From IBM to a $2 Million Counseling Business

October 14, 2026 - 03:42

Becky DeGrossa spent 20 years building a career at IBM before deciding to change direction entirely. She went back to school and became a therapist, a move that eventually led her to launch CounselingWise as a side project. What started small has since grown into a full-time operation generating $2 million in revenue.

Her path was not a straight line. Two decades in the corporate world gave her the discipline and business sense she would later rely on, but the shift to therapy required starting over in many ways. Building a private practice taught her the day to day realities of running a service business, from managing clients to handling the paperwork that comes with it.

CounselingWise began as a way to support that work, but demand pushed it beyond a side gig. DeGrossa, now 66, eventually left her therapy practice behind to focus on the company full time. The transition meant trading one set of challenges for another, including hiring, operations, and the pressure of sustaining growth.

Her story reflects a broader pattern of workers who start something on the side and discover it can outperform the job they spent years building. For DeGrossa, the payoff came from patience and a willingness to adapt when the side project proved it had more potential than expected.