In our June 11th 2012 Double Take Column, in the Lawrence Journal World, teen coauthor and Free State High School senior, Miranda Davis wrote, “Whatever path you take, it’s important to have a general plan and a couple of long and short term goals. This is the framework that guides our big decisions in life. Use your plan as a roadmap, but don’t be afraid to try a few different directions. Then you can use your goals to check your progress. We should always be asking ourselves, ‘Where do I want to be in five years? Ten years? Is this what I need to do to get me there?’ If down the road you are happy with your life and your success, it won’t matter what path you took to get there, as long as you are making smart, planned decisions now.”
As the sole owner of a 2.5-million-dollar business that serves thousands of clients in the area, including vulnerable children and teens, I understood early on that I needed to think about a responsible succession.
- Dr. Wes Crenshaw
Ah, such words of wisdom from an eighteen-year-old. Though she was responding to a teenager’s question about her career plan, her thoughts came at an ideal time for me. We all need to keep asking ourselves those kinds of life questions — at eighteen, at thirty, for me, as I entered my 50s that year and again now, as I’m closing in on 64.
In June 2012, after 18 months of preparation, I launched Family Psychological Services with a web post about my “mid-life crisis,” which I proposed to be both a normal evolution and not really necessarily a crisis. This was following thirteen years as co-owner of another, now closed, practice in Lawrence. The last thirteen years has been a demanding journey, bootstrapping a completely new practice, growing our staff and clientele, writing books and appearing often, for several years, on public radio and commercial TV. I also continued my newspaper column for several years.
Family Psychological Services had just about hit its stride, when, in Spring 2020, while I was working on a follow up to I Always Want to Be Where I’m Not: Successful Living with ADD and ADHD, the pandemic hit. I realize we all go to the pandemic when we want to discuss some kind of titanic shift in the universe. Some of those comparisons are spot on. Others a bit exaggerated or misplaced. For the world of therapists and therapy, the change was beyond anything any of us could have imagined. It quite literally shifted the entire industry in a direction that remains, for better or worse, until this day. I’ll do another post on that sometime down the road, but for now take it as an article of faith – nothing is the same in our business world as it was in 2019.
The most notable change was expansion. The need for services exploded in 2020 and 2021 to the point we were getting 150 requests for services per month and we couldn’t really hire fast enough to keep up with the demand. Eventually we caught up, but it was a tough slog. In the years since, the changes in the industry have only grown, even as we’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out both what to do now, and what is coming next. It’s a daily conversation.
As the sole owner of a 2.5-million-dollar business that serves thousands of clients in the area, including vulnerable children and teens, I understood early on that I needed to think about a responsible succession. Having worked closely with both Hannah Parsons, LSCSW and Jessica Allison, LSCSW for several years now, I have come to respect their balance of clinical wisdom and business acumen. We began extensive discussions and planning in late summer 2025 and announced in June 2026 the plan for them to take over the business in early fall of 2029.
I have spoken with most of my clients about this, particularly newer clients who might rightfully be concerned about the impact on their treatment. The answer is that there should be none for the foreseeable future. I will continue to see about sixteen clients a week for the next three years while managing my tasks at the business and allow Jessica and Hannah to manage theirs. I plan to continue in an emeritus phase after 2029, seeing ten to sixteen clients a week, but will probably take on fewer going forward.
One change that is already in place has to do with the ages of clients I see. Three years ago, shortly after taking on a fourteen-year-old and realizing she might well stick around on and off through college, I started doing the math. If she enters as a freshman in fall of 2027 and graduates in 2031, then goes on to graduate school, I’ll be about 71 when she walks the stage for the final time. That could be pushing it. So, in the interest of wise and responsible planning, I started increasing the age of clients I’m intaking. Unless it’s a very specific situation, I’m now primarily seeing college students, couples, and certain individuals within my practice interests.