Treat Your Business

150 Beyond the Treatment Room: How Playing to Your Strengths Will Transform Your Clinic

• Katie Bell • Season 1 • Episode 150

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Welcome
Welcome back to the Treat Your Business podcast. I’m Katie Bell, clinic owner, bestselling author, physiotherapist, and your business mentor. After 150 episodes, I’m still here to give you real, honest advice and tried and tested ways to grow your clinic and your life. 🎉

Episode Summary
In this special 150th episode, I’m sharing why leaning into your strengths is the game changer for clinic owners. Forget trying to be brilliant at everything. I’ll walk you through how to spot your superpowers, why it’s okay to let go of your weaknesses, and how designing your business around what lights you up will help you make more money, get your time back, and enjoy your business more. Plus, I’ll let you in on some of my own struggles (yes, stacking the dishwasher made the list!) and how I learned to stop trying to fix things that just aren’t my thing.

Key Takeaways
✨ You don’t have to be good at everything - just a few things that matter most
✨ Playing to your strengths gives you more energy, better results, and more joy
✨ Make a simple strengths and struggles list: three things you love, three things you dread
✨ Outsource, delegate, or just stop doing what drains you
✨ Your weaknesses aren’t flaws - they’re someone else’s strengths waiting to join your team

Resources & Links
👉  Invest in your team’s growth. Our face-to-face therapist transformation course is back this December in Sheffield - only nine seats left!

Final Thoughts
Remember, you only need to be brilliant at a very few things to build the business and life you want. Lean into your strengths, don’t try to fix your weaknesses, and let’s celebrate what makes you unique. Thanks for joining me—if you had a lightbulb moment, pass this on to someone who needs it. See you next time!

💙 Katie

Episode Sponsor:  Jane.app

Clinic management software and EMR that simplifies bookings, forms, and reminders so you can reclaim your evenings. Book a demo via the link in the show notes. Use code ThriveOneMo for a one month grace period. 

Treat Your Business podcast is proudly sponsored by MBST, the groundbreaking technology revolutionising recovery and rehabilitation. Offering a non-invasive, drug-free solution for musculoskeletal conditions and nerve injuries, MBST works at a cellular level to stimulate regeneration. Expand your services and deliver long-term patient improvements without increasing your workload.

Learn more at mbstmedical.co.uk. 

Treat Your Business EP150

Katie Bell: [00:00:00] Last time we ran our therapist at transformation course clinic owners told me their team left more confident. They converted more clients retention rates shot up, and it made measurable differences to their profit margins. Within weeks of them attending the course and to add, they didn't have any of the hassle or the stress of training their team.

This December, we are bringing the course back with a little bit of a change. We are hosting a full face-to-face day, specifically for your therapist to transform the way they handle their conversations with clients. They keep more clients in your clinic. They retain better. They convert better, and they boost your profit margin because here's the truth.

I can guarantee your team aren't confident. I can guarantee you are leaking money every single week. Clients drop off too soon and your clinic works harder for less return [00:01:00] than it should. This course has been developed by myself from a place of owning and running a clinic and having and managing a team of therapists who.

All struggle with these conversations when they start out in private practice. And they can be great therapists. You can teach them the tools and the skills and the knowledge, but without this, they will not be successful for you in your clinic. So on this course, we've always done it online and it's great and we've had incredible results.

By delivering it online. But you know what, I need people in a room because when I get people in a room, they've got high levels of accountability. They create connections with each other. I can look them in the eyes. I can really get the most from them. And so I just know that even though, the results that we've created already by running this, I think four times already.

They're just gonna go to another level because I'm gonna have them face to face on this course. I'm gonna give them the tools, I'm gonna give them the confidence and the frameworks [00:02:00] that they need to convert and retain with ease and professionalism. So your walk away knowing that your team can drive growth for you, and it's not just costing you to have your team.

Working for you. Imagine finishing 2025 with therapists who can confidently keep clients on their plan of care. Your retention rates are at an all time high. Your profit margins are healthier than ever. That's what this course will deliver. What they do is they come to the Mighty Sheffield for a whole day.

I hear you. Oh my God, it's really far. I'm gonna have to pay for the train. We have to pay for the hotel. Suck it up, do it. You're a business owner. Invest in them. The cost of this course and the travel costs, we will return back to you within weeks because of the improvement of their retention rate and their conversion rate.

It is the equivalent of basically one additional client converting into a plan [00:03:00] of care. Like it, it's that important. And they will get so that much from it. It is worth them getting on a train And being at the venue in Sheffield in December, we've already got 31 places taken.

You've got access to two coaches all day, myself and Philippa, our mindset coach, and then they get three further weeks. Of work with me and Philippa online so it's not just a set and forget and want and go. It is a month of really bespoke tailored support that is ongoing each week.

And there is no hiding and you don't have to do any of it. My lovely people, my lovely clinic owners, you can just pay the money, sell another course and leave me to do the rest. So we've only got nine seats left. It's running in December. As usual. I'm a yellow and a visionary and I don't actually know what date in December, so just excuse me while I [00:04:00] look that up for you.

Hold the line caller. I feel like it's December the fifth, but I'm just accessing my calendar right now. Thank God the video's not on Decem. No, it's not Katie. It's December the fourth. Thursday the 4th of December. They need to be in Sheffield. I've no idea where it is. All the details are gonna be on a page that I'm gonna send you to.

And that's where all the information is, but they're gonna get a whole day with me in person. What else do I need to tell you? We are not gonna run this course again then because we're doing it face to face until the middle of next year. So if your business cannot wait to make more profit, what business can then get them on this course this year?

They will leave 2025 in a they're gonna come back in 2026. A whole different clinician. So if you want your team to be on the front foot, grab one of the last places today. The link is in the show notes. It has all the information in there that you need. Yes. I'm gonna ask for your input as well as the clinic.

You can tell me some juicy stuff about them. It takes [00:05:00] it, it stays very confidential, but I can work. On that stuff with them, I can work on the stuff that is holding them back into being really amazing therapists that are making you profit in your clinic. That's all for me. Go to the link in the show notes now.

You don't have to be brilliant. Everything. In fact, you only have to be brilliant at a very few things in your business to make the money that you wanna make and get the time that you wanna have in your life. Welcome to the Treat Your Business podcast, the show for clinic owners who want real, honest advice and tried and tested ways of doing things.

I'm Katie Bell, clinic owner, bestselling author, physiotherapist, and business mentor, and after 150 episodes, I know this. Running a clinic is about getting more freedom, flexibility, money and time, as well as impacting your client's health and wellness. After 150 episodes, we're celebrating a new era of the podcast, bigger [00:06:00] insights, bolder conversations, and everything you need to know to grow a clinic and a life you love.

So let's dive in. Hi, and welcome back to the Treat Your Business podcast. We are following on from last week's beyond the treatment ruin episode where. I was really talking about how we define success and what success means to each and every one of you. Knowing that for all of you listening to this, success will look very different, and so we can't compare and we can't try and chase somebody else's version of success.

Today we're gonna talk about something that I think can change the way you run your clinic and maybe even the way you feel about your business. And we are gonna be talking about playing to your strengths now. As a clinic owner, you wear loads of hats, don't you? One minute you are treating clients. The next minute you are pretending to be the marketing manager.

I say pretending in, 'cause I know that's what we all try and do with marketing. Then you are the HR department, then you are suddenly IT support. 'cause the WiFi's gone down and the list just [00:07:00] goes on and on. But here's the truth. You don't have to be brilliant. Everything. In fact, you only have to be brilliant at a very few things in your business to make the money that you wanna make and get the time that you wanna have in your life.

So the fastest way to grow your clinic, to make more money, to get more time back, to feel more confident, to protect your energy is to lean into what you are naturally really good at and build support around the rest. And whether you are a clinic owner who is just starting out, or whether you are a multis six figure seven figure clinic owner, this is.

For wherever you are at, you can start small, you can go big, you can get more and more people, you can outsource more and more of those things. So you are ultimately only doing the things that are in your zone of genius. So in today's episode, I'm gonna explore why your strengths really matter, how to identify them, how to design your business so you spend more time in your like strength zone or your zone of genius and less time tearing your hair out [00:08:00] over the things that drain you.

This always reminds me when I talk about drains on you, the, what are they called? The Dementors in Harry Potter. For those of you who are massive Harry Potter fans, you're gonna know what I'm talking about here. Ena Finn, if you're listening to this episode, one of our longtime Thrive members, she's a massive Harry Potter fan, and she will know exactly what I'm talking about here.

They're. Swoop round and they like suck the soul out of people. This is what it's like in your business when you are dealing with patients that suck the soul out of you and when you are doing things in your business that you shouldn't be doing it, that it's like a drain. I wanna take you back to being at school.

When you were at school, the well-rounded individual was often the one that was celebrated. It was the one that was good at sport, but also good at study. It was the person that excelled in lots of different things that often was then head girl or head boy or captain of this or whatever it was. Those that were.

Very good at one subject, like a maths [00:09:00] genius or somebody that's great at piano or something. They really weren't as celebrated as much as those people in the middle and those that were on the other end that were naughty individuals because they weren't having the opportunity to just lean into what they're really good at, and they're being forced into our archaic school system to do it all.

Were the ones that they weren't looked to either, and I was this person. I was the person in the middle. I worked my. Backside off to be a well-rounded person. I explored every opportunity. I said yes to everything. I played every sport going. I was doing the piano, I was dancing, I was playing sports. I wanted to be top of the class in everything.

I was studying really hard. I was, I had a job as a carer for somebody with MS from the age of 14. And like I was just trying to be everything to everybody and be great at it all. And then honestly, by a levels. And university, and even my early career experiences, I only seemed to reinforce that belief.

I was endlessly [00:10:00] pursuing a variety of opportunities. I was always trying to bolster my experiences and I was always trying to improve my weaknesses because that's what the te the system teaches us, isn't it? And if only the school system wasn't so archaic, maybe I would've learned earlier that success doesn't come from being well-rounded.

Yes, you could have a level of success by being great at lots of different things, but it comes from knowing what your brilliance are and really leaning into it. Can you imagine that person at school who was maybe really good at design technology, but because we only spent an hour a week on it at school, they were then.

Looking about in all the other sessions because they were bored by them. They didn't excel at them. Can you imagine if we were allowing those children to really lean into what they're absolutely amazing at? And yet it, okay. Not all children know what they're absolutely amazing at, but there are certain things that they, that bring them joy, that they absolutely love, that we should be allowing them to do more and more of, rather than forcing them [00:11:00] into a physics class.

In my experience of math class, yes, I needed to have a certain level of maths. To get to, to be a physio and to get to where I am today. But I certainly did not need to know trigonometry and re's theorem. However, knowing what your brilliant brilliance are, leaning into it, it's the same in business.

When you are stuck in your weaknesses all day, it's like wading through treacle. When you are operating in your strengths, you get energy, results, you actually enjoy it. When you are operating in your strengths, everything feels lighter. You get energy instead of feeling like you're losing it bigger results because you're doing the work.

You're, you are naturally wired to do, and guess what? It can bring you joy. We might actually enjoy the process, therefore of pursuing our goals, but when you are stuck in your weaknesses all day, it's like waiting through call and you procrastinate, you get frustrated. How many of you are listening to this and [00:12:00] you're still not doing the things I need to do?

List? It's probably because the things I need to do list are not in your zone of genius. And YY yes. We all have moments in our business and we have to be like all in and we have to be doing stuff that we are not really great at doing. But the quicker that you can lean into what you're great at and get rid of the stuff that you're not great at doing, the quicker your business will grow.

You will accelerate your way to whatever success looks like for you in the season of your life that you're in right now. If you wanna know more about what I mean about the season of your life, go back to last week's episode. Humans are biased towards negativity. That is like a hangover from our hunter gatherer days when spotting risks was essential for survival.

However, focusing on our weaknesses leads to losing our confidence, really low self-belief, and we often pursue activities that are not aligned with our own definition of success. Accepting your own weaknesses and having no desire to fix it can be a game changer. When I was [00:13:00] preparing the script for this week's episode script in the loosest possible term, I was thinking, okay, I'm gonna list all like what I class as my weaknesses and the things that I have absolutely no desire to fix.

Number one, stacking the dishwasher. I probably have mentioned on this podcast before that I stack it like I'm on drugs and my husband stacks it like he's playing Tetris, and this is a almost probably daily conversation of feedback from him about the way that I have put something into the dishwasher and I have no desire.

To be any better at it because when I am to the dishwasher and if things are not done, I just stick another tablet in. So stacking the dishwasher is one of my big weaknesses. Reading anything with detail in is another one of mine. I'm just not gonna do it. If you send me a big, long email, I'm gonna skim read it.

At best. If you cc me into something, I'm probably not gonna read that either. I don't. Require the detail to be able to move forward and make decisions. Sometimes yes, we do but most of the time I don't. So reading everything with [00:14:00] detail in, it's not great. We had a situation in our household this week where my husband was booking holidays for 2026.

How exciting. And he said to me, he does all the research. He's very diligent. He reads everything, all the descriptions, gets all of the stuff that you need to do to make a decision. And he says, you need to decide between this hotel on the palm and this hotel in Abu Dhabi. Okay? So I just opened both on my phone.

I looked at the pictures and I was like they basically look the same. We've been to the one on the palm, let's do Abu Dhabi for a bit of a change. And he was like, have you, you've made that decision in three seconds. Have you actually looked at any of the pictures? Have you looked at any of the detail other than the pictures?

And I said, no. I just looked at the pictures. And the pictures basically look the same. If you can hear weird noises in the background. It is my baby. Alfie is six weeks old. He was a monkey and late. So now I have podcast episode to record because I'd got everything up to date. As long as he was on his due date, there is my first error.[00:15:00] 

Anyway, just ignore that. And this is why I'm not even in my recording studio today. I'm sat in my kitchen. So I made a decision that we were gonna go to the one in Abu Dhabi based on the pictures. And my husband said to me you've literally read nothing. I'm not going to. So that is weakness number two.

Number three, cooking. I can cook. Like I love hosting. I don't like cooking. I can cook if I need to. But I just don't enjoy it. Like I will cook something and then no, not want to eat it. Does anybody else ever get that feeling? Because it's just been such a, just an arduous thing to have to get on the table.

I've then lost the love for the food that I've actually cooked. I have no desire to get any better at cooking or to do any more of it, especially when the likes of HelloFresh and Gusto. And my husband are around number four, reading instruction manuals. Not gonna do that either. I am gonna be the person that it says This job is for [00:16:00] two people and I think, no, it'll be fine.

I'll just do it. I'll just do it. Five. Researching things. Have I said that? Yeah. Reading anything in detail. Research the things, not gonna do it. Number six, process driven stuff like onboarding, training, following process. Boring. Not gonna do that either. Writing SOPs not interested really in doing that. In fact, I've actually banned Nicola from talking to me about SOPs because SOP is a word that she uses almost in every other sentence.

And I told I, please don't use that word wrong, me said with Jes, but she's, that is like she is. Absolutely in her zone of genius. There I am. Definitely not. Number seven was thinking far into the future. Often these books are like, where do you wanna be in 10 years? And I'm like, whoa, hold on a sec, honey.

I'm literally just living for this year. Like I've got loads of plans. I'm really focused. I can have a rough idea of where the [00:17:00] business is going in three and five years, like top level, but 10 years, who knows? When I first started my clinic, I loved the vision side of things. I could see opportunities, I could rally people around ideas.

I was brimming with energy about where we were going, but as we just sit down and build an operations manual, not gonna do it, reconcile the bank accounts in zero, not gonna do it. Let's just say those things then didn't happen. I'd put it off, I'd stress about it, and when I finally forced myself to do it.

I was drained and it was the job that I would do last late at night when probably because I was not very good at it needed to be. The first thing I did in the day when I had, was more, had more energy and things really changed for me really quickly, which is why we went from north to six figures within our first year of trading because I bought people in whose strengths complimented mine, and I quickly identified what needed to be.

Shifted [00:18:00] and yeah, at the time I was like, I dunno how I'm gonna be able to afford this on paper, you never think you could afford anything. I got a bookkeeper who actually really enjoyed making the numbers balance weird. Suddenly the business was running more smoothly. I was back in my zone. I was able to lead, teach, motivate, and drive the clinic forward.

So my first reflective question for you is, what are the things in your clinic that light you up and give you energy? What are the things that drain you, that make you say the second they hit your to-do list, all the things that are still on your to-do list, because that gives you all of the information that you possibly need.

But how do we spot our strengths? Now, there's loads of different ways that we can do this. There's loads of different tasks that you can do, but here's a really simple exercise. Take a sheet of paper, draw a line down the middle, and on one side write strengths, and on the other side write struggles and jot down the three things you do best.

The three things you would happily [00:19:00] do all day, the things the team would probably say, yep, Katie, that is your superpower. Then on the other side, write the three things that frustrate you the most, the things that you put off, the things that you secretly hope no one ever asks you about. For me, my strengths are coaching vision.

It's about rallying the team leading. Struggles might be HR compliance forms it troubleshooting, reconciling bank accounts, writing SOPs. The list is lengthy. I would rather clean the clinic toilets than reconcile my bank accounts. Think about what roles you tend to slip into as well. What did you.

Think about what did you enjoy as a child, or what did you do more of when you were younger? What positive feedback do you often receive from people? Like I get told all the time that I'm ridiculously organized, which is [00:20:00] wild for somebody that is so low detail in a lot of aspects of my life. But I am super organized, super planned, and I don't want any drama or hustle.

So everything is planned in advance to the nth degree, including all of my cupboards and everything like that, and all of my wardrobe so that I don't have to make. Loads of decisions every day about what I'm gonna wear or what, how things are all gonna work. Everything's just super organized. People tell me that all the time.

What positive feedback do you get? What do you receive from your clients, from your friends, from your family? And if you are not sure, 'cause lots of us really struggle to identify our strengths. It feels really awkward and a bit icky, doesn't it? To say what we're really good at, but text or email five people and have a variety of those people, like maybe some family members, some friends, maybe some work colleagues.

And ask them to describe you in five words. And if this makes you feel weird, like just put, so I was listening to a podcast today. [00:21:00] And I was challenged by the podcaster to send this text message, so I'm doing it. You don't need to give an explanation. You can just ask them this and look what the five words are that they send them back.

And this is gonna really help you lean into and understand what your strengths are for clinic owners. Common strengths that I tend to see are visionary, like the big picture thinkers. Patient facing care. Always the clinicians who absolutely love being in the treatment room. Those that, I guess this is also maybe a strength and a weakness.

People leadership often is. What they're great at, but they don't allow themselves the time to really lean into those strengths and develop those strengths. They think it is a weakness, but it's more that they are afraid of the confrontation or they're afraid of the conflict. They don't know how to do it.

They haven't got the skills there yet 'cause they won't talk it. Those who like [00:22:00] thrive on telling stories and connecting with people. And then we also have those that geek out over processes and structure and systems and jody, one of our coaches, I'm gonna pick on you, Jody is so systemized in her approach to what she, what, how she does things in her clinic.

If there's a way to automate and get a bit of it to do it, Jody's gonna be the one to do that. She's so detailed when it comes to. Like patient retention, follow ups, knowing her numbers. Who'd have thought this Jodi, however many years on when we first met at Therapy Expo, she is super diligent on all of this sort of stuff.

A very different leader to how I lead, but we both lean into our strengths in a very different way. So if you are listening, be honest, which of all of those strengths I've talked about feels like your zone of genius. Which one makes you feel alive? This is where your focus should be. So once you've identified your strengths, here's the [00:23:00] key.

You've gotta then design your business around them, and you've got to connect with them. So if your strengths is strategy or vision, you need an integrator, also known as a practice manager. But an integrator technically is a level above a practice manager, someone who can take your ideas and make them happen.

If your strength is patient care, then you probably shouldn't be bogged down in marketing or payroll. You need systems automation, people who can handle that. If your strength is teaching and inspiring, then lean into workshops, group classes, speaking in your clinic. Find someone else to take the one-to-one.

Aspect of things if you hate them. I worked with a clinic owner who really hated the, that one-on-one, bring you in, assess you, and then discuss or show you that plan of care and what that needed to look like. She just awkward, she couldn't get herself over some of those beliefs that were holding her back, [00:24:00] having that conversation.

So she never had the conversation. She put it off. Her conversion rate was low, and it was holding back her growth, but watching her teach a group. She was like in her element. So we flipped it. Her team handled all the one-to-one stuff. She delivered the workshops that naturally just generated leads, and within months her conversion had improved, her stress had dropped, and she was spending her time in her strength zone.

So ask yourself this, if you could spend 80% of your time on your strengths, what would need to change first in your business? Is it hiring? Is it outsourcing? Is it just saying no to certain things that actually bring you no joy whatsoever? Societal and cultural expectations might make the task of identifying and owning your strengths really feel like a struggle.

It might also be that your strengths have been spoken about as weaknesses. For example, somebody who's really [00:25:00] sociable and can connect ex, I remember actually in fact a member of ours. Was telling me about one of her therapists who is, she's sometimes there's too much conversation going on in the treatment room and she's too personable.

Can you be too personable? You know what I mean? There's a level of professionalism isn't there? But this Thrive member is a agree, and she felt like her therapist, who's a yellow was. Too chatty, too personable, and I agree that there's a level of professionalism there, but I really needed her to see from a yellow's perspective is very different from a to a Green's perspective.

And you will behave in a different way. And yes, there are standards. Yes, there is a level of professionalism that we need to adhere to, but actually. What, how is this impacting her work? How is she showing up? Her conversion rate. Rate was good. Her retention rate was good. The green business owner found it quite hard to handle because she was very full of energy [00:26:00] V, but I was like, use it.

Use that. The other to my point here I'm making is she thought that maybe this was a weakness, but actually this was this girl's strength and we really needed to lean into that and she became like the person that was really great at developing that community feel, getting patients on board, converting, retaining those clients, like use that strength.

The other tool that you can use, that we use in Thrive, when you become a member of Thrive, we do two things. We do many things, but one of the first initial things we do is we get you to do the Clifton Strength Finder. Which is a Gallup test, and we also get you to do your color test. This helps us do a few things, really lead you into where your zone of genius is to help you offload, implement, automate, systemize, strategize.

Don't even know if that's a word, but I'm just throwing it in there. And also to see how you behave, what your personality like, so we can coach you and we can support you in the right way. That's gonna really align with you with how you do [00:27:00] things. So the Clifton Strength Founder, there's I think there might be a 34 tests, 34 strengths, one and a five.

You just need to do the five, gives you your top five strengths. It's about 20 quid, $20 maybe. If you haven't done it, do it and get all of your team to do it now. It won't make a huge amount of sense to you outside of our world because we really help you understand what strengths mean, what your team strengths are.

We plot them on a spreadsheet so that we can then really see where your gaps are. But there's lots of assets out there that you can read and you could. Find out a little bit more about this, or you could ask chat GPT and that will tell you. The Clifton StrengthFinder is something that I use a lot and I really recommend playing to your strengths isn't a luxury.

It's a necessity if you want to build a clinic that doesn't burn you out. So today we've talked about why strengths really matter. Because when you're in your zone, everything feels lighter, everything's feel feels more effective. How to spot your strengths by being honest about what gives you energy and what drains you, how [00:28:00] to design your business around those strengths by delegating, outsourcing, structuring your diary so you are not trying to be brilliant at everything.

And we do a exercise and thrive in one of our live days where we. Have four boxes and we split those up into what you are excellent at Zone of Genius, absolutely love what you are good at or like better than good. You are, you're really proficient at it. You're probably really good at it, but it's not like you are zone of genius what you are good at.

So you can do it, but you really hate doing it and what you absolutely are not good at doing. And we make you plot your kind of week's worth of tasks into those and we really start to iron out. What gives you energy, what drains you, where you need to be delegating and outsourcing. First, it's gonna make the biggest difference to your life and your business straight away.

So your action step this week, everybody, is to create your strengths and struggles list. Write down three strengths, three struggles. Choose one struggle. Make a plan to remove it, delegate it, outsource it, or just drop it. Just stop doing it. [00:29:00] Your weaknesses aren't flaws, they're just someone else's strengths waiting to be added to your team.

Thank you as ever for joining me on the Treat Your Business podcast. I hope it sounded seamless. I have a small baby that I have fed twice during this episode and moved about 60 billion times from his bouncer to his pram and back again. So just bear with me if it wasn't quite as seamless as usual, but I'm sure my team are gonna make that all be fabulous in the background.

If this episode gives you some light bulb moments, please share it. With another clinic owner who might need the reminder. And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Look for now, make sure you just lean into your strengths. Don't try and fix your weaknesses, and I'll see you next time.

Thanks for listening to The Treat Your Business podcast. If you are ready for more real, honest advice and proven ways to run a clinic that gives you freedom, flexibility, more money and time than hit subscribe now and I'll see you in the next episode.

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