The Private Practice Success Podcast

27. How to Sleigh your Overwhelm

• Gerda Muller • Episode 27

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In this episode of the Private Practice Success Podcast, Gerda tackles the universal challenge faced by private practice owners being....

Overwhelm due to a lack of time.

Join Gerda in this important discussion as she dives deep into the difference between stress and overwhelm, why overwhelm is so pervasive, and how it can paralyse even the most capable practice owner.

In this Episode, you will learn:

  • The key differences between stress and overwhelm and why it matters.
  • How to break free from the cycle of overwhelm.
  • Three practical strategies to finally sleight your overwhelm for good.
  • How to achieve a mindset that supports clarity and calm.
  • The importance of creating a business that serves not just your clients and team, but also you as the business owner. 

Who This Episode Is For:

  • Private practice owners struggling to balance leadership, operations, and personal well-being.
  • Practice owners ready to regain control, find clarity, and create a thriving, sustainable business.
  • Allied health professionals feeling stuck in a cycle of overwhelm and burnout.

Gerda’s actionable tips and empowering insights will help you take the first step toward slaying your overwhelm and building the business you’ve always envisioned. 

Tune in now and discover how to start each day with calm, clarity, and confidence.

Connect with Private Practice Success & Gerda here:

 Well, hello there brilliant private practice owner. My name is Gerda Muller, and you are listening to the Private Practice Success podcast, and this is episode number 27. 

The topic of today's discussion emanated from a recent poll that I ran in my Facebook group called Private Practice Success for Allied Health Professionals. It was really, really interesting. I asked a very specific question, and in the poll, I said I would love to know right now what is the number one challenge you are experiencing in your private practice.

In other words, what is that one thing that you think of when you wake up in the middle of the night? What is that? And I'm going to share the results of that poll with you, and we are going to start with the challenge that got the least amount of votes. 

Poll Results Reveal the Biggest Challenges in Private Practices

So 2% of allied health practice owners, because that's the audience within this group, and I would say that I think it's a pretty good sample size of allied health practice owners within Australia - most certainly not a perfect sample size, but pretty good - 2% said business stagnation. In other words, the fact that your business isn't growing, it's not moving forward. It might be going from side to side, two steps forward, two steps back - but we aren't growing. So that was a challenge for 2% of the people that voted.  

The next one was 14% of practice owners said that their number one challenge was empty diaries. In other words, a lack of clients. And between me and you, I actually thought that that one was going to be much bigger because of anecdotal evidence based on conversations that I have with people, based on questions that I see people asking in Facebook groups, I was under the impression that that's going to be bigger. So, a lot of people these days are talking about - Where can I find more clients? The phone has stopped ringing, the referrals have decreased, and people are less likely to book in or they’re spacing out their sessions. So, I was pretty surprised to see that only 14% of people had that as their number one challenge.

Then the third one on the list was 18% of practice owners said that cash flow difficulties were their biggest challenge. So, in terms of cash flow difficulties, that normally means the flow of money coming in and out of your business. And it's generally a difficulty when there's more money going out than money coming in, or the rhythm of that flow is such that the cash isn't in your bank account when you need it - like when you need to pay your bills or when you need to pay your team. Your third parties haven't paid, or for some reason the cash just isn’t there. And I say for some reason, there's always a reason. You can pinpoint what it is when you do a bit of a deep dive into it. But that was 18% of people. 

Then the next one was 25% of practice owners said that clinician recruitment difficulties was their number one challenge in their business. And again, this was interesting to me because I have most certainly seen and witnessed a turning of the tides when it comes to recruitment. But it is still an issue for a lot of people - 25% said that they are still struggling to recruit clinicians. 

And then the biggest one. The number one challenge that practice owners are experiencing right now, and which is sitting at a whopping 41% of people that responded to the poll, is overwhelm - due to a lack of time.

So tell me if you are thinking about these 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 things that I've just listed. What is your biggest challenge? Is it overwhelm? If it is, then I need you to keep listening, because today I'm going to talk to you about how to slay your overwhelm, and it's going to be really, really practical.

Now in order for what I'm going to share with you to be of utmost value to you and for this to be as practical as possible, I do think that we need to start with just spending one to two minutes differentiating between overwhelm and stress, because those two concepts can be confusing - especially if you are the person experiencing it. I'm going to start with stress. We are going to just talk about that briefly and then we're going to talk about overwhelm.

Stress in Your Practice: The Good, The Bad, and The Situational

This is just my definition off the top of my head as a psychologist, as a business owner, as a business consultant. The way that I see stress is that stress is a response to a specific pressure. IE: a specific challenge that you might be experiencing in your business or life in general for that matter.

Stress is not only happening in business, it can happen in your personal lives, in your family relationships, all of the places. But we are going to talk about business related stuff for the purposes of this episode. Stress therefore often arises when you feel that demands are being placed on you that exceed your available resources, or your ability to cope in that moment.

Due to that loose definition of stress, if we think about it in terms of its characteristics - stress can and often is very situational. So it's often tied to a specific event. For example - an upcoming NDIS audit, if you are a NDIS provider. Maybe a Medicare audit. It could be a difficult situation with a client that has complained and left you a really scathing Google review. Or maybe it's a cashflow issue where I've got all these bills, or I've got wages to you next week and I don't have the money. So it can be really situational. It also leads to a heightened state of alertness, or that sense of urgency when you have that feeling of stress in those situations. 

Now, the thing about stress is that it's not all bad, right? If you're an allied health professional, you probably know this - stress can be very helpful, ie: by being motivating - but in small doses. It can push you to take an action that you might have been avoiding or that is uncomfortable for you, but as a result of that feeling of urgency of stress, you do it anyway. So it can be good if it occurs in small doses. 

If I had to think of a very specific situation also for you as a practice owner, where people tell me they do have stress a lot, that is when they are stressed about meeting deadlines, particularly deadlines for wages. Right now I speak to a lot of relatively large group practice owners, businesses that look really successful from the outside with even multiple locations making in excess of seven figures, and those practice owners are highly stressed - probably overwhelmed as well - but every two weeks, they have a high stress event when their wages are due, because there's zero profit margin in their business. 

They tell me, “It doesn't matter what I do, how hard I work, the money's never going to be there. I'm stressed. From the initial seven days leading up to it, there's this buildup of heightened stress that happens watching the bank account every day. What money is coming in. How much am I going to have? How much am I going to be short?” And then holding their breath basically until they are able to pay their team, and then they've got that sense of release - and then the cycle starts again leading up to the next two weeks. Now that's not good stress, that is bad stress - because it's ongoing. 

But this is the reality of what is happening out there in our industry, unfortunately. So that is the way that I look at stress and the experience of stress for us as allied health business owners. So let's talk about overwhelm. 

Overwhelm in Business

Overwhelm really has a broader definition for me, it is more pervasive. It's a pervasive emotional state where really that sheer volume of tasks, of responsibilities, of decisions that you need to make feels unmanageable. Probably because it is.  

It is less about a specific situation, like I've got payroll due, for example. It's more that accumulation of that situation - and another one, and another thing and another thing and another thing. And as a result, that sense of overwhelm often leads to paralysis - where you just do nothing because  it's too hard. Or an inability to prioritise effectively - you just do the thing that's open on your desk rather than doing what's important, and it is way more likely to lead to burnout when left unchecked.  So really, between stress and overwhelm, the one that I'm most scared about for my practice owners is most certainly overwhelm. 

An example of overwhelm would be a practice owner that might feel overwhelmed because you are trying to manage your recruitment, you're trying to work on client retention - not just your own, but your team's client retention - you need to do marketing, you need to deal with toxic team members, but you've got no clear plan. You're just trying to do all of the things all at the time, even though you might have support people in place - but the overwhelm is just too big. 

Sometimes I can tell you this now, it is the practice owners with the largest support team in terms of admin and team leaders and stuff that has the most overwhelm. Because they didn't set things up right from the start. In a lot of cases, therefore, more people lead to more overwhelm, when really it should be the freaking other way around. 

That just means that most certainly we need to talk about overwhelm. Now, if you've listened to the differentiation between stress and overwhelm and you're going, “Yep, sounds good Gerda, but I think I've got more stress than overwhelm,” then, I've got you. I have actually already done a podcast episode on dealing with the stress of running a business. So if you think that stress is your number one issue, I want you to go to Episode Number Nine of the Private Practice Success Podcast, the one you're listening to right now, and I want you to go and listen to that episode. For today, what we are going to do is we are going to focus on how to slay your overwhelm.

Slaying Overwhelm: Practical Strategies for Practice Owners

Okay, so let's take a moment and just dig a tiny bit deeper into overwhelm. The thing is this, for practical skills to be of help, you first really need to understand the thing that you are trying to address, because unless you understand the thing - in this case, overwhelm - you are not just going to take my word for it, I would love it if you would, and some of you might - but as a general rule, we need to understand why am I doing these things? 

If we look at the Oxford Dictionary definition of overwhelm, because the one I shared with you previously was my own. The Oxford Dictionary defines overwhelm as follows, it says: 

Overwhelm is to have such a strong emotional effect on somebody, that it is difficult for them to resist or know how to react. 

Just let that sink in for a minute. That is so freaking true, because when you are overwhelm is high, that is exactly what happens. It's like you've got this feeling and you just don't know what to freaking do. So don't give yourself a hard time if you are struggling with overwhelm, it is freaking paralysing. It also says:

Overwhelm is to defeat somebody completely. 

Oh my goodness.  Do you sometimes feel defeated by your overwhelm? Yeah. Next one says:

Overwhelm is to be so bad or so great that a person cannot deal with it.

Mmm, again, let that one sink in. This is what the freaking dictionary says. So you aren't making this stuff up. It's not like you're failing. This is just the nature of overwhelm. And then finally it says:

Overwhelm is to cover somebody or something completely. 

Again, it's so pertinent for me. I mean, I've had overwhelm many times in my life. It's like this is so true, in that emotional state - that is exactly how it feels - that is overwhelm. Just reading that, it takes you back to times of overwhelm because, yes, that's exactly what it is. So I want you to let those definitions sink in. Because sometimes we give ourselves a very hard time for feeling overwhelmed and for not being able to dig ourselves out of it.

The fact of the matter is this -  once overwhelm has set in, it is a freaking bugger to get rid of. What makes it even harder is that overwhelm has this sneaky little cousin called anxiety that likes to tag along with overwhelm, and when the two of them get together - they cause a shit ton of problems. Mm-hmm. Have you met anxiety? I'm sure you have. Most of us have.

Again, the point here that I also want to make is that we need to be proactive. We need to nip overwhelm in the butt before it can start to reap complete havoc with your plans, with your day, with your week, your month, your year, with your life. And this is where skills are going to come in - the practical things that you can do that I'm going to share with you today.

Skill One: The Power of the Pause

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of resisting the urge to do something when you're feeling overwhelmed. You know what I'm talking about, right? You wake up in the morning, you have this internal nervousness, this pressure that drives you to just get into the day and start doing stuff.

That urge - which is often driven by wanting to feel that I've done something - that urge is driven by that need to reduce the overwhelm. But in fact, by acting on that urge, it only perpetuates it. It keeps you in the state of pursuing reinforcement that at least you've done something - giving you short term relief and allowing you to get through yet another day - and then to do it all again tomorrow 

What then happens as a result, it means that you keep on avoiding bigger issues, which is often the important issues. By avoiding doing the important stuff, this then leads to more and more fires popping up in your business down the road. To some extent really what I'm saying, is you are putting yourself in a cycle and you are keeping yourself in that perpetuating cycle. Can you relate to this? So what's the answer then? 

What you want to do is that before you want to jump into your day, you want to pause. You need to pause until such time as you have clarity around what is important for you to do today. If you get to the end of your pause and you are still unsure, you pause again and again -  until you know. What is the most important thing that I need to get done today? 

Not the easiest thing, not the quick win, what is something important? Because once you've made that decision, there's a knowing that comes. A knowing and a sense of calm that comes instead of overwhelm and anxiety. And you make that the only thing that you have to get done today - and that's how you start to slay your overwhelm. Don't wait for it to set in. 

I would encourage you to go right now and go - where am I going to apply this in my daily life? Can I make this part of my morning routine? Now I'm going to be the first one to put up my hand and say that I could never be part of the 5:00am Club. I am not a morning person. When I had kids, I had no choice, I had to be up, my kids were never good sleepers. Now that my kids are older, my alarm in the morning goes up at 7:00am. I will not get up before 7:00am. Maybe I shouldn't say this on the airwaves, but it is what it is. I'm not a morning person. I'm also not a nighttime person. I'm a freaking day person. 

So for me to do journaling in the morning, like early before the house wakes up - that doesn't work. I'm not saying don't do journaling. I actually do love journaling. But I do it when it works for me. I do my pause at a time that works for me. So don't look at where other people are fitting this in. Ask yourself, “Where's your time of pause going to happen?”

It might be before you put your light off at night and lay your head to sleep, maybe that's when you need to pause. And then tomorrow morning when you wake up, your little notebook is there right next to your bed, maybe on a sticky note to say this is your one thing that you're going to focus on today. 

Maybe you've got young kids and you don't have that time for pause in the morning. I remember how my life was, oh my goodness, getting up doing breakfast because my husband always used to start work at 5:00am, so he wouldn't be home to help with the morning routine of you know - getting kids up, dressed, fed, ready for school - it was a freaking shit show in the morning. You know, getting out of the house on time, getting everybody to school, and sometimes I felt extremely frazzled when I had to walk into the practice.

I can tell you a lot of mornings you would see me in the car park -  just pausing. Just going, I need to get rid of this frazzled anxiety that I have, (because I had three young kids that I had to get to school all by myself - and they weren't always very cooperative), and I had to literally calm my nervous system down before I walked in. Because I knew the moment I walked in, I had to be there for my team, for my clients, and for my business - and I wanted to be the best version of myself. 

So again, you need to do what works for you, but as long as you're doing something. Find where it's going to fit into your day and into your life. So whenever you notice that scrambling energy of anxiety, that's what it is. It's like you notice when you make scrambled eggs, anxiety just scrambles the inside in your chest. It's just like all scrambled and mushed together. That is your flag to pause, and then to trust that whatever you decide is the right thing to do on that day. And then you go and you do just that. 

Anything else is just the cherry on top of the cake that you get done. Stop expecting yourself to do ten things or even three, or even two - when you are a practice owner that has a family, that has a business that they are trying to build, that has team members that need your support - it's time to be realistic. One thing. One thing. That's all you need to put on your to-do list.

Skill Two: Change Your State

If you're a Tony Robbins fan, you'll probably know what I'm talking about, because he's very well known for his change your state method. Now, on a personal level, Tony also goes through what us normal folk would refer to as very extreme means to change his state, which is called cryotherapy. So if you are interested in that, by all means go and read up on it. It's basically where people go into the cylinder type thing with only their head sticking out and it's freezing cold in there. Cryotherapy -  it almost makes me think of, you know, where people freeze their bodies when they're dead, but it's not the same thing. This is, you do this when you're alive. So anyway, you can read up on that. 

But I have had my own personal brush with cryotherapy, but in a way more normal sense of the way. A couple of years back for my group private practice, The Psych Professionals, we had an offsite team day where we took everybody to the Gold Coast. It was such an amazing day. It was so super cool, it was a great day for team building. We did exercises, reconnected with the business vision, mission, our values, and more importantly than values even -  is our virtues. It was just an amazing day. 

So anyway, the last exercise of the day -  just as the sun was beginning to set - we had a facilitator come out. We did some breathing exercises and it was all geared towards dealing with overwhelm and dealing with difficult situations at the practice. It was about empowering the team with: how do you stay calm when an unexpected event happens, or a critical event that you need to manage, or maybe you are just overwhelmed. How can you calm yourself down? 

This was the ‘change your state’ exercise and we all changed into our bathing suits. We did some sitting on the mats, breathing exercises and had a bit of an educational session on it. Then everybody participated in an ice bath, and I so didn't want to do it. I was actually the last person to go in and do it. I was just watching everybody, and everybody was so amazing. It was the most interesting experience that I had had in a very long time. I have done a lot of uncomfortable things in my life (like in business, that's what I'm talking about), like having difficult conversations and making hard decisions - it's like I can do that shit. But now this is a very physical thing. It was the best thing I could have done. 

For me, my own experience was you get in and then you need to sit down and you need to stay in there for two minutes. When I say ice bath, I mean this thing full of ice. And the moment you go in, you need only your head to stick out,  like your shoulders - everything needs to be covered. If your shoulders aren’t covered, it's not going to have the same effect. So if you see those people on TikTok and Instagram doing ice baths and half of these bodies still sticking out, that's not a true ice bath, let me just say that because this is what happens - you go into the water, and when the water hits your neck, it's like you cannot breathe. 

When I tell you, you can't breathe - you can't, your body literally cannot breathe. It's like there's this weight on your chest, and the more you try to breathe - you know what happens in your brain, in that survival part of your brain - it starts to freak the hell out. Yes, I wanted to use the F word, but I won't, because this is a non-explicit podcast, but your brain freaks the hell out because like - I cannot breathe. 

And this often happens in difficult situations - confronting situations like, I can't breathe? What do I do? Then your brain starts to freak out and then your adrenaline gets released, all of that stuff. And the answer actually is, guess what? To pause your breathing. We just spoke about pausing right before right. A different type of pause, but very similar concept. 

You actually need to pause your breathing for around 15 to 20 seconds, and because your mind now knows that you are consciously choosing not to breathe, it's telling the brain that, “Hey, I'm still in control. I am not dying. So you don't have to go into survival mode. I am okay. No need to release the adrenaline. I am in control here.” So you pause and then you can breathe again, and it's about just letting the body adjust. 

You know the other interesting thing that happens is that you just stop feeling your body. I was getting to the 90 second mark and I was telling the guy, “I don't think I'm going to be able to get out of here because I cannot feel my legs.” And he said, “No, don't worry, the body remembers.” I said, “No, no, you don't get it. There's nothing there. It doesn't exist anymore. My legs do not exist. I cannot feel them!” And he just went, “You need to trust your body.” It's so interesting looking back, because the ice bath was on the side of a big swimming pool, and the swimming pool had this little what's it called, the spa section with warm water. 

As I said, I was the last one to go, and everybody, the entire team had already gone. When they were done, they would get into the spa with the warm water, and everybody was sitting there watching and listening to me. It's like - okay. I was just focused on this guy and I was just going, “I'm not going to be able to get up here.” And he just said, “You need to trust your body, because your body will know what to do.” It was just amazing when the two-minute mark was over. He said, “Okay, you're good. You can get out.” And I just went - okay, I'm going to get out. And my body just did what it needed to do.  It was one of the best experiences I could have gone through. It was so super cool and yeah, I highly recommend it. 

I went on a bit of a tangent there, but needless to say - changing your state is incredibly effective. Now, I'm not going to recommend that you do cryotherapy or ice baths on a daily or even a weekly basis. I've not done an ice bath since then. I'm not one of those extreme people, that's not how I operate. If that is you, I love it. There is actually, in my little coastal town where I live, there's people that do ice baths here. You can book it in and go on a daily basis. It's available to me, but it's not something that I'm pulled to do.

I think if I really needed it, if I came to a place where I go that I need an intervention, I would probably go. But if you manage your overwhelm proactively, you won't need that unless you are just really, really health conscious and that's the type of stuff that interests you.

So rest assured that you can do things that normal people can do that will have a similar calming and empowering impact, because remember - the goal here is to just achieve a physical change in your state.  If you think about your own experience of overwhelm, even anxiety, you'll probably know that it has a really strong physical component. You know that scrambled feeling on your chest, or maybe for you, it's in your stomach. It can actually manifest in various parts of your body. It's different for each of us.  To shift that physical feeling, you need a physical intervention, and that is where this concept of changing your state comes in. 

So here's a couple of ways for you to change your state on an everyday basis. It could be as simple as going for a walk, a nice brisk walk. Maybe walking frustrates you, and you want to go for a run, or maybe you like going for an early morning swim. Maybe you want to go for a yoga class, a hot yoga class where you are doing a lot of stretching. Maybe you want to jump on the kids' trampoline outside in the backyard and just jump until all that scrambled energy has left your body. Maybe you like skipping? There's this guy on TikTok that skips on music, and I always look at him and go, ‘Oh, I want to learn how to do that.’ Maybe skipping is your thing. Maybe just putting on headphones or earphones and just dancing to really upbeat music -  dancing like nobody's watching as they say. Or having a cold shower, have you tried that one? It wakes you up like that. So there's everyday things that you can do that doesn't cost you money, that doesn't have to involve a lot of your time investment, that can have a similar impact.

So maybe try two or three of these suggestions and see which is the one that does it for you. Or maybe you were a runner when you were younger, but you've stopped doing it and you're going, Hmm, maybe that was my thing. Just go, okay, I'm going to start doing it again. But choose something that's going to fit into the life that you have today. Because our life changes as we get married, if you have kids. Based on where your life is at right now, what does that need to look like for you? And don't get hung up on the fact that there's certain things that maybe you can't do anymore because life has changed. That is just how it is. So you need to make a decision around what are you going to do and where you're going to fit this into your world right now.

Skill Three: Remember Who You Are

Can I call it a skill? It is a skill, but it starts with a mindset and an encouragement of remembering who you are. 

Skill number one, which was pause and skill number two, which was to change your state, has strong physical components to it. With skill number three, mindset is that primary component, and it is the mindset of remembering who you are. And who is that?  You are the CEO of your small business. You are the practice owner, the person that bears all the risk and all the responsibility. You are the principal clinician probably. You are the director of your business. You are the ‘whatever word’ you use to describe what you are and what you do in your business.

As the owner, it is your job to sit at the top of your private practice mountain. It is your job to have a bird's eye view of what is happening - in the business, in your industry, in your community. Now pay close attention to what I'm going to say next. When there's chaos and overwhelm in the practice, it is not your job to go down and walk yourself down the mountain and into the valley of doom and operations and do all the things. Because if you do, you will get trapped in the bushes, in the weeds, in the overgrowth - also known as the freaking overwhelm - and once in there it is extremely hard to get out. I know this has probably happened to you. Maybe it's even happened this week… this month. 

Instead, it is your job to continue to operate from the top, and I'm not saying this in a hierarchical sense of the word, that's not what I'm saying here. It's not about being better than somebody else because you're sitting at the top of the org structure. But it is actually your job to operate in this mindset. To know what your job is, just like everybody else needs to know what their job and their responsibilities are. And it is your job as the owner and therefore as the leader of your team - whether you've got one team member, twenty or a hundred team members - it's your job to stay in the calm. 

By staying in the calm - instead of going down there in the overwhelm -  your energy will pull whatever is happening down in the overwhelm, into the calm - but you need to believe that that's what will happen.

So when overwhelmed, you need to take yourself to the top of the mountain. You need to then sit until it becomes clear what threads do I need to pull next? Instead of being in the valley, pulling and tagging at each and every thread - not knowing where this is coming from and what is going on, because you can't see what is happening when you're down there - it is so much easier at the top of the mountain. 

But get this - it is not about working yourself to the bone to the top of the mountain. Being at the top is an energetic choice. It is a mindset choice. You need to decide that that is where you will operate from. And if you ask me, it is a much more pleasant state than being stuck in the overgrowth of the valley.

A lot of times you go down into that valley because you want to help your team, because you want to help whomever is stuck in there. You know, there's fires that you are always getting pulled into putting out. You aren’t helping. That is not helping. And if you really think about it, it's part of what's keeping you stuck, right?

I see this all the time. I'm in a very fortunate position to speak to a lot of, especially group practice owners, people that are reaching out to me going, “Hey, Gerda, I'm struggling with A, B, and C. I think you're the person to help me.” And then we go through a bit of a process and we talk. To make a long story short, often they will go, “I really want to jump in and work with you.” Maybe it's joining my Academy or joining The Founders Club. And then they tell me. “But I just want to, (for example), hire my practice manager - because when I have that person, I'm going to have more time to focus on working on the business. Or I just want to do ‘insert whatever this thing is’ that they think they need to do so that they can have the time and emotional energy to work on the business.” In other words, to go and sit at the top of the mountain. 

But guess what? It rarely happens and I see this all the time. I have been doing this thing called Private Practice Success for quite a long time now. I started my Private Practice Success Academy towards the end of 2020, so we are now in our fifth year of doing this. I've had people reach out to me specifically wanting to join The Academy early on and then again reach out two, three years later. And it's really interesting to me that when I compare the information they sent me the first time they reached out to the second time they reached out. Do you know how many times - nine out of ten times - they list the exact same challenges that they had when they reached out the first time. Exactly the same.

It's like nothing has changed. And you know, I've got a really good memory. And I keep really good records because if you email me,   I'll go -  ‘I'm sure I've heard from this person before, or I'm sure I've spoken to them before.’ And then I will go and search for it and I go, ‘Oh yeah, this is where they were then, what has changed? What is still the same, et cetera.’ And nine out of 10 times - nothing has changed. And that to me is incredibly sad. Because I know that that practice owner had the very best intentions to get those things done that they thought they needed to get done in order to have - the time, the money, the energy to work on their business. But that's just not the reality of business. 

The sad reality of being a business owner is that you will never have the time - until you decide to make the time. Until you decide to let go of certain things. To let go of feeling really great by being the one that puts out all the fires. Because it's like I'm the one with the answers. I'm the one that rescues everybody. I'm the one that goes into the weeds, and yes, I might be covered in leeches full of scratches and hurting and sunburn from working here and fixing all the stuff in the weeds. But I did that. That feels good. 

I'm not saying you're doing that consciously. You probably aren’t. You might be doing all of that stuff, complaining every step of the way because you actually don't want to do it - but you still do it. And the reality is the only person that can stop you, is you. You need to decide. I can't decide for you. I can encourage you, but only you can decide - that you know what? It doesn't matter what else is happening in the business - even in my life - I am making a choice that enough is enough. That I do not want to stay stuck here. Life is too short to stay stuck.

If you truly want to create a business that can help you achieve the goals for why you started it in the first place -  which is for a lot of business owners, especially female business owners, which is the majority of the people I work with - it is to have time freedom, to have financial freedom, and to create that stuff in service of yourself and your own family, right. 

Because most of us went into private practice to have flexibility to be there for our kids. But also to build a business that's going to serve the people that work for us - our clinicians, our admin team. But to also build a business of course, that's going to serve the clients and the community. And you know what? You can. And you deserve a business that serves the community, the clients, and the clinicians, and you as well. That is not selfish, okay. 

Unless you build a business that serves you as a business owner as well, you are doing this for, I wouldn't say for nothing - but you are not creating a sellable asset. And I don’t know about you, but I want to have the rewards of having my own business on an ongoing basis. But I also want to be able to one day sell it as an asset as part of my retirement planning.  

Nobody's going to buy a business where the business owner is a slave. Where the business owner can't pay themselves a market wage. Where the business owner isn’t able to get dividends from the business. Where the business owners are on the brink of burnout every second of every day. But ultimately it's up to you to make that decision. So I'm going to get off my soapbox. 

Please know I'm saying these things because I'm like an outsider looking in onto a lot of businesses and I can see those patterns. And again, for me it's incredibly sad, but also frustrating to see that people are staying stuck in those patterns. I do see it as my job, as your unofficially appointed business mentor here for my prior practice owners listening, to tell you that this is happening, because now you know now you can't say you didn't know. Now you can actually go and reflect on your own process. 

Are you still where you were 18 months ago? 12 months ago? If so, maybe you are a very optimistic person and you're a very hopeful person and you're going, ‘I'm working really hard, things are going to change.’ But I'm thinking that you were probably thinking that 12 months ago as well. And if nothing has changed, honestly, I don't think it is going to change unless there's a miracle.

I do believe that miracles can happen, but things don't just happen - you need to make it happen. It's up to you at the end of the day, and that could be a very empowering thought, but it can also be a very scary thought. Because when it's up to you, the responsibility is now on your shoulder to do something about it.

And of course, as always, if you want my help with that process, you know where to find me. There's a link of ways to contact me in the show notes. Check it out, be in touch, and let's talk. It's actually not hard to take that first step. 

When you reach out to me, I actually mean that you're reaching out to me. You won't be getting an email from my team. If you get an email, it will be from me personally. You won't be jumping on a Zoom call or a phone call with somebody that's really a salesperson. When you do a Zoom call with Private Practice Success, it's with me personally, the person that's going to work with you. You will be talking to me specifically because that is how I want to run this business. 

I want to know each and every person that I work with personally.  I want to know who you are. I want to know your business inside out. I want to know your goals, your vision. And I want to help and support you. So know that I'm always here when you decide to be ready, because readiness doesn't just happen - you need to make the decision. 

Start Your Day with a View from the Summit

So tying all of this together then - what I want you to do when you are using skill number one, which is pause (and as we said, you're going to find a time in the day where you are going to pause) - I want you to also visualise sitting at the top of the mountain. I want you to sit there and look around you.

I want you to see all the beautiful vistas that you can see from that place. You might even see a little black cloud in the distance where you can go, Hmm, I need to find out what that is and plan for that. Maybe there is a puff of smoke somewhere popping up beneath in a valley where you can go, Alright, that's something that we need to address before it becomes a wildfire.

But it's only when we are sitting at the top of the mountain that we can see these things - where we can breathe in the fresh air of calm, of clarity, of confidence. You so deserve to gift that to yourself. So that is what I want you to do at the start of every day and really allow yourself to consciously and energetically step into that space. 

Alrighty, thank you so much for listening. I do know that this episode was a bit longer than usual, so thank you for sticking with me right to the end.  And as always, remember that I am here to help you build a practice you can't stop smiling about :-)

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Gerda Muller

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