door.

This is a retention problem, not a marketing problem.

A strong retention rate for therapy practices is 70% or higher. That means 70% of your new clients should stay for at least 5-6 sessions (not just one follow-up appointment).

When clients don't return, you've lost all the money, time, and energy you invested to get them there. That's not just a missed opportunity. That's a revenue leak.

In this week's podcast episode, I break down:

The 4 main reasons clients leave early

Coaching questions to identify where YOUR leak is happening

How to track retention properly

Why saying yes to every client actually hurts your growth

Link in bio to listen 🎧

What's your retention rate? Drop a number below or tell me you have no idea (no judgment, most practice owners don't track it).

31/10/2025

Real question for my therapy practice owner friends:

Do you feel guilty about wanting profit?
Like making "too much" means you're betraying your helping profession values?
Yeah. I lived in that paradox for YEARS.

In one hand, my social work values—generosity, giving back, community service.
In the other hand, wanting to make payroll, employ people, and have profit left over.
The shame around wanting "extra" nearly kept me stuck at a revenue ceiling forever.

Here's what changed it for me:

Recognizing that when women make money through business, communities benefit MORE. We buy local. We collaborate. We support nonprofits. We invest relationally.

Making profit doesn't make you a capitalist pig. It fuels your mission.
But getting to that abundance mindset?

That required challenging some DEEP beliefs about money, worthiness, and what it means to be a helper.

New Podcast episode live now → link in bio 🎧

Tell me: Do you struggle with this? What beliefs about profit are keeping you stuck? 👇

30/10/2025

Hot take: Stop outsourcing everything you think you're "bad at."

Here's what I discovered when my practice was stuck at $500K:

I had this pattern; anything that felt hard, I immediately outsourced.

Didn't understand websites? Paid someone.

Overwhelmed with SEO? Hired it out.

Didn't want to design graphics? Delegated it.

The problem wasn't outsourcing.
The problem was I never learned how it worked FIRST.
I took everything back for one year and learned it all myself.

What happened:

I could see the FULL picture of my practice.
I knew exactly where to make changes for growth.
I became strategically informed instead of just reactive.
My revenue jumped to seven figures.

When you understand how all the pieces work together, you make BETTER decisions about:
What to keep in-house, what to delegate strategically, what to eliminate.

Nobody knows your practice vision like you do. When you outsource everything, you're selling yourself short. Learn it first. THEN delegate with intention.

Full episode on why this leadership shift was my turning point → link in bio 🎧

What's one thing you've been outsourcing that you should probably learn yourself? 👇