12: 10 Rules for Business in 2025

In this insightful episode of the Private Practice Success Podcast, Gerda Muller shares the 10 Rules for Business that guide her leadership team at her group private practice. Discover how these rules can help you make heart-centered, effective decisions that align with your values and business goals.

In this Episode, you'll learn (amongst others):

• How to balance heart-centered decision-making and empathy with effective leadership in a private practice setting.
• Five of Gerda's top business rules, to guide decision-making and prevent burnout.
• The use of business rules as a framework to model professional confidence and consistency.
• Strategies for ensuring decisions serve clients, the team, and the business.

Who This Episode Is For:

• Private practice owners seeking to improve their decision-making processes.
• Female entrepreneurs looking for heart-centered business strategies.
• Business leaders aiming to establish clear boundaries and guidelines.
• Practice owners interested in aligning their leadership style with their values.

Join Gerda as she delves into the principles that have shaped her successful practice. Whether you're setting boundaries or refining your leadership approach, this episode provides actionable insights to help you build a thriving practice you can't stop smiling about.

Connect with Private Practice Success & Gerda here:

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• Email Gerda directly at gerdam@private-practice-success.com
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Transcript

Well, hello there, amasing private practice owner. My name is Gerda Muller, and you are listening to the Private Practice Success Podcast, and this is episode number 12.

10 Rules for Business

Today, I'm going to talk to you about the 10 Rules for Business. This is a juicy one. 

So, every year I meet with my leadership team at my group private practice, and we write down 10 rules for business that we are undertaking to live by in the next 12 months.

Heart-Centred Decision-Making

Now, if you have ever found yourself making a decision in your business and then coming to regret it, and then finding yourself two, three months later, making the exact same mistake and going, why, why did I do it? Why did I not learn my lesson two, three months ago? Then this is even more for you. 

Because guess what? We've all been there. We've all been at a place where we've made a decision just wanting to then kick ourselves afterwards because it wasn't the right decision, it was something made in the moment - a decision you made without really thinking it through, without looking at it from all different aspects.

And sometimes if we are honest, we are making decisions that's not really business minded. And I think, no, I know that for me, you know, I'm a female, I'm also a psychologist, and I feel like those two variables makes it even harder. Now, I'm not delving into the research here, but I'm pretty sure that us females make more emotional decisions in a good way, a positive way.

I'm not saying we are emotional, like out-of-control emotions, but we make more heart-centred decisions. That's what I mean when I say emotional. Like we're more in touch with our feelings. I know I'm generalising here. I'm sure there's a lot of males that do that as well.

But I think just naturally as female business owners, we lead a lot with our heart. And then couple that with the fact that in my case, for example, I'm a psychologist, I'm highly skilled in empathy. My training embedded in me how important it is to be able to put myself in somebody else's shoes to understand what they're going through.

So every time I make a decision, my brain automatically goes, how is this going to impact that person? How are they going to feel about it? How are they potentially going to react? How's this going to impact their day, their week, their month, their year, their life in general, how's it going to impact their relationships, especially if I give them bad news and they need to go home and they talk to their partner or husband or wife about it.

I'm so acutely aware of how other people are going to feel, potentially. And yes, you know, sometimes we, we guess what we think that might be. We're not mind readers, but we are very, very aware. And, if you're just a decent human being, you wouldn't like upsetting other people. And if you are like me, and you like to be liked, you want to be seen as the person that's helpful, that's nice, that's understanding and that is supportive. 

And then you need to make a difficult decision that doesn't sit well. It's so hard and it can be so emotionally draining getting to that place where you finally make that decision, because in your head and in your heart, you've worked through all of that stuff.

And a lot of times then you don't make the decision that you should be making, or you make it and it's like, you feel so bad about it, and you feel guilty. And it's like, yes, I knew this was going to happen. It's so hard. It's so hard being a business owner. That's all I can say. 

And we want to be careful because we also don't want to get to this place where we just do the opposite, and we just become ruthless. We don't want to be that either. I know I don’t, and I most certainly wouldn't want to work for somebody that is ruthless. Most certainly. 

So how do we then make business decisions as female heart-centred business owners that are also helping professionals and therefore highly skilled in understanding how our decisions can impact other people. 

Beliefs Around Boundaries

Well, the first thing I will tell you, one of the biggest lessons I had was that I'm not responsible for other people's boundaries.

I'm also not responsible for their feelings, but I'm very aware that if I make decisions, it's going to lead to certain feelings, that they're going to have. But I'm not responsible for their boundaries and what it is that they do. I'm only responsible for my own boundaries and what I do and what I decide and ultimately I need to take responsibility for the consequences of the boundaries that I lay down and a boundary is just a different word for a rule.

It's like a rule that I have. So when I say 10 rules for business, I'm also talking about 10 boundaries for business that helps me make decisions. And when I meet with my management team, to have this conversation every 12 months, this is not like a business planning conversation. 

This is not about what goals did we achieve? What went according to plan? What was a challenge? No, we specifically look at how we went with our decision making. What was hard about it? Where did we make the wrong decisions and why, what led to that? And we have this really in-depth conversation that then helps us devise 10 rules for the next year. 

Now, once you've done this once or twice, the rules I find generally stay more or less the same. We might tweak some of the descriptions or one might fall off the list because we've gotten really good at that boundary and a new one needs to be popped onto it, but most of it remains the same and today what I want to do is I want to share with you five of the 10 rules that we have at my practice and I would highly encourage you to do this exercise even just for yourself as a business owner because the truth of the matter is that running your practice isn't just about clinical excellence, right?

If you've got a group private practice, you need to create a sustainable business and your personal business rules, your boundaries, these are going to act like, these guardrails that you put in place for yourself in order to make sure that you honour both your professional goals, as well as your personal wellbeing.

Because without them, you risk falling into that very old common trap of saying yes to everything and everyone, leading to burnout and resentment. 

Then when we look at some of our boundaries - with regards to finances specifically -  because we are a business and in the helping profession we tend to not want to talk about that stuff or we avoid really delving into it.

It's really important that you also create, clear boundaries around financial decisions in your business. I see a lot of female practice owners undercharging and over delivering because they haven't set firm financial boundaries. So really your business rules become like your permission slip to really charge what you're worth and to maintain healthy profit margins without feeling guilty about it.

Another example is charging cancellation fees and no-show fees, right? You know what I'm talking about. So more holistically, what I would say before we look into my examples is that when you have these business rules, it really sets the tone for your entire team. Because what you do is you are demonstrating professional confidence.

You are creating consistency in processes and policies and operations, and you are really modelling that to your team and when you as the practice owner has got good boundaries it also gives permission for them to have good boundaries. And when you take responsibility for your boundaries, your team, your clients, your referrers, other businesses you do business with, you again model to them that it's important for them to take responsibility for their boundaries.

Okay, so I'm going to share five of our ten with you. So these are the ones specifically at my private practice. 

Rule 1: Communicate with Purpose

So the first one is, says, communicate with purpose. Communicate with purpose in everything we do. That's one of our really important rules, whether that is just through verbally talking to somebody, whether that is in an email, doesn't matter how we communicate.

It must be with purpose, which means that we need to include context. We need to be prepared when we are communicating. We need to not only listen but also hear what they're saying. We need to reflect if we are uncertain. We want to be collaborative in our communication. We also want to be clear, to be kind.

It's not about being nice. It's about being clear in order to be kind. And when there's an issue, we want to pause, consult and then act. So that is the description for us that goes with the rule, communicate with purpose. And we try and really put a little description with reminders for us, attached to each of these rules.

So that is rule number one. 

Rule 2: If Something Breaks, Fix the System

Rule number two. If something breaks, fix the system. Don't band aid it. Because we've tried the band aid approach, and it doesn't work. Because guess what? Do you know what happens to a band aid? It's nice, you put it on, it stops the bleeding, but then it starts to come off and it starts like flapping - let's say if it's on your heel - it starts flapping, becomes annoying and then it starts bleeding again because the band aid's off. Yeah, no, it's not worth it. 

That's a short-term solution. That's not what we're about at my practice. Our little description here says, get off the hamster wheel to get this done.

Okay. The hamster wheel that, ‘Oh, I've got so much stuff to do’, the ‘Oh, I don't have time’, no, we're not going to accept that. We're getting off the hamster wheel if something's breaking and we're going to take the time to fix it. We're going to step back and slowdown in order to speed up. It's very tempting to band aid something because you don't want to stop.

You want to keep going, keep going, keep going. No, we're going to stop and we're going to fix it. So that's rule number two. 

Rule 3: Zoom In before Zooming Out

Rule number three says zoom out every pit stop before we zoom back in. So what we do at my practice, and I do this with all my Private Practice Success Academy members, is we do a practice pit stop every six to eight weeks.

So obviously whatever I teach my mentoring and coaching clients, I actually do it my own group private practice as well. So this is our rule. And reminder that we always want to zoom out before we zoom back in, which means that we need to look at each business strategy and go through the numbers with a fine-tooth comb, which will then inform the planning that we're going to do.

The goal here is to be less reactive and more proactive. And we always want to ask ourselves when we are zooming out, you know, and we're looking at what we've done, what we plan to do, we want to ask, is this vision focused? Is this mission focused? And then we want to limit ourselves to a maximum of two to three projects per six-to-eight-week cycle, because that's how we do our planning. So rule number three, zoom out in order to zoom in.

Rule 4: Drive the Competitive Advantage

Then rule number four is to drive the competitive advantage always, always. And how do we do that? We ask, how is what we are doing different? How is what we are doing standing out? How is what we are doing innovative? We want to always innovative.

And how does this better serve our clients, our referrers, and our team? And I want to emphasize that driving the competitive advantage is about how do we beat our competition. We're not competing with other group practices or other solo practitioners. We are competing with ourselves. Always wanting to level up what it is that we are doing.

Rule 5: A Profit-First Focus

And then last but not least, the fifth one that I'm going to share with you... 

Rule number five says we have a profit first focus at all times. So I'm a big believer in the profit first philosophy, but let's have a look at some of the bullet points I have under our profit first focus description. It says here, we don't work for free.

We charge our worth. We allow the numbers to guide us. And lastly, feeling sorry doesn't pay the bills. That is like a prompt for us. Feeling sorry doesn't pay the bills. So we always need to remember that as a private practice, every dollar we spend, whether it's on paying our bills or paying our teams, we need to earn and therefore we can't work for free.

I'm not saying you can't do pro bono work. You most certainly can, and I've done pro bono work myself - even as a solo practitioner - I've done pro bono work as a group practice owner, but you can only do that when you've had a profit first focus because a profit first focus allows you to make profit, which then allows you to have money to put towards pro bono work because pro bono work is a free service for the client. It's not a free service for the business.

The business still needs to pay the clinician providing that free service. The business still needs to pay for the operating expenses for that hour that that session is being delivered.

So it costs the business money. The money has to come from somewhere and it therefore needs to come from the profit. So making a profit is actually a good thing because it allows you to give back to the community. But if you are going to do work that is free without having had a profit first focus, that's when you're going to undo and unravel your business.

So that was rule number five. So maybe have a think around whether some of these rules would be helpful to you. But what I would highly suggest is for you to set some time aside and do some journaling in terms of when you look back over the last 6 to 12 months and the challenges that you faced in your decision making.

When you take that big picture overview of how have you been going? What is that stuff that you've learned? When you went through it, you were never doing that again. Or next time I'm going to do it differently. And this is what that's going to look like. It's a really important way to bring those learnings, which often comes from things not going well, but to bring that into conscious awareness.

And go, is this something that I really want to focus on? If yes, let's pop it on paper and you don't need 10 rules. You can have two, you can have three, you can have five, okay? But just get started. And I can tell you, it's actually really great to have, I love the fact that I do it with my leadership team because sometimes we forget our own rules or our own boundaries.

Remember rules are boundaries. And then Chelsea can go, Hey, you've forgotten about this. Or Ash will go, Hey, what about this? Or I'll go, Ash, that doesn't sound like a profit first focus. And then we just laugh. It's like, okay, all right, uh, let's, let's reset. Let's think about this in a different way. What other lens do we need to put this through?

Serving the Three Parties of Interest

And the other thing that I will leave you with, in terms of decision making, is whenever we make decisions in the business, I wanted to tick three boxes, right? And this is particularly when it comes to innovation and when it comes to change or new things. I always ask myself, will this change or this new thing or this new strategy, will this serve the clients?

Yes or no. Then I ask, will this new thing or this change serve the team, both admin and clinical? 

And then thirdly, I ask, will this serve the business? Now, ideally it needs to serve all three of those in order for this to be a good decision. Every now and then I might make a decision that serves two out of the three.

I don't like it, but sometimes I don't have a choice because of external factors, but that's the three questions I ask myself. And if it doesn't tick all three of those boxes, then at least I'm going into this decision with open eyes and then I can start to mitigate the impact on one of those three interests that it doesn't serve. And then I can ask myself, what do I do about that? How I'm going to manage this. 

I hope this was helpful. At the end of the day I know I want to, and I'm sure you want to be a leader that inspires trust and that inspires growth in the people that you, deal with every day, both your team and your clients. And it's a journey. It takes time to step into your role as a leader.

But when you have , your rules for business, which most certainly will be aligning to your values, you will start to attract the right clients and the right team members who will not only respect but will also appreciate your leadership style. 

So thank you so much for tuning in. And as always remember that I am here to help you build a practice. You can't stop smiling about.