167 From Manager to Mentor: Stop Babysitting, Start Leading Your Group Practice

If running a group practice feels like herding highly educated cats, this episode is going to feel like someone finally put words to what you’ve been living. I’m joined by Amanda Esquivel, a Texas group practice owner who’s scaled to 50 clinicians across seven locations—and she’s breaking down why most “staff problems” aren’t actually staff problems. They’re leadership-role problems.Amanda names the four roles practice owners bounce between when growth accelerates: babysitter/manager, bottleneck, firefighter, and mentor-leader. And she’s honest about where she’s had to course-correct—because when everything runs through you, you don’t just get busy. You get stuck. Your team gets stuck too.We also talk about what employees are really reacting to when they complain about low pay, lack of tools, unrealistic expectations, and “promises” that don’t materialize. Amanda shares the transparency practices she uses to educate rather than defend—like showing where the money actually goes, tracking attendance metrics without shaming, and building a training hub so clinicians aren’t reinventing the wheel. The throughline is simple: your job isn’t to be everyone’s emergency contact. Your job is to build people and systems.If you’ve been living in manager mode, exhausted, resentful, and constantly “on,” this conversation will help you shift back into leadership that develops your staff instead of babysitting them.In this episode, you’ll learn:The four roles group practice owners cycle through—babysitter/manager, bottleneck, firefighter, and mentor-leader—and how to identify which one is running your practice right now.How to shift out of constant firefighting and bottlenecking by building systems, metrics, and delegation structures that develop staff instead of controlling them.What staff complaints about pay, tools, expectations, and follow-through are really communicating—and how transparency and education reduce resentment and turnover.Practical leadership tools that support retention and accountability, including structured one-on-ones, attendance and caseload metrics, shared training hubs, and role clarity.If you’re ready to move out of manager mode and into grounded, sustainable leadership, start by grabbing the bonus resources that support this kind of systems-based growth. If you’re still clarifying how your practice should be structured, the free practice guide will help you name what needs attention next. For supervisors and practice owners who want clearer expectations and less daily friction, the Supervisor Checklist gives you a concrete place to begin. And if you want ongoing CE credit, leadership support, and real-world training you can actually apply, the Step It Up Membership is where this work deepens over time. Get your step by step guide to private practice. Because you are too important to lose to not knowing the rules, going broke, burning out, and giving up. #counselorsdontquit.