Sep 11, 2026
We are proud to share that VOX Mental Health Clinical Director and Founder Laura Fess, MSW, RSW, was recently featured in She & Success Business Magazine in an interview exploring the growth of VOX from a solo psychotherapy practice into a team of 15 clinicians.
The feature, From One to Fifteen: Growing VOX Mental Health with Integrity and Care, looks beyond the numbers to explore a question that has been central to VOX from its beginning: Can a mental health practice grow within a competitive marketplace without allowing business priorities to take precedence over clinical ones? For us, the answer has always needed to be yes.
VOX did not begin with a goal of becoming a large practice. It began with a question about what private mental health care could look like when clinical ethics were treated not as a limitation on business, but as the framework through which the business itself was built.
As Laura discusses in the interview, there can be an inherent tension between the values of social work and the demands of operating a business. Private practices need to remain financially sustainable, employ people, invest in infrastructure, reach new clients, and make responsible business decisions. At the same time, social workers have professional and ethical obligations that cannot become secondary to growth.
That tension has influenced many of the decisions VOX has made along the way.
We established our mission and values before developing a growth strategy. We hired slowly rather than filling positions simply because there was demand. We invested in clinicians with distinct areas of expertise rather than expecting every therapist to treat every presenting concern. And perhaps most importantly, we have tried to remain comfortable saying, “We may not be the right place for this.”
Sometimes ethical care means accepting a new client. Sometimes it means referring them elsewhere.
Growth should never require clinicians to practise beyond their competence or a practice to prioritize retaining a referral over helping someone find the most appropriate care.
Growing from one clinician to a team of 15 is something we are incredibly proud of, but the number itself is not what feels most significant. What matters is how that growth occurred. Every clinician at VOX is a Master’s-level Registered Social Worker. Our therapists bring significant clinical experience and pursue additional education and training within their areas of practice.
Rather than attempting to create a team of generalists who treat everything, we have intentionally developed a practice with clinicians who bring different areas of specialization. That means we can increasingly consider not simply whether VOX provides therapy for a particular concern, but which clinician has the training, experience, therapeutic approach, and scope of practice best aligned with the person seeking support- the distinction matters.
The interview also explores an area we think deserves considerably more conversation within private practice: ethical marketing. Mental health care exists within a marketplace, but the people seeking therapy are not simply consumers making an ordinary purchasing decision.
They may be grieving, frightened, overwhelmed, experiencing relationship distress, navigating trauma, or searching for help during one of the most vulnerable periods of their lives. That creates a responsibility in how mental health services are communicated.
At VOX, our approach to marketing has therefore been grounded primarily in education. We do not believe people should have to become clients in order to benefit from something we share. Our blogs, social media posts, and educational resources are designed to help people better understand mental health, relationships, trauma, parenting, grief, neurodivergence, and the many other experiences our clinicians encounter in their work.
If someone reads one of our articles (although not a substitute for psychotherapy), understands themselves differently, has a more productive conversation with their partner, recognizes that their child may need support, or finally finds language for an experience they have struggled to articulate, that content has already served a purpose.
Visibility matters, but how we become visible matters too.
There are faster ways we could have grown VOX.
We could have hired more quickly.
Expanded more aggressively.
Borrowed money to accelerate growth.
Accepted referrals outside our strongest areas of practice.
Used more persuasive marketing strategies.
We chose not to.
VOX has grown without any business debt, with investments funded through the practice itself. Growth has been directed toward clinician education, our physical space, community involvement, local partnerships, educational resources, and gradually expanding our team according to areas of genuine clinical need.
That approach is not always the fastest, but speed has never been the primary measure. Sustainability, integrity, and quality of care are.
Being featured by She & Success Business Magazine is an exciting milestone for VOX, particularly because the conversation was not simply about entrepreneurship or growth. It was about the values underneath that growth.
We are proud that VOX has grown from one clinician to fifteen, but we are even more proud that, as the organization has become larger, the fundamental question guiding our decisions has remained remarkably consistent:
Is this good for the people we serve, clinically responsible for the therapists providing the care, and consistent with who we say we are?
Read Laura Fess's full interview, “From One to Fifteen: Growing VOX Mental Health with Integrity and Care,” in She & Success Business Magazine.
