The Private Practice Success Podcast

26. Stop Doing These 3 Things if you want to Grow your Practice

• Gerda Muller • Episode 26

Share episode

In Episode 26 of the Private Practice Success Podcast, Gerda puts on her “bossy boots” to share three critical things you need to STOP doing if you’re serious about growing your private practice. 

These common habits might be holding you back from achieving the business growth and freedom you desire. Gerda breaks down why these behaviours are counterproductive and provides empowering advice to help you shift gears and focus on what truly matters.

In this Episode, you will learn (among others):

  • Why spending money on irrelevant marketing strategies is hurting your growth.
  • How doing admin and front desk tasks is costing you valuable time and energy.
  • The importance of saying “no” when managing your team and how it fosters psychological safety and consistency.
  • Practical steps to identify and change these behaviours one at a time.

Who This Episode Is For:

  • Private practice owners who feel stuck in day-to-day operations and want to focus on growth.
  • Allied health professionals struggling to balance business ownership and leadership.
  • Practice owners ready to step into their role as CEO and create a thriving, sustainable business.

Gerda’s no-nonsense advice will inspire you to reflect on your current habits and take actionable steps to build a practice you can’t stop smiling about. Tune in and start making those changes today!

Connect with Private Practice Success & Gerda here:

 Well, hello there fabulous private practice owner. My name is Gerda Muller, and you are listening to the Private Practice Success Podcast, and this is episode number 26. Today I am putting on my bossy boots. Yes, I sure am. I'm going to talk to you about three things - three really important things that you need to stop doing today if you are serious about growing your private practice. Let's jump straight in. 

Now these are not in order of priority. I'm just going to talk about it in terms of how it pops into my head, because that's how my brain works.

#1 - STOP Spending Money on Irrelevant Marketing Strategies

Please, please, please stop throwing money at marketing strategies that are not relevant to your level of private practice development.

Now, when I refer to private practice development, I am talking about the size of your business. If you've ever read my book, you would know that there are five levels of private practice development.

  • Level One private practice is the startup private practice. That is you if you are in solo private practice. 
  • Level Two is the step-up practice. This is where you have two to three clinicians on your team already, and your annual turnover is at least $300,000 plus.
  • Level Three is your expanding practice. This is where you have around four to six clinicians on your team - and by the way, I'm not talking full-time equivalent here, I am talking just about a head count of clinicians. If you are level three, your minimum turnover is $500,000 plus.
  • Level Four is what I like to refer to as the demanding, AKA, successful - because it looks successful - but it can be really hard work if you don't know what you're doing practice. By now you have a headcount of six to eight clinicians on your team, and your minimum annual turnover is between $750,000 and $800,000 a year.
  • Level Five is your Ultimate Private Practice. Now you've got eight or more clinicians - in terms of a headcount remember - and your annual turnover is a minimum of $1.1 million a year. 
  • Then of course you still have the self-running practice, which is that next stage. 

That's just a quick reminder of what the five levels of private practice development is all about, and I've only shared two markers with you. There's actually in excess of 15 markers that will give you an indication of what level your practice is at right now. But I feel like those two are really easy just for you as the listener to go - where am I sitting right now? 

So, as I was saying, the first thing to stop doing is to stop throwing money at marketing strategies not relevant to your level of private practice development. In other words, I see a lot of practice owners at level three using marketing strategies that are more suited to a level five. Or I see people at level one using marketing strategies that's more suited for practices at level three. And sometimes I see level five practice owners still implementing marketing strategies that's more suitable for level one and two - when they're at level five.

This often happens because of various reasons, such as -  you're just doing what you've always done. And I am most certainly somebody that goes - you know, if something works, don't stop doing it. However, you always need to balance that with - ‘Is this still relevant to where my business is at right now?’ And if not, I might need to tweak it. I might need to adjust it. I might need to scale it. Sometimes I just need to chuck it out because something new is needed. 

A lot of times what happens - especially when we are running a small business - is that we are so caught up still in the day to day running in the operations - in the putting out fires, in the answering of questions, of being the human operating manual, of being the human problem solver for everything that goes wrong in our business - that we never have the time, or we never make the time to actually go and sit in that space of working on the business.

Now, I know I've been preaching about making that time for many years now. And a lot of people will tell me they make that time, but they're also not using that time in the right manner. And I hate to sound critical of this, right, but sometimes we just don't know what that time needs to look like, because we don't know what we don't know until we know what we don't know.

So sometimes we think we are working on the business when we aren't. Like supervising your team isn't really working on the business. There is a lot of specific strategic analysing, decision making and planning that needs to happen for you to truly be working on your business - and practice owners aren't doing it. As a result, they're often throwing money at marketing strategies that's not relevant to their business.

Another contributing factor is when they hear another practice owner talk about a marketing strategy that they are using, and I absolutely love it when practice owners are open about what they are doing and sharing strategies that work for them. I mean, that's what I do myself, right? I've started sharing what I do and what I have done to create not one but two level five private practices, and I started that back in 2014 -  so I most certainly encourage it. 

But sometimes, especially when you hear something on social media where there's a limited amount of context when people share things - or you are having a conversation over lunch at a conference or networking or CPD event - you are not getting the full context when you're speaking to another business owner. You don't know what their 15 markers of private practice development looks like. So yes, they are being amazing peers and fellow business owners by sharing with you what they're doing. But you always need to put that through that filter of - ‘Is this relevant to me right now?’ It doesn't mean it won't be relevant to you at some stage. 

This is why practice owners are always freaking chasing their tails, because they hear about all these things and they want to do it all. You guys are such amazing humans. You are so driven. But that's also the thing that trips us up. That keeps us on the hamster wheel because we want to do all the things. The new shiny things like, ‘Oh, that person said this marketing strategy worked for them. I need to do that right now!’ 

Case in point, as an example: Google Ads. Google Ads are very effective, but Google Ads are also really expensive. So, I, for example, would not recommend a level one, two, or three practice owner to be investing money in Google Ads when they've not already implemented the marketing strategies relevant to a level one, two, and three private practice.

A lot of times practice owners and level one, two, and three, spend money on that, and then they are cash poor. Their cash flow sucks, and they ask themselves, ‘Why can't I get this done? Why isn't this working for me? Or why am I not getting ahead?’ And that's because you are using a marketing strategy, which is very effective when done right - but it's not really time for your business to use it. 

Same thing with Facebook Ads. Now, I would say Facebook Ads are relevant properly from roundabout levels two and three. But then I see people doing Facebook Ads, which is not being done properly. And I see this because when I'm delivered a Facebook Ad from specifically Allied Health businesses, I actually click on it, and I click on the link and I go, where does this take me to?

I've seen this even with Google Ads, especially when people are doing their own Google Ads or managing their own Facebook Ad. When you think about it, that's a marketing funnel and there's certain steps that need to be in that marketing funnel - and it's not in there. It's like I click on the Facebook ad and it just takes me to their homepage. It's like, what?  There's no communication through it. 

There's actually a whole science around what needs to happen step by step for you to get the return on investment when it comes to Facebook Ads, particularly in this instance - but also to Google Ads. There's so much that goes into it.  I've tried to manage my own Facebook Ads and I've tried to manage my own Google ads, and I don't recommend it. There's just too much stuff you need to have your head around. 

When I say it's a science, I mean it's a freaking science. It is very technical and it's a science in terms of the technical parts of it - of understanding all that backend tech - but it's also understanding the marketing tech. I'm really good at the marketing side of it in terms of writing the copy, choosing the images, then choosing how does this copy link to the landing page - AKA, the sales page - the page where the conversion needs to happen from where this person needs to go, ‘Oh, yeah, I clicked on the right link because this is exactly the service I'm looking for,’ and then knowing what to write to that person, takes the next step.  A lot of times people just skip over all of that thing. 

But I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole. I'm trying to make the point that a lot of the time you are trying to do the right thing. You are trying to build your business, but you have to know - is this relevant to this stage of business? And we need to learn how to park a strategy that is not relevant. 

What I've done for my Private Practice Success Academy members is I've actually put together a Private Practice Growth Roadmap. It’s a table that looks at level 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. It looks at strategies related to getting clients for your business at each level - which is really marketing, customer service, that type of thing. Then we've got a bunch of strategies that have to do with the team, how to grow that amazing team that you want, recruitment, capacity building, career progression - all of that type of stuff. And then also one related to frameworks - that's your systems, policies, processes, procedures. And I've actually put it in order from what is relevant for level one - across all three of those things, what is relevant to level 2, 3, 4, and five. 

So if you were ever to come into The Academy, the first thing we would do is do a checklist. So even if you come in at level five, it's like, “I’m rocking this Gerda, I'm making $1.1 million minimum every year. I've got all these team members.” I'm going to go, ‘Hang on, let's go and have a look. Are there any gaps in your foundations?’ Alright, so that's maybe the frustrating bit of working with me. 

When I work with allied health practice owners, helping them to grow their business, I see it as my responsibility to go before we scale an amazing, already successful level five practice, I'm going to take you back and I'm going to make sure that there's no holes in your foundation, because I want to set you up for success if you're going to work with Gerda Muller - my reputation is at stake, - so I'm going to make sure that we fill the gaps, that we fill the holes that might have been left there. So we can then look - Have we done everything that a level one should do across all of three of those domains? Yes, we have. Have we done everything at level two? Yes, we have everything at level three. Oh, there's a hole here. Maybe it's a system hole, we don't have that system set up, let's do that right now. Because if you can make sure that there's no gaps in every level of the foundations - because at each level of business development, there's new foundations that you are laying down for the next stage of growth.

We get so caught up in the growth, which is intoxicating - it feels good. You know why it is intoxicating? Because more people are being helped. The more clinicians you have, the more clients are being seen,  and as helpers that is such an amazing validation for why we went into this industry, why we became helpers, right?  But that also means that it's easy to skip over foundational pieces and it will come back to bite you. I've seen it time and time again, that's why I'm harping on about this. 

So you have to make sure that at each level you have your foundations set up. A lot of people come and talk to me because they want to have that self-running practice. If you don't have these foundations in place. That will never happen. You might pretend to have a self-running practice and you're going to be constantly dragged back into the ops, back into solving issues and problems - and you don't want that. 

So that's where the Practice Growth Roadmap comes in, making sure that you are always implementing business strategies in general, but particularly marketing strategies, because this is the one thing I see people get wrong all the time. So I want you to stop throwing money at marketing strategies not relevant to your level of private practice development.

#2 - STOP Doing the Job of your Front Desk or Admin Team

The second thing I want you to stop doing is an oldie, but a goldie. At some level in my mind, I'm thinking - is this even relevant to share Gerda? Because I have spoken about this quite a lot, but you know what, it is still freaking relevant, because I still hear this happening all the time.

And that is when you, as the practice owner, are still working as reception, and as admin support. So I need you to please, please stop being both the business owner and potentially still a clinician, right, let's not lie to ourselves about what is actually happening. You are probably working as the business owner, the clinician, probably also the bookkeeper. And then you're still being reception - answering the phone, answering client enquiries, taking payments. And I wouldn't be surprised if you are still the one cleaning the practice. But again, I don't want to come down on you like a ton of bricks, I want you to take this feedback with love. Alright. Please take this with love. 

I'm going to really drill down on practice owners still working at the front desk. I think it's good for a practice owner to have worked at the front desk. A lot of times we do that when we start as a solo practice owner. I've done my own admin when I was a solo practice owner, but you know what? It also meant that often I had to go in on Saturdays to do admin - which I didn't like because I went into private practice to have work life balance - to spend time with my kids, and I went, ‘This isn't working for me.’ So if you are a solo practice owner, I would highly encourage you to, at the very least, get yourself a virtual assistant.

Back in 2007 when I went into solo practice, I don’t think virtual assistants existed because I had never heard of it. But if I were to go into solo practice today, I would not do it without a VA. And you don't need a full-time virtual assistant. You can start with four hours a week, an hour a day, five hours a week. It's still going to make a difference. And then you can add more time and add more time as your business grows. 

Again, I will say, I think it's good to do some of it at the start, so you know - How long does an intake normally take? How long does it take to process a payment? How long does it take to put new client details into my client management system? That way you've got a great understanding of - What is your expectation of that virtual service or when the reception comes. How busy is it actually, at the front desk? Even when I had my level five practice, I would often go in to the practice and I would always make sure that I had the room closest to reception, and I would keep my door open and I would listen to what's happening in there.

I would have days where my main goal for being at the practice was to observe. Not to stand behind them micromanaging them, but to just observe what is happening. What are the efficiencies like? What am I hearing people saying? Is everything still at those standards? Is the welcome still the way that I want it to be?

Are people actually standing up from behind the desk? Are they making eye contact? Can I hear that warmth from the room next door where they say, “Hey welcome, so glad to see you again!” All of that type of stuff. So I think it's really good. You need to know what's happening at your front desk. 

But you shouldn't be the receptionist, you shouldn't be the person doing all the administration. Because - and I've just touched on this earlier - you are the business owner and when you are working in reception, you're not going to have time to be the business owner. To sit at the top of the mountain, to sit in that strategic decision making and planning space where you need to sit and in order to truly grow your business.

People tell me, “But Gerda, I, I can't afford to hire a receptionist.” I think you can't afford not to. Just like you can't afford not to have a business consultant like myself on your team, okay? You cannot afford not to have reception and admin. Because if you think about it as the business owner, your time is valued at $300 plus. That is your time. That is like actually a minimum. That's what the value of your time is, being the CEO of your small business. 

Now I love reception, and I'm not looking down on them when I say this - but what is the value? What is it going to cost you to pay for somebody to do your reception? Definitely not $300. But that is what you are paying in lost business owner productivity when you are sitting at the front desk. You might go, “Oh, but I'm doing it for free.” No, you are not. You are not doing it for free. Maybe there's not a direct line between money that you're paying out to a receptionist wage and super and all of that type of stuff - but it's costing you. It's costing the growth of your business. It's costing you time with your family. It's costing you energy. It's costing you time to sit at the top of the mountain - actually plotting and planning this amazing business success that's going to help you hire more team, and help more people -  that's what it's costing you, okay.

So when we are looking at investing money and hiring our first admin person, whether that's a virtual assistant or an in-person, you shouldn't just look at the expense. You need to ask yourself - What am I losing out on here? What are those indirect costs that I'm having as a result of not having this person here to help and support me? Why am I keeping myself stuck here? Is it fear? Is it a scarcity mindset?  What is stopping me from taking a step where I'm going to go, you know what, enough is enough already. I need to step into being the business owner. This sitting at the front desk, it's a beautiful form of procrastination. It's a beautiful form of avoidance. Because when I'm busy here, I can't make those uncomfortable decisions when I'm sitting at the front desk - I can't step into being that leader that maybe makes me feel like an imposter, when it comes to being a leader and a practice owner . This is actually safe staying here at the front desk because I actually feel like I know what I'm doing. I'm feeling productive. I feel like I'm contributing, and I don't know whether I can do that as the actual business owner.

And you know fabulous practice owner - if that is you, then the one thing you absolutely have to do is step away from that front desk, and allow yourself to step into that uncomfortable space of owning who you are - and that is that you are the business owner, and therefore that you are the leader of your team, the leader of a team that looks after amazing clients and supports your community. That you are a business owner that's made that decision to build a business, that's going to give you that time and financial freedom to be there for your family. 

So please, I encourage you to reflect on if you are still doing tasks, whether that's the front desk, bookkeeping, cleaning that stops you from being, and stepping into the business owner role. You need to be honest with yourself about what's going on there, and make a decision as to what you want to do going forward. Because only you can decide that enough is enough and that you are going to do what you are here to do.

#3 - STOP Saying Yes when you should be Saying No

The third and final thing that I want to talk to you about that you need to please stop doing, is that you need to stop saying yes when you are meant to be saying no. I'm going to venture a guess that you actually deep down know that you should be saying no - but you don't. And I think a lot of times, and I might be wrong, but I think a lot of times that is because we like to be liked and we want to make our team happy - and this specifically comes through in managing a team - that's what I'm referring to here. But you know, this also refers to dealing with clients in terms of boundary settings when it comes to your policies and processes. But I'm going to talk about it specifically in terms of managing a team right now.

A lot of practice owners are saying yes when they should be saying no, and they often end up kicking themselves afterwards for having said yes - even though their gut was telling them that this is not the right thing. And a lot of times they tell me it's like “I was in the meeting and I didn't know what else to say, and the moment they left the office, I knew I did the wrong thing.’  Or they stopped me in the corridor and said, ‘Hey, do you have a second?’ And because as a practice owner, you want to be helpful - you've got that open door policy, and eople come in and then you say, yes, you should be saying no because she did not give yourself an opportunity to actually think about it.

I think a lot of times it's because we like to be liked. We want our team to be happy. And as a result, we people please. We people please our team, because we don't want them to leave. Let's not lie to ourselves - for the last couple of years, it has been a really challenging labor market If you are a business owner.

The amount of jobs far outweigh the amount of candidates applying for it. Yes, there has most certainly been a turning of the tides. Practice owners that I work with are getting lots more applications than they did 24 months ago. They have got way more choice in hiring, but it's still not what it was back in 2015, 2018, those years, it's not close to what it was - so people are desperate. They are desperate to keep their team on board because they're thinking to themselves, ‘Oh my golly, if I say no to this request, they might just go - Well, I'm leaving, thank you very much.’

Because it feels like, and maybe it's more than just a feeling, maybe it's reality that the candidates - whether that's potential or current team members - have got a lot more leverage than we have as the business owner. I find like a lot of people are saying yes to things that they should be saying no. And then what happens is that they are people pleasing. 

And when you are pleasing people, you're saying yes to one person. Now you need to start saying yes for other people as well right? And before they know it, they have totally undone their business where they're running at losses. I've spoken to practice owners at level five making more than a million dollars a year, who are running that business at a loss month after month, after month.

Eventually they come and talk to me and say, “Gerda, I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I've got this relatively big team, 8, 10, 12, 14, even more team members on board. We are seeing all these clients. We've got really great revenue, but there's zero profit. I don't understand it.”  And you know, I actually love working with practice owners like that because to me that's an amazing challenge. It's like there's no reason why you shouldn't be making profit. 

When you come in and work with me, I want you to work towards a 30% profit margin, and that is after you've paid yourself as the business owner, that's after any and all expenses, we want that to sit at 30%. That is a sellable business. So now that we know what the target is, what do we need to do to get there?

 And it might take time to get there because once you have undone a lot of stuff that should have been done -  it takes time to get there. We want to problem solve these situations in a way where we retain the team. But the thing that I know being a psychologist myself, is that when you lead as a people pleaser, what you are actually doing is not providing the level of psychological safety that your team deserves.  

Just like you can't always say yes to your kids, you can't always say yes to your team. And I'm not comparing your team to children, but I'm really positioning this in that sense of psychological safety.  You know what gives psychological safety to a child and also to your team: structure, consistency, and listening to them. I'm not one of those parents that says, ‘You will do as you are told. Why? Because I'm your mother. Because I'm the adult.’ No, you need to listen with empathy. You need to make sure that person knows that you are not only hearing them, but listening and that you are understanding of it. You can say no with empathy and you can say no with compassion.  You can also say yes, and you should say yes - when appropriate, when in line with the values of your business. When in line with set policies and processes. 

You know how many practice owners I talk to that have, let's, for example, say a leave policy that's written down, that's rolled out - and then they apply it differently to different team members because they want to keep the team happy. That is not consistency. That's not safe because it's like, I don’t know, what's the right or the wrong thing? So as a team member, when I feel psychologically safe within a workplace, I know what's the done thing, because there is transparency. I know that if I'm going to go ask for this, I can probably predict what the answer is going to be because this practice owner has been consistent with these answers when my teammates have gone in and asked the exact same thing.

But if the practice owner isn’t consistent in their feedback, in their answers - and I'm not saying that you can't look at individual circumstances, there are always outliers - but the team isn't dumb. Your team is very clever. They will know when there are extenuating circumstances and they will be fully supportive if there is a team member with (i'm just, you know, thinking off the top of my head here), with significant medical issues and therefore we need to manage that a bit differently in terms of our example - a leave policy. The team's going to be fully supportive of that, but they're going to know why that is so. And if you are going to be clear and transparent with your decision making, that is what makes people feel safe.

So I want you to reflect on have you been managing from a place of trying to please everybody? And if you have, ask yourself - how has that been serving you? If it hasn't been serving you, it's probably also not serving the team, although I know that's probably your motivation. I'm also guessing that it's come back to bite you.

So if you truly want to create a psychologically safe workplace for your team - your focus needs to be on consistency, but also, transparency about what is happening. And you also need to trust your team that they can deal with those things and that, that is what they want. I'm not saying that I should tell them your whole life story, please - boundaries, people, boundaries - but it's about knowing what that balance is. So that was the third thing that I want you to please stop doing. 

Closing Thoughts: One Change in Behaviour at a Time

I hope that this has been of help. Now, if you've been listening to this episode and you are going, “Oh my goodness, Gerda, I do all three of these things.”  Don't give yourself a hard time. I want you to then go - which of these three things do I need to address first? Maybe it is because it's the easiest thing for me to stop doing. That's normally a good one, right? If it's the easiest thing - I'm going to focus on this one for the next four to six weeks. It's going to be my main goal. I'm going to put up a note here on my computer. I'm going to put it in my diary. I'm going to put it on my calendar to remind me that this is the thing that I need to work on.

Also, make sure that you've got a plan for working on this, that you know what it is that you need to do to stop doing it. And then when you've done that one, then you go - okay, what's the next one that I'm going to work on? And then what's the next one? Don't make the mistake of trying now to stop all three of these things - that will be setting yourself up for failure. That’s just how it is, because these things are behaviours. 

I'm going to suspect that if you are a helping professional, you've got some training in behaviour change, and that you probably know that it's really hard to change behaviour - even if you are a helping professional. Even if you spent three, six, five, however many years studying at university on behaviour change -  it is still freaking hard. I mean, I'm a psychologist, I've got years of practicing as a psychologist, and there's still behaviours that I'm working on today. 

So you need to be kind to yourself and you need to take one little step at a time. And if you need help, you know where to find me.  I'm right over here, ready, willing, and able to be of assistance - all you need to do is go to the show notes, there's a triage form there. Fill it in, send it through to me. I personally go through those responses. And if I can help, I will reach out. If I can't, I will point you in the right direction, because my goal is to empower you with the right support for where you are at right now.

Alrighty, we are going to leave it at that. Thank you so very much for tuning in. And as always, remember that I am here to help you build a practice you can't stop smiling about 😊


People on this episode

Head Shot

Gerda Muller

Host