Why I Built Doc Poppins

I opened a practice because I wanted to be a psychologist. I also became the person responsible for hiring, billing, marketing, software, and whatever broke that week.

That second job gets very little attention during clinical training. You can be excellent with patients and still spend your evening trying to work out why a claim was denied or how to replace an employee. Eventually, running the practice takes time away from the work you opened it to do.

I built my practice without investors and sold it in 2025 for seven figures. I’m proud of that. I also know how much work sits behind a sentence like that, and how little a sale price tells you about the experience of getting there.

The bakery problem

An idea from a business book has stayed with me: you start out wanting to bake the bread. Then you find yourself buying flour, pricing loaves, hiring bakers, keeping the bakers, and responding to a review about the crust.

I see the same thing with clinicians. Years of specialized training lead to a job that requires an entirely different set of skills. The clinical work is familiar. Managing employees, deciding what to delegate, and building reliable systems often aren’t.

And there’s no obvious clock-out. Friends hear “your own boss” and think flexibility. The owner is thinking about the problem waiting tomorrow morning. It can be hard to explain that to someone who hasn’t run a business.

Why I started Doc Poppins

As I built and sold my practice, I became increasingly interested in helping other founders with this part of the job. I still love clinical work. But I also like sitting with an owner, looking carefully at how their week is being spent, and figuring out what needs to change.

Doc Poppins grew out of that interest. It is for clinicians who want more time for clinical work, and for business owners whose days have filled up with responsibilities they never intended to take on. My consulting work includes founders here in Orange County and across Southern California.

The starting question is practical: which parts of the business really need you? From there, we look at what can be automated, delegated, or hired out, and what you want to keep doing yourself.

Where my assessment background fits

I’ve spent more than twenty years in clinical and forensic assessment. That work has taught me to look closely at a person’s strengths, limitations, and the demands being placed on them. A recommendation has to make sense for the person who will use it.

Doc Poppins starts with testing to understand that individual profile. I review each “Rx,” the recommendations about what to automate, delegate, or hire out. The assessment helps identify where someone’s strengths fit their work and where the current arrangement is wearing them down.

Software can help organize the work. I want a human responsible for the judgment behind the recommendations, especially when those recommendations affect someone’s livelihood.

This is consulting, not traditional therapy. I’m bringing my experience as a clinician and a practice owner to the business problems founders are trying to solve.

What happens next

Doc Poppins is preparing for beta, and I’m also taking a small number of consulting clients directly. If the business side of your practice has taken over your week, or you’re a founder trying to decide what to hand off, tell me what you’re working through.