An Overview of Private Practice Business Development

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Private Practice Business Development

In this video, I’m going to share with you the three phases that every private practice goes through: the start phase, the growth phase, and the scaling phase.

Start Phase

So the start phase for a private practice is at the very beginning. It’s going to be from $0 to $40,000. During this phase, the main focus is ‘startup’. To get going, to get your very first client. So, the sign that you’ve made it, that you’ve actually started, is that you have your first client. There are three main goals during this phase, it’s:

  1. To get the nuts and bolts going: so all of those things that you need to get in order, you want to get that going.
  2. To get client acquisition down
  3. To keep risk down, as far as you can, because you don’t want to have it be risky when you’re first starting a business.

Growth Phase

The next phase is the growth phase. This is going to be from around $40,000 gross to a $100,000 gross. During this phase, your main sign that you’ve made it is that you’re mostly full with your ideal client. So, you’re seeing clients that you want to see, at the rate that you want to see them, and you’re mostly full. You might even be turning some people away, because you just don’t have the capacity to see more people.

During the growth phase, you want to be optimising your time. You want to do this through people and services. So, for example, you might want to hire your first virtual assistant to answer the phones, to do your scheduling, so that you can be doing your sessions in your private practice. Or, you might want to have tools, like electronic medical records. As well, you want to be adding some part-time people to fill in the gaps. Who are you referring out of your private practice? You can keep those people internal. So, for example, if you do parenting work, maybe you need to have a child therapist, or maybe you need a play therapist, who is going to complement you, that could come in on a part-time basis in the hours that you have your office, but that you’re not actually in it.

Lastly, we want to start to asking ourselves: right before services, what do people need? Do we want to give them an infographic, some training, etc? And then during services, how do we give them even better service? Then, after services, what do they need? So maybe they need a group, maybe they need an eCourse, or a podcast. So we have ‘before’ services, ‘during’ services, and ‘after’ services.

Scaling Phase

The last phase of private practice is the scaling phase. This is from $100,000 all the way up to $1,000,000. During this phase, the biggest sign that you’ve made it is can you go away for two weeks without everything falling apart. Even better, could you go away for a month? Because we want to have the systems and the scaling all set up so that it’s not dependent on you anymore.

During the scaling phase the big focus is on removing hats. The very thing that it took you to get to six figures is the thing that you need to stop doing to get to seven figures. So, when you’re doing this, you want to ask yourself: should I be spending my time on this? For example, maybe you’ve been the accountant, maybe you’ve looked at all the legal paperwork, maybe you’ve done all of the billing yourself, or the phones; you really want to take all of those hats off. We want to move towards systematising everything. We want it to be a system that runs things, not you. Because, if it’s dependent on you, you really can’t scale.

And that leads into finding great people. Finding great clinicians, finding great front desk staff, finding great people for the phones, and finding great people to do marketing and IT for you. People that are experts in all these different areas, so that you can scale beyond your own abilities.

Take Your Practice to the Next Level

The people that I have seen through my consulting work, and in my mastermind groups, that have levelled up fastest through these three phases, are those that are in community. Those that are getting extra help and learning from people that have gone before them. We would love for you to join us! Head on over to www.practiceofthepractice.com/apply to connect with us so that we can help you continue to grow your practice.

 

Joseph R. Sanok, MA, LLP, LPC, NCC

joe-sanok-private-practice-consultant-headshot-smaller-versionJoe Sanok is an ambitious results expert. He is a private practice business consultant and counselor that helps small businesses and counselors in private practice to increase revenue and have more fun! He helps owners with website design, vision, growth, and using their time to create income through being a private practice consultant. Joe was frustrated with his lack of business and marketing skills when he left graduate school. He loved helping people through counseling, but felt that often people couldn’t find him. Over the past few years he has grown his skills, income, and ability to lead others, while still maintaining an active private practice in Traverse City, MI. To link to Joe’s Google+ .