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What does a CEO mindset mean in private practice? How do you exit a group practice? What stands in the way of having a CEO mindset?
In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok speaks with Alison Pidgeon about transitioning to a CEO mindset and how to exit a group practice.
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In This Podcast
Summary
In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok speaks with Alison Pidgeon about transitioning to a CEO mindset and exiting a group practice.
What does a CEO mindset mean in private practice?
Being a CEO in private practice means you are now focusing on the big picture and not the smaller runnings of the business. Whether that be looking at new locations or being involved in hiring, being a CEO means not running the day-to-day tasks of the practice, but rather having a number of people that can do it for you. Training other people to do things for you.
What are some steps towards moving towards being a CEO?
One of the most important things to look at is delegating. Delegating can be difficult for many but this doesn’t have to happen overnight, it is something that can happen over time. Ask yourself, “what else can I delegate?” If you’re not delegating enough, you won’t be able to move into the CEO phase.
What stands in the way of having a CEO mindset?
Most of us think of ourselves as clinicians because we’ve worked really had to get there, and moving into the business side can be daunting.
You may think; “Can I trust these people to run the business the way I want?” A lot of fear can come in trusting others as well as when hiring others. Look past the money you’ll need to pay others to get your business going. Your revenue is going to increase even when you’re paying for others to work for you. That’s the switch that needs to happen in your mindset, and once it does, it’s the easiest way to grow and scale.
How do you exit a group practice?
The easiest way to exit a group practice is to build and design your business to be able to run without you. That means that when it’s time to sell it, the business will still create the same amount of revenue without you. That’s what buyers are interested in. You can’t look at selling or exiting without removing yourself.
What are some surprises that came with running a group practice?
Alison now works 5 hours a week, which she never thought would have been the case when she first started the business. She structured it in such a way that she could minimize the amount of time she was in the practice. It was also surprising how quickly she generated income.
Focus on things and be intentional about how you are going to make the people that work for you stay. Get things right in the beginning, and the rest will fall in place.
Useful Links:
- Managing staff, systems and turnover in a group practice with Alison Pidgeon | Start a Group Practice Series 4 of 5 | PoP 415
- Join Next Level Practice
- Register for the ‘How To Start a Group Practice’ Webinar on 10 Dec at 2:30pm EST
- Free resources to help you start, grow and scale
- Apply to work with us
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 that are growing their income, influence, and impact on the world. Click here to explore consulting with Joe.
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Podcast Transcription
[JOE]: This is the Practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sanok, session number 416. Cyber Monday is right around the corner and our last cohort of Next Level Practice is starting on Cyber Monday. Next Level Practice is a monthly membership community where you get in an ongoing support system for mental health clinicians, counselors and coaches who want to start and scale their own private practice. We feature hundreds of trainings, live calls with experts and a robust library full of exclusive online contact and a community that’s so amazing and supportive. I mean, let’s be honest, even if you have a PhD, odds are that you graduated without really knowing how to start your own private practice, let alone one that allows you to grow your impact and your income.
Maybe you’re working for someone else’s practice and you’re struggling under their systems. Maybe you’re working out in the world or nonprofit and making less than you deserve. Maybe you’re working in both arenas and getting dangerously close to burning out, or maybe you already have a practice and it just hasn’t launched how you want it to. I want to invite you to head on over to practiceofthepractice.com/invite where we are going to be talking all about Next Level Practice and you can get access to this cohort. The prices go up in 2020 so I want you to grab and lock down the $88 a month price. Head an over to practiceofthepractice.com/invite to read all about it.
Well, welcome back to the final episode in this series, all about group practice. We have covered a lot of ground with Alison Pidgeon, our in-house consultant around group practice. In episode one she talked all about why do a group practice and then we moved into logistics to start a practice, next we covered moving from me to us, filling up others, and then in the last episode we talked all about managing staff systems, turnover and finances. And today Alison, we are diving into CEO mindset. You ready for this?
I think the challenges that people don’t recognize is you have to be intentional about setting up the practice in a way that’s going to make things run smoothly and it’s going to make staff want to stay, and, like these things just don’t happen by accident. And what I see happen a lot is people start a group practice without necessarily getting any help or getting any consulting or following any kind of a plan and then, they get a year or two in and they realize they’ve made a mess of things like billing or their staff’s all leaving or, you know. And so that’s what I talk to a lot of people when they’re interested in the mastermind group. That’s one refrain I hear over and over is like, “I just don’t know what I don’t know and I don’t want to start something and have it being an epic fail just because of my own ignorance because I didn’t know how to set it up correctly.” [JOE]: Yes. It’s like doing renovations on our house. Like I can tear down drywall, I can tear things up. I’m not going to start taking walls down without knowing if they’re support walls and I’m definitely not going to rebuild it or learn how to rebuild it. It’s just like, I don’t want to put my time into things that someone else is already an expert in. So, like, why wouldn’t you just work with an expert that knows how to tell you how to do it? [ALISON]: Right. And I think too it was surprising to me when I started how quickly we started generating a lot of income. I just had that one office in the beginning and my first kind of full-time person I hired, she and I were sharing the office and she was there when I wasn’t there. And like the second month she was there, we generated like $10,000 gross and I was just like blown away. I was like, never imagined seeing that number coming in on one month’s time. And yes, so it was super exciting. And once you get that first person hired, it’s much easier to add the second and the third and so on. [JOE]: Yes, totally. Well, I, I’m with you. It’s been so fun to watch you kind of go from that solo practice, that group practice to consulting to now retired. Oh my gosh. So, oh, look at you. Well, I’m so excited about what you’re doing with group practices. If people want to connect with you head on over to practiceofthepractice.com/apply and you’ll see there that we have this big infographic helping you figure out where you might fit best in the Practice of the Practice world. You can connect with Alison through that, you can apply to work with Alison, join her mastermind group. But one thing that we want to talk about is that on December 10th at 2:30 Eastern, 1:30 Central, 12:30 Mountain, and 11:30 Pacific, we are doing a mastermind call/master class/webinar, slash, we’re just helping you learn how to start a group practice. We can call it anything we want but after recording so many of these episodes today, you’d think I’d have this down, but not yet. So practiceofthepractice.com/grouppracticewebinar. If you want to register for that again, that’s December 10th that you can check that out. Alison, thank you so much for doing this series a and working through just all the work you do with group practice owners. [ALISON]: Thank you. Yes, it’s fun talking about this stuff. [JOE]: So, if you want to get some extra help from Alison and myself, we are doing a webinar on December 10th at 2:30 Eastern, 1:30 Central, 12:30 Mountain, and 11:30 Pacific. Head on over to practiceofthepractice.com/grouppracticewebinar and you can get all the information about that webinar, register for it, and get some extra help on starting and growing your group practice.
Special thanks to our sponsor, Next Level Practice. For you to sign up for next time’s cohort which kicks off on Cyber Monday, head on over to practiceofthepractice.com/invite. We would love for you to join that community and rock out your private practice. Also special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy. We like your intro music and this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or other professional information. If you want a professional? You should find one.