Balancing Motherhood and a Private Practice

“I knew that becoming a new parent was going to be hard. I feel really, really proud that part of my work is taking care of my two-year-old daughter,” Taylor Moss, MS, LMFTA says as she walks with her daughter to a playground and assists her down the slide. Taylor and her family live in Seattle, Washington where she specializes in individual, couple, and family therapy.

Taylor began her career as a certified sign language interpreter, but her personal experience with marriage counseling inspired her to become a therapist herself and offer the same support to others. “I got interested in therapy because of the experience that my husband and I had,” she says. “We did premarital therapy. Our therapist really helped guide us and align us as this new couple. I came away from that saying ‘This is what I want to do.’”

Pursuing Career Ambitions and Managing a Family

Now, Taylor is a licensed marriage and family therapist, focusing on relationship issues, premarital counseling, women’s issues, depression, and anxiety. She’s worked hard to make her practice a therapeutic space where everyone’s individual strengths are valued and explored. Staying true to her early roots in sign language interpretation, she continues to leverage her experience to help Deaf and hard of hearing clients and their families. 

Getting her practice up and running had its own set of challenges. But the process was made a whole lot easier because of her practice management system. “If anyone asks what it was like opening my practice, I’ll say it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” she says. “It’s hard to even fathom not having SimplePractice helping me manage my practice because I rely on it so much.” 

As any working parent can attest, it’s a daily struggle to balance the demands of work and family life, especially without support. Taylor says, “The shift from being a full-time parent to a therapist can be quite jarring. But it also feels really streamlined into these two roles that I have as owner and manager of this private practice and also COO of my family life.”

Transitioning to Full-Time Business Owner 

Taylor wanted the transition to being a full-time business owner to be sustainable and long term, and SimplePractice helped her do that. She recalls, “When I started my private practice, a lot of my colleagues started with ‘paper-and-pen’ because they wanted to save money. But I knew that eventually I wanted more, so I started with an EHR that could grow with me.” 

One of the main advantages of using an EHR is the automation of necessary, everyday tasks that eat up a lot of the hours in the day that could be spent with clients. For Taylor, finding a way to make her software work for her by simplifying some of those tasks, like automatic appointment reminders, was crucial. “Knowing that SimplePractice is doing the work to remind my clients for their appointments is so helpful,” she says. “It was a selling feature for me.” 

Finding a Support Network

Another advantage Taylor found with her EHR was the support network that comes along with it. Jumping into the world of private practice alone can be overwhelming, and having experts to answer any questions and offer support is a huge help. Taylor has experienced that support network first hand at SimplePractice. “I know that if I have a question there are a lot of different ways to contact SimplePractice—through email, chat…” she says. 

She’s also experienced first-hand what it means to have a dedicated support team that works to provide resources that make her job easier and her practice better. She says, “SimplePractice contacted me and said ‘Hey, we completed this feature that you asked for. Go ahead and try it out.’ I was just really impressed that they heard and remembered my voice.”

Building a Lasting Business

Taylor was able to build a strong foundation for a flourishing practice and find her right balance between motherhood and her career. “I’m really proud of the fact that I’m a business owner, that I’m a woman running my own career, and that I get to be nimble about how I do that,” she says. “I’m so thankful and feel fortunate that I’m able to do that and be with my family as well.”

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