The Private Practice Success Podcast

53. Private Practice for Dummies

• Gerda Muller • Episode 53

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In Episode 53, Gerda strips private practice back to basics and reminds us that simplicity is often the secret to success. 

Inspired by the iconic “For Dummies” series, Gerda uses humour and real talk to break down what actually matters in running a thriving group practice (no complicated jargon or overwhelming checklists required).

You’ll discover the three essential elements every private practice needs, how they work together, and what goes wrong when you neglect any one of them. 

Plus, she shares the three behaviours that separate sustainable, successful practices from those stuck on the hamster wheel of doom.

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

  • The three non-negotiables for building a sustainable, profitable group practice (hint: it’s not just about getting more clients).
  • Why clear expectations, communication, and boundaries are the real secret sauce behind every high-functioning team and happy owner.
  • How to make the identity shift from clinician to business owner and why it’s essential for long-term success.

Who This Episode Is For:

  • Allied health practice owners who want to cut through the noise and focus on what really matters.
  • Clinicians thinking about starting or scaling a group practice and want a clear, practical roadmap.
  • Owners ready to simplify, set better boundaries, and finally build a business they can’t stop smiling about.

Tune in for a refreshingly simple, honest, and actionable conversation that will help you create a private practice that’s both successful and sustainable.

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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 53. 

Today's episode is called: Private Practice for Dummies. Yes, we are going there. I don't know if you've seen this, but some years back (and I'm saying some years back because I haven't recently seen it). Now that being said, it's probably because for the last five years I've been living in a small, rural coastal town, which means I don't get to visit a lot of Officeworks stores anymore, because it will take me a three hour round trip to get to the closest Officeworks in my neck of the woods. 

But when I was still living down in Brisbane and on the ground running my practice, I would regularly go and visit Officeworks.  A little secret, Officeworks was one of my favourite stores to shop in, because, you know how it is, right? You don't even need anything, but when you go into an Officeworks store, you can find something to purchase. Even if it's just a nice, new, fresh, pretty colourful notebook or a pen. Oh, I love the pens, but I digress.

In Officeworks there were always these (and I'm pretty sure they'll probably still have this), there was a section with book shelves where they would sell books. On these bookshelves, they often had a book series called Excel for Dummies, Accounting for Dummies, Business for Dummies. So it was basically an ‘insert topic’ and it is explained for dummies. I clearly remember these books being bright yellow and black branding, almost like a hazard sign.  It most certainly always caught my eye when I walked past that section of the aisle.

Now, I never bought one of these books. I don’t know why, but I never bought it. But I always noticed it and the titles were really catchy. I would always smile when I read it, so I thought I'm going to use that catchy title today. Hence this episode being called Private Practice for Dummies.  I did have a moment of going, Oh, Gerda, you can't say that, what if you offend your listeners? What if they go, ‘Hang on, we are not a bunch of dummies here, Gerda!’ But you know what? I'm going to go there because I think it's funny. 

If you do get offended by this, then you're probably just not my kind of person, because I do love to bring a bit of humour into what it is that we do, because our work can be really hard, so humour is incredibly important. And you know what, if I think about Private Practice for Dummies, the first thing I think about is how many times I've spoken to my accountant, and even other professionals in my world - such as the lawyers that help me with my contractor agreements over the years. And I would always tell them, ‘I can hear what you're saying, but it's still not making sense. I need you to explain this concept to me like I'm five.’

And sometimes I need to go, ‘I really need you to dumb this down for me because I still don't get it.’ And sometimes I would even go, ‘I need you to dumb it down a tad bit more because I still don't get it.’ And sometimes I need to go, ‘Maybe you need to draw this out for me, maybe I need a visual picture so that I can actually understand what you're saying.’ Because some concepts are just a bit trickier than others. And you know what, I was actually good at maths in grade 12 -  let me just say that my ego says that I need to just tell you that I've definitely passed maths. In fact, I got an A for math in grade 12 - not maths extension, not the clever maths, just the normal, you know, middle of the road math subject. I also did really well. I had extension accounting back in South Africa. But these concepts often still felt really complex and confusing when you need to apply this in business.

So what I want to do today, is really share with you my version of Private Practice for Dummies. Because you know what? There's a lot of gold and a lot of beauty in simplicity. Very often, we as allied health professionals and as private practice owners, we like to make things complex. It's our jam. It's like, ‘It can't be this easy. Surely it should be harder than this. There must be something I'm missing. What is it?’ Now I go down that rabbit hole. And very often things just are simple. So I want to really help you make things as simple as possible for you today, so that you can really get the fundamentals of what makes private practice amazing.

Let's get straight into it. This is going to be a bit of a general conversation. Interesting fact as I'm recording this, I'm not sitting where I would normally sit when I'm recording my podcast. Normally, I would be sitting at my desk feeling really formal in my professional mindset, because I want to make sure that everything I share with you is of great value. But today I'm actually just sitting on my bed. I just had a lovely shower, feeling nice and refreshed, and I'm sitting and looking out through the windows, and I feel like I'm in a mindset of having a really easy conversation about Private Practice for Dummies to really make it as easy and as simple as possible, because that is what I want business to be like - for me and for you. 

You guys would know, I've got my little tagline that says Here to help you build a practice you can't stop smiling about. And when things are easy and simple, that is when we can smile about it. So let's do this. 

For you to have a group private practice, you need three things - just three things people.

3 Essentials Elements for Private Practice Success: #1 Clients

Now, number one what you need, is you need clients. 

Whether you are a solo practitioner, whether you are a small group practice, or maybe you are a large humongous group practice with 20, 30, 40 practitioners. No matter how you spin it, you need clients.

If you want clients, you probably also need to know how to do marketing, and you also need to know how to do sales. Now, not sales in the yucky kind of way. Not sales in the sleazy used car salesperson kind of way. I'm talking about sales that involves converting enquiries into bookings with compassion. Being able to have a conversation with somebody that is enquiring about your service and about how you can help them, in a way that they will actually book an appointment. Because guess what? You can't help them if they don't book an appointment. And I'm thinking, you want to be able to help them, right?

So you need clients. And in order for you to have those clients, you need to learn marketing, and you need to learn sales okay. So that's the first one. You need clients.

3 Essentials Elements for Private Practice Success: #2 Team  

The second thing you need in group private practice particularly, is a team.

Because once you have a lot of clients, and you've done the marketing, and you are good at the sales aspect, the converting with compassion aspect, and people are coming through the doors. Whether that's your virtual doors, or your in-person doors, or maybe it's their front door, if you've got a mobile business - and you get more and more leads and more and more enquiries and more and more referrals - then you can scale your business if you hire more team members. 

Now your team can be made up of various types of engagements. A lot of group practice owners will have employees. A lot of group practices might have independent contractors. But at the end of the day, you need people AKA clinicians to service those clients that are now coming through your doors. They need to be available and capable and able to help these clients. That is what allows you to go from solo practitioner to group practice owner. That is when you start to scale your impact because it is only by hiring more clinicians, that you are able to reach and help more people. Because you, as a solo practitioner, can only see so many people in a week. 

Even if you love private practice, even if you are very resilient and you go, ‘Well, Gerda, I can see 30 clients a week easily.’ It's still 30 people. There's always a ceiling, there's always a limit. I'm not saying that doesn't matter. That is 20, 25, 30 people that are now getting the help they need. But if you want to scale that impact, you will need a team, and that is where group practice ownership comes in. Unless, of course, you want to go into groups. Unless of course you want to go into online programs. Both of those options are a more leveraged type of model. So that is most certainly also available to you. But when I talk about the traditional bread and butter private practice, what we do is we hire more clinicians to help us help more people. 

A lot of people out there in our community - our clients, potential clients - a lot of people still prefer to speak to somebody one-on-one. I most certainly love groups, we do a lot of groups at my group private practice. I love online programs, we've done online programs and we will continue to do those things. But both of those serve a certain segment of the market, and they probably are relevant depending on the presentations coming through. They have a place in the client journey. But what I know 100% for sure is that one-on-one private practice will always be there. 

Because at the core, especially being a psychologist, that one-on-one work brings with it a warmth, a beauty, an effectiveness in it, through that one-on-one connection. I, for one, will always advocate for it, because I love doing that work. Maybe that just means I'm very old school, but at my practice, I will always ensure that we are providing one-on-one services to the clients. And that means that we will always need team members AKA clinicians at my practice.

Of course as you grow, you also need to hire nonclinical team members such as your front desk team, your admin team. So if you've got your clients and you've got your team, now, you also need to learn stuff such as human resource management, leadership. All of those really, really important things. Because once you have a team, you are now not only a manager, but you are also really importantly a leader. So you need to invest the time, money, and energy into developing your management and your leadership skills.

3 Essentials Elements for Private Practice Success: #3 Frameworks

So once you have number one, which is your clients. Then you have number two, which is your team. The next and third thing you need, is what I like to refer to as your frameworks. 

So what is your frameworks? Your frameworks is the scaffolding that holds everything together. It's the stuff that allows your clinicians to see the clients. It's the stuff that allows the clients to keep on coming through the doors. And it's the stuff that allows your business to generate more clients. So it's pretty important stuff.

Frameworks at its core are your policies, your processes, your systems, and it is very often the area where practice owners fall down because it takes a lot of work. It is not as sexy as getting new clients and hiring a new team, it's not exciting. It's a bit harder. It's a bit more boring, and that's just the reality of it. It is also really hard to draw a direct line between, Oh, I've written this policy and this has helped me to help X number of more people.  At the core, all of us are here to help people, not to write documents. But those documents are the scaffolding that allows you to double, quadruple, 10 times, a hundred times your impact. So we need to see how this boring part of what we do connects with helping more people, and that is our frameworks.

The truth is that you cannot have a long-term sustainable, successful, profitable group practice AKA business without these three core things being -  clients, team, and then just as important as the first two frameworks. If you only work on clients, and not on your frameworks and teams, one of those things are going to start to wobble. If you only work on your framework similarly, and you drop the client or the team ball, one of those is going to start wobbling pretty quickly. So you need all three of those areas to be chugging along nicely in order for you to have a sustainable allied health business.  To be clear, you can't neglect either one of those three.

Now I'm thinking to myself, Well that doesn't sound very simple Gerda, but actually it is. Because there's only three things - clients, teams, and frameworks. You as the business owner need to learn how to direct your energy, your knowledge, your skills, your experience, your capabilities across all three of those areas. So that is the first part that I wanted to share with you, knowing what those three areas are, and understanding that all three are of equal importance when it comes to you directing your energy towards it. 

Now, I do hope that you are sitting there and going, ‘Yep, I've got it. I've got that Gerda. I've got clients, I've got a team, I've got the frameworks.’ And if you do, that is amazing. It is great. But I still want to ask you to go with me here. Because a lot of times I do see people generate clients. I see them hire the team. I even see them being great at establishing the frameworks, but then something starts to go wrong along the way. Because we can all go out and learn how to do marketing. We can all go out and learn how to do sales. We can all learn how to hire and recruit. We can learn how to onboard people. We can learn how to do cashflow forecasting and budgeting. We can learn how to set KPIs. We can even learn how to write policies and all of that interesting stuff.

But unless you know how to manage all of that on an ongoing basis, and how to manage the people within all of that, you will start to pull your hair out at some point in time. And this is not a ‘could happen.’ I'm telling you now it's going to happen, because that's just how business works. I see this all the time, and I've been there myself. A lot of people go wrong in very specific areas that I've been able to pinpoint for this to happen. Now, I honestly want you to avoid those, so please make sure that you stick with me here, because I'm going to share this with you right now okay. 

There's no secrets here. I'm not holding anything back from you. I'm telling you as it is. That's the one thing you can always know you're going to get from me. That's why some people out there love to listen to what I have to say, and other people just hate my guts, because I think I can be a little bit too direct. But you know what? You are not here to fluff around. You're not here to play if you've started group prior practice. You are here to make a difference. You are here to have an impact, and it's my job to help you with that. And therefore, I share with you fully transparent and honestly with what it is that you need to look out for. Alright, let's do this.

3 Essential Behaviours for Private Practice Success: #1 Clear Expectation Setting

Number one, you need to at all times and with all people, and with all things, need to be very clear with regards to your expectations as the business owner. Expectation setting is incredibly important. Expectations with your clients. You need to teach your clinicians and your front desk team how to set those expectations with your clients. And if not, even more important, also, expectation setting with your team - both your clinicians and your admin team. It is when practice owners don't set clear expectations that the wheel starts to come off from what looks like a really shiny business. From what on paper needs to be a really great, sustainable, profitable business, and I can tell you when the wheels start coming off, it is not freaking pretty. 

Then also expectations with external businesses and other agencies that you might be working with. Whether that is somebody that does your website, somebody that does your Google ads, maybe you've got an offshore virtual assistant - any external business that you work with. Those things go awry when you are not clear about your expectations. So you have to set clear expectations, and then - and, and this is the important part - you need to keep them to those expectations. No use having the expectations in your head, right? You need to communicate it to them, and then you need to hold up those expectations.

 3 Essential Behaviours for Private Practice: #2 Clear Communication

Which brings me to my second point here, and that is communication.

I know you've probably heard me say this over and over. But I cannot tell you how often I see allied health professionals (particularly my people psychologists), who should, and I know that's probably not a good word to use, but who should and who one would expect to be really good at communication. They aren't. I think that's for a variety of reasons. They're just not good at it. They don't speak up. They're not as assertive, because a lot of us are people pleasers. And we are very empathic and we don't want to give negative feedback, because we are mindful of how the other person might feel. And then what starts to happen because we don't want to hurt their feelings? We ask ourselves, ‘Oh, maybe I'm just being unrealistic, or I'm just going to give them more time. Or we just hope that that person's going to step up and start fulfilling these expectations.’ And then it doesn't happen. And then we still go, ‘Oh, must be me.’ And then we go, ‘Oh, I'm just going to find somebody else.’ 

Maybe I don't want to have the conversation. I don't like conflict. I'm just going to terminate this relationship and move on. That's when you keep spinning your wheels, and spinning your wheels, and you start to wonder, ‘Why isn’t my business growing? I feel like I'm doing all the right things. Maybe I should just go back to solo practice.’ Okay. Don't do that to yourself. Please people. Because if you do, you're going to go down that spiral of disillusionment with private practice. You're going to feel like it's not worth doing it. And I don't want that for you, because I know for certain it is so worth it.

And you know what? Let's just be honest here, now that I think of it, you're probably also that person that's quick to encourage your team to speak up. You're probably quick to listen to feedback from your team, from external people that you're working with, to take on board to adjust what you're doing. So why can't you do this yourself?  I really, really want to encourage you that if you are listening to this today, and you have that niggly feeling that there's something happening somewhere in your business and you've not been speaking up, then I want to encourage you to please do so today. Do not wait any longer.

Do not wait until that little thing has become this humongous thing in your head or in your heart, and then you finally decide to talk to that person about this, and then it's so emotionally laden, that conversation, and although you might try really hard to contain it, it's going to be hard to stay professional. Because guess what? You're freaking human. You might lose your shit. And that could be bursting out into tears. You might be all shaky and anxious. You might feel really uncomfortable. It's going to be different for all of us, right? You might be really frustrated because you've allowed it to build up over time. Please don't do that. 

I can tell you that the more you speak up on an ongoing basis, even if it's uncomfortable, the easier this is going to get. And people often say, ‘Oh, I just want to just give myself time to get comfortable with this, with the conversation, or I want to do all of these things fast so I can be more comfortable.’ No. Comfort is on the other side of discomfort. You need to go through the discomfort, to get to the comfort. The other excuse people often give me is like, ‘I don't have clarity on the issue. Once I get clarity, then maybe I'll have the conversation.’ No. The conversation is part of getting clarity. You need to go and say, ‘Hey, I'm not sure whether I've misunderstood this.’ Or, ‘Hey, I'm feeling confused about what is happening here, and I would love you to help me get clarity on this.’ Have the conversation please. 

You need to be communicating whether this is with your clinicians, your admin, your business support people - have the conversations.

 3 Essential Behaviours for Private Practice Success: #3 Clear Boundaries

And then third, and this is most probably the most crucial part, is boundaries.

Now, again, me and you probably might expect that as an allied health professional, particularly if you're a psychologist, that you would be good with boundaries. Mm-hmm. I know when I was still doing a heck of a lot of clinical work, the boundary conversation with clients would come up at least once a day.

Generally, more than half of the clients sitting in front of me in the chair, we would touch on the issue of boundaries. Okay, we would need to talk about it. How a lack of boundaries is causing havoc in their world. It would be about empowering them to establish boundaries in all of their relationships. It's an incredibly important conversation. And I keep on being surprised at how easy we find it to teach this to our clients, but how really bad we are at doing this in our own world. 

A lot of practice owners are good at doing it in their personal relationships, but when it comes to their professional relationships, it's a whole different ballgame. I often ask myself, why?  How do I explain this? It's because we want to be liked, we want to create a great work environment for our people. But a lack of boundaries isn't good for you, and it 100% isn't good for the other person. Setting great boundaries is actually, not only good for you as a practice owner, it's actually good for your team. People thrive when they know what the boundaries are. People will also try and push the boundaries. It's going to happen and there's no use in getting the shits when people push your boundaries, and I put my hand up that a long time ago, many years ago, that was my initial reaction. ‘That's a boundary. I've said this, how many times do I need to set this? You should respect it.’ Yes that would be nice if they did, but sometimes people are going to push it. And when they do, it is now my job to hold my boundary.

It would be lovely if somebody else would uphold it for me, and respect it, but if they don't, it's my job. And if I don't uphold it, I can't blame them, okay. We need to take some serious responsibility and accountability for upholding our own boundaries. And when you do that in a professional, respectful, loving way, guess what starts to happen? People start to respect it.  Because they go, ‘Oh, okay, that is a real boundary. It's not a made up one. It's not a temporary one. This is a real boundary.’ And they learn that that's what it is, and that's where the respect comes in. You can only expect people to respect your boundary if you've respected your boundary first. If you are not going to respect your boundaries, why should somebody else respect it, right?  

So some serious self-responsibility is called for when it comes to boundaries.  Yes, it's going to be scary and hard to start doing it if you've not been doing it, but this will change the culture within your business for the better. Take it from me. I've helped a sufficient amount of practice owners do this. You will not recognise the culture in your business in 12 month’s time if you start respecting your own boundaries.

Okay, so my big encouragement to you from the first day of opening up your practice - whether you're a solo practitioner or you're a group practice owner - is to do these things from day dot. And if you've not been doing it, just start today. I would encourage you to make a note of what was your biggest takeaway from today. Maybe it is the boundaries thing. Write it down somewhere that you can see it every day, so that you can be reminded to do it, because it's these dynamics in business, right? It's the marketing, we've got the HR stuff, the practical strategy stuff, the culture staff, the energy - these things are extremely important, because all your strategies, all the tactics, all the plans that you have for your business, it's not going to come to fruition if you can't do this other stuff. The expectation setting, the communication, the maintaining boundaries - this is the stuff that makes the wheels come off. So I want to encourage you to really reflect inward, and ask yourself whether there's things in here that you need to work on personally, in order to start implementing it.  

The Practice Owner Identity Shift

Sometimes I also suspect that this could be an identity thing.  Sorry, this is where the psychologist hat comes on. I suspect that what happens is when you become a group practice owner, in other words, a business owner that has people in the business that now needs to be managed, looked after and led. We fail to make a really important identity shift, and that identity shift is now being a leader, being a business owner, because we've worked so hard in the clinician space, and when I say clinician space, I'm talking workplace space, but also mindset space. 

Our identity is that of a clinician, which means we really relate to the clinicians as we should. But if you want to run a freaking business, you need to step into the identity of a business owner. A lot of times we don't want to, it's uncomfortable. We don't want to be seen as a tall poppy because what happens to tall poppies, they get cut down so quickly, right? It's almost unsafe. It's unsafe to step into that identity. Sometimes there might be shame and fear attached to it, or negative connotations of like, I'm going to come across as egotistically if I do this, and the other.

I once worked with a practice owner that told me she bought herself a new car, and she felt so bad about buying herself a new car, that she parked her car five blocks away from the practice and then walked to the practice because she didn't want the team to think - ‘Oh, look at you. You've bought yourself a new car. You must be, you know, rolling in the money. This is where all our hard work is going.’ Can you believe that? And between me and you, this wasn't even a luxury car. This car was around $60,000 at the time, and this is not that long ago. It's not like she bought herself a $200,000 vehicle, or even a $150,000 vehicle. It was a new car. It was nice and shiny at a very reasonable price. But she couldn't get herself to park in the car park of her own business. Which to me was incredibly sad.  But that's the reality that's out there. 

So I want you to really think about whether this might be happening for you. I want you to think, have you made that identity shift? Are you allowing yourself to make that shift? I'm not saying go out and buy yourself a new car, right? If you like driving a 2010 car, then that's what you do. I'm all for it. I personally see cars as a utility, as serving a basic need for driving. Other than my one car, which is my pony, which I love. I've had it five years now and I'm turning it into a classic. I'm never ever, ever selling it. But my pony was also less than a hundred thousand dollars. I refuse to pay more than $100K for a car. It's just not freaking worth it. I'd rather spend that money on something else. But the car thing is just an example. For you it could be something different. 

For example, now that I think of it, other people that I've worked with would feel bad when they take themself to a conference as the business owner. They’d say, ‘Oh Gerda, are we going to go to this conference for two days? We are going to have to fly there, travel there. And they suspect that their team is going to judge them for taking time out of their week. Not being available to answer queries potentially, in a conference with their phones off. Being away, spending money on flights, accommodation, and on a conference ticket? Can you believe that? You know how often I've heard that. So freaking often. It's crazy. It boggles the mind. But that same practice owner will allow their team a $1,000, $1500, $2000 CPD budget for each and every team member on their team, but they won't allow it for themselves.  That to me is fucked up. I'm just going to say it, okay. It's like, no, that doesn't make sense in my head.

And you know why this happens? This happens when you've not made that identity shift. When you are the one actually shooting yourself down. It's not your team. And if your team thinks that you can't go to a conference, if your team thinks that you can't buy yourself a new car, then you've got the wrong freaking team. Then that team needs to go. Then that person needs to be purged out of the business. And if they resign because they think you are using all the money on yourself, then they first and foremost don't understand business. 

I would actually encourage you to talk to your team about money.  At my practice we are very transparent. My team knows exactly how much money their specific role needs to contribute to operating expenses every month. If you ask them right now, they will tell you, this is the amount of money my full-time equivalent job needs to contribute to operating expenses. I don't hide it. I don't tippy toe around it. I own it, and I share it. It has been the best thing, because now our team also owns that number. They are now empowered to really write their own pay checks, and isn't that a great position to be in? That way we are all on the same page alrighty. 

If you are feeling those feelings, there's probably this identity shift that needs to happen and the change needs to occur within you, not within the team. It needs to happen within you. And then as you start to embody this new identity and you start to get really good at setting expectations, communicating consistently and clearly, and upholding those boundaries - you will be creating the culture that you've always wanted. A culture where you can flourish as this business owner, and when you flourish, your team will flourish. Because when you have a team, you as the business owner looks after the team, so the team can look after the clients. And looking after the team doesn't mean not paying yourself. It doesn't mean not buying a new car for the first time in 15 years. That's not looking after your team okay? If this is what you think looking after your team is all about, then we need to freaking talk because that's not what it is.

Okay lovely practice owner, I'm going to leave it at that. I honestly hope that I've given you a lot to reflect on today. I honestly hope that I've given you some practical suggestions for what you need to do next. If you are unsure as to what that is, that's what I'm here for. Reach out and let's have a chat about what that right next thing is for you and your business. 

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.  😊

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Gerda Muller

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