We direct bill counselling services to Pacific Blue Cross, GreenShield, Canada Life & Sun Life! For a full list of direct billing providers, click here.
Skip to content We direct bill counselling services to Pacific Blue Cross, GreenShield, Canada Life & Sun Life! For a full list of direct billing providers, click here.
The Happening Project encompasses coaching and marketing for therapists who are ready to build their private practice on their own terms. This ecosystem of guides and courses help you with marketing therapy and running a justice-oriented business without abandoning the values that brought you to this work.
Through supporting therapists in making value-led choices inside imperfect systems, you develop the business literacy needed to make those decisions with clarity rather than guesswork.
Whether you’re starting a new counselling practice or deepening your impact, this project gives you practical footing — so your values turn into workable decisions, not just ideals.
“I just want us to be building a million different experiments together – that’s how we’ll get free.” — Mariame Kaba
At its core, The Happening Project was built with one goal in mind: to give sustainable business practices, which are often gatekept by those who already have access to the most capital, back to the people.
These values-led, justice-oriented coaching, business consulting, quick start guides, frameworks and marketing courses for therapists support you to build a practice that actually works for you; while envisioning a world where therapists get done-for-you support or join a group practice because they want to, not because they have to.
Most private practice guidance assumes you can separate your values from your business decisions — or that if you just find the right strategy, everything will line up cleanly.
But if you’re here, you already know that’s not how this works. You’re trying to build a practice inside problematic systems, with:
ethical commitments you refuse to abandon
a body with real, non-negotiable limits
financial realities that don’t disappear because you’re principled
And most days, the hardest part isn’t knowing what you believe. It’s deciding what to actually do.
That’s what The Happening Project exists for.
The Happening Project is business coaching for therapists who refuse to separate their ethics from their bottom line. It is applied decision support for therapists who want their private practices to be ethically coherent and materially livable — without hustle, extraction, or self-betrayal.
This work helps you build a sustainable therapy practice reducing the constant second-guessing that comes with building a practice without relying on business frameworks that ignore our core ethics. It offers orientation and reflection so decisions start feeling clear, contextual, and grounded.
Most therapists don’t need more inspiration.
They need scaffolding.
A place where harm is named without collapsing into shame, where constraints are acknowledged instead of denied, where sustainability isn’t framed as a personal failure, and where ethics are treated as lived, imperfect, and ongoing — grounded in real business practices that actually hold up.
That’s the work here.
Running a therapist business that is both ethically grounded and financially sustainable is possible. This work is designed to support your private practice growth without hustle or extraction. Therapists use this project to steady themselves around decisions that previously felt overwhelming, charged, or isolating.
The goal is not certainty or perfection, but relief — not because the decisions get simpler, but because you have orientation you can return to.
People often experience:
The Happening Project includes a growing body of written and guided material designed for self-directed use. Resources evolve in response to the real conditions therapists are working within. These resources aren’t about checklists — they’re tools you can revisit when you need orientation in a moment of uncertainty.
This program was built by a practicing therapist committed to anti-oppressive practice, specifically for therapists just starting their private practice journey, and for established practitioners who want to restructure or audit their work through a justice-oriented lens — with ethical clarity and practical business foundations.
MA, RCC-ACS (she/her)
I’m an avid explorer of wonder and possibility, aspirational human database for systemic awareness, co-creator with the magic that still manages to survive in this dumpster fire world, lover of all things with faces that probably shouldn’t have faces on it & cat-reel aficionado.
I navigate the world as a cisqueer, working-turned-middle class, straight-sized settler from Hong Kong who lives with chronic pain and ADHD. My ancestors come from roots in Chaozhou and Nanjing, and a lineage of creating sneaky practices to survive necropolitics, and refugeeism.
Learn more about Abby.
founding and running Venturous Counselling and Reflecting on Justice, a virtual community for therapists to unlearn systemic oppression together through free resources, a community membership, and various training programs. As well as co-founding and co-running Prospect Counselling, a Queer, POC-led, radical training practice that redirects proceeds from services to provide further training so that SDQTBIPOC+ communities can access justice-oriented counselling, while funding projects for collective healing within communities. I am also part of the operations team at Healing in Colour and clinically supervise/provide business consulting to various local non-profit agencies and group practices.
Before becoming a therapist, I was formally trained in graphic design, marketing, and business management!
The modules Pt.1
Liberatory practice is all about world-building. What kind of world do you want to build with your practice? Define the principles that will guide your decision-making.
This session will guide your through:
When you speak to everyone, you speak to no one. Define your practice niche and core ethics while co-creating policies and services that amplify the impact of your practice.
These sessions will guide you through:
There’s more!
Websites don’t have to cost a bajillion dollars to be effective. Most people don’t need the super fancy custom stuff AND there are plenty of ways to make something look and feel custom without having to actually reinvent the wheel. Let’s focus on the difference that actually makes a difference.
These sessions will guide you through:
The unglamorous side of therapy practice management is still part of building something that lasts. Let’s go through all the nitty gritty operational building blocks so you can keep your practice sustainable and functional.
This session will guide you through:
Yes, there’s still more!
Now that your foundations are set, let’s get you out there! Create marketing and outreach practices that align with the impact you want to make in the world, while being sustainable and nourishing in the long run. Because marketing your private practice should feel like an extension of your values and not a compromise of them.
This session will guide you through:
Operating through private practice and being complicit in the medical industrial complex is messy and can bring up all sorts of questions to reconcile with our ethics.
This session will guide you through:
The Pricing
Many therapists use The Happening Project entirely on their own. For those who want additional support, guidance options are available. If you need direct support with a specific decision or to get feedback on what you have so far, you can book 1:1 sessions separately.
Payment plans available. 50% of all proceeds go towards mutual aid and collective healing initiatives in so-called BC.
Client love
Hear what your fellow therapists are saying about their experience with the Happening Project and/or private practice consulting supports.
Q&A
The Happening Project is a comprehensive program helping justice-oriented therapists in so-called Vancouver and across BC build therapy practices that not only support individual sustainability, but also contribute to collective liberation and care. This program was built by a practicing therapist committed to anti-oppressive practice, specifically for justice-oriented mental health professionals.
The Happening Project is designed primarily for self-directed use. There is no required group participation. Rather than a linear course you move through once, it functions as a body of applied material you return to when practice decisions arise.
You can expect structured guidance around fees, policies, capacity, sustainability, and the business conditions therapists are working within — without prescriptive formulas or growth-at-all-costs frameworks.
The program covers eight comprehensive sessions including Vision & Indicators (defining the principles that will guide your decision-making), Niching Your Practice & Business Model Co-Creation (defining your practice niche and core ethics), Branding & Website Set-Up (creating effective websites without huge costs), Operations, Accounting & Legal set up (all the nitty gritty operational building blocks), Marketing Strategies (creating marketing that aligns with your values), and The Personal is Political (reconciling the messiness of operating within the medical industrial complex while maintaining ethics). No question is off-limits, and we look at all topics through a systemic, political lens.
Unlike traditional business courses that focus on profit maximization, The Happening Project integrates justice-oriented frameworks into every aspect of practice building. We examine the messiness of being complicit in the medical industrial complex while dreaming up liberatory practices for collective wellness. The program was built by a practicing therapist committed to anti-oppressive practice and addresses the unique challenges faced by justice-oriented practitioners who want to align their business practices with their values.
The Happening Project is specifically designed for justice-oriented therapists, counsellors, social workers, and mental health professionals who want to build practices that align with their liberatory ethics. This includes practitioners starting new practices, established professionals wanting to transform their approaches, those working with marginalized communities, and anyone seeking to challenge oppressive systems through their practice. Whether you’re a new graduate or experienced practitioner, this program supports your professional development through an anti-oppressive lens.
That depends on how you built your practice! This program is rooted in our liberatory ethics and provides a framework to align our practice to this work. I go through these processes regularly to tweak my practice and address complicities in capitalism and the medical industrial complex and have found it helpful even though I established Venturous many years ago.
In particular, I find the group processes especially nourishing as I’m always left with seeds of reflection I hadn’t considered before.
It could! The program was designed to get everything up and running by the end of it. That being said, ableism and urgency under capitalism is rampant. Please take care of your bodyminds as you go through the program.
You receive ongoing access to the material so you can return to it as your practice, capacity, and circumstances evolve. Many people revisit different sections multiple times as new questions come up.
Yes! The program was built as a overarching framework for you to fill in your own personalized details. The only instance where location may be an area of consideration is in session 6 where we talk about tax and legal obligations. Through the program we’ll support you in verifying this information for your particular context anyway, so it won’t affect your experience with the program.
Recorded modules are about 30-minutes to an hour long each week. The rest depends on the time you spend on action-guides and processing prompts. Some weeks are more intensive than others, particularly the website and branding sessions and business model co-creation session. The program was designed to get everything up and running by the end of it, though you can work at your own pace.
There are three enrollment options: The Self-Study provides access to all recorded modules and materials to work through at your own pace. The Commons includes the self-study content plus a monthly voice note Q&A for support and workshopping. The Intensive offers the most comprehensive support with additional one-on-one strategy sessions and personalized guidance. Each option is designed to meet different learning styles and support needs.
For therapists who want additional support with specific decisions, optional 1:1 sessions are available separately or in the Intensive. These are not required to benefit from the material and are intended as intentional support rather than ongoing participation.
The Happening Project offers three enrollment options: The Self-Study option provides access to all recorded modules and materials for $497+gst, The Commons includes the self-study content plus a monthly voice note Q&A for $750+gst, and The Intensive offers the most comprehensive support with additional one-on-one strategy sessions for $1250+gst. Payment plans are available for all options. 50% of all proceeds go towards mutual aid and collective healing initiatives in so-called BC. Contact us to discuss pricing and payment options that work for your situation.
This answer might surprise you given the gatekeeping that happens in capitalism, but YES. Absolutely!
Depending on your proximity to privilege and experience of systemic barriers, I ask that you use your own counsel to decide how many enrollments to purchase. Your tuition goes towards keeping this program sustainable and towards mutual aid and collective healing initiatives in so-called BC.
I will not be policing this self-reflection process and trust that you and your community are accountable to your positionality.
For many folx who face significant systemic barriers due to race, disability, incarceration, etc. taking me up on this offer may be a difficult process. If there are any feelings of shame or accusations of undeservingness arising for you, I want you to know that this is exactly what the Happening Project was built for. This is not charity or benevolence, but one messy attempt at equitable practice and ethical alignment in the midst of capitalism.
If you’d like to discuss reciprocal resource sharing options outside of monetary exchange, please email connect@venturouscounselling.com and let’s chat!
Yes! Please do! You can book with me directly here. or email connect@venturouscounselling.com for support or to arrange an individual session. If you purchase the self-study option and gather your own group, you can also invite the facilitator into your group if you get stuck. The Commons and Intensive options include built-in community support and facilitated sessions to help you work through challenges.
Yes, Abby works as a business coach for therapists and counsellors across BC and beyond, bringing both clinical experience and formal training in design, marketing, and business management to her consulting work.
Yes. While the program welcomes all regulated therapists, much of the content is built around the realities of RCC private practice in BC, including sliding scale frameworks, fee setting for therapists, and navigating the BCACC code of ethics alongside justice-oriented values.
Aside from extenuating circumstances like family crisis and the onset of long-term medical concerns, the return policy for the program is 14 days. For the Commons and the Intensive enrollment options, we will not be able to offer a refund for sessions you’ve already taken part in. In these cases, I recommend deferring your enrollment to the next cohort or gifting your enrollment to a community member.
Click to access
These resources are born from real questions and challenges faced by practitioners like you, shaped by our community’s needs, and offered freely as part of our vision for transformative change in mental health care.
The Happening Project lives inside a wider ecosystem of practitioner support at Venturous. Whether you’re building your first practice or restructuring one that’s outgrown its original shape, these resources hold adjacent pieces of the work.
occupying the stolen, ancestral territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), S’ólh Téméxw (Stó:lō), Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh), Qayqayt, and kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem) peoples. Our relationship with these lands dictates our commitment to understanding and responding to the ongoing impacts of colonization in our practices in and out of the counselling room.
Learn more about the land you’re occupying at native-land.ca
No one taught us business practices in life, let alone grad school! These resources were born from real questions and challenges faced by practitioners just like you. No more reinventing the wheel on your own, we’ve gotchu!
