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How can a written business plan fix the number one mistake therapists make when starting private practices? Are you doing what you want to be doing with your business? How can you blend financial projections, market needs, and competition analysis into a simple and effective plan?
In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok discusses exactly how to write a business plan with Dave Lavinsky.
Podcast Sponsor: Therapy Notes
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Meet Dave Lavinsky
Dave Lavinsky is an entrepreneur, author, and business-plan expert with over 25 years of experience helping more than a million founders launch and grow their companies. He is the Co-Founder and President of Growthink, creator of BusinessPlanTemplate.com, and founder of PlanPros, an AI-powered business planning platform. Dave is also the author of the bestselling book Start At The End and has been featured in outlets like Forbes, Entrepreneur, and The Wall Street Journal.
Visit BusinessPlanTemplate, PlanPros, GrowThink, and connect on Facebook and LinkedIn.
In This Podcast
- Work with your financial model
- “Why am I uniquely qualified to succeed?”
- Look at the market needs
- Competition, marketing, and operations plans
- Dave’s advice to private practitioners
Work with your financial model
The most common mistake that people make when it comes to business planning is not having a plan at all! A basic business plan works with numbers, and that’s one of the easiest and most effective ways to plan out your new business well.
So, say you were starting out and launching your own new private practice, a basic yet successful financial plan would look a little something like this:
- Decide on the financial model and how much you will charge per hour
- Use your hourly rate to work out how much revenue you will generate, depending on how many hours you are planning to work
- Take this general income amount and make sure your expenses can fall within it
The core part of the business plan is this financial model or financial projections to understand the numbers. I know a lot of people go into private practice to help patients, and that’s great, but you need to make sure that you’re profitable. (Dave Lavinsky)
“Why am I uniquely qualified to succeed?”
This is a central question for your business plan. This answer has two parts: being a great therapist and being a great marketer.
You are uniquely positioned to bring your best skills forward and to position yourself within your ideal client’s community so that they can find you.
If you’re a great marketer but a terrible therapist, that will quickly come out, and you will lose clients, but “Why you are uniquely qualified to succeed” is a very important question … It’s important to think about … “Here’s where I stand now, wouldn’t it be cool if there were more reasons” And then build those reasons. (Dave Lavinsky)
Build on your current strengths, identify where you have the chance to develop, and build out those too as time goes by.
Slowly, you will continue to become a great therapist and a great marketer of your therapy services.
Look at the market needs
Keep your finger on the pulse of what is going on in the world, including people’s needs, if you want your business to do well. It doesn’t matter how wonderful your work is if what you are offering people is not helping them in any specific way.
Follow the market – not necessarily trends – and make sure that you are staying connected with your ideal clients by tailoring your passions to their pains. This way, you meet them halfway and stand out better from the helping crowd.
You can also talk to people. Talk to other businesses, find out where there’s demand. Where are other counsellors and therapists turning patients away, and where is their waitlist? Waitlists are the greatest, which means there is more demand than the current market can fill. (Dave Lavinsky)
Then, blend your insights on the market needs with your customer analysis.
The better you can define and understand your customers, the better you can connect with them and market to them so that they can trust and choose you.
Competition, marketing, and operations plans
Scope out your closest competitors:
- Look at their websites. What are they doing well?
- What are their price points?
- How are they received by their audience? Good reviews, bad reviews?
Sometimes the best marketer wins. So, even though you may be a better therapist or a better counsellor than they are, if they have a lot of clients and they’re doing a good enough job, [clients] are not going to switch. So it’s important to understand who your competitors are, what they’re good at, what they’re not so good at … so you can figure out what your niche is going to be. (Dave Lavinsky)
Once you have this set, you can start on your marketing plan with the four Ps:
- Product/ service
- Price
- Place
- Promotions
The third piece to this section is your operational plan. Now that you have your niche, your marketing strategy, how are you going to run your business? 1 – Operational processes: What do you need for your practice to run? 2 – Five-year plan: Where do you want your practice to be in five years?
Dave’s advice to private practitioners
There is so much value to having your business plan written down and making sure that your financial model makes sense.
You can then make sure that you’re making money, or at least paying your staff a good salary and taking a piece home for yourself, too.
Sponsors Mentioned in this episode:
- Apply to work with us one-one-one!
- Trust me, don’t waste any more of your time, and try TherapyNotes.
Useful links mentioned in this episode:
- Check out our Practice Academy!
- Sign Up to the Group Practice Boss Conference!
- Visit BusinessPlanTemplate, PlanPros, GrowThink, and connect on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Check out these additional resources:
3 Habits of Top Performers Revealed: Inside the 3,000-Person Study with Dr. Matt Dixon | POP 1258
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Meet Joe Sanok
Joe Sanok helps counselors to create thriving practices that are the envy of other counselors. He has helped counselors to grow their businesses by 50-500% and is proud of all the private practice owners who are growing their income, influence, and impact on the world. Click here to explore consulting with Joe.
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