On the 4th and 5th of May, I attended the Group Practice Conference (GPC) in Traverse City, Michigan for the very first time.
Hosted by Joe Sanok and the Practice of the Practice team, the conference brought together approximately 200 group practice owners, operators, clinicians, consultants, and suppliers from across the behavioral health space.
Going into the conference, I honestly didn’t know what to expect.
Ubuntu Freelancers has never really marketed traditionally. We’ve grown almost entirely through referrals, relationships, and word of mouth. So attending GPC was the first time we had intentionally invested in placing ourselves in front of the behavioral health community in a meaningful way.
And what an experience it was.
Ironically, I was first introduced to the conference about 15 months before I actually attended it. One of our clients, Melissa Schneider from Resolution Counseling Center, sent me the flyer for the 2025 event and said, “This would be a great opportunity for you to attend.”
At the time, it was simply too tight to make the trip happen – but that conversation started something.
During 2025, Ubuntu Freelancers underwent a major transformation internally. While we had historically supported businesses across many industries, we made a very intentional decision to niche specifically into supporting therapy and behavioral health practices.
We began refining not only the types of clients we wanted to work with, but also the systems we needed internally, the types of support our freelancers should specialize in, and how we positioned ourselves within the market. It pushed us to think more deeply about what practice owners truly need operationally, and how we could build a service model that genuinely supports clinicians as they grow.
Around the same time, I reached out to Joe and began consulting with him. Through those conversations, he helped me think more strategically about what Ubuntu Freelancers could become within the mental health space, and how we could position ourselves as a meaningful operational partner to growing practices.
So by the time GPC arrived, we felt far more prepared, focused, and aligned with the community we were stepping into.
One of the biggest surprises for me was discovering the incredible ecosystem surrounding the behavioral health space. I arrived expecting to meet therapy practice owners, but what I found was a much broader network of companies supporting practices behind the scenes from EHRs (Electronic Health Records) and CRMs (Customer Relationship Management) to analytics, marketing systems, operations support, compliance, bookkeeping, and client experience tools.
For the first time, I saw Ubuntu Freelancers not simply as a virtual staffing company, but as part of a much larger ecosystem helping practices grow more sustainably.
What stood out most was that the environment never felt overly competitive.
It didn’t feel like:
“Who’s the biggest?”
or
“Who’s winning?”
Instead, it felt collaborative.
People openly shared:
This community embraced us, and I truly felt like we belonged.
One thing that felt really special was that Ubuntu Freelancers seemed genuinely different within that environment. While there is already a well-developed market for software, platforms, or products within the space, we were talking about people, about how practice owners can reclaim time and reduce overwhelm by outsourcing administrative and practice support to highly skilled South Africans.
During my breakout session on working successfully with virtual assistants in group practices, one of the key themes we discussed was that support is often brought into practices too late.
Many practice owners grow their clinician teams without building the operational structure needed to support that growth, and over time they slowly become the operations manager, scheduler, inbox manager, HR department, and the person holding everything together. By the time they seek help, they are often already overwhelmed.
We discussed how operational support only works when it is intentionally integrated into the business. The most successful virtual assistants become true extensions of the team: they attend meetings, understand workflows, build relationships with clinicians, and take ownership of key operational areas.
That conversation resonated deeply with people throughout the conference, and it genuinely felt like we were introducing a new way of thinking about operational support to many of the people in the room.
One of my personal highlights was bringing a small piece of South Africa to the conference.
We gifted every attendee a handmade beaded bracelet created by women here in South Africa.
The following day, attendees kept coming up to me wearing them and talking about how much they loved them.
It was such a simple gesture, but incredibly meaningful.
For me, Ubuntu Freelancers has always been about more than outsourcing.
It’s about:
Seeing those bracelets worn throughout the conference felt like a beautiful reflection of that.
The conference validated something I had already started feeling internally:
Ubuntu Freelancers is absolutely on the right path by focusing intentionally on the behavioral health space.
Not because we are the cheapest.
Not because we are the biggest.
But because the need is real.
Practice owners are looking for:
And increasingly, they want partners who genuinely understand the unique pressures of the therapy world.
The conference also reminded me how much opportunity exists when people are willing to collaborate instead of compete.
I left Michigan inspired, motivated, and incredibly grateful.
And perhaps most importantly – excited for what comes next.
—
Di Luden
Founder | Ubuntu Freelancers
