Overview
Linda Richardson spent two decades as a state counselor before retiring and building something she had never had before: a practice entirely her own. Guidance, Inspiration and Resilience, LLC is a solo private practice where Linda sets her own schedule, her own rates, and her own pace.Meet Linda Richardson
Linda Richardson, MS, CRC, CCATP, LPC, has been helping people for most of her professional life. After 20 years in state services, she retired and started over on her own terms.
She began on a third-party teletherapy platform to stay connected to clients while learning the virtual model. It got her comfortable with the remote model, but the clinical limitations eventually became impossible to work around: notes were handwritten, billing was manual, and adjusting how often she saw a client was surprisingly hard to do. Today, she runs everything through Carepatron from one place.The first change was the freedom to slow down.
After 20 years working inside systems that set the rules, she had a clear picture of what she didn’t want her practice to look like. What she didn’t anticipate was running into the same problem on a teletherapy platform.
Session frequency was largely fixed. Moving a client from weekly to bi-weekly, monthly, or PRN, a natural part of therapeutic progression, wasn’t something the platform supported. Clients could pause entirely or request a monthly check-in, but the gradual step-down that builds independence wasn’t an option.
### “This made it difficult to allow clients to practice the skills they learned independently within therapy.”
Everything outside the platform was manual too. Handwritten notes, no integrated billing, administrative tasks that followed her out of every session.
The scheduling problem was solved on day one. Linda can now move clients through levels of care as their progress warrants, more support when someone is in crisis, more space when they’re integrating, PRN when they’re holding their gains.
### “It feels less like moving clients along a timeline and more like walking alongside them, honoring where they are and what they’re ready for.”
For a counselor who spent two decades inside other people’s calendars, that’s not a small thing. It’s the actual practice she went into private work to build.The bigger change is the mental space at the end of a day.
AI-assisted notes changed the shape of her evenings. Without the weight of writing everything down after sessions, she has room to actually think. To think about patterns, about timing, about what a client needs next.
### “I now spend time after sessions researching, gathering, or pondering topics covered in the session. This allows me to give deeper, more comprehensive feedback for clients’ next steps.”
The work she always wanted to do, the deeper, slower, more reflective kind, finally has somewhere to live in her week.
Linda is still building. She’s adding clients on her own timeline, and the foundation she has now is the practice she actually wants to run.
The practice is hers. The pace is hers. And for the first time, so is everything else.
