The Private Practice Success Podcast

55. Three Reasons Why you will Never have a Self-Running Practice

• Gerda Muller • Episode 55

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In Episode 55, Gerda gets real about what’s holding so many practice owners back from building the self-running business they dream of. 

With her signature honesty and a dose of tough love, she unpacks the three big reasons most practice owners never achieve true freedom and why it’s not about working harder, hiring more, or just wishing things were different.

Gerda shares her own journey to a self-running practice and explains what it actually takes to step away from the day-to-day - without everything falling apart.

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

  • What a true 'self-running practice' really looks like (and why it’s possible for you, too).
  • The three core barriers that keep owners chained to their business and how to break free.
  • Why asking for help early, being patient with the process, and choosing the right support are non-negotiable for long-term success.

Who This Episode Is For:

  • Private practice owners who are tired of carrying the whole business on their shoulders.
  • Leaders who want more freedom, flexibility, and a business that doesn’t rely on them 24/7.
  • Anyone ready to ditch the burnout cycle and finally build a practice they can’t stop smiling about.

Tune in for a candid, empowering conversation and walk away with the clarity and courage to start building your own self-running practice.


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Connect with Private Practice Success & Gerda here:

Well, hello there passionate private practice owner.  My name is Gerda Muller, and you are listening to the Private Practice Success Podcast, and this is episode number 55. 

Today I want to talk to you about the Three Reasons Why you will Never Have a Self-Running Practice. Now as the title might be alluding to, this is going to be a bit of a confronting episode, and I'm very aware that I'm recording this in December. It's the end of the year and we are all feeling a tad bit exhausted, a tad bit over the year that was 2025, and just chomping at the bit for the doors to close towards the 24th of December so we can all go on holidays. I get it. And maybe I'm feeling a bit of that too. Hence I've been pushed to talk about this specific topic. 

So what I want to say is, if you are feeling a tad bit vulnerable this time of year, there's no judgment if you decide to not listen to this episode. You are very welcome to go to your second favourite podcast because I'm going to assume that this one is your favourite podcast that you listen to, right? So I'm very happy for the purpose of today to be your second choice. If you don't feel like hearing what I have to say today, now is your prompt, your trigger warning, as they say, to maybe go and listen to something else, whether it's another podcast, or maybe go and listen to another episode on my podcast. Because I can tell you, there are a lot of amazing episodes on this podcast. I often look at the amount of downloads, and there's some of them that I look at and I go, why haven't more people listened to that episode? Because according to me, it's one of the most important ones that people need to hear - so this is just a general plug for my podcast. Anyway, if you know you've not listened to each and every episode, I think you've got some catching up to do, and maybe today is the day that you go back and have a look at what you've not listened to and go and listen to one of those.

But if you are open to being challenged, If you are open to being invited to engage in some reflective thinking, knowing that my intention with this episode is 100% to absolutely help and support you. I am not doing this for me. I've got a self-running practice. In fact, I've got two, alright, so I am having this conversation for you. Because at the end of the day, I want you to be able to have what I have and even more, okay? There's a lot of people out there that's got way bigger practices than I have, but I can tell you what I've created, to me, is enough for me and my family, and it has put us in a really great position, and I would want this for each and every practice owner out there. But I see things every day that I look at and go, this is why you will never have this.

For me, in the job that I do, in the role that I have (and I'm not talking about the people that I'm actually consulting and coaching and mentoring), I'm talking about people that reach out to me and talk to me about: where they're at, what's happening for them, the decisions they have made, and they are planning to make - and I can see those themes, and I can see those trends over time, and that is why these people will never have a self-running practice. Although they so deserve it, each and every one of you deserve it. So this is me going, these are three things that pop up all the time.  I really want you to use this as a self-reflection and go as the business owner, as a person that owns a business and this is scary as well - when you own a business, there is an inherent risk to your family. For me, when I started my business, my practice, we specifically ensured that my husband always had a full-time job. We didn't want to risk the business not working out because there would be an inherent risk to our family and to our livelihood.

So when you decide to open up your doors and start a business, there is an immediate enhanced risk that comes into play, versus just going out and getting a job with Queensland Health or New South Wales Health, or with an NGO or big corporate. There's a lot more security in working for someone else okay, so you take a big risk when you start your business. I would hope that it's an informed and calculated risk, and I can tell you 100% for sure if you do this right, that risk will pay off at the end of the day. We know how a risk works, right? The more risk you're willing to take, the bigger the negative consequences if it doesn't work out. But also, the bigger the payoff if it does work out. 

My goal for each and every one of you is if you've taken that risk, I want you to see the positive payouts as a result of that, of taking that risk. Hence me really feeling called to have this conversation with you today, even though it's probably going to feel a bit uncomfortable for me to do so, because I always know that when I talk about these things, it just pisses some people off, and I know that happens because I'm probably speaking the truth and sometimes it's hard to hear that. But I also know there's going to be some of you listening who are going to be really receptive to it, and you are probably hearing this just at the right time. And if that happens, then it was worth me taking the risk with this podcast today to engage in this conversation with you.

So if you're still listening, if you're intending to continue listening, thank you. I appreciate you. So let's get stuck into this really important conversation.

What is a Self-Running Practice?

I feel like we need to start this conversation by being really clear on: What do I mean when I say a self-running practice? Because I've just said I'm going to talk to you about three reasons why you will never have a self-running practice. So what the hell is a self-running practice? Well, it is what the word says it is. It's not complicated. It's a practice that can run itself. In other words, it is a practice that can run in your absence. 

I will say this, that my self-running practice might look slightly different to your self-running practice. So for me, having a self-running practice, what does that mean? It means that I currently, and I have since January, 2020 -  I live six and a half hours drive, by car, from my two practices. My two practices are on the south side of Brisbane. If I had to jump in a car right now, it would take me six and a half hours on a good day of traffic, no roadworks. If any of those things are happening, it can be seven and a half to eight hours to get to my business. I can no longer do what I used to do in the early days when I run out of my Aldi coffee on a Sunday, pop on down to the practice and go and get some coffee pods. I can't do that anymore, I'm just too far away from it. 

Another interesting fact, because both of my locations moved to new premises this year.  One now towards the end of the year, and one was in February. Do you know that I do not even have keys to the front doors of my practices? I can't let myself into my business even if I wanted to. Now you might hear that and go, ‘Well, that's just crazy Gerda and so risky. You've just spoken about risk Gerda. That is really risky.’ You know, I think of that and go, I'm just spoiled, because I'm so fortunate that this is my situation. Nobody can give me a job to go and do at the practice. Well, guess what? I don't have freaking keys to the front door, so not my job, thank you very much. Not that I can get there anyway. But that is how hands off I am. 

Now I'm not completely hands off because I still meet with the person that runs my practice once a week on a Monday at 1 o'clock, and we will chat normally for 45 minutes and my role really is to mentor and to coach that person to run my business in my absence. And there will be weeks where we don't even meet - that is the exception, rather than the rule when, you know, maybe she's on a day off or there's a workshop happening - but most weeks we will meet. And because I talk to her consistently, things just keep on running smoothly. It is an incredible position to be in, to have a business that can run in your absence.

What that means is that I am no longer responsible for running the show. It means that the generating of business and referrals and clients, it's no longer on my shoulders. It means that recruitment and retention of the team is no longer on my shoulders. It means that the management of systems, processes, policies is no longer on my shoulders. All of those things continue to happen, whether I'm involved or not. I can literally disappear tomorrow and everything will just continue as is, which is just magic, and that is a real business - that was always the goal for me. 

Now, for you, a self-running practice might mean not working four days a week, like a three day working week. Or maybe for you it means still doing two days of clinical work, but not having to be involved in managing the business at all. For you, it could be being involved in the finances, because that's your jam and you love spreadsheets. It could look the way that you define it. But at the core of it, it needs to clear the hurdle of:  If I took you out of the business for six months, it should be able to just continue as is. It should not be reliant on you to generate the revenue, and also importantly, the profit that it needs to generate to keep the doors open, to look after the clients and to look after your team, who are the livelihood of your business.

Yes, if you choose to be involved, perfectly fine. If you choose to continue seeing clients, perfectly fine. But it should not be reliant on you in order to do so. The moment that has occurred, you now have a self-running practice, and I can tell you it's possible because I've had not one, but two for many years now. You might be thinking, How long does it take to actually get there, Gerda? Well, I'm glad you asked. I've got a podcast episode on it. If you go all the way back to episode number three, I will talk to you about How long does it take to build a Self-Running Practice?. So make a mental note to go and listen to that one as well.

If you are listening to this and you go, ‘That sounds pretty cool, Gerda, and maybe it doesn't have to be what yours is. Maybe I just want to know that everything is no longer on my shoulders.’ Well, you can have that, okay. In fact, if you put in place what I like to refer to as self-running systems within a self-running practice, guess what? That person that's running your business - because you might be thinking what happens when they are no longer there - well, I'm glad you asked because that just happened to me this year.  So last year September, October, my principal psychologist had a chat with me and she's been with the business for seven years. Long story short, she decided to go on a sabbatical in 2025.  We went, sounds amazing, sounds like exactly what you need and deserve. And guess what happened? We did not have to go on a panicked driven recruitment campaign to find this unicorn of a person to take over a freaking important role in my business, no, we just seamlessly took somebody that was already in the business and they stepped into that role - seamlessly. 

You would think that me as a business owner would now have to spend time onboarding that person and doing all the things? No, I didn't have to do anything of the sort. My practice principal that was going on sabbatical, had a couple of meetings with that person, and did a nice little handover seamlessly - that is because they're self-running systems. Yes, you still need amazing team members to come in and work within those systems, but if the system is there, you can easily get somebody in to step into that role. You can have the most amazing, hardworking person, but they will burn out and they will leave if the system doesn't support their amazingness. Yes, you still need to hire really competent, driven people, or otherwise it's not going to work anyway - but those people can only achieve their level of amazingness within a system that supports that. 

This is possible for you as well. You don't need to be a huge practice to get to this okay? You can do this with 8, 9, 10 clinicians. You can also have this with 20, 30, 40 clinicians. It is possible. But there's three really big things that could be significant barriers to getting you there. So let's look at the first one.

Reason 1: You are a Hopeful & Optimistic Human  

The first reason why you will never have a self-running practice is because you are a hopeful and optimistic human being - which is probably the reason why me and you will get along really well, and we will most probably be friends if we were to meet in a social setting. Because I don't know about you, but I hate energy vampires. I do not like to surround myself with people that are whinging, whining, complaining the whole time. Always got something negative that they want to go on and on and on about, oh my golly, I can't tolerate that. I am all for listening to people's complaints, I mean, I am a clinical psychologist after all. It's my job and it has always been my job to listen to people's problems.  But there is a difference between being a psychologist, right, and surrounding yourself in your social world with energy vampires.  I won't do it, thank you very much.  Because normally people that are in session with me as a psychologist, they want to change, they want to work on their shit.

It's the people that's not in the session that don't want to work on it, because they like to complain. They like to make excuses and they're in denial. But I think I'm going down a rabbit hole here. I'm kinda going to pull myself back out from there. But back to you. You are not one of those people. You are a very hopeful, optimistic person. And to top that off, you are freaking hardworking. You've got vision. You maybe have a good chunk of ambition even, and you are not freaking lazy. You have started this business for a reason. Maybe it was for time flexibility, being your own boss, whatever it was for you, and somehow things aren't working out the way that you've planned. You keep on thinking: I just need to work harder. I just need to put in more hours. Or when I do more marketing and we have more clients, things will be better. I'm going to throw money towards marketing, or I'm going to do all these meet and greets, and when we have more clients, things will be better. Or you might be thinking, I'm going to hire another clinician. Or when I hire a practice manager, I'll have more time. 

You are consistently being hopeful that when you do this next big thing, this next big project, that things are going to change. And I'm not saying it won't. But what I often see is that people are working on things that's not going to fix the problem that they have because you've got multiple projects running.  Because you are clever, you are allowed health professionals. You wouldn't get your qualification if you weren't clever, hardworking, and high functioning. And you are so used to functioning at this high level that you think you need to do it by yourself and you don't give up. You are determined and you are persistent, and these are the things that also shoot you in the foot. The amount of people that have reached out to me over the years, and we talk, and with the email we might even help on a clarity call. and they send me through what they're struggling with. So if you do a triage form, I actually ask you what are your biggest challenges right now, and they send that to me and it's a question I will ask if I speak to you on a Zoom clarity call as well, right? So people will send that to me, would have a conversation and they would go, ‘Yes, Gerda, I know I need business coaching from you and I want to work with you, but, I have two new clinicians coming on board and I just want to finish onboarding them. Then I will have the time and the mind space to really get optimal value out of business coaching consulting.’ 

And you know what happens then? And this is just one example, I don't hear back from them. And then two years later - because I've been doing this for 10 years so I've got a lot of data - two years later they come back to me, and their challenges that they give me then are exactly the same, like to the latter, exactly the same as what it was two years ago. And in the last two years, they've done all these things because I always say, Hey, can you remember we spoke two years ago? Can you remember you reached out to me? Can you give me a bit of an update on what has happened since then? And will tell me about all these things they've done. But they've got the exact same challenges. Because you can be busy, busy, busy, busy, but if it's not the thing that's going to help you get to your goal, it's going to make no difference. 

I can tell you if you've got the same challenges over and over and over and over, it tells you that something's not working. If you've got new challenges, that's business. That's life as well. But if it's the same thing over and over, if marketing or a lack of clients is still an issue for you, and it was 12 months ago and it was 24 months ago, you've got a problem that you can't fix because it's been 12 months or 24 months even. If it is maybe for you, a culture thing at your business culture amongst your team, maybe it's a recruitment issue for you. Maybe it's a financial issue. If you've been running at a loss for the last 12 months, 24 months, and you know that you have worked so hard and you have done a lot of things to fix it, and it's still exactly where it was, then you need to face it. It's not working. But no, people don't do that. Why? Because you're hopeful. You're thinking, ah, that next thing that I've heard somebody talk about in a Facebook group, I'm going to do that. Or maybe Gerda has spoken on the podcast about this strategy, I'm going to do that. Or maybe it's another podcast, or you've read a book and you feel inspired, I'm going to do that thing. But if it's not the right thing for your business right now, it's not going to work. It's not going to work, and this is where having external eyes on your business helps, not the eyes of people in a freaking Facebook group that actually don't know what's really going on in your business. They're coming from their own perspective. Real capable eyes - that's what you need.

What I can tell you for sure is that for me as a business consultant that has a lot of conversations with practice owners looking to get business consulting with me, that hearing and having these conversations is incredibly frustrating to me, because I hear amazing practice owners whose hearts are in the right place. They are so motivated to help people to have an impact, to make a difference, and then as an outsider looking in, and what it is they're sharing with me, all I can see is them spinning their wheels and spinning their wheels and slowly, getting more burnt out and more burnt out, more disillusioned by the day. And then they start to question themselves and they go, Maybe it's me. Maybe I am not cut out to run a business. Maybe I'm not cut out to lead a team. Maybe there's something wrong with me, when that's not the case.

It is incredibly frustrating again, when I see practice owners - you know what - they're like parents. They will spend their last dollar, you know, a parent will spend their last dollar on their child, a parent will go to bed hungry to make sure their child is fed. It's the same thing with my practice owners. I mean, I love clinicians, (but what I do) I'm an advocate for practice owners because of this, because I see practice owners spend their last dollars on their team, and nothing on themselves. Nothing. And we know why that's not good. I don't have to tell you why that's not good. You are an intelligent human being. You know the answer to that. But still, we do it. And I say we because I was there as well. I did that once upon a time. I would give all my team amazing CPD budgets and there would be none left for me. Maybe that's what you're doing. 

What I can tell you is that another clinical workshop, or lecture or course is not going to help you fix your business. That's the one thing it won't do. That to you is the practice owner is a freaking distraction. A distraction. That's all it is, because that's not what you need to work on. You need to work on building, leading, managing, growing a business. That's your job. The moment you started a group private practice, that became your job. You signed up for that. I love that you are hopeful and optimistic, but that's not the secret of success as a business owner. So the reflection here for you is, has this been happening for you? Because if you continue to try and do it all yourself, and run your business on hope and optimism, you are going to get to number two.

Reason 2: You've Left it Too Late

The second reason why you will never have a self-running practice, and this I also see a lot of times. This is when people finally realise that, Oh shit, yes, Gerda, I've done what you've just said in reason number one, I'm going to change it. And then they finally pull the trigger and they decide to work with me or with another business coach - there are amazing people in this space doing amazing work supporting allied health professionals - and they finally say yes to getting that help. Very often they've left it almost too late, because you've hung on for such a long time. You've worked so hard. And then finally, when you say yes, it's incredibly hard to do the work that needs to happen. Often because you just burned out, you don't have the energy anymore. Or it's like, I'm depleted, and now you want to come into a program or into coaching and mentoring and there's work to be done, right. There's implementation, there's projects, and even if you do one thing at a time, it's still work. And a lot of times there's change management that needs to happen. There's a modification to your business model that needs to occur. There's a reason why you're spinning your wheels. 

It's not a quick fix or an easy fix. If it was, you would've done it yourself because you are a clever person. You can research, you can read, you are hardworking. So there is hard work to turn a struggling business around. That's just how it is. And when you've left it too late, it's almost like a bit of self-sabotage that's occurred, because now it's really hard to do what you need to do. Business coaching isn’t free and it isn’t cheap. If it's too cheap, I would be concerned about it, because somebody else is providing you with a really important service when they're doing business consulting with you. If finance is an issue for you, now you need to pay for business consulting, you still need to do marketing, you still need to pay your bills and all this stuff. It's like, you are going to get stuck. And a lot of times people leave it too late and you know, this is, this is just a common thing in business if you think about it.  

It's December, now that I'm recording this, so we are going into the holiday and Christmas closure period. Traditionally a lot of practices will struggle in January with money because for. Generally 1, 2, 3 weeks even the doors of the business would be closed. But if you've got an employee team, you still need to pay them wages whilst still paying all your other bills. You need to do all of those things, but clients aren't coming through the doors. So your revenue in December is already much less than it would be in other months as a result of that. Sometimes also in January, because a lot of people next year will probably only open Monday the 5th of January. So there's a couple of days there that you've lost, and then you might have clinicians that are parents and they're taking extended holidays because their kids are on school holidays, which means that they aren't seeing clients. So January is generally a month that people report lower revenues.

So if you weren't prepared for this and you are currently looking at your bank account, you go, I don't know how the hell I'm going to get through this. You might be thinking, oh, maybe I should get an overdraft from my bank. Or maybe I should make sure that I've got a credit card so that I can cover expenses during that time. But do you know what, if you were to go to your bank now and they look at your situation, they're probably not going to give you a credit card or an overdraft. Especially not if you still have an ATO loan or other credit cards. And this is the thing you should, if you want a credit card or an overdraft to help you during difficult cash flow periods, you shouldn't be applying for it when you're in a difficult cash flow period, you should be applying for it when you've got lots of money in the bank. That's when you should be applying for it, because that is when the bank's going to give you those things. They're not going to give it to you when you need it, alright? 

Same here... If you leave it too late, you're setting yourself up for failure. And when you keep on going,  I'll do business coaching next year, or I'll do it when I finish this project, or I'll do it when I've got enough money in the bank account - it's never going to happen. I see it all the time, never going to happen, and that's okay. You get to decide when you say yes, but you also need to own that. Then do not be hard on yourself when you are not having the success that you want and deserve, because you are making a choice. You are making a choice not to take on help. You are making a choice to wait, and you are telling yourself that I am going to wait extra six months, extra 12 months before I start doing the work to get a self-running practice, and that's perfectly fine. You get to choose that, but you need to choose it with open eyes alright. I'm sorry if this all sounds a bit hard to hear, and I'm very mindful that I hope I'm not sounding like those darn energy vampires that I alluded to and spoke about earlier because I don't want to be negative. I don't like being negative, but these are the things that I'm seeing. Like I said, this is an honest conversation that I want to have here with you today. 

Now, this all being said, I inherently, at my core, believe that it is never too late okay. Let's say if you come and you start business coaching with me and my PPPs Academy and you've got a $200,000 ATO tax bill. You've been running your business at a loss. It feels like your clinicians are all resigning. The culture's not what it should be. There's no cash and the bank account - It's going to be hard. Yes, it's going to be hard, but it's not impossible. I believe that anything and everything can be solved. I truly believe it, I think that belief has stood me in good stead in building my own business over the years. People do leave it very late, which means that the journey towards getting to where you want to get to is going to take longer, just is what it is, and it's going to be harder. 

It's like I always used to tell my clinical clients, during the first session when people would come in to see me, I would always take them through the charter of client's rights, and one of those things is that the client should have the right to know how long therapy is going to take.  I would talk to them about that and I would always say that, you know, the amount of sessions that you will probably need to engage in will depend, which is annoying, but it depends on how many issues there are. How long has it been there? Which of those things do you want to address? And the same holds true for business. If it is a longstanding issue that's very ingrained, it's probably going to take a bit longer to deal with it. If there's three issues versus 30 issues that we need to address, it's probably going to take a bit longer. It doesn't mean that we can't fix it, we most certainly can. I believe, and I know it for a fact. You know how I know that for a fact? Because I've seen it. I've worked with quite a number of practice owners over the years, yes the majority of people I've worked with, our psychologists. If you are wondering, I would say the second biggest discipline I've worked with has been occupational therapy. I've also worked with speech pathology, dieticians, physio, and social workers. Those are the main ones that I've worked with over the years. But I mean, what I do, any allied health discipline, can benefit from it. I would generally work with people for 12 months minimum, some people, multiple years. 

I've had people talk to me and say, ‘You know what, Gerda, before I started working with you I had one or two options. Either it was to close the doors, or it was to do something really drastic. And guess what? The something really drastic was working with Gerda Muller, and I'm so glad I did because look at where I am today.’ Those shares and those stories and those emails and cards that I get from people just mean the world to me. That's my evidence right. I'm not sucking this out of my thumb, I actually have a book of evidence. On a side note, I bought a book of evidence, quite some time ago, a couple of years from the amazing Joe Muirhead. I'm not sure whether Joe still sells that, but I bought myself a book of evidence. Every time somebody sends me a note, gives me a review, sends me an email, (generally people give me feedback via email as well), I print it out, cut it out, and I put it in my book of evidence. Because that is there for days that I have down days. Where I have days of going, ‘Oh, is this even worth it? Why is this so hard?’ 

Business is never perfect, and even though you might be looking at me and you might think my business is perfect, it isn't. I'm still learning every day. I'm still in business coaching, learning about how I can reach more of you guys so I can help more of you? And my book of evidence has been really great at giving me that motivation. So maybe you need to chat with Jo and see if she still has that because I really highly recommend a book of evidence. If you are into scrapbooking like I was as a young person before kids, of course, you will love the book of evidence as well. But anyway, I wanted to just preface and, you know, underline and highlight for you that even if it might feel like it's too late, if you are willing to do the work, we can turn anything around - so don't get discouraged. 

To recap, reason number one was that you are an optimistic, hopeful human being who believes that they could or should be doing it all by themselves. You keep on trying and keep on trying, and then finally you realize that you need help. But then you've arrived at reason number two, where you've left it too late and you've made it so much harder to get to what it is that you want. You know the saying that there's an easy way and there's a hard way? You guys keep on choosing the hard way. Because you're hopeful, optimistic, hardworking, ambitious, driven, high functioning people. You choose the hard way. You think that you need to do it all by yourselves, and then you leave it too late where it becomes even harder, even harder to do, and then you finally go, ‘I get it Gerda. I've had enough. I need help.’  And you put your hand up and you say yes to business coaching.

Reason 3:  You are Too Impatient

And then we get to reason number three, then you expect us to fix it in six months. That is just not possible = maybe if it's a little thing, yeah certain things we can fix in a day - but I can tell you 99% of people that finally start coming into business coaching, consulting with myself because you've left it so late - it's big things. It's not little things. It's easy to fix because remember, you chose the hard way, the difficult way, and now it's even harder. So because you've gone through that process and you've waited so long, you've already built a big team, and now I look at your business and I go, ‘well, there's all these things in your model that's not as it should be. It might not even be legal, the way you're running it - that happens all the time.  Or you think you have an employee model, but it's actually a contractor model, or you think you've got a contractor model, but it's actually, employees, the way you're managing people, and you're putting yourself at really significant risk - that is a lot of change management, model modification that needs to happen. We can't do that in a month. I mean, we can, but your whole team will leave, and I don't want that for you. So I'm going to help you fix your business in a way for you to have a business at the end of it, because otherwise, why do it? And that takes time. It takes patience. Business in and of itself takes time, right. 

I am big on Profit first, for example, and I work with my clients to have a Profit First approach in the financial aspects of their business. Even Mike Michalowicz, the author, the Founder, the Brains Behind Profit First says that the reason why people fail at profit first is because of impatience. They expect the numbers to change within one or two quarters. No, it takes many multiple quarters for the numbers to change. And then people go, ‘oh, this is not working.’ No, it's because you've only done it for six months, that's why it's not working. It takes time. Unless you are happy to break your business, if you are happy to break your business. We can start from scratch, but I don't think that is what you want. So you have to be realistic as well when it comes to getting to that self-running practice, which is why I've got that episode three, on the podcast where I talk about how long it takes and why it takes that specific time, and I explain that to you in more detail.

I often see this with people where you have waited again so long that it feels like you've been doing this like forever, and like surely now that I've said yes, we should just fix this magically but it doesn't work like that my friend. I wish it did, and I know it's probably annoying for you guys, especially if you're not a psychologist, but it's the same conversation that I would have with my clinical clients, especially people that I would see with depression or really complex trauma. I did a lot of trauma work as a psychologist and you know, if you've got complex PTSD, you've just got depression as a result, you've got a lot of anxiety, and I would always tell people that you don't get better in session. You get better between sessions, but you also get better over time. You are going to come to session two or session three and session four, and it's going to feel like, ah, nothing's better. Yeah, I still feel the same. Right? But if you keep on doing the work, if you keep on showing up session after session, and you keep on going home and you implement the stuff that we talk about and you come back and you go, Gerda at this worked brilliantly, we can do the next thing.

Or you might come and go. Gerda I tried it, but it didn't work. I need something else. And we get something else from the toolbox and then we implement that, and if you do that over time, you're going to wake up one day and you're going to go, hang on. I feel so much better. I don't know when it happened. It's really hard to pinpoint and almost impossible to pinpoint an exact moment. But I'm not where I was six months ago. Things have changed. I'm not where I was 12 months ago. My world is so much better. And the same happens in business. Yes, it's going to be those amazing times where you can really concretely say, I've achieved this thing. I've completed this project. I'm kicking this goal. I've had my best revenue month ever. For the first time ever, I'm like in the black, and we've maintained that for three, four months. Those are amazing goals to kick. But over time, you're going to get to that place where you're going to look back and go, ah, this is all worth it. 

Running a business can be fun. Running a business can be satisfying. Running a business can be energising. It doesn't have to be draining, when it's done in the right way, when it's supported with the right frameworks. Because when people come into my world, for example, we will work together, we'll draw up a plan, for example, so I can give you the plan for your specific business solving your problems. I can even give you the resources, the tools, the templates, the scripts, policies, processes, the systems. I can help you implement it. I can give you coaching and mentoring and support, not if - when you get stuck. Because even if I give you all the stuff, your business on the ground is going to have differences to other people's businesses. So you're going to get stuck with things and I'm going to help you and go, okay, this is how we get unstuck, and can help you through each and every step of the process. But guess what? It is a process and it takes time. 

If you want to get to a day where you can be where I am - and I'm not saying that as a, oh, look at me kind of thing - but be at a place where you can go, you know what I do have a self-running practice. I can choose to go overseas for six months next week, and everything will be all good. You will get there. But you need to have the patience. I'm not saying stick around in mentoring and coaching, that's not working for you. You need to see progress. But have the patience, and don't try and do everything at the same time. That's another part of that patience, because I know you are like me, we want to do all of the things all at once. That is, again, shooting yourself in the foot. The more patient you can be with doing one thing, and then the next, and then the next. That my friend, that's the snowball of momentum and progress. That's the compounding impact of business growth, and that thing is amazing, but it takes patience to get that. It's a person that has the determination, the persistence, and the grit with the vulnerability to ask for help, to speak up when they need it, ask for help, and ask for help early. Those are the people that're going to make it. Those are the people that are going to have a self-running practice, and I can tell you, it is so freaking worth it. 

I want to tell you a story of a question that somebody asked me. It was in August this year when I ran a two day in-person Business Intensive for private practice owners. It's an amazing two days and we answer a lot of questions, but I also know that sometimes people have questions that they might not be comfortable asking in front of a whole room of people, right? Especially those questions where they might go like, oh, I really want to ask this question, but what if it's not an appropriate question to ask? So anyway, at the Business Intensive, what we do is we have a little question box in the back of the room, and I encourage people to put questions in there. There's a little piece of paper and some pens and they can write in their question during the break at any time. At the end of the day, we have a Q&A  panel where all the speakers for the day come together. We get the question box out, and then we get the speakers to answer the questions.

One of the questions this year was: Some days I feel like maybe it's just easier to go back to solo practice. So tell me, how do you keep going? What motivates you to keep going on those really, really hard days? And when somebody asks me that question, I always think of an encounter I had with a private practice psychologist many years ago now. I think it was around about 2016, 2017 because I had just published my book and I actually was at a conference and I was an exhibitor. I felt very fancy. It wasn't one of those big exhibition booths because I couldn't afford one of those because back then already, they were like. Two, three grand just to book those out. But I had a trestle table exhibition, which basically means they give you a table in two chairs. It was cheap,something like $500 that I could afford, and you put on a nice little tablecloth and you put your books on it. And you sit there and you speak to people when they come around during the breaks.

I remember this gentleman coming around having a talk to me, and he was much older than myself. He had long grey hair that was in a ponytail, he was very hip for his age, I'll say that. But he was, you know, much older. He was probably in his seventies if I had to guess, I didn't ask, that would've been rude, but that's the age he looked if I had to judge a book by its cover, so to speak, and he was talking to me and he was in solo private practice. He basically said that he's been in solo practice for many, many years. And you know what Gerda? I’m probably going to have to be in solo prior practice until the day I die, because that is just how it is. And I remember thinking to myself, I don't want that to be me, and this is no judgment on him. But you know, we work our entire lives. I come from a household, South African culture where you work, that's what you do, right? You have to be hardworking; you provide for your family. That's what we do. I'm not scared of hard work, but I want to get to a place where I can retire. 

I don't want to get to retirement age and go, Oh shit, I can't retire. Or I can, but I'm going to be reliant on government money. I don't want to do that.  I've never claimed Centrelink, for anything other than when Heno, my second child was born, that was back in the days when you still got the baby bonus. I got the baby bonus for Heno, he's turning 19 next month, so that was many, many years ago. I thought, geez, what an amazing country this is getting money for having a baby. I don't think I got a baby bonus for Ethan. I didn't think, I think they took it away because I can't remember getting that for him. That's the only Centrelink money that I got and never qualified for any of the other stuff. I mean, Medicare is government money, right? For your Medicare rebates. I do get money now, like, a little payment because my son goes to boarding school and I live in a regional location. But I've never been on Centrelink benefits, and I do not intend to go on Centrelink benefits when I retire. That's not what I want to do.

Instead, I want to be able to be self-sufficient, and I feel like that's the beauty of being a psychologist. I feel like I'm a tradie. I feel like I've got this trade that nobody can ever take away from me. I feel like I always have a plan B as an Allied Health professional, because I can always help people, right? Yes, I need to maintain my registration, that type of thing, but I have the choice, and that's what I want. I want the choice. If I want to keep on seeing clients until I'm in my eighties, nineties, that's what I will do because I love doing what I do. But I don't want to do it out of necessity. If I want to go, no, my kids are having babies and I want to look after them and I'm going to be, the daycare for a couple of years. I'm going to be able to do that, without worrying about money, I want to set myself up. I feel like that is the responsible thing to do as a human, is to responsibly look after your future - and that's why I have a business. 

My business needs to do its job. And within all of that, yes, we look after clients, we impact and change lives every day. We also impact and change the lives of the people that work within the business every day, whether that is my admin team or my clinical team. But it also needs to impact my life as a business owner. The person that has taken all the risk/ The person that in the early years had to go without a wage, had to take money from our mortgage and put it into the business. The person that carries all the risk if something goes wrong. Surely you deserve something from this business, from the hard work that you are doing. So the business also needs to look after you, and this is what I'm all about because I know that you are already looking after the team, you've got that freaking covered. Okay? So it's my job. To have these conversations with you, and it's my hope that I'm getting through with them. 

Sometimes when I think of what I've just said, I go, ‘Oh, that's so pushy Gerda.  Some people are  just going to hate hearing that.’ And it's like, oh, well it is what it is. I need to say my truth, and I am here to advocate for you, and I will keep on doing that until it annoys the shit out of you and you stop listening. Or you go, ‘Yes, Gerda, I can hear you. I can finally hear you and I'm going to do something about it.’ So that is what I wanted to share with you today. Please know that you 100% can have a self-running practice, any type of self-running practice, depending on how you describe it, you can have it. You deserve it. All you need to do is say yes to having your very own self-running practice. And if you need help with that, I'm sure I don't have to tell you, I am here willing, capable, and able to help and support you. 

So 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, and for today, that is a self-running practice.  😊

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Gerda Muller

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